The American Rite of Passage - The Car and the Classroom

I ranted recently about the discontinuity between our "system" of public education and the needs of youth. I really needed to get that all down in writing so I could read what I thought and think on it for a night.

I received some responses to my rant that validated it, but then there were the obvious questions that followed - "So what do we do about it?" Now that's really the question isn't it. There's always the "solution" to change the teacher to student ratio, increasing the access for students to teachers. But that costs a ton. What about a longer school year? Too much push back from the unions  (and to some degree, parents.) How about sitting on exercise balls instead of chairs in the classroom? Or community involvement in the classroom? Or more nutritious snacks? All reasonable ideas and all with some merit. We know they have merit because they've all been tried with varying degrees of success and sustainability. The one glaring assumption in all of these options is that they take place in a school and classroom setting. Where else would they take place? Duh.

There's the rub. The schools and classrooms, in all of their iterations over the past 7 decades are, fundamentally unchanged. They are so much a part of our culture of public education that we don't even see them anymore. It just is. Although malleable, schools are ultimately static. They can be pounded and stretched, but they will retain their basic shape. They are the vehicle that we use for education.

I'm not suggesting that we take kids out into the woods and have them stand on their heads as adults prance around chanting various equations and requesting the children recite multiplication tables. I am suggesting that we, the adults, begin to recognize that we are in a school and that classrooms have remained the same since the institution of public education in America. When we surface our implicit knowledge we can begin to understand and approach it differently.

I ranted about how our educational lifecycle in America is like a tunnel (some might refer to it as a pipeline) and how we drive our young people through that tunnel for 12 years until we pop out the other side, give them the keys and tell them to go for it. I really focused on the tunnel as the limiting factor in the analogy. This 12 year journey requires very little investment of our youth. They make very few decisions and have very little input in the process. They are the deliverable. They effectively, sit in the back of the car and are along for the ride. They (and we) never challenge that we're in a car. We just are as it is the given mode of transportation through the tunnel.

What if we were to step outside of that car and really evaluate it as the most effective means of transportation in a tunnel (which I will get into in a subsequent article?) Like our classrooms, we would look at it and check its maintanence needs - tires, gas, oil. We'd give it a tune up, maybe slap on some sweet wheels, give it a paint job, get back in and keep going.

What if we didn't get back into the car?

What if, instead, we (adults) were asked to walk? How would that change the paradigm? The walk could give us the opportunity to have deeper conversations with our youth because we wouldn't be so concerned about all the things the car requires of me. It would force us to walk at the pace of the young person and force us to encourage the kid to walk faster (or slower depending on our own pace.) It would be much easier to place the young person out ahead of us so she could challenge her own pace and mark her own path within the tunnel.

Our job as educators is to inspire and nuture creativity and critical thinking. I would suggest that our job doesn't relegate us to driver. I'm not so naive to suggest that I have the answer, nor am I suggesting that classrooms aren't the best vehicle for driving through our system of education.

I am, however, suggesting that we take a moment to think about it. What are the options that we are presenting to our youth that give them the ability and support their desire to make their way through life? We are, afterall, preparing them for life - not graduation.