On the State of Education, Part 2: Big Lies
We measure the quality of a student not by their emotional or social skills, not by their perceptiveness, curiosity, or their desire to pursue what interests them, and not by their unique strengths and talents and passions. Instead, we use some treacherously narrow standardized mathematical equation that eliminates nearly all space for creativity, reasoning, critical thinking, activism, cultural awareness, discovery, self-representation, and outside-the-box educational and personal exploration. We preach that kids can be “whatever they want to be” if they just “work hard enough and believe in themselves,” and yet we stifle them at nearly every turn, convince them that they’re stupid and lazy and worthless, medicate them into numbness and submission. We crush their self-belief, unless they happen to be good test-takers who want to grow up to have “good” or “honorable” careers.
“Good” according to whom, and honorable according to what ideology? This is the first Big Lie at the heart of our educational system: We tell kids they can be whatever they want if they just apply themselves and work hard, yet we require that they acquiesce to the narrow mandates of a system that is only set up for the success of a select few who through luck or privilege can - or learn to - fit the mold, and we diminish, shame, abandon, and even incarcerate them if they can’t do it. Not coincidentally, this lie is also the fundamental tenet of the so-called “American Dream.”
First of all, I’m not calling you (the teacher, parent, administrator, coach) a failure, because I know that there are many, many of you out there that have dedicated your lives to raising and shaping young people, and are doing a fantastic job of it. Your dedication deserves honor. What I am doing is indicting the system within which we all have to work, a system that makes parenting, teaching, and coaching so much harder than it has to be. This system is sabotaging our innovation, mocking our compassion, and punishing us and our children for daring to hope or ask for a different way. This system is set up to at best marginalize and, more often, stigmatize or push out too many interesting, passionate, intelligent, complex, and multifaceted human beings.
Public education does this through districting, cuts and inequity and inequality in resource distribution, zero-tolerance policies, and tying funding to teacher and student performance. It does this by criminalizing students of color, and by indoctrinating teachers and administrators. Higher education, in its turn, does the same by driving costs so high – with ever-slashed funding (sometimes out of their control), merit-based scholarships that drive up tuition rates across the board, unwieldy and convoluted bureaucracy, unevenly distributed endowments, and admission policies of outright racism and classism – that it becomes inaccessible to students from working or low-income families. This serves to perpetuate and grow the gaps between the haves – predominantly white and middle-to-upper class – and the have-nots, who are predominantly students of color.
A Humbler View
Education doesn’t just fail the unconventional thinkers and those students with different forms of intelligence. Economics, cultural norms, and family or community circumstances sometimes dictate the need for young people to provide financial support for their families, priorities which supersede a commitment to an educational system that sometimes doesn’t value them anyway. Some of them live with constant fear and uncertainty under volatile, unpredictable, and racially prejudiced immigration policies; then, we exacerbate the problem with policies like truancy, which might keep some kids “off the street” but punishes others for doing their best to get by. What if there’s no real choice? I mentioned in an earlier post a young man from El Salvador with whom I worked a little bit in my time at English High School. He and his family were/are in the United States under a policy of political amnesty as a result of the persecution and violence in his country. In the early days of the Trump administration, this protected status was revoked, and this young man was faced with the possibility of being forced back to a country where he might literally not survive.
Instead of being labeled a misfit, being harassed, or being shamed because of his family’s situation, maybe what he needed was unconditional support, compassion, flexibility, forgiveness, and a consistent, non-judgmental listening presence from the adults around him. Maybe he needed someone to help him navigate the emotional, educational, and social-political minefield that was his daily experience. Maybe I’m wrong, but my education and my experience tell me I’m on the right track. But did anyone at his school bother to ask him? In order to provide and be those things for kids like him, we as adults must set aside our egos and opinions and our righteous sense of objective truth. We need to suspend our adult sensibilities. We have to get humble and ask questions, and truly listen to the answers and then take action based on those answers. Objective truth is very, very rare in any case; it doesn’t exist when it comes to the human experience. Real-world learning is subjective and happens through living, and we have to be humble enough to know with absolute certainty that we know little to nothing about an experience until we live it. And, if we can’t – or don’t have to – live it, and we’re faced with someone who does and who needs our help, we have to ask, listen, and accept that their truth, while not ours, is still valid. In fact, it is often the truth that matters most.
The Second and Third Big Lies
If we want to improve education, we have to ask the students what they hope to get out of it, what they want to learn, what interests them and drives them forward and stokes their passion. We need to stop telling them that the way the system is set up is “for their own good.” Because here comes education’s second Big Lie: That the system at large has their best interests at heart. Perhaps individual parents, teachers, coaches, administrators, and policymakers do. But how often do we ask the students what those interests actually are, and then do something constructive with the answers? It’s easy for us to pat ourselves on the back when we help the kid who wants to be a doctor/lawyer/CEO/engineer get themselves educated. There’s a defined path for those kinds of “good” and “honorable” careers, and the system of measuring a student’s value and quality is designed to send people into those professions.
But what about the kids who don’t fit? Maybe their passions fall into what we call “The Arts” or literature or food or wellness or exploration, or something else that isn’t politically expedient or doesn’t pay the big bucks or have a defined path. Maybe they’re not the linear and logical learner that our mainstream system so exalts; maybe college isn’t for them. Maybe the environment of high school is too loaded with meanness and expectation and contradiction and controlled by people – teachers and peers - to whom they can’t relate. Maybe it’s a cruel, unfair, and developmentally unrealistic expectation for a 17-year-old to know what they “want to be when they grow up.” What do we do for these kids? Often, we punish them, shame them, lose patience and give up on them, and then we assign labels that haunt and sabotage and imprison them – sometimes literally - at nearly every turn. This is not a failure of the student; this is a failure of the system and the people who run it.
Our educational policies also fail teachers, who are in an unenviable position as emissaries of a broken system who are being trusted with the positive development and growth of our children yet being asked to do it within a brutally narrow construct and with woefully few – and ever-dwindling – resources. Teachers have it rough, because their criminally underpaid jobs depend on evaluations that in turn depend on meeting a version of the same narrow academic requirements as their students. That is to say, there are benchmarks related to student performance that dictate an educator’s employment status. And, as the low pay tells them that society doesn’t actually value them, we then further insult them by telling them that they should accept the awful pay and be grateful because their job – with the long hours and high stress – is so altruistically gratifying and important. And even with all that supposed gratification and importance, if a teacher falls below the standard – maybe they’re not good teachers, or maybe they’re attempting to teach for knowledge instead of teaching to the test – they lose their job, because schools also receive funding based on the performance of their teachers and schools can’t afford to lose another cent.
Burnout is high among teachers; many don’t even last a few years. This lack of job security combined with the lack of resources and a disingenuous system puts teachers in a position where, instead of choosing all of their students – an ideal which is undoubtedly a driving force for getting into teaching to begin with - they are forced to choose between some of their students and a paycheck. And here is Big Lie #3, the driving force behind it all, not at all well-hidden for anyone who chooses to look and perhaps the singular fatal flaw at the heart of our educational system: It’s not about the students, the teachers, or the moral or intellectual future of humanity: It’s all about the money.
Originally published on May 20, 2020