[The juxtaposition that inspired this post is our current educational situation as typified by Race to the Top and the loss of a generation of wise educational leaders including, this weekend, David Mallery.]

This idea is not my own, but if intelligence is speed, then wisdom is slowness.

I write this after reading about the death of David Mallery from Christian Long who tweeted out:

I worry a lot about that these days. I worry that we are losing wisdom. Wisdom is a funny thing, because it isn’t something you are born with, and it isn’t something you can acquire quickly and easily. It is hard-fought, path paved with mistakes and regret and reflection. Those folks who acquire the term “Wise Beyond Their Years” often have had to get there the hard way.

The people we are losing understood the balance of intelligence and wisdom. Ted Sizer understood that listening is as important as speaking. What we have instead is a “Race to the Top” with goals that are completely unproven, and many states falling all over themselves to change their long-term policies for a short-term influx of money.

As John Wooden has long said, “Be quick, but don’t hurry.”

Let us be clear, the problems facing schools are serious, and they demand that we work diligently and quickly to make our schools better.

But let us be wise in our changes. Let us listen to the people who must enact the changes. Let us consider what we do and how well we can do it. Let us not demonize those who oppose is by turning their arguments into strawmen. Let us, instead, do things wisely and well. If for no other reason than we want our students to do so as well. If that means that we must slow down to listen, to reflect, to come to consensus, so be it. Better we make the wise decision than the expedient one.

Read the older educators… Read Ted Sizer and Deborah Meier and Herb Kohl… and feel the wisdom in their words. They write without hubris, but instead with an acknowledgment of their own flawed humanity. They write with an understand that they cannot be all things to all children, but with the knowledge that they must come as close as they can.

I am far from religious, but I am reminded a lot these days of the serenity prayer:

I worry that our inability to have the wisdom to know the difference is going to do a lot of damage. In the days of hyper-culture, this isn’t just a problem in education, of course. But when we lose sight of the value of wisdom in education, how can we expect it to surface on any large scale anywhere else?