Free Our POW's

Free Our POW's

A Call for Sanity in Education from Dr. Dan Johnson

A great deal has been written about POW's and MIA's from the Viet Nam War. But little has been said about the largest group of POW's and MIA's from another major U.S. conflict. These are the POW's and MIA's of one of the longest conflicts in U.S. history - a conflict waged by adults but whose victims are our children. The conflict is the war of philosophies regarding education in the U.S. The POW's and MIA's are those millions of students who are being held captive - or worse, forgotten - by the adults who started the conflict in the name of the children. These adults seem to be too engaged in their combat strategies to notice that the people for whom this war is supposedly being fought remain helpless and deeply wounded.

Is my premise overstated? I think not. Consider the major battles that have been waged during this 50-year conflict and their effect on education. There was the battle of "Sputnik" in the 1950's that was fought to free U.S. students to pursue math and science. Yet, today our children remain captives of an out-dated education system that perpetuates drill and kill and a survival of the fittest mentality. Then there was the battle of "A Nation at Risk" begun in the 1980's. This battle left millions of educators wounded but accomplished very little in terms of the war's overall objectives of improving U.S. schools. Two other major battles, the "TIMSS Offensive" in the 1990's and the all-out drive known as "No Child Left Behind" that continues through today, have had similar dismal results. In the meantime, minor skirmishes continue within the public schools themselves such as the battle of "Phonics vs. Whole Language," "Conceptual Math vs. Computation," and the "Whole Child vs. Academic Child."

Like most wars, no one wants to admit having started this Education War. It now seems to be self-perpetuating, and we seem to have forgotten why we entered it in the first place even though all sides in the conflict remain resolved to continue fighting to the last soldier standing. We have squandered billions on this war, we have little to show for our efforts, and our people are becoming war-weary. Teachers, school administrators, and school boards are hunkered down in their own bunkers at the front-lines - mostly shooting at one another. Academics, as they argue over the injustice of war and mock those at the front lines, prepare the next generation of soldiers in much the same way they have prepared them for generations. The generals - our legislators, governors, and departments of education - continue to shift their strategies from week to week and continue to vie with one another to become the next Allied Commander. The Joint Chiefs - our U.S. Congress and Executive - continue to predict a light at the end of the tunnel even as we hear the Asian locomotive barreling toward us from the other end of that tunnel. And as always happens during protracted conflicts, U.S. parents are taking various sides. We hear the least from the poor, who have little choice about supplying their children as fodder for their country. The middle class complains but for the most part remains loyal to the system. A few brave souls who refuse to participate in this tragedy have chosen to send their children to private or charter schools. But the vast majority of parents sit idly on the sidelines awaiting the messiah.

Oh, and what are U.S businesses doing? Most think that there is little they can do to help. After all, it's not their job to educate our kids, and they refuse to throw more good money after bad. Others are capitalizing on the war - some by supplying weapons for the war machine and others by supplying any shoddy product they can create to gain a personal profit. A growing number of business leaders are attending meetings held by bureaucrats of all ilks to lament the dilemma over coffee before going back to their offices totally befuddled if not brain-dead. They want to see a new offensive called "STEM" (an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and math) that will produce better workers for the global marketplace in which we find ourselves competing even as the educational war continues.

Is there a reason to hope for an end to this 50-year conflict? Do we have an exit strategy? Can we rebuild our society in a different image? In keeping with our recent election theme, one might suggest, "Yes we can."

We can decide that our children are more important than our personal philosophies and political agendas. We can decide to quit placating adults (parents, educators, business leaders, politicians, et. al.) as if somehow the residue from their happiness will "trickle down" to our children. We can quit searching for a single program or strategy to work for all children in favor of multiple programs and strategies that work for some children regardless of whether or not they fit existing expectations and management styles. We can quit trying to build "separate but equal" academies and charter schools that suit adult philosophies but pigeon-hole children into lives of "successful" but quiet desperation. We can quit teaching children to use technology and start using technology to teach children. Finally, we can admit that we live in changing times where we need to ask better questions rather than grasping for the perfect solution.

And what is the major obstacle confounding these changes? It is our fear of making mistakes and our failure to see the real threat that perpetuates this educational conflict. What I and many of my partners in crime have failed to realize is that "the solution is the problem." The solution poses a major threat to the status quo.

Most knowledgeable people recognize that, regardless of the exact nature of the list, we already have a workable list of 21^st Century skills: basic literacy and math skills, an ability to think critically in order to solve complex problems, an ability to work as a contributing member of a diverse often multi-cultural team, an ability to communicate complex ideas in practical words, an ability to see patterns and connections among seemingly unrelated phenomena, an ability to see possibilities where others see problems, and a knowledge of and commitment to ethical participation in an interdependent world. But we are not prepared to cope with the results of this knowledge - none of us is prepared.

