Why Morph?

SUNDAY, JULY 17, 2011

There is no static state. Public schools are very different today than they were in the last century, and have tended to be very different each decade since for a variety of reasons and as the result of a variety of factors both internal and external. External forces under the rubric of reform and driven by money and accountability have been slowly re-shaping not only the day-to-day operation of our schools, but the actual focus and mission of the institution. Internal forces driven by the complex mix of parental wants, employee wants and generational and cultural differences in the childhood experience have moved the operation and mission of our schools in another direction. The institution is literally being ripped apart by forces from without pulling or mandating one way and by forces from within pulling and demanding in another way, and the tensile torque on schools escalates with each new push for reform from outside and each newly identified pull from inside. Prior to totally ripping the institution into pieces, (and, my friends, we are close to that, I think, as is evidenced by the growth in the number of charter schools, high stakes tests, voucher programs, increased need for technology, increased outcome standards, cheating, childhood obesity, union busting, etc., all with less and less funding), I believe it is time to shift the national and state discussion away from promoting one reform or another and/or defending or attacking one current practice or another, and have a very candid discourse about why we even bother spending the billions we spend to send the youth of our country into brick and mortar structures for about 180 days each year. If we can agree on the "why" perhaps we can agree on the "how."

Schools have always had multiple missions, though they have now changed in some subtle and some brutal ways. Schools have always been asked to occupy the time and provide custodial care of the youth of our communities during the adult work day and when they are not needed to provide familial labor. We still follow an agrarian calendar born in the days when 75% of our population was rural and our economy was based on agriculture. We are now down to about 3% of our population devoted to agriculture and we follow the same calendar. And, the nature of the custodial care of our kids has morphed during this time from simply providing safe shelter under adult supervision to the monumental task of checking inoculations, teeth, eyes, ears, spines, learning disabilities, emotional disabilities, and body mass index all in a setting that is disabled-friendly. We are further charged with actually improving the health and well-being of the children who come to us, a very different mission from maintaining the health and well-being of the children at the levels exhibited when they arrive. Apparently since it happens nowhere else, we must provide 30 minutes of physical exercise each day while serving food that would have starved Tom Hanks while a Castaway.

Schools have always been asked to teach kids stuff. The stuff used to be commonly understood as reading, writing and arithmetic, but that too has dramatically changed. We now teach the classic three "R's" plus a wide range of social sciences including history, promotion of the free enterprise system, health, all the sciences, all the fine arts, all the psycho-motor arts, all the skilled craft non-college bound preparation courses, and courses targeted at preventing dating violence, promoting bus safety, fighting drug and tobacco use, and discouraging pre-marital sex. We have moved from subtle acculturation into a commonly understand "American" culture, to efforts to communicate the value, history and heritage of all cultures. We have moved from an assumed understanding of gender roles to the promotion of gender equity. We have moved from teacher determined curriculum to school determined, school district determined, state determined and are on the verge of nationally determined curriculum. We still teach stuff, but the stuff we teach grows both wider and deeper each year.

Schools have always been staffed by teachers to teach kids the stuff. Women, for the most part, assumed this honorable role as a main career choice. The very best and brightest women entered teaching or nursing if they were able to pursue learning beyond high school. That has changed and all career fields are open to women (Say "Amen," "Hallelujah" and pass the plate!), but there remains the notion that those who can, "do" and those who cannot, "teach." Frankly, that is poppycock and balderdash. Teaching remains an incredibly challenging career. If you want to strike fear in the heart of Bill Gates, give him the Texas 3rd grade curriculum standards and a room of 20 3rd graders for a week, and let him know we will test his success, not his students, at the end of that week. Bring Depends. This career still attracts many of the best and brightest, but it appears to me it is also attracting more of the part-timers, the "June, July and Augusters". The road toward getting a professional license to teach is also fraught with an amazing array of IEDs from fingerprinting, background checks, collegiate hours clocked by subject and renewal every five years. It has never been so difficult to become a teacher and the practice of teaching has never been so difficult.

Schools have always monitored the success of their children. First by teacher made tests and a paddle or ruler. Now, with standardized tests and in a principal's office. Each community used to know who the "good" kids were and who the "bad" kids were and expected the good to do well, and the bad to drop out. We no longer look to dropping out of school as a solution, it is now a problem. As the rigor of the testing has increased the number of students unable to pass and thereby get a diploma increases, and schools and teachers are held accountable for their failures, unlike any other profession.

Schools have always provided learning tools to support teachers and kids. Books, blackboards, chalk, pencils the size of small trees and paper produced with bark chips used to be enough. It took 30 years for the overhead projector to make its way from bowling alleys to classrooms, but the pace after the personal computer arrived in the late 1970's and early '80's has been phenomenal. And expensive! Equipping kids with the devices and connectivity they will need to enter our colleges or economy has issued in an entirely new set of school employees: the IT departments. I remember hearing that technology would be labor-saving, and that may be true in the private sector. In public schools, it has added to the labor intensity of the work just to keep all the needed tools up and going. Districts are now required to post information on websites and provide email addresses for employees. No staffing plan in the 1970's allowed for people who could accomplish these feats. Add to that a rash of accountability standards, and few districts can afford to go without new departments of "Human Resources" and "Information Officers" just to keep the rules straight, the district out of court, and to seek ways to put a positive spin on whatever the new story is degrading public schools and crying for improvement. The technology revolution has in fact made schooling much more expensive. And, we still buy textbooks and still put up marker boards with pens in every classroom and some libraries still have encyclopedias.

