School Days, Golden Rule Days

School days, school days

Dear old golden rule days

Readin' and 'ritin' and 'rithmetic

Taught to the tune of the hickory stick

                (Music by Gus Edwards; Lyrics by Will D. Cobb, 1907)

School is out. Have the expectations we hold for our children been met? A report card:

My children are leaving elementary school. During their six years in our local school district, there have been two parcel tax battles. In the news, teachers have been portrayed as being money-sucking union members. In our local school district, letters to the editor have frequently portrayed teachers as being overpaid and over-pensioned. I have not seen that. These are political myths that are convenient to cutting off funds, and an unaware public all too often buys into the lies.

I attended school board meetings, not PTA meetings. The latter might have been useful, but I only had time for one or the other. PTA meetings deal with the specific environment of a school, while school board meetings discuss the entire ecology of the district. I went to those meetings. Frequently, I listened while parents complained about how their children weren’t being given something, whether it was the ability to enroll in their neighborhood school, or the sports elective that parents felt sure was essential. The general message was that the district owed these children whatever it was the parents wanted. Those parents with complaints would have their say, and then they would leave, and go home.

I stayed on at those meetings. Meetings where the board would leave to the very last an agenda item that needed to be addressed by the teachers’ union representative. Such meetings could go on until sometimes later than 11pm. Yes. And, yet, the union rep hung in there. I know, because I was one of the ones who stuck it out with her. What I learned in these meetings would curl your hair and your toes. Parents who left, after having their 3 or 5 minutes to talk about their personal need for their child unique, never heard about any of the issues or challenges that inform policy in the district.

The teachers’ contracts had been up for renewal for a several years. Our district, like many, had been shortchanged by the, due to the shortfall of the state economy—brought on because people, particularly politicians, don’t believe in taxation or social programs. The state, you will remember, mandates education. However, whenever there is a fiscal crisis, the first thing cut from the budget is funding for public education, whether it is k-12 or higher education. That is the  first cut. The teachers in our local district have been working without a contract, and had agreed to a cut in pay, in order to preserve the continuity of the district’s education. When further cuts came, unpaid furlough days were also adopted.

I volunteered at my kids’ school. I was the parent volunteer on one of the morning drop-off safety patrol teams. I was an art docent. I volunteered to help with reading in the classroom. My husband and I sold cups of coffee on the schoolyard in the morning for over 3 years. We wore a groove in the sidewalk and street between our house and the school—who knows, we could have been personally responsible for the deferred maintenance of our local streets! I loved being able to be there, with my kids. They loved having their parents participate in their learning. It was a beautiful thing. My husband and I were given the school service award for this year. I was stunned and touched. Our children achieved their own recognition.

People, hear the truth: that service award attests to my husband's and my involvement, but it means nothing when compared to the gift we received. We saw our children and the children of others learning, growing, and thriving, while they were having a great time. For us, it was all about the kids. We saw younger siblings who couldn’t wait to start school. We saw older siblings come back to say hello. We saw students struggling, and getting help. Yes, we saw a few who were beyond help, also. There is no system yet devised to handle all parameters; when we cut funds, how many more students fall through the cracks? We all do what we can, in the time we have. As in the old carol:

Please put a penny in the old man's hat,

If you haven't got a penny, then a ha'penny will do
If you haven't got a ha'penny, then God bless you!

But, that brings us back to money. Doesn’t it? [How many resources were cut while my children were in school?]

When I think back on my own elementary school days, I never could have imagined how wonderful such days would be for my children. I did have wonderful days, back then, days that I remember fondly. But I tell you, I was able to live it again, and in a better way than when I was growing through it, because I could see it all from both sides of the coin.

Do I wax nostalgic? Not at all. No, not at all. And again, I say pas de tous.

Because I was there, at my children’s school, many days throughout the year, I was able to witness what it is that individual teachers can and do offer, despite being hampered by budgets and regulations. Teachers are now, and have always been, about TEACHING. What teachers teach goes beyond readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic. Teachers teach life skills. Teachers teach compassion. Teachers teach manners. Teachers teach children how to discover what lies beneath the surface. Teachers teach children how to be interested in something other than themselves. Teachers teach anticipation. No thanks, mind you, to the parents that drop off their children but never try to venture into the classroom, to the parents that write nasty letters to the editor of the newspaper, to parents that show up at the board of education meetings to state a grievance, but will not sit through the meeting to be informed of the complete picture. Never mind the textbook writers don’t know how to write for their intended audience. Never mind the federal regulations and programs, such as No Child Left Behind (a.k.a. Nickleby, as in Nicholas Nickleby of Dickensian origin, as in nickel, as in this nebulous federal program that tests, but does not fund). There is always a way to reach a child; where there is a will, there is a way--and most teachers have the will and find the way. Never mind the possibility of bloated district offices with overpaid upper management—our school offices run on a shoestring, but they run.

The teachers at the school where my children have been for six years are each stars in the education firmament. And so, too, the staff and Principal. Bless them all. Watch over them all, in these lean days of budget cuts and broken promises and the dissolution of the public employee and the breaking of the unions.

