Realistic Expectations For Successful Education

In the world of racing, you will never see a race between a Ferrari, a Volkswagon van, and a bicycle. The reason you will never see this is because the three vehicles are in completely different classes with regards to maneuverability, performance, and power. But if for some reason such a race were to take place, it’s pretty easy to determine the outcome. Barring unusual circumstances, the Ferrari would come in first, by a long shot, while the Volkswagon would come in second some time later. Eventually, the bicycle would cross the finish line too, but by then most of the spectators would have already gone home. There are no surprises with this outcome either, as most sensible people would not expect the van to perform as well as the Ferrari or the bicycle to perform as well as the van. This is an example of Common Sense at work.

The analogy of the race exposes the reality of our educational system today. One size fits all education ignores the realities that everyone has a different capacity and desire to learn. For some students, learning is both easy and fun. For others, learning is hard and unpleasant. And for the many in between, learning is neither easy nor hard, nor fun or unpleasant…it just is. But our school systems lump all students together, categorized primarily by age, and teaches them together as if they were all the same. Sure, we have some accelerated classes for the brighter students and remedial classes for the slower kids, but on the whole, the schools attempt to teach and promote kids in age groups with gained knowledge being secondary as criteria for advancement. The result is a student who either lacks the necessary skills to continue learning or one who is hopelessly bored by the relatively slow pace of learning. Yet the overriding concern to build a students self-esteem by pretending that all are equal in every way, which trumps the process of education.

Much of the problem lies with the false notion that kids who are the same age should learn at the same rate. But since all children are different, this is a generalization that is weak at best. We must also refocus our sights on the type of education that our students receive and have a clear-cut objective regarding the knowledge they are expected to obtain at certain points along their educational careers. By addressing these basic building blocks of education, we can begin to put our children back on the path towards an education that is appropriate to their abilities and desires, and in the process, we could probably more effectively use our education tax dollars.

With regards to the grade based system of classifying students, while from a social perspective this idea makes a lot of sense, from an intellectual viewpoint, we may be hurting kids more than we are helping them. At some point in their education, kids will begin to separate themselves according to their academic ability, creating amongst themselves a caste system of sorts that serves to segregate the students from each other. Those who are academically gifted may be shut out of the mainstream social activities, while those who fall below the academic norm may lose all interest in further education. Meanwhile, those in the larger middle go blissfully along, hardly being challenged to exercise their intellect or being pigeon-holed into pre-determined academic plans derived by parents and counselors who are determined to push students along the “college path” regardless of that students desire or aptitude. Rather than help our students master certain necessary areas of knowledge, we instead funnel them through to the next grade, hoping that they will catch up and flushing out their lives with abundant extra-curricular activities to make them appear better rounded as college prospects.

But the numbers of high-school dropouts, the low level of adult literacy comprehension and mathematic skill, the masses of remedial college courses necessary for students to get up to speed, all affirm the failures of our current structure. We need to find another way to categorize, instruct, evaluate and advance students so that they can all achieve the level of education they are capable of achieving. So where do we start?

Beginning at the earliest ages, from pre-school through the second grade, basic evaluations should be taken on each student as they begin to learn how to read, write, recognize shapes and colors, and perform simple mathematical calculations. Based on a students progress, beginning at grade three, students could then be separated according to their learning capabilities, offering students who are faster learners to move at a more accelerated pace while slow learners could be taught at a slower pace. By separating these groups from the students who are average achievers, we could remove the stigma and social cruelty that pits students against each other, giving all students an opportunity to focus on learning and not on jealous or insensitive peers. Such a move would also permit teachers to spend less time dealing with students who are disruptive due to boredom and less time helping individuals who were seriously behind the other students and more time teaching at a common speed that fits the capabilities of the class as a whole. All the while, students could shift from one learning path to another if their capabilities show that they have become more or less adept at learning. As students progress in their scholastic years, they would be periodically assessed to ascertain that they had mastered the skills necessary for a person with their capabilities and of their age group before they could move on to middle or high school.

Once in middle school, students could begin to explore the opportunities that await them as adults by engaging in more “real life” educational opportunities. (An interesting concept for instruction of these courses can be found in this post at Educational Whisperer.) Students would also begin to learn about civic responsibilities and ethics courses in middle school along with their academic lessons in math, literature, science, history, and art. At the end of their eighth year of schooling, students would be assessed again and interviewed to determine the course of their further education. Some students will not have the skills or desire to pursue a career that required a college education and could be steered into a course of education designed to teach trade skills necessary for life in the working world after high school. Other students would continue along the college path and go on to become scientists or doctors or teachers, among other things. In both cases, high school education would become more individually tailored to each students goals, while still imparting the necessary life skills like personal health and finance, and basic “living on your own” information. From high school, students would follow their paths to a university, a specialized trade school, or directly into the work force.

Finally, we must recognize that all students do not learn in the same way. Some are good at learning through the written word while others are good at learning through tactile experience. As such, schools should try to be more flexible with regards to the methods a student uses to gain his or her new knowledge. The goal is to learn, so the rigidity of how something is learned should be dissolved and the focus should become that it was learned at all. Teachers and parents should help their students develop learning methods that work for best for them and be judged on the final outcome.

Most children want to please their parents, and by extension, the other adults in their lives. As young children, this desire allows us to instill the qualities of respect and responsibility in them. But we must at some point return that respect when they become capable of choosing their own interests in life. By nurturing these abilities and desires, we help create a happier, more productive adult member of society. We must stop pretending that all children are the same, or that they can all learn the same skills. That simply is untrue and only blinds us to the real goal of giving our children the kind of education that they deserve.