In the 1980's I had the distinct professional privilege and honor to work with Larry Lezotte. Lezotte taught me a lot. One of my favorite lessons was the concept of "organized abandonment". Legislators, communities and school people do not practice this in public schools. We are still doing very much what we have been doing since the turn of the previous century, and we have added so much more! I don't know about you, but when I buy a new couch, I give the old one away. Not schools. We get the new stuff and keep the old and we are choking to death.

We must change what it is we expect of public schools. We must change it first and foremost for our kids and for the future of our nation. We must change it for the adults who choose this future-oriented profession lest we have no one left who will volunteer. If Legislators keep expecting more while taking nothing away except the funds, and parents keep expecting that we teach home economics and give 4 full credits for football and Ag, we will die trying to do both in an environment that publishes the success of the school on high stakes tests in the local paper. Schools are not now and have never been the panacea for all that ails us. They are not to blame, and they should be lauded. Schools have not failed, communities and legislators have failed. Those good folks on the payroll of your local school system will show up again in August to teach kids to the very best of their own professional potential, and they will do it in a setting with higher standards, higher expectations, more stuff to teach, more accountability and fewer dollars.

So, let's morph before we self-destruct!

Why do we have schools? It seems to me that a common core of cultural beliefs and standards must be shared and learned for forthcoming generations. We can argue all day about what should be included and what should be excluded, but basic human rights, basic human dignities and basic democratic principles should be taught, albeit in a dictatorial setting. We should not promote one religion or any religion over another as part of this process, but should impart that any belief system that answers eternal questions will be honored and respected.

We should teach the knowledge and skills necessary for the next generation, not the knowledge and skills used by previous generations. If we continue to offer courses that train our kids to memorize information rather than process information we are doing them and ourselves a huge disservice. Every student who exits a public high school with a diploma should have a core set of knowledge and experience, but must have a huge toolbox of information processing skills and a deep appreciation of the arts, sciences, languages, communication, problem solving and creative thinking skills.

The strategies we use to teach the identified knowledge and skills must be based in the latest and greatest tools and research. Kids must be challenged and must master the tools needed to answer those challenges.

We must re-think the non-curricular programs we offer. Does it in fact make sense for any reason other than historical or sentimental to offer Agricultural Science anywhere other than rural settings? Does it make sense to have a bevy of secondary teachers on board to coach competitive sports? Does it make sense to offer home economics, sewing, and cosmetology when we need nurses, welders, electricians, computer technicians and robotic repair specialists?

And we must re-think the basic organization of the school. Does it make sense to assume that today's children will learn best in groups of 20 to 30, gathered in a room for an hour or so with a college degreed, professionally certified educator? Does it make sense to continue building schools that are no more than a series of rectangular rooms along a hall? Does it make sense to devote an inordinate amount of space to a library that holds fewer volumes than a Kindle? Does it make sense to build large sporting arenas? Does it make sense to simply keep kids off the street for 180 days from 8:00 to 3:30 to serve merely as custodial care givers, weight reducers, meal providers, and test preparation specialists? We must ask these questions. The answers do not lie in our old yearbooks or the sacred text of any one religion. They lie in crystal balls and our vision of the future.

If students who exit from our schools are to be prepared for advanced academic work at universities or to enter our economy at a highly skilled level, then we are doing them an injustice. If that is what we want, then parents must be ready willing and able to communicate to their children that academic rigor means more than private leagues of volleyball and basketball, means more than cheerleading tryouts, and means more than the incredibly remote chance of an athletic scholarship. It means book time, study time, reading, writing, thinking, exploring, challenging, processing tons of information, etc., etc.

Simply put, schools cannot accomplish the incredibly varied and complex missions they are currently assigned while they are held so accountable for outcomes in only one major area, and are provided fewer and fewer resources. Can’t be done. We must change what we expect of schools and schools themselves and the good folks in them must change as well. Or, millions of children will be loose on the streets for most of their childhoods because their schools have been closed, or millions of children will attend schools that are labeled failures.

(I am frequently both amused and terrified by the notion of closing schools and replacing the adults with other adults to teach the same kids, the same stuff in the same communities. If there is a group of adults with a panacea and they are keeping it a secret until the public school fails, why don't they simply tell us? I think I know the answer, and it is posted as "Schools of Choice.")

In other words, we must morph or die.

What we morph to merits another post.

POSTED BY EILEEN GOOD AT 8:49 AM


2 COMMENTS:



Anonymous said...

Change is necessary! How do we motivate many of the old timers to understand, step to the plate, and embrace the change?

JULY 17, 2011 4:33 PM



Eileen Good said...

Not just the old timers, Dearest Anonymous. I'm an old-timer! Any one of us who does the same thing more than one year with different students could be stuck!