Technology exists that would allow us to eliminate many of the mundane transfer of knowledge tasks that dominate most teachers' time. I have personally observed the effective use of computer-driven programs in reading and math that organize, present, assess, and report instruction far superior to the normal "electronic workbook" technology that permeates most schools and private tutoring organizations. But it took a long time for me to recognize that this technology is not viewed by various adults as a help. In fact, it is a threat. While most educators now realize that technology is not a threat to their employment, it is a threat to their jobs as they were trained to view them and have become content to pursue them. And if we, like some Korean firms, learn how to use this on-line technology to teach students in a more individualized and highly personalized manner, what will happen to the expensive cottage industries that have sprung-up to offer parents assessments and tutoring that the schools have "failed to provide?" Who will attend our state and national conventions provided by a growing industry of professional and private organizations?

The aforementioned issues are not stated as indictments. Nor are they meant to cast aspersions toward any individuals or groups. They simply represent a compilation of reasonable solutions to various educational problems that have emerged over time. They were developed by reasonable caring people and are by-and-large being perpetuated by reasonable caring people. In fact, they are by some measures helping some children. The problem is that by helping some U.S. children succeed, we will watch the demise of the world's greatest experiment with democracy - a democracy that depends as much on effective business practices and capital as it does on effective education and ethical citizenship.

The Asian people are not smarter than we are in the U.S. The TIMSS study taught us that it is a myth to believe that their students out-perform our students in math and science because they are more dedicated, have a longer school year, or have better teachers than we have. They simply have a significantly larger population than we have, and they are hungry to have what we have until recently taken for granted. They are willing to work harder for less until they can save enough money to move to the U.S. to participate directly within the world's finest democracy.

Again, most existing solutions are limited in their effectiveness because they are designed for a virtual world of independent silos where the concept of "local control" (synonymous with national pride) perpetuates our simplistic view of what is a complex, interdependent world. Therefore, I will propose a path to multiple solutions that begins with several significant questions accompanied by several clarifying follow-up questions.

•1.      Has our view of childhood matured over the centuries?

•a.      If our children are not here to help us hunt and gather or to work in the fields of our family farms, should we simply relegate them to the existing boredom of "practicing for adulthood?"

•b.      If we cannot guarantee our children's safety even with drug sniffing dogs, metal detectors, and myriad rules and procedures that have turned our schools into forbidding and foreboding fortresses, should we open the doors and engage them in practical, real-world problem solving that is both a learning opportunity and an opportunity to become responsible citizens?

•c.       If we have created so much to learn that we are robbing our children of their childhood, is it time to reconsider Piaget's suggestion that "play is the work of children?"

•2.      If most of what passes for schooling simply robs childhood of its joy and discovery of learning, is it time to redesign our concept of schooling?

•a.      If doing more of what did not work in the first place did not bring about the results we expected, is it time to do "different" rather than more?

•b.      If we can't find all those smart, hard working children that parents are apparently not sending to our public schools, is it time to change the way we teach so that the kids they are sending us can learn?

•c.       Since many educators are convinced that today's parents simply don't care, is it time for us (in the words of my father) to say, "We'll give you something to care about," and actually mean what we say?

•3.      If most gatherings of public school, higher education, business, and governmental leaders consist of a "United Nations" environment of caring people speaking in various languages often unrecognizable to one another, is it time for us to move from discussion to action?

•a.      Since children learn more from what adults model than from what we say, is there a way to align our words with our actions?

•b.      If our children are not learning critical thinking and other 21^st Century skills, could it be possible that the adults are not modeling these skills for them in our daily lives?

•c.       If poor, hungry children often become poor, despondent students, is it time for schools to feed kids the knowledge they crave and move the arguments about junk food where they belong - with parents and families who are not afraid to say no to their children?

•4.      If adults are preoccupied carrying out this educational war, is it time to make learning more readily available to the children?

•a.      Can we use existing technology more effectively to deliver meaningful information directly to children?

•b.      Can we help teachers and educational leaders reframe schooling to become synonymous with learning rather than with teaching?

•c.       Can we help parents and business leaders shift their emphasis of education from "getting kids ready for the future" to seeing each one of them as an amazing gift from God that came preprogrammed to learn (each with a slightly different configuration)?

These questions alone will not change education. Even if we could agree on a set of answers, we would only be part way down the path to a meaningful educational experience through schooling. But if we could view these questions as a starting point, they could become a catalyst for us to see life's challenges as that which makes life worth living. Who knows, we might even learn to highlight our differences as something to celebrate rather than something to fear. Wouldn't that be something worth modeling for our children? In fact, it might almost make the questions we've been fighting this 50-year war about seem somewhat inconsequential.

Dr.  Johnson is a 38-year veteran of the public schools. He has been a classroom teacher, building administrator, and superintendent in three states, he has worked with numerous aspects of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and he has published numerous books on education, group dynamics, parenting, and change. He is currently the Director of the Jabaily Center for Leadership and Learning, a non-profit education clearinghouse.