A Nation of Teachers

Every event in a young persons life is a teaching moment, whether we recognize it as such or not. Every first sound, every new sight, every new sensation is an opportunity to learn, especially in the first few years of our lives. And as people grow they continue to learn new things and ideas and ways to behave. They don’t learn these things in a vacuum though. They learn from the people around them and the people they see in the world. Whether or not you have a child of your own, you are a teacher to someone; we all are.

In order for the state of our educational system to be repaired and once again become an institution of learning and advancement instead of a money sucking day care center, American society needs to face up to our shared responsibility as teachers of the young. A quick reminder of where we went astray may be in order. American financial might in the 20th century provided an era of leisure and consumption previously unknown. As incomes rose and technology advanced, people began to buy more things to do their work and increase their leisure time, in the process, losing the lessons gained from physical labor. As their leisure time increased, technology created entertainment that required less and less intellectual involvement and more introspective enjoyment, causing social skills and interaction to suffer. These qualities of physical work, intellectual development, and social mores combined to develop what was once known as character and often blossomed into traits like respect, appreciation, imagination, empathy, congeniality, and compassion. These traits, once learned, would, in most cases, transcend into all aspects of social and personal life and help continue our national prosperity. But if life got better, people got worse.

Don’t get me wrong here. Technological advancements are a wonderful thing. But they do not take the place of humanity and the ability to coalesce with a community. Technology offers humanity the opportunity to expand our knowledge about our world and each other by giving us more time to explore new lands and ideas. It does this by making the machinations of daily life more efficient, freeing up more time for people to enjoy. But rather than use this opportunity to our advantage, we have allowed ourselves to become slave to it. Instead of turning the increased productivity into an asset for a better quality of life, we have insisted that our own productivity increase to match that of our machines. The result, of course, is a net result in no more, and in some cases less, leisure time than we had before. Less time for our families. Less time in our communities. Less time to teach our children those things that create character.

But the children have been watching and learning anyway. They have learned that work is more important than family. They have learned that imagination is just a click away. They have learned that money makes the world go ‘round. And they have learned that “me” is the most important person in the world. Parents, too tired from a long days work or home late after a long commute, would rather spend the few hours with their children filling them with fun and adoration, instead of teaching them about respect and responsibility. Or they would rather pamper themselves, ignoring the kids altogether as they run wild through the house. Kids have learned that it is easier to do what you want than what is expected, as the punishment is likely to be minor or non-existent, and rarely ever consistent. The result is a generation that expects to have what they want, when they want it, and the way the want to have it. We are now moving into the third consecutive generation that has been raised under these increasingly slacking conditions and the result is a society that shows little respect and gets little respect from anyone outside a given age group, and one that can barely communicate with each other, let alone the rest of the adult world. Such a societal shift isn’t always easy to see until it’s gone on for some time, and this is no exception really. All generations complain about “those darn kids today…” but the truth is that it’s becoming less of a generic grumble and more of a reality.

So what does any of this have to do with the school system anyhow? After all, isn’t this an essay about education? The answer is like connecting the dots in a child’s coloring book. In order for a child to be taught the basic intellectual skills to function in the modern world, they first have to have the character traits instilled in them that will allow them to function in a formal learning environment. In order for these traits to be instilled, parents have to take a more active roll in helping their child develop them. In order for parents to spend more time with their kids, we need to accept the fact that our priorities, as a society, need to shift.

Such a dynamic change of thought requires some proof of pay-off, so let’s take a look at the benefits of having an educated public. First off, business needs skilled labor to operate. In fact, so many businesses are claiming a lack of educated Americans to fill their jobs as an excuse for outsourcing their work offshore or encouraging illegal immigration. Quality education would negate that excuse. A more educated public would also likely have a higher rate of employment, which would ease tax burdens on social welfare programs and increase personal wealth across the board. An educated public is less likely to have rampant crime or rundown communities. And an educated public would probably be more stable and peaceful, working together to solve the next human challenge instead of fighting for a piece of the pie. To me, these seem like very valuable returns for my investment in time and money.

So, we must stop paying lip service to the empty mantra of “Education Comes First” unless we intend to back it up with actions. Parents must be responsible for nurturing the traits necessary for a child to succeed in formal education, especially respect and responsibility. Parents and teachers must work together to demand respect and responsibility be applied to the learning process by backing each other up instead of working against each other as if the child’s happiness were the prize in a race. Business must become more flexible for families by allowing the pace of commerce to relax a bit, or adjusting their business plans to help accommodate the time families need to make their children into good adults. And society must promote personal interaction and development as more valuable than pure wealth attainment. Young people must be taught that their role in society is to learn the traits and skills that will allow them to become productive adults instead of having their whims indulged at every turn. Educators must choose to put their student’s needs ahead of their own by dispensing knowledge without bias or omission. And we must show our children that we value education by offering them safe, clean buildings, accurate and complete information, and qualified teachers and accountable administration officials.

If you teach a child to throw rocks at windows, you can’t very well be angry with him when you come home and all of your windows are broken out. He is just using the knowledge he learned in the way he was taught. In the same vein, if we allow our children to sit in front of a television or video game for hours at a time, if we allow them to ignore their teachers or disrespect us as parents, if we give them everything they ask for and expect nothing in return, we can’t blame them for becoming uneducated, disrespectful, anti-social adults.

It will do us no good to reform the way we spend our education dollars, or to restructure our teaching methods, or mandate specific mastery of specific skills, or make any other superficial changes to the system without repairing the foundation that we send our children off to school on. Without an educated society we will eventually become one of two things: either a society of ignorant peasants working for the man or a culture of autonomy, too locked into the solitary, technological grid to relate to others or contribute much to anyone. Of course, behind door number three is the promise of an educated society. Which door will you choose?