On the two simple and crucial truths about education that AmericanStudying
can help us remember.
As anyone who has read Diane
Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great
American School System (2011) can attest, the policies of
accountability, testing, and school choice—cornerstones of educational reform
for the last decade plus—have largely failed. It’s not quite as straightforward
as that, of course; but Ravitch, herself one of the chief architects of those
policies before extensive experience and evidence convinced her of their problems
and limitations, dismantles No Child Left Behind and its many corollary
concepts pretty thoroughly. To my mind, the much more difficult question is
where we go from there, how education reform can move away from those models
and toward something new and hopefully better. Ravitch
has some ideas, of course; President Obama’s Race to
the Top program represents some other possibilities; and the coming years
will see many more suggestions, I’m sure.
I don’t pretend to be equipped to argue educational policy, although I
would always come back to something I’ve addressed in this space on multiple
occasions: universal
preschool. But beyond the specific and evolving questions of policy lie
some basic truths about education that I feel sometimes get lost in the
shuffle, and there I believe AmericanStudying can help remind us of what’s most
important. For one thing, some of the most compelling American memoirs include
passages that highlight the immense and inspiring power of education, its
ability to offer hope in even the most desperate and difficult circumstances.
From Frederick
Douglass secretly learning to read and write as a slave on the streets of
Baltimore to Richard
Wright forging a library card and checking out classics from a Mississippi
library, Mary
Antin feeling like an American for the first time in her elementary school
classes to Richard
Rodriguez challenging his parents on the importance of learning English,
and so many similar moments, these American lives were profoundly changed by
the chance to become a student in the fundamental and significant sense.
Remembering that basic and crucial fact, of the shared promise of education for
all American children, itself becomes an argument for universal preschool, for
focusing on improving the conditions and possibilities in every classroom and
for every student, for keeping students (not institutions, not accountability,
not outcomes) at the heart of every policy choice.
There are various ways we can keep our focus on students, but I would argue
that the most effective entails remembering and supporting the other most
important part of every educational moment: the teacher. AmericanStudying reminds
us that behind many of the most influential and inspiring Americans we can find
the contributions of an impressive teacher: Annie
Sullivan, the “Miracle Worker” who taught Helen Keller; William
James, whose Harvard mentorship helped W.E.B. Du Bois achieve his full
potential; Ella
Baker, who mentored many of the Civil Rights movement’s leaders and
activists; and so many other American educators and mentors,
including those in my
own AmericanStudying life (and, I’m quite sure, yours). Far from worrying so
much about holding public educators “accountable,” much less critiquing them as
so many of our current narratives do, it seems to me we should focus on
empowering them as best we can to do their crucial job, and then getting out of
their way. Who knows where the next Sullivan, James, or Baker is working with
her or his Keller, Du Bois, or Martin Luther King, Jr.—and where some extra
funding for resources, some professional training, some parental input and
support, some communal encouragement could provide these inspiring teachers and
students with the push they need?
Next big issue tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Thoughts on this issue? Other questions you’d
highlight?
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