ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 1992 ~~~~~ TI-101 ~~~~~ OUR 4/A UNIVERSITY by Jack Sughrue Box 459 E.Douglas MA 01516 [BB&P Editor's note: This is the first in a series of articles about the 99/4A and public education to be initially published in this newsletter by Jack Sughrue. Jack teaches third grade. In the cover letter that accompanied this article Jack says, "In the future I want to explore holism up to the ways computers can be used in the class. Then I'd like to show the variety of ways the TI can be an important part of any child's education (and adults, too) by giving many specific applications through modules, disks, and tapes and even combinations of all (and not discounting direct applications in the form of programming)."] .CE #1 Corpus Historical Perspective The corpus calosum is that wonderful band of billions of nerve fibers connecting the hemispheres of the brain. Forty years ago that band was surgically severed to contain grand mal seizures in epileptic patients. That was the beginning of a profound revolution in education that is quietly (though, at times, quite noisily) continuing through today. Through the massive research done since that fateful slice, we, as a society, have learned more in the past quarter century about how people learn than we knew about the subject in all the tens of centuries humans have considered the process. This educational revolution was not without its prophets. John Dewey was one. Today there are many great teachers out there operating under the umbrellas of "Process Learning," "Open Methodologies," "Whole-brain Teaching," "Open Classrooms," "Science/Logic Approach," and piles of other names, including "Whole Language." The last is probably having the most profound influence on the real education in the English-speaking World as any philosophical approach since Horace Mann "Manndated" public education in America so long ago. (So long ago that we take free, public education for all as a given, as an inalienable right.) But there is a problem. (Isn't there always?) When the Germans first devised an efficient way of organizing a mass education in the 19th Century, they decided to make a step-by-step system of completing a given body of work at a given chronological year of a child's life. Thus, 6-year-olds go through a first grade (and an artificially-created, adult-generated curriculum). After completing this predetermined set of tasks, the child turns seven and, if lucky, moves into the second grade where another set of artificial goals awaits HIM (no girls, of course). And so on. The fact that 7-year-olds are not developmentally on the exact step at any time (any more than all the 47-year-olds are) made no difference to the people operating this 19th Century system. In order to protect the system, an achievement hierarchy was developed, which has come down to us, unfortunately, even to today in too many schools. It is a system that never worked because it created an invisible - though profound - class system. The system created a society of elitists, of average Dicks and Janes, of losers. The basal reader system (unfortunately still in place in most American schools) requires that the classroom be divided into three groups: the good readers, the average readers, the poor readers (sometimes called Bluebirds, Robins, and Snowy Egrets - or whatever). But you know and I know that those groups, begun in kindergarten and carried all through elementary school, created what are perceived as the smart snobs, the struggling middle class, and the dumb (and bad) kids. By the time official tracking takes place in junior high (middle school) the system is firmly in place. You'll never guess which group has the greatest number of dropouts or which group has the greatest number of kids who go on to advanced degrees (followed by the best jobs). These determinations for the most part are made in the primary grades in elementary school. The same 19th-Century system also created a hierarchy of adults. Prior to the institutionalization of education the teacher was the most important adult in the learning process. After the system overtook the world, administrators became the most important part of the system. This is usually followed by the operational staff. (Go into ANY school and see if that institution operates around the things that secretaries and custodians require before all else or whether the teachers get top priority. Surprise!) In this topsy-turvy setup, highly-paid administrators make the decisions. These decisions (from administrators operating in an entirely separate building from a school, believe it or not) are then handed down to other adminstrators who have offices and secretaries. The decisions are then handed down to administrators who are in schools (principals, which means, by the way "first or highest in rank and importance"). In secondary schools these decisions are usually then handed down to department heads. Then - possibly - the teachers are told. These are the same teachers who adminstrators love to hold "accountable," even though they have been excluded from the decision making. Doesn't this "accountability without authority" have a bit of the ring of "taxation without representation" about it? Generally speaking, administrators - who have the most opportunity and time to learn about all the masses of reseach on how children learn - know the least. They are divorced from the youngsters and from the realities of day-to-day education. They don't realize, for example, that the clientele has changed. That the students today are not made the same way, intellectually and emotionally and socially, that youngsters 25 years ago were. That the horrors of nuclear war, AIDS, street violence, fanatic consumerism, drugs, and so on were not part of our growing up, of our everyday consciousness and reality. That when I was growing up the attention span of youngsters in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL was estimated to be a little over an hour; that seven years ago for students in K-12 it was 22 minutes; that last year for that same group it was 10.8 minutes! And education is a big - a humongous! - business. Publishers determine the curriculum in America and sell their goods to administrators who foist these materials upon the trained classroom professionals. This is a multi-billion dollar business and one that stomps out any attempt at teacher input for better ways of doing things in the classroom. Such changes may cause these influential profiteers to lose money; influential bureaucrats to lose power. Millions of Americans sense (even if they don't have statistics at hand) that something is drastically wrong with schools that still use 19th-Century methods and materials to teach 21st-Century life skills and that still put profits and political power (inside and outside the schools) ahead of the education of our children. These parents and other friends of pulic education are afraid for America, for the Earth. For all our children. Some parents (former Bluebirds) have the lucky financial fortune to put their children into expensive private schools. Others have sought to find some solace and protection from the outside world by placing their youngsters in religious schools where they hope their own values will be inculcated. Others, who have the trained academic and intellectual background (like Barry Traver) teach their children at home. The vast majority of us parents are, however, just working class stiffs who want and expect public education to do its job by our kids. But, wait a minute! Aren't we the same society that put a man on the Moon just because Jack Kennedy set us that national goal? Didn't we (not England, not Chile, not Russia, not China, not Iraq) send those Voyager spacecraft out into the wilderness of our Solar System? Aren't we the country with the most Nobel winners? But those achievements all stemmed from a society that prized education. Weren't these and most of the other masterful achievements of our nation developed during a high level of caring for our youngsters (our future), and of developing a liberal climate of risk-taking and experimentation? What has happened since Nixon's Presidency to change all this? In spite of the lip service given to education by our recent Presidents, the State of the Union, educationally, has regressed catastrophically following the Kennedy/Johnson Era. And, because federal and state programs to assist and enhance the education of our nation's greatest resource - it's children - has virtually dried up and property taxes are the primary source of funding education, teacher bashing has become a national pastime. Blaming the teachers (the lower paid members of the staff who are not allowed to make important educational decisions nor even to give input in most cases) is like blaming the production line worker for the stupid concepts American car manufacturers have been promulgating. As a matter of fact, it is an interesting solution on the part of these rich conservatives to save American business (and, thus, America) by laying off the workers, as if they in some way were to blame for the decision-makers' gross and blatant stupidities. That, of course, is another story. There is a revolution happening in American education, and it will prove to be the saving of our nation. This revolution has many names and takes many forms, but it has a commonality: holism. It's an idea whose time is long overdue, and your TI has its place in this scheme of things. We'll begin to look at those next time in TI-101. .PL 1