Today I'm posting a fellow muller's thoughts. David Bryan is the Head of New Roads, a school in Santa Monica. He wrote the following essay for the school newsletter, and it was passed on to me by one of the parents:
If your time in school was/is anything like mine, you will have seen a film or two (or thirty) about people who live closer to the earth than those of us who grew up in or near large cities. My recollection has them as National Geographic films about tribal people with simpler and less frenetic lives. Or perhaps you have seen one of those films that takes the viewer through a day in the life of a farmer from a small farm in rural America. Regardless of the particulars, I'm sure you know what I mean.
At the time, you may not have noticed — I didn't — that in almost every one of those films you find children — from barely walking through nearly adult — hanging around, pretending to be adults and practicing adult behaviours. Kids helping on the farm, pretending to hunt, building fires, herding animals, helping younger children, washing clothing, making baskets... No big deal, I guess, and certainly not uncommon. You don't have to look to rural America or the jungles of Borneo to find that. Young People in our culture grow up playing house, they play with dolls, they play teacher, soldier... they play at all sorts of things that mimic adult life.
Then they go to school... and for so many of our children, their parents and teachers, the battle begins. Teachers and parents have to cajole, seduce, coax, threaten, or "trick"... and kids resist, resist, resist.
"Don't you want to learn?"
"I don't care!"
"How come you don't have any homework?"
"I did it at school."
"But this is really interestingt!"
"If you like it so much, you learn it!"
"No homework, no TV!"
...I have no doubt that all but a very few of you can write the dialogue.
Doesn't it strike you as odd? Why is it that kids who are so eager to imitate their parents and elders, who are always right there in the kitchen "helping you cook," or in the yard "helping you garden," in the car wanting to drive, or shave, or... suddenly are coming up with all sorts of excuses for why they cannot do their homework, or avoiding sitting down to do the homework, or saying they are doing their homework but in reality are doing everything but, or...
Why is it that schools and parents have to come up with complex reward and punishment systems to get a young person to think? Why is it that we have had to create the modern version of boogie men — the college admissions office, next year, the real world — to motivate our kids? In fact, why is it that we have to think about motivating them at all? The kids in those National Geographic films didn't have to be motivated!! In fact those kids — and our kids — are fanatic about learning until they get to school.
There are all sorts of answers to these questions, although none particularly satisfying. Maybe it's the way school turns everything into a task, into a graded task. To my mind, one of the worst expressions ever to come out of schools is one or another version of the all too familiar "Jonny is having a difficult time staying on task." From the moment we push them through the doors, they are in a peculiar and unreal world where they are evaluated, graded, and assessed... Nothing is ever done for its own sake. Everything is always preparing you for the next thing, the next course, the next phase of your life, or, worse still, the real world. Doing something for no particular reason would be... well... unthinkable. After all, it's school! In school, there needs to be a reason for everything. Otherwise you'd be "wasting your time." NO act has any intrinsic value. Not even art. Not even music. "They even give us a grade for singing!"
But maybe the answer does not lie in school. Perhaps we need to look at the larger world, the adult world, the real world. A lot of what young people see when we show them that real world is a highly competitive, "stingy" place where older people grow more and more weary handling problems that seem too complicated to solve, too exhausting to handle, and too disconnected from any sort of deep and lasting satisfaction to make them seem worthwhile. Why would anybody want to get ready for that? Let alone a bright young person filled with the exuberance that comes from all those years of play and fun and dreams.
Okay... so maybe I am overstating things a bit. I would love to think that there are schools where we do things differently. I would love to think that there are places that have moved away from having to seduce, threaten, or motivate our kids, and towards an education that encourages the thrilled, passionate and ferocious curiosity that is so obvious in young people.
But I know we are not there yet. Too often, I hear things like "What is my overall average?" "How can I raise my grade?" "I am soooo stressed over school." Or the flip-side? "Andrew can raise his grade, if he does well on the next test." "Tony's last test really hurt his grade." I would so much rather hear "Wow, it is so cool that life has evolved with all the variety we find on this planet", or "Yesterday I wrote this amazing essay on the impossibility of finding ultimate truth, and the absolute necessity of searching for it."
Somehow we must help our kids see that life can and ought to be "a party," and that the best way to prolong that party is with a vigorous life of the mind. I know some schools are further along than others, but we have a ways to go.
Yes, I know. There is a real world out there. Our children do have to compete to get into college. They do have to take the silly exam. They do need to "compete" against others for that job they really want. And all of this makes the hunger educators feel all the more challenging. How do we create a school about passionate engagement when we must still make sure they can get some sort of decent numbers on the next ERB, ISEE, SAT...? Hmmm... those kids in the National Geographic films? Did they take the SAT???
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education"
-Mark Twain
Yes. Indeed.
