What We Can Do
In a recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times Rory Stewart says that, “We must acknowledge the limits of our power and knowledge in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere and concentrate on what is achievable. The question is not “What ought we to do?” but “What can we do?”
Shouldn’t we say the very same thing, ask the same question, in regard to our system of education? Shouldn’t we no less acknowledge the “limits of our power and knowledge” to significantly improve our schools and our children’s education? Shouldn’t we begin to address what we can do and no longer be stymied by what we ought to do but can’t?
When I ask educators if all children can go to college they reply that we have to give all children that opportunity, that we have a moral obligation to do so. By emphasizing moral necessity educators can justify almost any reform program including most recently the No Child Left Behind law. For don’t we have to change all children’s lives for the better. Aren’t we required to do so?
But what in fact is happening in regard to our efforts to reform the schools and make all our school children proficient in reading, writing, and figuring? We are not being successful, as is evident to everyone.
We are learning, painfully, that many, if not most, of our problems and difficulties in raising the achievement levels of all our children are deeply embedded in things over which we have no control, in family histories, experiences, and the circumstances of the lives that children bring with them to school. For teachers, even the best of them, positive role models that they are, rarely diminish, let alone replace, the negative role models that children bring with them to school, and that are much more a part of them than are their teachers.
The teachers, being as they are on the front lines of the struggle to educate children, are aware more than anyone of just how little they can accomplish with the children in their classrooms. Furthermore, many of them come to their teaching jobs with little or no experience with the particular needs and situations of the minority and impoverished inner city children who fill their classrooms. Even the very best of them need in support of their classroom work all kinds of other services that for the most part are not readily, if at all, available.
In short there is a gulf that separates teachers from their children, perhaps no less daunting than the gulf separating the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan from the native populations they would help.
We were warned by the authors of A Nation At Risk, in April of 1983, that “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. … We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”
Now, nearly 25 years later, nothing has changed. The warning was heard and repeated endlessly in the national media, but nothing came of it in regard to the outcomes for our children in our schools. Now only the educators seem to have held onto the great objectives of the members of the Nation At Risk Commission. For educators (probably not teachers) like Commission members go on looking for a single reform effort, such as national standards, merit pay for teachers, school choice, No Child Left Behind, etc. that will transform all schools into successful educational establishments. But of course this won’t happen.
The American people, of whom I am one, are probably beginning to feel that the great educational objectives (for example, everyone going to college, and graduating in a reasonable time frame) are unachievable, and although not yet “lapsing into a widespread cynicism and opposition,” comparable to their attitude vs. the war in Iraq, they may soon do so.
Instead of constantly looking for the magic bullet that is going to solve our problems we ought instead to acknowledge our great limitations in respect to the powers we have to educate all our children. We don’t have such powers. For children, especially those whose lives outside of school are singularly deprived of adequate housing, health care and two parent families, we can do very little of what we would like to do. Why not start by owning up to our own inadequacy in this regard?
The mission of the inner city school (such as the Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Boston) may very well be, “to turn out students who are competent, skilled, and informed citizens, capable of critical thinking and problem solving, appreciative of the arts, and able to function effectively within an increasingly pluralistic and technologically advanced society.” But given the present circumstances of the lives of its children there is absolutely nothing that the school can do to realize its mission. It doesn’t have the power.
There are, however, things we can do in regard to improving our schools and the education of our children. We are not powerless, no more than the United States army in Afghanistan. While we’re not going to have all kids graduate from high school and go on to college (unless we make the standards ridiculously low) we could make sure that while they are with us in school the kids are doing things that make sense to them and to us.
That’s not the case now, and if you don’t believe me attend classes for a day or two in a large inner city middle or high school. And after doing so ask yourself if the activities you witnessed were making “competent, skilled, and informed citizens, capable of critical thinking and problem solving…” out of the kids. Then ask the kids themselves what sense it all made to them “what was it all about.”
To know what we can do we ought to begin with what is working. For in every school there are probably pockets of learning that are going on. During the six hour long school day there are probably some activities that have successfully engaged the kids. For example, I taught in a high school where for many students that only thing that brought them to school was a beloved theater program.
Then there are other activities, such as sports, band, a rock music group, a few clubs etc. that clearly engage the kids. The gifted kids are often engaged intellectually by good math, science, history and language teachers. But most kids, probably even in the average suburban schools, will rarely if ever be engaged, fully engrossed by their learning, during the school day.
Each year the teachers ought together decide what they might do differently to involve a few more kids in one or more learning activities. Save the kids one by one, no longer en masse, that should be our Mantra. Modest efforts are needed. The big ones, such as racial integration and No Child Left Behind, have not and will not work.
Stewart concludes his Op Ed piece with these words, “I believe we can do a great deal… [But] we have no moral obligation to do what we cannot do.”
What about us who care about the schools? What can we do? In Kabul, Afghanistan, one can help a single baker to open a business. (See Nicholas Kristof’s op ed piece in the NYTimes of March 27)
In the inner city middle school we can help a single teacher to reach a few more of her kids with meaningful learning activities, not open a bakery on the ruined streets of Kabul, but perhaps read a book and engage in meaningful conversation about the book with teacher and classmates.
