Nobody disputes that education is transformative. Students come in at the start of the year and are very different by June. This effect is cumulative. Year after year the students grow and develop. Sure, they’d grow and develop with or without formal education, but could this society continue if all children grew and developed without specific direction? I think not.
Children aren’t the only ones who grow and develop as a result of being in school for six or more hours a day. Teachers change, too. At least this one has.
Six years ago my friends likely would have described me this way:
Very smart, but impatient with others who don’t get things as quickly as he does. Edgy; tense; quick to anger; sarcastic. Stubborn, inflexible, stiff, rigid. Disorganized.
Yes, I did say my friends, all of whom were surprised, to say the least, that I wanted to become a teacher and a special education teacher at that.
Six years later these same friends say:
Very smart. Calmer, but still very alert. Flexible. Open to new experiences and way more patient. Less judgmental. Less sarcastic but wittier. Very generous.
What happened?
I changed. None of those changes were planned, directed, strategic or part of a curriculum. All the changes are the results of tests, and those tests were anything but standard. Anyone who has read my writing for any length of time knows that I have VERY low regard for standardized tests; they are a fraud being perpetrated on the American by its elected leaders, none of whom have a clue about how children learn.
Unfortunately, as standardized tests have become more prevalent schools have had to move further and further away from operating in ways compatible with the ways students learn. Students learn and develop the same way I have grown and developed the past six years, the way I’ve grown and developed through the courses of all my various careers. I was put into situations where I had to solve problems and learn from the failures and successes of the effort. Even more important, I was given time and help to figure out why what I did was a mistake or success, and, if the former, how to do it better next time. I engaged in the process because it was meaningful and both success and failure had consequences that meant something to me.
The noted educational philosopher, Tom Bodett, he of “We’ll leave the light on for you” fame, said, “The difference between school and life? In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.”
More and more it seems we shield our children from life, from having experiences that have consequences, from taking responsibility for their successes and failures. My great grandparents did hard, physical work and hoped for a better life for their children. My grandparents did slightly less hard physical work and hoped for a better life for their children. My parents did more intellectual than physical work and hoped for a better life for their children. I do purely intellectual work and hope my now 16-year-old son has a better life than mine.
But I wonder if I am helping him develop the tools to do that.
He is great with kids, but he does not want to babysit. He is big (6’4” and still growing!) and strong, but does not want to do physical work. When I was a kid I didn’t get an allowance. If I wanted money I had to work for it. My son gets $20 a week whether or not he empties the dishwasher or cleans the cat littler. When he doesn’t do it, my wife or I do.
Have I failed my son by not giving him larger responsibilities, by not giving him or allowing him to find tasks with real consequences for him?
I’m not talking about punishing him for not cleaning the cat box or paying him to do so. When I was his age I dropped out of school to work on political campaigns because the election of those candidates and enactment of what they stood for had greater importance to me than parsing Moby Dick. I was bored in school because it did not have meaning in terms of my needs.
My son is smarter than I am but his grades are worse than mine were even though he attends school every day and I rarely did. He has grown up in a stable home with two parents that he knows love each other and him. When I was 17, I moved out and lived on my own to get away from a very difficult family situation. I had to earn $200 a month for my rent and money for food and clothes and other aspects of life. My son has gone to camp for part of the summer for the past six years. This year he is there for the whole summer because he has a paying job, his first. Maybe the $250 he earns this summer as the theater aide will teach him about effort and responsibility, and provide him with tasks that carry meaningful consequences of success or failure.
His parents haven’t done that and neither has his high school. I think we’ve failed him in an important way.
Has education or the pursuit of it transformed you in a tangible way?
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By Deven Black
