A slight divergence: An "op-ed" on education

What is going on?

I am going to temporarily diverge from my normal blog focus because I can’t get the unbelievably horrific event in Connecticut out of my heart and head.  Like everyone else, I keep wondering, “How did this happen?”  “What could have been done?”  “Where do we go from here?”  I will return to the original focus of personal journeys and 'What Do People Do All Day?' pretty soon as there are some very fun ones on the horizon.

When I start to think about all of the facets of our society that led to this tragedy, I can’t help but return to one place - our priorities, and more specifically, education.

I come from a family of educators.  Both my grandmother and mother were high school English teachers.  After my sister and I were old enough to take care of ourselves after school, my mother became an instructional assistant working with Down Syndrome and autistic children.  I have aunts and uncles who have been teachers and administrators across decades and districts.  Education is highly valued in our family.  

Nelson Mandela 2008
credit: creative commons

In addition to my family’s influence, my studies have led me to also support the idea that education can help solve many of our world’s greatest problems.  Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which can use to change the world.” I agree with Mr. Mandela.  If we are to change our world, we must educate ourselves, and most importantly, we must educate our children.  I’m just a little fearful of what we are teaching our children.  I just learned that by 2014, our education system will replace texts like To Kill A Mockingbird and Catcher In The Rye with instruction manuals.  As Margaret Mead said, “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”  Instruction manuals certainly don’t teach them how to think.  If our society is to innovate, if we are to improve our connectivity not just through wires and technology, we need to foster creativity.  Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk on creativity speaks directly to this:

I also feel that we need to teach empathy and compassion - in both the home and the schools.  It certainly won't come from teaching the California Invasive Plant Council's Invasive Plant Inventory as the new standards suggest.  It was Aristotle who said, "Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all."  It makes me wonder why we fight against some of the wisdom that has already been gained.  Why must we ignore the tried and true and how do we re-introduce this?

I know I'm an idealist AND I also know that there are a whole host of issues plaguing our schools.  I know our education system is so large that it feels that there's no way we can actually change anything. I also know that many people have many ideas of what should be taught in schools.  I wonder, do you think that we can come together to address this in a civil manner?  It seems to me that the common ground we all would want for EVERY child is to have the best possible education - to be able to think critically, to create, to reason, to have an understanding of the world, and to have compassion for others.  Only then, might we be able to best prepare them for the phenomenally difficult and complex problems that they will face (and we are leaving them).  I also believe that if we get our education system sorted, we end up addressing so many other issues in our society.  

There are many ideas that exist about how to "fix" our education system.  There was one that got me thinking, and it comes from Finland, the country whose students rank #1 in the world.  It was while writing a paper with a classmate on how the market principles of competition (charter schools) and freedom of choice (vouchers) affect education, that we stumbled upon two simple and short videos produced by NBC News for Education Nation.  The first was titled Following Finland's Lead on Education.  What is different in this country?  They place a high value on education, and their practices are remarkable.  In the second video, the Finland Phenomenon, a gentleman featured in Robert Compton's film stated, "Politicians, principals, teachers, universities have all understood that this is actually the only resource that we have in Finland that has to be taken good care of:  the brain, the young people, the education."  To me, this is the kind of priority I would love to see us give education.

Everyone is looking for the one idea that will solve our education system.  The simple fact of the matter is that it doesn't exist.  It is going to take a systems approach to addressing the problem, which will require everyone to be at the table and a commitment from all to achieve our desired outcome of putting education at the top of the list.  Would this even be possible especially as we are in the throes of the fiscal cliff and are facing impending cuts?  

Speaking of money and budgets, I'll next look at ways we might be able to finance this, and it comes from a very unlikely source - the ice cream man.  I can't help but think that investing in education (both brain power to get it sorted and money) would positively impact so much in our society.

Thank you so much for letting me diverge a bit from my story-telling of people's journeys and for letting me share a few ideas with you.  I had so many thoughts running through my head that I just needed to express them.  Please let me know what you think as I firmly believe that dialogue is a place for us all to start.

Finally, my heart goes to the families and community of Newtown, CT.  I am sending every bit of love to you all.