We are NOT failing

One of the ideas I discuss with my students is that most people assume that others, in the same situation, would react and think in ways similar to themselves.  Thus I have thought for years that those seeking to “reform” education were actually doing it out of a desire to make education better. I no longer believe that. I have come to the reluctant conclusion that the current crop of educational reformers are actually seeking to destroy public education as we know it.

            When I began teaching in 1985, I passionately believed the power of an education rested in its ability to enlighten individuals, to turn them on to the power of ideas. History and literature, my two subjects, opened minds and doors, exposing my students to the entire world of ideas. In 1988 I began teaching journalism as a way to give my students a voice. The value in all of this was profoundly obvious to me. I assumed that was how every one else approached education.

            How wrong I was.

            Another idea I teach my students is that controlling education, and who could get an education, was historically a way to keep populations under control. You do not need to look any further than our own American history to see this in action. Slaves were denied the right to reading and writing because it was easier to keep them from rebelling if they were ignorant. American Indian children were sent to boarding schools to be educated in the white man’s way. Their own language, culture and religions were beaten out of them.

            This control is continuing today. The only difference is the rhetoric surrounding it. Now politicians and the multi-millionaires who control policy use phrases like “educational reform” and “work place readiness.” Education is no longer about opening minds to new ideas, or instilling independent thought.  It is all about providing job skills and preparing students to be productive employees.

            The creative and independent thinking we used to value as a country is no longer valued. Instead we want our children to be competitive with China. The same China whose Cultural Revolution killed millions of intellectuals simply because they were intellectual. Thinking people are dangerous. We can’t have that. Thinking leads to new ideas. Thinking leads to challenges of the status quo. To the people who control that status, thinking is subversive.

            Americans still give lip service to the value of education, which is why the people set on destroying it use the word “reform” and talk about our failing schools. People have heard this phrase so often, that it now becomes a given, reminding me of Adolph Hitler’s famous quote: “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.” Most schools were not failing; at least they weren’t until No Child Left Behind turned them into testing factories. Now we spend so much time testing (one tenth of the school year at my high school) that we no longer have time to teach real thinking. Which reminds me of another quote of Hitler’s, “How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.”