It's also why I think we need to reflect on another real challenge tied to this first one: discerning the "important" from the important. The former are those things that we tend to hold out as crucial, even vital, far beyond their real value. The latter are what truly matters.
For example, let's consider a typical English curriculum and ask some big questions. What is the purpose? Is it to study literature, meaning the general canon and genres and literary elements and how authors speak to each other across generations? In other words, it is to study literature (pronounced with suitably snooty tone)? Or is it for us to consider aspects of the human condition as they play out in myriad ways across cultures? Or, even simpler, is it supposed to keep alive--spark?--a love of reading deeply? Why is it so heavily focused on literature? Why is the overwhelming majority of writing based on formulaic essays and standard literary criticism? Why do we even have English classes rather than Communications classes?
One can raise similar questions, of course, about other disciplines. In chemistry classes students struggle to memorize elements of the periodic table. But does that really help them to understand how that table works or the relationships between elements? Currently some healthy debate is raging about algebra. Why is that the one almost universally-required math course when it seems to be the one that turns many kids off from math? I don't have definite answers to these questions, but I certainly have opinions. And I do know we need to be considering such notions.
However one answers these questions, we put misplaced faith in curricula, imparting upon it unjustified importance. Despite what I have to see as the bald marketing attempts in the use of this label, there is no teacher-proof curriculum. Conversely, a great teacher can bring a terrible curriculum alive. Similarly, we place too much faith in assessment, whether standardized or teacher-generated. That naturally then leads to grades, perhaps the currency whose value we have most inflated.
I could keep going. Any thoughtful reader can add to the list. A list can help us keep focus on the right issues--and deem what is truly important.
We also must ask another key question: Why do so many of us become so overwrought about the "important"?
One reason is a positive one. It's that we have many passionate, caring, dedicated people concerned about education. That can also be a challenge in that sometimes our lizard brain, despite being primitive and small, overwhelms the cerebral cortex. In less scientific terms, we react emotionally to the immediate. Further, as humans we prefer the tangible, the measurable; they are easier for us to grasp, to manage, even to manipulate. We become more vulnerable to the traps of fast thinking. Our vision can become myopic, monochromatic, one-dimensional. Rigid even. The sort of outlook that promotes pure rigor. Which often means just more of the same.
Learning at its best, though, is scintillating, imaginative, speculative, kaleidoscopic. It revels in the process, both in the here and now and wherever it may be going, knowing it never really arrives at a certain destination. But hoping. It's that insatiable curiosity innate in us at birth, optimally raging for the rest of our lives.
We assign much of what we deem "important" that status because of short-term thinking.But as one of my mentors regularly encouraged, we need to "take the long view--the longest view possible." At the risk of seeming melodramatic, perhaps we should consider education in the same way David Brooks encouraged to consider living our lives for building a resume or a eulogy. To capture that notion, I'll defer to one of my former students, who graduated high school in 1988. In a comment on a blog post I wrote in 2012 after a beloved educator passed away, he wrote:
ESA was never about the location. It is a sugar cane field in between Lafayette and New Iberia. The population of Cade, LA doubles every morning and halves every night. It was always about the teachers. Coach Rhoades, Madame Garboushian, Ms. Dobkins, Mr. Olverson, Dr. White, Mr. Tutwiler and, yes, you, Mr. Crotty, taught us more about what the journey we had in front of us than any of the lessons and tests we had to pass. Prep school for once meant more than learning what we needed to know to succeed in college. It also prepared us for the challenges we faced outside the classroom. I remember very little of the books that I read back then (enjoyed Watership Down, couldn't summarize it for you if I tried). I do not remember a specific PE class Coach Rhoades taught. I do remember many of the conversations we had over 24 years ago --- conversations that stay with me and continually educate me to this day. May Coach Rhoades rest in peace with the knowledge that his lessons were always destined to outlive him --- and us.
