Kids gettin' down at a school I visited in Ghana. Hey kids, be cool, stay in school!Here's another one you might not hear much about with all the debate regarding No Child Left Behind. How about no child left at school?
"An American kid drops out of high school every 26 seconds. That’s more than a million every year, a sign of big trouble for these largely clueless youngsters in an era in which a college education is crucial to maintaining a middle-class quality of life — and for the country as a whole in a world that is becoming more hotly competitive every day.
Ignorance in the United States is not just bliss, it’s widespread. A recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core found that a quarter could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900.
“We have one of the highest dropout rates in the industrialized world,” said Allan Golston, the president of U.S. programs for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In a discussion over lunch recently he described the situation as “actually pretty scary, alarming.”
Roughly a third of all American high school students drop out. Another third graduate but are not prepared for the next stage of life — either productive work or some form of post-secondary education.
When two-thirds of all teenagers old enough to graduate from high school are incapable of mastering college-level work, the nation is doing something awfully wrong." (Read the whole sad tale here).
This is a good column, similar to the many others that pop up a couple of times a year that make you say "Are we really that messed up educationally and intellectually as a nation?!" Apparently we are. However as usual there is no mention of the possibility that intellectual development might be intimately related to spiritual and moral development. I'm not talking about "prayer in schools" propaganda either which is essentially a smoke screen for spreading a particular brand of Christianity (sorry, I had to say it). What I'm saying is that to do well in academics, to even stick around long enough to do well, requires at least one spiritual and moral capacity: the capacity for sacrifice. The problem is, as I've said in "Pursuit of a Pain Free America", according to the new social contract, "sacrifice" is a four-letter word and demanding the best of our children is considered a form of child abuse! I remember when I was a kid, I watched one of those news stories about how kids were educated in Japan or China I think. This news story was pure propaganda. The core point was that these kids spent all their time in school rather than doing cool things like American kids. "Look at that weird society", the story implied, "aren't you glad to be an American where you're not some kind of mass-produced intellectual slave?" Being a bit of a nerd (still am) I didn't think spending more time in school would be so bad. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time but watching this thing on these news left me with the impression that I wasn't getting the full story. Little did I know, right?There are at least two selections from the Baha'i Writings worth pondering here:
"How long shall we drift on the wings of passion and vain desire; how long shall we spend our days like barbarians in the depths of ignorance and abomination? God has given us eyes, that we may look about us at the world, and lay hold of whatsoever will further civilization and the arts of living. He has given us ears, that we may hear and profit by the wisdom of scholars and philosophers and arise to promote and practice it. Senses and faculties have been bestowed upon us, to be devoted to the service of the general good; so that we, distinguished above all other forms of life for perceptiveness and reason, should labor at all times and along all lines, whether the occasion be great or small, ordinary or extraordinary, until all mankind are safely gathered into the impregnable stronghold of knowledge. We should continually be establishing new bases for human happiness and creating and promoting new instrumentalities toward this end. How excellent, how honorable is man if he arises to fulfil his responsibilities; how wretched and contemptible, if he shuts his eyes to the welfare of society and wastes his precious life in pursuing his own selfish interests and personal advantages. Supreme happiness is man's, and he beholds the signs of God in the world and in the human soul, if he urges on the steed of high endeavor in the arena of civilization and justice. "We will surely show them Our signs in the world and within themselves."[1] [1 Qur'án 41:53.]"
(Abdu'l-Baha, The Secret of Divine Civilization, p. 3)
"The primary, the most urgent requirement is the promotion of education. It is inconceivable that any nation should achieve prosperity and success unless this paramount, this fundamental concern is carried forward. The principal reason for the decline and fall of peoples is ignorance. Today the mass of the people are uninformed even as to ordinary affairs, how much less do they grasp the core of the important problems and complex needs of the time."
(Abdu'l-Baha, The Secret of Divine Civilization, p. 109)
Perhaps of course there is a kind of divine justice in what is happening to the intellectual (or lack thereof) foundations of American society. Perhaps the next stage in the battle for the decolonization and liberation of the masses of people around the world will be waged on the battlefield of the mind. Formerly subjugated, humiliated populations will surge forward on the wings of intellectual, spiritual and moral excellence while comfort loving and ignorant nations fall into chaos and decline. If so, then maybe this column is a sign of a redistribution of global power that is long overdue, a revolution of brains rather than bullets. Wouldn't that be nice?
