At Least Once More

I have written precious little about the "progress" in public schools since my retirement from that particular arena five years ago. This should not be inferred as insouciance, rather that I've seen little point in writing about the same ills -again- when it's obvious that the forces in our society that are transforming the schools must run their course.

Nevertheless.

After reading a rather well-crafted column in the local paper on the subject, I am moved to blog about it again, and so ask, and perhaps for the last time, why?
The schools have always been where a great many Americans, perhaps a large majority, take their hopes for the future, when children enter the classroom to acquire some of the tools needed to deal with the world. Perhaps, after acquiring some schooling, some students will apply that learning to addressing society's problems. This is certainly reasonable; historically, a number of such students have done this, and will continue to do.
But through what side door crept in the wholly irrational expectation that schools themselves can be mandated to solve a multitude, if not all of society's ills? It is irrational -looked at in the broadest sense it is impossible- since schools are not structured to do it and should not be restructured to attempt it.
And yet this litany goes on, gets longer, and is pursued with increasing pressure. Racial, medical, dietary and a myriad behavioral problems (not to mention some that we've not thought of yet- this is covered by the catch-all phrase in the DSM-IV-TR) are all deemed to have an educational solution, and those who attempt to manage the schools are far past the point where they can fold their hands and admit their incompetence to deal with these issues. Instead, they nod, and smile broadly, and assure the public that they can solve the problem (just fill in your own blank), if only they "-have the resources."
Those with adequate mental acuity who work in the schools know perfectly well they can't correct these issues. The children bear these problems to the schoolhouse door, and they are a matter of congentical defect, deficiency, or a home life that makes fantasies like the Jukes and the Kallikaks look like the Brady Bunch. The more time the teacher must devote to being a therapist or warden, the less they can teach.
The single biggest force in our present culture that militates against success in school is the prevalent belief that everything ought to be pleasant and not upsetting or rigorous. Oh, there's plenty of talk of "challenging" kids in school, but the teacher who attempts it is just as apt to find him or herself in hot water for doing so. Nothing of the sort is generally permissible in an educational atmosphere that insists that teachers embrace detailed curriculum guides and not deviate. And the curricula themselves are increasingly aimed at the lowest common denominator, as relentlessly "dumbing down" is the only practical way to ensure that "no child is left behind."
As far as any support from the home, that most perceptive of contemporary social philosophers said:

Parents can no longer control the atmosphere at
home and have even lost the will to do so. With
great subtlety and energy, television enters not only
the room, but also the tastes of old and young alike,
appealing to the immediately pleasant and subverting
whatever does not conform to it.

-- Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind; 1985

........and there is nothing immediately pleasant or gratifying about learning the parts of speech, Julius Cæsar, the Constitution, or fractions- they're all just necessary hills to be climbed on the road to becoming educated. This is the increasingly impossible task our teachers must attempt, and one of the reasons I'm frankly glad to be retired.

But none of this addresses the why of it all- what's behind it? Have we lost so much confidence in our society, are we that suspicious and fearful of our neighbors that we insist that all the things we see that incite our fears be rectified by some magical, impossible diktat? I suppose if I knew, I'd be rich & famous....the main and hopelessly banal goal that -apparently- is the presumptive end of contemporary education.
I suppose that none of this will be rectified unless and until we finally allow schools to pursue a true education: educat = to draw out, to bring forth those things in each individual and develop them as much as teaching can. And, as important as it is, teaching is always a limited activity, always ending where the free will of the individual begins. And free will is an uneasy concept as the 21st Century opens, as is anything that is not subject to statute, regulation, or some other form of social control. The more our society attempts to reduce education to a formula, the more it becomes obvious that it is a glorious variable, helping to produce individuals in all their unpredictability and diversity.