The Minority…Silent No More!!!

The following is the first installment of a work in progress based on my observations of the state of state education. 

Education in America has undergone quite a transformation over the last century or so. Determined men and women have made great sacrifices in the admirable service of making equally effective organized education available to all. But in the last thirty years or so, this crusade for egalitarian education has overcorrected mistakes of the past, and in so doing now finds itself marching in a direction that, while continuing the struggle for uniformity in educational opportunities, causes one to lose sight of the real purpose of education. Education has fallen from, as Sherwood Anderson said, a thing whose “whole object is…to develop the mind”, to Bertrand Russell’s observation of “[O]ne of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.” When a person pledges themselves to the education of the nation’s youth, they are often rapidly disillusioned by the barrage of barriers thrown in their originally ambitious way. The authors of this work hope not only to expose the inconsistencies between the self-proclaimed goal of the educational system in America and its actual products through a series of carefully thought out conclusions based upon observations in their own experiences with that system, but to demonstrate how quickly this can be changed by way of a reinvigo-rated determination of today’s educators to truly educate this nation’s youth.

I.                    The Purpose of Education

‘Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.’

–G.K. Chesterton

The mind of a child is a very malleable thing. Children have no preconceptions from which to form opinions. One of the most evident examples of this in our society is racism. A college student once told of an experience on this subject in an elementary classroom. She called one of the students to the front of the class. On the far-left side of the room was a row with an African-American child, a Japanese-American child, a Hispanic child, and a Caucasian child. She directed the student’s attention to this row, and asked, “Is there anything that stands out to you about any of the kids on that row?” The child immediately answered, “Yes ma’am. The girl in the back has glasses.” The child had no reason or motivation to make any distinctions based on race. To her, the pair of glasses was the most poignant difference among them. Making such distinctions is not something that a child is born with. It is an example of outside influences, learned by observing those in their immediate environment. The most influential environmental influences on a child are their family and teachers.

Regardless of the level of its lasting effects, the formation of a child’s mind is to a very large extent environmental. This means that those persons placed in charge of controlling a child’s environment find themselves in a delicate situation. How does one effectively control a child’s environment without adversely affecting the child’s development? How can a child’s mind be cultivated without being manipulated?

The ultimate answer is not entirely restricting the child’s environment, but setting the pupil up to analytically manage unforeseen circumstances. The child must be prepared to deal with situations out of their control. The basic term for this is “problem-solving”; the best word for it is logic.

For a child’s mind to be prepared to reach its full potential, they must be taught to learn. The best indicator of a child’s educational development is not necessarily the grades achieved. There are far too many examples of students whose test scores are in the highest percentile, yet remain completely unprepared for higher learning—much less the uncontrollable situations of adulthood. The job of an educator is not to top last year’s test scores. It is to inspire within their students a desire to learn, a need to question, and a will to discover.

I.                    Education…or Regurgitation?

‘It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.’

–Aristotle  

The foremost ailment of the contemporary educational system is its ostensible motivation. The proportional nature of the scores at the end of the year to the funding received has triggered a narrow-minded approach to how the students are instructed. The overriding goal is to get the scores up for the sake of the bottom line. The most odious result of this course is the phantom score improvement, meaning that the manner in which the scores are presented are altered so as to cause the same output to appear to be an improvement. This is not a methodology conducive to the intellectual edification of the students.

In the name of these “improved” scores, concepts—whose original source and sole purpose are the proficiency tests at year’s end—are drilled into the minds of these students without opportunity or encouragement for discussion or explanation. Thus are the students taught that what is on the page before them is the only information necessary for a full understanding of the subject, leaving their minds dull and their initiative effectively moot.

True education is not informational indoctrination. It should not be the goal of the school to ingrain a list of perceived facts into the minds of its students. On the contrary, students should be trained to logically prove or disprove presented ideas. Unquestioning acceptance of offered information does not nurture the intellect, nor does it foster the desire to understand. It can be said with some confidence that the typical student does not consider school a rewarding experience. This is not entirely the fault of the student. Nor is lowering expectations by any means an appropriate response to the result of the student’s apathy.

A major mistake made on a wider scale than simply teacher-to-student is the unwritten policy of making scores appear to have improved by lowering the standard. In so doing, the funding might go up, but at the cost of actual educational progress while the last vestiges of motivation on the part of the school-going population are negated. The primary results of this course of action are the disfranchisement of those students who have proven themselves capable, and the stunted development of those whose potential has not yet been realized. In both cases, intellectual development is brought to a halt.

As was best said by the great American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Teachers should not teach based upon a test. The tests should be based upon the teaching.  In short, blind determination for increased funding will not solve problems; fully equipping the next generation of problem-solvers will.