10 comments:
Great and timely post, Phillipe. The American public school is long due for a total overhaul. Unfortunately that would involve retraining thousands of teachers who just aren't interested. The current system was developed to ensure a supply of workers for manufacturing jobs. Basically retrain a rural community for industrial life. Scientifclly and technically successful Americans from Alexander Graham Bell to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have put their trust in the scientifically based Montessori style of education. Research based and emphisising self-directed learning and personal accountability, for me, Montessori is where it's at. I can really see the Baha'i neighborhood children's classes developing into neighborhood scale schools educating the soul with the Baha'i Faith and the mind and body through Montessori method.
Internet columnist Robert X Cringely has been writing about education reform lately, a field outside his expertise.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080321_004574.html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080328_004611.html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080404_004650.html
And on the subject of branded Christianity in the schools, there's the site about Ben Stein's Expelled movie: http://www.expelledexposed.com/
The only way I can see to get the school system fixed up is to adopt a Montessori methodology and get all the University Education School professors trained in it. Then in 15-20 years most school teachers and school administrators will have had that training and have gradually phased it into use. This is similar to how an International Auxiliary Language would be propagated. (though in that case, TV, libraries, commercial book stores, and of course the Baha'is would be involved in addition to the schools).
Thanks the soap box!
- Jeff in Charlottesville, Va
http://Lavezzo.com/blog
Jeff thanks for such a detailed and thoughtful comment. I'm not an expert on the Montessori method but know many people who feel very positively about it. Perhaps what you are describing will happen.
But let's not put this all on the teachers or the educational system PLEASE!!! If all we wanna do as parents and as people is follow the path of greatest laziness and luxury, we will not demand excellence of our children and the schools they attend because it takes too much time away from entertaining ourselves, and besides - it takes EFFORT! Who can be bothered to do all of that? The hardworking individual is no longer the American ideal; he/she is perceived to be a "sucker" or "stupid" and most definitely un-sexy. Horrors! I believe that until we hunger for achievement that is earned as the result of our own efforts, any other reform is futile.
Helen I agree, like most of our problems what's going on in our schools and in our kids heads are really symptoms of deeper problems. Much of what passes for reform in our society is the equivalent of giving a glass of water to a person dying of cancer and calling it a cure, it's a form of malpractice
you need to retitle it as the Land of the Fools and Home of the Clueless....
An education could save these Teenagers from a life of Crime, drug abuse and sexual abuse...
Furthermore a spiritual education would keep them from perverting scientific knowledge that would kill the planet....
Helen is right, it is too easy to blame this on teachers and education systems. We can all be a part of the solution by mentoring young people, since research shows that students who meet regularly with mentors are less likely to skip a day of school or even one class. We can also volunteer at schools, after school programs, and advocate for our children and youth. There is a report on this website http://www.americaspromise.org/APA.aspx called Cities in Crisis that has more information about the issues.
Also, to see local efforts on the web, check out www.inspire4life.org
Allison thanks for the info, as an emerging public health social worker, I know that focusing on a single cause of any social problem has real limitations. It's not all about teachers or even students or parents for that matter. It's a question of what kind of people are society at all levels is skills at producing. Right now, it ain't too clear.
thanks so much for that last comment, Phillipe. It is on point!
The "blame game" is an easy trap to fall into.
I sometimes posed the following open-ended question to middle and high school students on both ends of the spectrum:
A student gets a "B+" in a subject. He/she has a computer, his or her own room, a quiet place to study and do homework, and parents and teachers who are able to monitor, assist, reward and punish, and keep the student on track.
The other student gets a "B". He/she does not have a home computer, shares a small bedroom with 2 others, has to do homework at the kitchen table, in a noisy environment, does not have parents and/or teachers who make sure they do what's expected.
So... which student would you admire most? Which one has achieved the most? Who has learned more about themselves and how to get things done in life in the process of earning their grade?
What could and should each of them do from here on in?
Judith W
I think Phil and Judith have good points.
Speaking from personal experience, I think that, at least in the case of highschool students, we must also acknowledge their power as individuals to choose for themselves.
Granted the choices they make will be limited by what they are aware of, referring to both their internal capacities and the external possibilities. Both of these are quite flexible but its hard to see that.
Personally, I dropped out of high school, repeatedly. I didn't feel challenged in my classes and the environment was very toxic. Now, in college, while the concepts are easy, the work load is my greatest challenge. I am constantly trying to discipline myself and struggling to sacrifice a lifetime of laziness and ease. I see others who really may struggle to understand what's going on in class, but they do all the work, are able to take more classes, and get better grades.
I wish I had understood the nature of sacrifice Phil is talking about when I was 16.
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