View from the Hall

The other day I had to stop by the local high school to pick up something from an acquaintance who works in the office. As I walked down the hall, I could have been walking down the hall of any of the schools where I taught from 1965 to 1992. The world has become a very different place since 1965. Why have our schools remained virtually the same? In fact, I would say very little has changed since I started first grade in 1948.

Undoubtedly children today are more tech savvy and given more leeway in expressing their opinions. They are fearless in their downloading and social networking. But as I walked through the halls of my local school, I saw teenagers crammed into classrooms, making the grade in pretty much the same way they've been making it since I entered first grade in 1948.

When I asked students for directions, the teenagers were friendly, polite, and happy to help. They didn't seem much different from teenagers back in 1965. One thing is assuredly different. Academic standards have been in steady decline over the years. According to 1983 study, A Nation at Risk, our education system has been slipping since the late sixties, a decline I describe on my website and in my memoir.

All of this, however, is nothing new. One thing not being discussed is that those who are now teaching and administrating our schools were educated by an inferior system. The damage is perpetuating itself. Jonathan Kozol began a recent article on illiteracy by saying that one third of Americans could not read what he was about to say. Perhaps an even more disturbing fact is that far more than one third are content to allow our children to be educated by schools that don't even come close to giving them the kind of education they need and deserve.

Perhaps the education system is not failing. Yes, it's failing to educate our children. But the education system appears to be the strongest and most influential institution in the country. What else could account for the fact that every year we send our children off to schools that we know are academically inferior and increasingly dangerous places. Could it be that as a people, we're all just doing what we were taught to do in school, which is to sit down, keep quiet, and do whatever it takes to get the grade, no matter how irrelevant or absurd the assignment might be.

Nothing is going to change until we acknowledge that every education reform over the last fifty years has been based more on political expediency and fad than on the welfare of children. Perhaps the place to begin would be for teachers in one school after the other to refuse to implement polices that are not in the best interests of their students and to have parents and concerned citizens support their local teachers. For an inspiring story of what's possible, consider the stand taken by Norwegian teachers during the Nazi occupation of Norway.