The President and His Priorities

As President Obama beings his new term, he speaks of America's limitless possibilities. America’s possibilities would be limitless if all our children were getting the education they need and deserve. Since the National Defense Education Act of 1958, the arts and humanities have been eliminated from many schools—and with them, the spirit of creativity and humanity required to solve the nation’s problems and carry us into the future. Math and science alone are not the gateway to innovation. As Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” 

In his new Organizing for Action campaign, the President encourages us all to become involved locally and nationally in issues related to immigration, gun violence, and budget concerns—all vital concerns. However, this campaign offers no encouragement to take action to improve the American education system.

When will we address the fact that for decades schools have been sending an increasing number of young people into the world with little more than minimum-wage skills? And when will we ask ourselves why America’s leaders have degrees from the nation’s top universities, yet lack the character and skills required to solve the nation’s problems? In fact, it seems that our leaders not only fail to solve our problems, but often make them worse with their stalling and ideological bickering. What are we teaching our children?

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan calls his plan for improving our schools Race to the Top. Race to the Top of what? As America was busy becoming the world's economic and military superpower, our education system deteriorated into a moral and intellectual disgrace. Restoring the arts and humanities to their rightful place alongside math and science in our schools would be a good thing. But nothing will change until the lessons of humanity become more important than the acquisition of money, position, and power. 

Makeshift Memorials

Last night on the TV news, a story about Newtown, Connecticut showed a huge warehouse filled with toys, games, stuffed animals, and dolls sent to Newtown from all across America to honor the memory of children and teachers gunned down and held the troubled town. In the warehouse, Newtown residents are now sorting out the mounds of stuff and trying to figure out how to distribute or dispense with the items. I couldn't help wondering how much money had been spent on these toys. I estimated that there were probably at least three thousand items. At $10.000 each, the collection would total $30,000, not counting postage to send them from across the country. Even if I'm off by half, $15,000 is also lot of money. My thought was that this money could have bought a lot of books for children whose homes and schools were destroyed by hurricane Sandy. Also the toys could have brought joy to many poor children over the holiday. Or homeless shelters could have fed a lot of hungry people. Even if the games and plush toys are donated to good causes, the cost to Newtown of doing this will not be insignificant. I've noticed in previous tragedies that makeshift memorials are piled high with stuffed animals and other such things. Perhaps, we should rethink the idea of the makeshift memorials—maybe send or even create a card offering condolences to the bereaved and make a small donation of goods or money that will help alleviate the grief of the world in more practical ways.

Arms or Arts?

December 23, 2012

This morning, I heard more discussions on TV about putting armed guards in schools than I’ve ever heard about eliminating the arts and humanities from our classrooms. Since the National Defense Education Act of 1958, the arts and humanities have been budgeted away so that today in many schools, more than 30,000 years of what it means to be human have been reduced to an occasional elective.

Several days ago, a gun enthusiast on TV advocated arming teachers. A skeptic said that in recent public shootings, the shooter wore bullet proof gear, so did this mean that the teachers would have to do the same and if so, what about students? As a former English teacher, I thought it’s way easier to ban books than assault weapons. The American Library Association's list of 100 Banned and Challenged books for 2000-2009 includes The Color Purple; Brave New World; To Kill a Mocking Bird; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Bless Me, Ultima; Slaughterhouse-Five; Of Mice and Men; and The Catcher in the Rye. . . .

Michelle Rhee: Education Reformer or Corporate Steamroller?

Another Kaputnik Moment?

President Obama has called for another Sputnik moment to revitalize our education system and make America competitive once again. I began my career as an English teacher in 1965 and over the course of that career saw how the approach to education reform set in motion by our original Sputnik moment contributed to the decline in academic achievement. I would even argue that the last fifty years that were set in motion by that first Sputnik moment caused the decline. For the sake of our children and our nation, we must not allow history to repeat itself.

The most damaging legacy from that first Sputnik moment has been the elimination of the arts and the denigration of the humanities. The most fundamental problem among students today is the inability to read. Reading is fundamental to learning at all levels and in all fields of study. Reading is fundamental to all learning. Reading is a skill. But reading well is an art that requires imagination, perspective, and a point of view. All of these qualities are enhanced through the study of the arts and humanities. The same can be said for critical thinking. Yet, today in many schools, thirty thousand years of what it means to be human have been reduced to an occasional elective. How can young people assimilate and order information without some framework of understanding that helps them ascribe meaning and perspective to what they're learning?

