What Is Public Education?

[Post that got me thinking: Some New Years Dreaming by Will Richardson

On Leaving Teaching to Become a Teacher by Clay Burrell.]

In a provocative post, Will questions the role of schools in today's society, and he quotes quotes Clay Burrell who writes:

More and more I wonder: is school a good place for teachers who want to make a difference in the lives of their students, and to the future of the world? Is there a way to leave the daily farce of gradebooks, attendance sheets, tests, corporate and statist curriculum, homework assignments, grade-licking college careerist “students” (and parents), fear of parents and administrators, and fear of inconvenient socio-political truths - and at the same time, to make a far more meaningful impact on the lives of the young?…I’m not sure how much longer I want to work for schools. I’d so much rather teach.

And in general, a lot of Clay's writing these days is showing an incredible dissatisfaction with the structure of schools these days. And perhaps it is time for Clay to leave the formal classroom. Certainly, given his comments later on down in Will's post, he sounds like someone whose time in the classroom is done:

As a high school teacher, I’m hard-pressed to see anything schools do that really are good for the majority of students - at least that couldn’t be done outside of schools.

Certainly, if this is what Clay is thinking and feeling, then he's probably right to think that the time has come to leave the classroom. Fortunately, there are a lot of places that Clay can find the kind of learning environments he wants. Informal learning environments have every bit as long a history as formal schools. Places like church groups, the Boys and Girls Clubs and youth programs such as PACTS (run by SLA partner, The Franklin Institute.) Informal educational spaces are incredibly important, and someone with Clay's passion and idealism would probably do an incredible amount of good in a place like that.

Will, in his post, talked a lot about his vision for a school for his kids:

[It] started me thinking, about a different model, one that is built on really small groups of students that meet in physical space studying and learning about the topics they are passionate about and who are also connected to other small groups of students with like minded passions from anywhere in the world via the Live Web, where long term collaborations and research and learning can happen over extended periods, all of it real work for real audiences, published and reviewed by engaged readers participants acting as mentors from global audiences. The adults in the room are co-learners with the students but also educators who can model and navigate the skills and competencies, the “network literacies” (sorry, Tom) that the kids in the room need to have to leverage the connections they help facilitate. And there might be some high-level, virtual administration in there somewhere, to make sure the connections and logistices are working. And there might be parents learning alongside their students, and others who are involved at different levels of the process. Regardless, it’s a place where learning is at the heart of everything. Not grades. Not tests. Not college acceptances.

Interestingly, this sounds a lot like the free school movement as typified by the British Summerhill School and still found in America at places like the Brooklyn Free School. This is part of why I think it's incredibly important for all of us who are arguing for reform and thinking about 21st Century schools to really immerse ourselves in the history of school and school reform, because change is happening right now, and we need to understand what has come before us and what still exists around us if we are to be advocates for innovation, we owe it to our kids to be scholars as well as activists.

But all of this also got me thinking about what we should and shouldn't expect our schools -- especially our public schools -- to be. (And I know that Clay isn't a public school teacher, but that's my lens....) There are some things that we have to deal with, and they can be difficult, especially if we hold onto an idealistic vision of what we want our schools to be for every child.

1) School is compulsory.

Something I realized early in my teaching career is that my very best teaching happened at 6:30 in the morning on the basketball court and Ultimate field. I realized that if I could get kids where they wanted to be, then we really could do something amazing together. I knew that the greatest impact I had on kids was with the kids on my teams. So much of my time in my "regular" classes was spent trying to recreate the feeling of 6:30 am.

But there's nothing wrong with accepting that school is compulsory, I think. We have decided as a society that this is something we value and need. And I agree with that, but it also means that there will be plenty of times that your classroom won't be the first place many of your kids want to be. I used to say to my classes in September of every year, "Just so you know, on a beautiful fall day, I'd rather be outside too, but since we have to be here, let's pledge to really make the most of every moment we have together." It was honest and upfront, and it did away with the false notion that my classroom was always going to be fun or the place we always wanted to be. Instead, what I always hoped for was that our time together would have meaning.

And I'm o.k. -- in fact I'm more than o.k. -- with compulsory education. I'm even o.k. with making kids take several years of science and math and history and English. I don't think most fourteen year old kids know what they most want, and I think that, at its best, a "comprehensive" (ha!) education does two really important things:

1) It exposes kids to a wide variety of subjects in the hopes that kids can find things for further study later on down the line that they may not have otherwise been exposed to.

2) (And this is the more important of the two) It gives kids different lenses on the world. I used to say that we read novels because every book we read teaches us to see the world through a different set of eyes. As an administrator, I've realized that every class -- not just English -- should do that.

Our kids today need to be able to see the world through a historical lens, a scientific lens, a mathematical lens. They need to mix and match those lenses which is why interdisciplinary study is so important, and they need to be able to apply those lenses which is why project-based learning where kids can apply skills and knowledge is so very important.

2) Our schools serve as a sorting mechanism for college and life after high school.

I hate this part too, but this one falls for me under the whole "We cannot be revolutionaries at our kids' expense" credo. Grades, as much as they are a construct, matter. This goes back to the whole "Two Schools" idea that I wrote about a while back... as much as we want our schools to merely be cathedrals of learning, that's not all they are. They also are mechanisms for entry into the world after adolescence. This can be painful and dangerous, and it's part of our job as educators to deal with this reality as openly, transparently and kindly as possible, but they are there, and if we are to work within this system, we have to deal with it.

3) Our schools will always be flawed because we are flawed.

This one may be the hardest part. Schools are made of people, and you put a group of people together and sooner or later, we're going to have to realize that we don't all pull in the same direction all the time, we don't always live up to our best ideals, and we say and do things -- kids and adults -- that we regret later. There will always be some teachers who are better than others. Kids will always have some moments in schools they don't like more than others -- just like adults have in their lives. Learning that sometimes it's about punching the clock and doing the work we don't want to do isn't a bad thing to learn. I love teaching, I love being a principal, I love being a father, but it doesn't mean I love every aspect of these things. Learning how to do things we don't love doing is a great lesson to learn in life.

4) Our public school system is -- at its best -- designed to do the most good for the most number of kids.

The public school system -- something I still believe must be the necessary backbone of a healthy democracy -- is designed to maximize learning for the most number of kids. The outlier kids (Albert Einstein, as mentioned in Clay's comments, for example) will always struggle in a system that has to attempt to educate just about everyone.

If I had to say one thing to Will and Clay, it would be this: We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If we can only see the problems in our schools without seeing the incredible good teachers do every day, we've lost sight of what happens every day. Public schooling is probably a terrible way to educate a society -- unless you compare it to just every other option. (Thank you, Mr. Churchill.) Even at its best, it's a flawed system. It just beats the alternative.

None of this is to say that we should be satisfied with where we are in public education today. NCLB is a monstrosity that is a wrecking ball for our public system. We have too many big schools that are totally impersonal. We have too many places where student voices aren't valued... and too many places where teachers' voices aren't valued. And we have too many places where learning is measured by a score on a test, rather than by the authentic work of the kids in the school. I recently read "Stupidity and Tears: Teaching and Learning in Troubled Times" (Herbert R. Kohl) and it is a must read for everyone who is frustrated in public education today, because Kohl gives us language for our anger. But in the end, Kohl is still working within the system to create change, and that is where I think we need to focus our energies as well.

We have a lot of work in front of us, of that there can be no question. But if we do not temper our idealism with a healthy dose of pragmatism, we will allow the problems to overwhelm us, and we will lose the ability to see the good that we do every day -- and the good we can do if we are willing to continue to try to reform the system in which we work.