I may have learned something, in the past few days, that can help our "cause" of improving public education. I'm asking some of my long-time friends and colleagues to help think about what I believe I have learned.
As points of reference, I remind my friends that I have long been convinced that the top-down mandating now being peddled as a way to improve public education is the wrong way to go; many fine educators have shown me that the children need to be active participants in order for their learning to be effective. As another reference point, I have understood, from my own long experience in and around public bureaucracies, that top-down coercive methods are the stock in trade of government agencies; the thinking is done at the top, with the people at the bottom doing as they're told. Learning to think is the crucial component of effective education but, to the extent that bureaucracies have their way, students (and their teachers) are being told "No Thinking Allowed".
As the most vexing of my reference points, I have been perplexed by the fact that many of our very finest educators (and other highly intelligent people) persist in looking to the political/bureaucratic hierarchies to lead the way to better learning. I know -- or at least I think I know -- that the very fact of asking government agencies to fix education conveys the message that top-down bureaucratic methods are capable of leading the way to good public education -- and that's exactly the wrong message.
Wendell Berry, our renowned Kentucky farmer and philosopher, has long been telling us that many of the things that matter the most to us humans are at the community level. I'm convinced that Berry is correct, and that what he's saying applies to children's learning. David Mathews, in his book "Reclaiming Public Education by Reclaiming Our Democracy", reminds us that we citizens "are not customers of government; we own the store"; and he further tells us that the essence of our citizenship is in the communities. And, as Mathews makes clear, good public schools are dependent upon the democracy that is in good communities.
I tend, in my own mind, to put Wendell Berry and David Mathews together; they are saying, correctly I believe, that community, democracy, and education are interconnected. But, as I have learned the hard way, it is easy to look to government hierarchies to do our fixing for us but it is not easy to look to each other.
Looking back, I realize that I have been somewhat naïve. I should have known that we humans find it very difficult to turn our backs on our own "special" interests. If we're being paid (in money or status) to be top-down fixers, that's what we're very likely to be. (I have, at times in my own career, been paid to be a top-down fixer, and I managed to convince myself that what I was doing was just what the public needed.)
And that brings me to what I think I've learned in the past few days. One of my friends, a longtime elementary school principal in the eastern Kentucky mountains, said these words to me: "You can't deny people bragging rights". That friend -- she's retired now and she may well be the world champion when it comes to bragging on her grandchildren -- was saying something that I had not really thought about: we very much need people who, like my educator/grandmother friend, are especially proud of their own families.
When I discussed "bragging rights" with one of my elder bureaucrat friends, we reminded each other that our political systems, when they are working at their theoretical best, balance special interests with the public interest. What I've long been saying about the problem with public education policies is that the political/bureaucratic apparatus has itself become a special interest and that, therefore, we need to take away the hierarchies' power over public schools. What I need to do now, I'm thinking, is to acknowledge the need to balance special interests with the public interest: we need for each child to be "special" to the grandmothers and, from a public interest perspective, we also need for all children to be special.
Does what I'm saying about special interests and public interest make any difference? I think so: the distinction can help push down some of the barriers that are now separating people who ought to be together. As an example of a barrier, I have many times found myself saying to dedicated educators that they should look for allies out in the communities rather than in the political/bureaucratic hierarchies. That, in turn, raises the question as to where the money is to come from, and then I find myself saying something like "The politicians and bureaucrats don't own the money -- they work for us"; and that can sound like I'm threatening the people who hold the keys to the smokehouse.
There are other barriers to effective conversation about education. I frequently see, as an example, evidence of the elitist notion that upper-class people have superior knowledge about children's learning than do "ordinary" folk. (The notion that top-down mandates can be more valuable to children than can, let's say, the love of grandmothers is an obviously foolish notion; but it's nevertheless a notion that can be seen in lots of places.) These barriers (and others that I could mention) lead to a pattern of deference to hierarchies that has been going on for so many years that it has become almost cultural. We almost believe that conversation about children's learning is supposed to be restricted to what big people and big hierarchies say and do; and that means, as a political/bureaucratic fact of life, that the conversation is about adult power rather than children's learning.
The basic reason that "bragging rights" can make a significant difference (I believe) is that it is possible for communities but impossible for hierarchies to care about children who are special and, at the same time, care about all children. This means, in turn, that nobody need feel threatened when a community helps all children understand that they matter. Instead of, in effect, telling the hierarchies to take their standardized tests and other mandates and throw them in the river, those tests can continue to be given -- and the grandmothers and others can brag on the kids who make good scores on them. The change is merely that the community, as a matter of public policy, does things to make all children special. (In the interest of transparency, I admit that I believe those top-down standardized tests ought to be thrown in the river, and I think they in fact will eventually lose whatever credibility they now have.)
I know that communities can do things to help children matter. I have, as an example, recently seen a small town in the Appalachian region of northeast Alabama, doing a beautiful job of engaging young people as active contributors to the life in their town (the youngsters, among many other things, produce the town newspaper).
I grant that it is easy to ignore what goes on in such places as that Alabama town, but maybe David Brooks can give us a useful perspective. Brooks, in his column in the New York Times, said that the key to America's future is with the working-class families in the region of America "that starts in central New York and Pennsylvania and then stretches out through Ohio and Indiana before spreading out to include Wisconsin and Arkansas". Brooke's punch line, which is as powerful as any words I've seen for awhile, is this: "If America can figure out how to build a decent future for the working class people in this region, then the U. S. will remain a predominant power. If it can't, it won't".
I don't know that David Brooks is right, but I think I do know that we need -- that we must have -- strong and active communities with strong and active young people (and with lots of grandparents who insist on bragging rights).
Friends, let's do what we can to put "bragging rights" to work.
Bob Cornett
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