Studies now show that student performance declines as children get older. This isn't surprising when when we consider that over the last twenty-five years we've tried to solve the problems in our schools, not by expanding the imagination and perspective of our students but by subjecting them to an increasingly standardized curriculum that is geared to nothing more than raising test scores.

The history of testing is a study in irrationality:

Testing was used to assess student progress.
When test scores didn't improve, teachers were encouraged to teach students how to test.
When test scores still didn't improve, teachers were encouraged to teach to the test.
When test scores still failed to improve, teachers were instructed to drill students like little soldiers for the test.

The obsession with testing is not a valid teaching methodology, but rather a mentality of competition instigated by ambitious leaders. As history and great literature show us, hubris of a life defined by ambition is doomed to failure. Right after the first Sputnik moment, America rushed to launch its own satellite into space. So sure that our rocket would succeed, officials broadcast the launch world-wide. The rocket blew up, and our satellite got no farther than the surrounding weeds. Newscasters dubbed our failed satellite Kaputnik. By driving children to study math and science without the balance of the arts and humanities, we make them instruments of competition defined by ambitious leaders. Only, it's the children who are falling among the weeds.

Mr. Illich and President Obama's Sputnik Moment

The last two blogs have recalled excerpts from Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society, first published in 1970. Illich was an Austrian priest known for his critiques of western culture. Today's blog offers his reflections on curriculum. Illich mistrusted institutionalized learning and favored self-directed work, such as offering students a list of names and works related to projects that interested them. While I still favor public education, Illich's insights articulate ideas we need to consider in order to bring more meaningful reform to public education. The following passage about curriculum seems prophetic in light of the way American schools have dumbed down and pureed curriculum over the years.

"School sells curriculum—a bundle of goods made according to the same process and having the same structure as other merchandise. Curriculum production for most schools begins with allegedly scientific research, on whose basis educational engineers predict future demand and tools for the assembly line, within the limits set by budgets and taboos. The distributor-teacher delivers the finished product to the consumer-pupil, whose reactions are carefully studied and charted to provide research data for the preparation of the next model, which may be "ungraded," "student-designed," "team-taught," "visually-aided," or "issue-centered."

Jargon is the language of bureaucracy. Jargon works like the language of advertising. It makes people feel good and makes their ideas sound right and important. We all want to feel good, right, and important. But as feeling that way doesn't make it so.

Recently, President Obama called for another Sputnik Moment. The President has been praised for his inspirational words. We all like to be inspired. But those same words he used were spoken back in the fifties. Driven by national pride, we flung ourselves into the study of math and science so we could beat the Soviets in the arms and space races. I lived through the first Sputnik moment and saw how our response to it changed our approach to education in ways that actually created many of the problems schools face today. I invite you to visit my Web site to learn more about the first Sputnik moment and why the last thing we need is a second such moment.

Mr. Illich, Standardized Tests, and the Consumer Index

Much that happens in our schools today is defined by measurable objectives. In fact, measurable objectives seem to define who we are as individuals and as a people: who has how much and how can we get more. It's difficult to know how we got started down this road as a culture, or why it's so hard to recognize the flaws in the current belief among many that the way to save our nation from economic ruin is to get more people buying things. Is it what we can measure that will save us, or those qualities that can't be measured: compassion, creativity, justice for all, and a sense of responsibility based on the welfare of all rather than special interests?

Perhaps we should rethink our approach to education where measurable objectives in the form of standardized testing have taken the humanity out of learning. In 1970, Ivan Illich wrote, "People who have been schooled down to size let unmeasured experience slip out of their hands. To them what cannot be measured becomes secondary, threatening. They do not have to be robbed of their creativity. Under instruction, they have unlearned to "do" their thing or "be" themselves, and value only what has been made or could be made."

Millions of dollars are spent on self-help books and motivational speakers across the social and business worlds. Perhaps, we ought to change the way we educate our children and save ourselves a lot of time, money, and personal angst. Perhaps the crisis in America is not economic but spiritual. Over the last fifty years, the arts and humanities have been so denigrated that today in many schools, more than thirty thousand years of what it means to be human have been reduced to an occasional elective. Certainly, we don't want to go back to the open classroom of the seventies where students wandered about schools defining their own courses of study. But discipline and scientific thinking not the antithesis of creativity and compassion. Or rather, they shouldn't be. The challenge is to achieve a balance so that the measurable and unmeasurable can inform one another.

How could the rejection of the unmeasurable qualities of the human spirit not have contributed to the divisiveness plaguing our political system and the greed that motivates our financial system? Where will all the social networking get us if we don't know how to work together as a people to solve the problems that threaten our wellbeing as individuals and as a people?