11-24-04

Reinventing the Wheel

If you haven't read last week's editorial, go read it now.  I'm not going over all that again.  The upshot was that we'd established (okay, I had) that standardization and performance-based allocations may be a good way to run a business, but they're no way to run a school.
          I'm not going to pretend to have all the answers.  Hell, I'm not even going to pretend to have any of the answers.  I do, however, have some suggestions and ideas:

Adjust Our Priorities
This is the hardest one to do, which is why it's first.  America's always been a little anti-intellectual, at least in theory.  We've always thought of ourselves as doers and explorers; let the Europeans sit and think.  But doing without thinking just leads to riots, and there's very little left to explore that doesn't require a whole lot of thought, first.
          And yet, we spend more annually on sports than we do on all other extracurricular activities combined.  Marginally talented kids are encouraged to disregard their studies in favor of more training.  Steroid use, both legal and not, is as common as mud on a motocross track.  Student athletes are pushed to perform more and better at a younger age than ever before.  They're being sold a bill of goods, forced to learn skills and develop talents that will be of no use to them in the real world on the slim hope that they will be one of a small percentage of a small percentage who make it big in the pros.
          Those that do have the talent and skill to go all the way to the show have it no better.  As the Detroit incident last week exposed in glaring relief, professional "sportsman" have lost all sportsmanlike qualities.  Many of them aren't even aware that such thuggish behavior is wrong (never mind the behavior of the jackass fans).
          The unnecessary attention afforded to athletics, however, is just the most obvious result of this drive to over-performance.  Everywhere, in every endeavor, school children are driven to succeed.  Not just succeed, but excel, often for no more reason than for the sake of excelling.  College enrollments in the last twenty years are higher than they've ever been.  We have more doctors, more lawyers, artists, actors, businesspersons, writers leaving those colleges than ever before.  And they're all driven to excel.  Do more, make more money, buy more stuff.

Just a Cigar
It seems to me, that in this drive for excellence, we forget that by its very nature, not everyone can excel.  The word presupposes a median range above which to perform.  And this leads me to my second suggestion:  Learn to get past it.
          Geniuses are uncommon; true savants like Mozart, Einstein, and Michelangelo are so rare that it's often hard to believe they were produced by mere human parents.  Stop making excuses, and for the love of all that's holy, stop haranguing the schools and the teachers and your child for getting a "C".  "C" is an average grade.  A C-student is just like everyone else.  An "A" should be an accomplishment.  It should be an excellent grade, not the standard. 
          Instead of pushing kids to get more, we should be pushing them to be more.  They will always encounter someone who is stronger, or smarter, or wealthier than they are.  We should teach them that they have value beyond their grades or their physical talents, that a hard days work is a reward in its own right, that you don't have to win as long as you succeed.  And true success comes from doing your best, not being the best.

Back to Basics
Lastly, we need to get back to basics.  We need to let our teachers teach.  They shouldn't be raising our children for us.  They can't, and, anyway, it's not their job.  Once we do our job, we should trust them to know their job.  Checks are built into the system.  Some teachers are harsh, some are unfair, all are human.  But once teachers and administrators are allowed to educated children and not raise them; once they have the option of evaluating performance on their own terms and in the light of their training and experience, then our system will truly excel.  The few bad teachers will become apparent, and they can be dealt with accordingly.

The good ones will, too.