Mutually Assured Rejection

Most Americans believe school teachers deserve substantial salary increases. Most Americans believe that success in school translates to success in life. Most Americans believe that schools should be drug-free, alcohol-free, tobacco-free, firearm-free, bully-free, asbestos-free, pedophile-free zones for learning. Most Americans (especially heavy-hitting intellectual divas like Whitney Houston) believe that children are our future.

But are most Americans willing to ask themselves the difficult (but deceptively simple) questions regarding education and public schools? A typical exchange with my fellow parents on a park bench, or in the tae kwon do lobby, or in the kids' section of the library, usually goes something like this:

(informed parent) "So, I hear you guys have excellent schools in northwest city."

(Stephen) "I'm not sure. What constitutes an excellent school, in your opinion?"

(informed parent) blank stare

(Stephen) "Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. What I meant to ask was what are schools for?"

(informed parent) flees in minivan to the closest Chick-fil-a

(Stephen) surreptitiously sniffs armpit

Although we may evade many of these fundamental questions, schooling and education continue to command headlines in the media and hot topics abound: the No Child Left Behind Act, the new Washington DC school czar, various book banning initiatives, school vouchers, privatization, Darwin (sigh--45% of Americans continue to believe in creationism), billions of dollars dedicated to schools/education in the Obama stimulus plan. To put ourselves in a position to weigh in on these important issues (and many others), we can begin by simply reflecting on our own (very distant) school experiences.

The late social critic (and former elementary school teacher) Neil Postman stated:

At its best, schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living. With such a purpose, schooling becomes the central institution through which the young may find reasons for continuing to educate themselves.

My experience in public school was a disheartening one (I failed to learn how to make a life or a living). High school was particularly bad since the 1000+ students were "detained" in an architectural nightmare resembling Bentham's Panopticon. Let's see what's going on inside, shall we?

My 10th grade English teacher/automaton stomps methodically through Edith Hamilton's Mythology, pausing occasionally to coldly dismantle an unorthodox notebook. Another teacher accuses me of plagiarizing a research paper on replacement players during an NFL strike (because it reads so well). An assistant principal measures the flesh between the top of my kneecap and the edge of my shorts with a wooden ruler and sends me immediately to ISS. I watch three solid hours of Iraq war coverage on CNN in drafting class. I am banished from the library for quietly discussing a novel with a friend. I haul my entire John Bonham-replica drum kit into speech class for a disruptive "how to" speech. I listen to a history teacher complain about his hemorrhoids and wonder if he's referring to me and my classmates. I watch a sophomore nearly choke to death on a piece of celery.

It was clear to me that the great majority of my teachers were less than enthusiastic about coming to work, and I certainly did not want to be there (I've created a name for this phenomenon--mutually assured rejection). I was not invited to register for any advanced coursework, and the only reason I took the SAT (which I knew absolutely nothing about) was because of the baseball recruitment letters I was receiving from various colleges and universities. I remember the bewilderment of my elderly guidance counselor when she saw my SAT score ("You can actually go to college with this score!")

The one highlight for me was reading Mary Shelly's Frankenstein because it made me feel less lonely (monster secretly watches "normals" going about their lives, wishing he could be a part of it). In this same class, my teacher allowed me to choose a novel (I turned to Dickens) and be as creative with the "book report" as I dared. I constructed a newspaper with various "columns" and quirky headlines discussing the characters' plights, and it was well received.

Despite the mostly disappointing experience of public schooling, I developed an almost immediate passion for educating myself by building a broader and more sophisticated reading list (or self-willed literacy, as Fred Kaplan calls it) once I hit the university campus. This new found joy for learning was probably due to 1) escaping my home life, and 2) escaping my school life.

These days I'm observing my own kids' schooling with mixed feelings. The textbooks are DOA, many of the teachers seem frustrated and burdened (and sometimes outright hostile), administrators are increasingly playing politics with school boards, PTA's are consumed with fundraising and jockeying for highly prized leadership positions, educational researchers are testing theories that often seem out of touch with reality, and the students are slowly losing their joy and enthusiasm for learning, worrying over report cards, end-of-year testing, and the impending bully confrontation.

So...back to the uncomfortable questions we began with. What constitutes an excellent school? What are schools for? A brief blog posting will not suffice, and I'm not sure that I really know anyway (perhaps I'm the one that fled to Chick-fil-a). Perhaps all we can ask for is a safe place for our children to be engaged by an enthusiastic (and caring) faculty/staff that is committed to the notion of learning for its own sake (maybe throw in an experiential component) and, as Postman suggests, "the cultivation of a skeptical outlook based on reason." Some people call this critical thinking.

What I find most depressing is that many college and university students now resemble the lifeless masses I described in my previous recollections. Most view education merely as a credentialing process, an anti-intellectual gateway to the American middle class. In this scenario (described with chilling accuracy in the PBS documentary Declining By Degrees) students are not seeking education as a life changing experience (which implies growth). Instead, they are treading water. Meanwhile, the university machine becomes increasingly more business-like (as does the faculty reward structure) with external funding, student credit hours, and customer satisfaction surveys taking precedent over scholarship, mentorship, and curriculum issues.

I suppose if all else fails, my kids and I will cozy-up in some remote nook of the public library, deep in the stacks, reading and whispering until closing time.