If there is anything I could now question, looking back on these last six years, it is the expectations the public place on public education. For a lot of people, school is a place where the kids are dropped off. What happens while the children are in class can remain a mystery. Many parents are strangers to the classroom life of their children, while yet wanting to have control of it. We continually expect our teachers to have ultimate responsibility for what our children learn, but, just as frequently, the public does not remember that public moneys are meant to publicly fund public education and other public programs. (When our government abdicates its responsibility to tax for the common good, we can only blame ourselves--we voted for this abdication.) And many parents do not remember that they are primary models to their children, and therefore bear the ultimate responsibility for all humanist qualities that their children learn.

Long summer days stretch before us. If I wish anything for you and for your children, it is the experience of boredom, which is the mother of invention. When your children get bored, don’t let them play computer games; don’t let them watch television. Send them to the park, or park them in front of a good book. Let your children be BORED. Boredom is the key to doors of discovery and perception.

School is out. Have the expectations we hold for our children been met?

For my part, I sing a resounding YES! The way I see it, we could not pay our teachers enough for what they do. I want our teachers to earn a decent living wage: this is how we value teachers, students, and society. 

My children and I thank all you beautiful teachers that have shaped these formative years.

May you all be blessed and may you all be kept in the manner that is due to you, all your days—be they school days or those halcyon days of summer.

Is There Life Beyond The Jetsons?

The future blurs before us now, blazing a trail we have initiated and will perhaps be unable to halt or even slow. It is also possible we will not be able to follow this trail. If Prometheus has been unbound, what kind of future has been unleashed?

C’era una volta, an individual who embarked upon and completed a university education was considered a person of the world, one who had encountered a sufficient breadth of knowledge and had developed the ability to think broadly and critically. By critical thinking, I mean the ability to embrace life’s questions as an entré to a lifelong journey of discovery, where answers are more likely to be provisional, rather than arrival points. Such an education was meant to encourage independent thinking.

In the twilight of the humanist Enlightenment ideal of the university, we see that the corporate commodification of education has presented as the new ideal (indeed a new product for consumption in a marketplace that vaguely resembles a high-priced flea market) that education must be goal-oriented, the goal being, of course, career preparation. This model university is universal only in that it allows one universal opportunity to sacrifice the mind for an idée fixe, that of entering the job marketplace with a specialized knowledge.

If any trend has made education elitist, this is it. Where for hundreds of years, academia was able to engage with the corporate world without compromising independent thought, now this may no longer be possible. The public has been sold on the corporate advertising myth: education is too expensive to publicly fund. Now we will all have to pay more for education, so that we can learn less and ask fewer questions.

Technology, the primary tool of the captains of industry and finance, has contributed to a state of affairs whereby the average person, rather than being served by technology, is forced to run after it. Technology has not freed the human for contemplation and rest. Technology has become the equal opportunity slaver. Quite simply, if you don’t have it and don’t know how to use it, you are useless and will be left behind. If you don’t have the very latest, you are passé.

There was a time when auto repairs could be done by most everyone, with a few parts and tools. That time has been gone for decades, since the advent of computer components. While people are expected to know how to use computers, for the most part they do not know how computers work, much less how to repair hardware or applications. Where there was had always been craftspeople to repair watches and other items, there are few such people left—they are dying at an alarming rate, and there are no young people willing to learn their arts. There has been a revival in the art of handmade paper and books, but there any people left who do hand engraving? No, but there is a technician who can run a machine that will do a flimsy sort of engraving that has no character or depth. The computer technician can diagnostics on your machine and maybe (though sometimes not) solve your difficulty, although you will not learn what the problem was or how it might be avoided or remedied should it occur again.

With technology has come the expectation that humans can and will perform work at greater speeds, and for longer periods of time. People have been trained to answer their calls, rather than allow the automatic features to take messages for them. People have been trained to work through lunch and dinner and vacations. Business, because it has been globalized, is transacted 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In short, people have been and are being trained to live for work, not work to live.

There must be a breaking point. Where will it show itself? Probably the fruits of this will be marked by increased illness and individual dysfunction and inability to cope, but also in greater division and divisiveness among individuals and societies.

A computer can make millions of computations per minute, but it does not have life independent of the user. A computer is capable of diagnostic functions, but not of self-examination. The liberal arts university education promoted free thought that was directional outward, but also intended the ability for self-reflection. The blur of a future blazing beyond the Jetsons seems poised to obliterate independent thought, as well inwardly directed contemplation.

There is a remedy for this dilemma: we must remember that computers and other electronic devices do not live. We can turn them off. We must remember that the human mind is capable of self-reflection and abstract, expansive, outwardly directed thought. We must remember that thought does not cost money; our thoughts cannot be owned by anyone. We must remember that our minds are worth more than technology, and our thoughts will outlive the relevance of technology. The computer stops when it is turned off, but the mind at rest is still alive, awake, and at work during sleep, even if that work is only apparent as a dream.

Further, education never need end at a degree. Too many people stop reading and thinking, once the degree is in hand. A degree is not the key to your potential, not the key to your mind nor, these days, necessarily the key to a career.  

When the years of formal education end, the lifetime of informal education begins. A public library card is your free ticket to lifelong journey of learning, free association of ideas and free thinking. 

Take time, each day, to turn off all your machinery. Then, turn on your mind.