Plain Stupid

The Kentucky legislature is considering prohibiting young people from dropping out of school before the age of 18. (It's 16 now). And a major newspaper is saying hooray, citing such "facts" as that high school graduates make more money than dropouts and that dropouts are more likely to end up in jail than are those with diplomas. (One of my friends, a criminal justice professor, wonders whether it's osmosis that's the reason two extra years of boredom can be so beneficial. However, if osmosis, or something equivalent, doesn't work my friend says that two extra years of forced acquiescence will be good preparation for jail.)

Dee Hock, the founder of the Visa credit card organization, and author of the remarkable book, "Birth of the Chaordic Age", posed the question as to why he sometimes resorted to top-down command and control methods even though he knew that such methods were the opposite of what is needed. His answer was "Plain Stupid!"

Everybody will agree, if they think about it, that marking time in a classroom is not the same thing is learning. Our best educators have, for many years, been telling us that education is effective only when the students are active participants. But we keep right on with the top-down methods: more standardized testing, more coercion of teachers and students, more of the same old thing. More "Plain Stupid!"

I have confessed to some stupid things I've done: when I was an ambitious young bureaucrat I regularly used top-down coercive methods and thought that was all right. But I didn't call myself stupid; I was saying that it is in the nature of political/bureaucratic hierarchies to issue top-down mandates. I'm now ready to admit, however, that our problem is not merely a systems problem, but it is rooted in human nature: we like to feel special.

Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, in an article in "Newsweek", (January 31), helps put things in perspective. I quote briefly from Sonnenfeld: "Top leaders, like artists, are fueled by the desire to leave a lasting legacy. I have termed this the 'heroic mission'. In his book, ‘The Denial of Death', Ernest Becker wrote that the leader is on a quest for immortality -- he or she must stand out, be a hero, make the biggest possible contribution to work life, show that he counts more than anyone or anything else".

Looking at education from the vantage point of the legacy of a political leader -- or a corporate leader or a high-ranking bureaucrat -- children's learning is not what’s important: the leader needs to satisfy his "heroic mission" imperatives. It is impossible -- obviously impossible -- for people or organizations who don't know a child as an individual to be of as much help to that child as can, say, a grandmother. A child and a grandmother (or, even better, a combination of grandmother, parents, neighbors, and dedicated schoolteachers) can do highly important learning, but that doesn't translate into "heroic mission" credits.

What I'm saying -- what I think I've learned -- is that there is a fundamental conflict between what children need and what "heroic mission" adults are seeking. That conflict, as of now, is being resolved in favor of adults. And that's Plain Stupid!

We know, as one of my wise old friends puts it, that "There are two kinds of governments -- those in which the citizens fear the government and those in which the government fears the citizens." King George III believed that our Founding Fathers were supposed to fear him; it took a war for the King to learn his lesson. We don't face a war over fear -- at least, I don't think we do—but we do face conflict. We citizens -- We the People –can minimize the conflict by helping our government hierarchies and the corporate bosses understand that top-down techniques of coercion do damage to children's learning.

The best way to achieve the needed understanding is to show that learning through active participation is superior to learning by coercion. We can do this, as one important example, by listening to Grace Lee Boggs, that remarkable lady in Detroit whose life's work is proof that children can be assets rather than problems. As Grace has demonstrated, young people can be highly valuable partners in community-based social entrepreneurship. As other important sources of understanding, we can draw upon examples from the best of the world of homeschooling, from "alternative" schools, from vocational agriculture, and from other sources in which partnership outranks fear. (I regularly cite, as one of my favorite examples, the Linefork community in southeastern Kentucky, where young people and elders are working as partners in restoring the American Chestnut tree to the forests. That example is spreading.)

The political part of the equation will, I feel sure, essentially take care of itself as youngsters and adults become partners in real-life projects. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 million grandparents in the country, every one of which is on the side of partnership rather than fear. (And that doesn't count the many millions more people who have grand parent type love and respect for young people.) I don't believe there is a politician in the country who would willingly advocate techniques of fear while grandparents are watching.

David Mathews of the Kettering Foundation puts the political issue this way: "Citizens are not customers of government, they own the store". He is correct.

The bottom line is clear: if we don't replace fear with thoughtful respect for children, we are Plain Stupid!

Bob Cornett

Let's Change Directions

I just now read in the newspaper that the new Governor of New Jersey proclaimed his intent to fix public education by such things as mandating more tests and paying teachers on the basis of student scores on the mandated tests. That Governor is but an example: politicians all over the country are making similar pronouncements.

The effect of doing what those politicians say they're going to do is to change the purpose of public schools from serving children to serving adults. That obviously makes no sense from an educational point of view. (Anybody who doubts that what those politicians are saying is senseless needs to listen to what the education journalist Marion Brady has to say on the subject. Brady's article in the Washington Post on January 10 is an excellent place to start.) But politicians listen to their own drummer, and their drummer plays to a political beat.

I think I know why politicians (and bureaucrats) advocate senseless public education policies: they don't know any better. The way our political/bureaucratic systems work is that the politicians get their information from people who come into their political world; and that political world is about power and status. As a small recent example from my own experience, a Kentucky legislator asked me where I stand on the issue of "charter schools", which is pending before the Legislature. My answer was that I regard the issue as more fundamental than "yea" or "nay" to that particular piece of legislation. That answer didn't help the legislator a bit; the system he works within requires that issues be defined in the context of his political world. (Incidentally, I regard that legislator as a good one; it's not him I'm faulting -- it's the system).

Abraham Maslow, who was a prominent pioneer in the field of psychology -- he was highly regarded in the business world for his insights on management -- gave us a quotation that helps sum up our problem: "If your only tool is a hammer, before long everything looks like a nail". Power -- the power to coerce and the power to reward -- is the hammer of the political/bureaucratic system. What that New Jersey governor is saying -- senseless though it is from a learning point of view -- is a predictable product of the political system. (As one of my old friends puts it, "Politicians like to get credit for doing good things for the people". The Governor is telling the people that he will fix the schools, and that the citizens need to do little more than appreciate him for doing that job.)

What I'm saying about the difference between politicians and citizens is something I've been saying for a long time. But I've seen the difference in actual operation; and what I've seen has convinced me that my own time and energy needs to focus on communities where the citizens are actively connecting the young people with the life in their community. My best example right now is a community I've talked about before: Linefork, located at the base of Pine Mountain in Letcher County, Kentucky. I believe Linefork is shaping up to be an excellent example of what small communities can accomplish when they look to their own strengths. Linefork is very much an Appalachian community, and the self-reliant Scots-Irish culture that has been in those mountains since right after the Revolutionary War may well be largely responsible for what I see happening. If that is correct -- if the Scots-Irish culture is indeed a positive force -- Linefork can set an example not only for Appalachian communities but for rural communities wherever a sense of self-reliance is alive and well.

I think I need to tell the Linefork story -- and the story of the example that I believe Linefork will be providing. I'm not talking about a scholarly report -- I want to see the spirit of Linefork everywhere -- but I think I can be factually accurate.

We may want to change the name of this blog -- I've toyed with "Appalachian Generations Connected" -- but let's think about that later. For now, I'll plan to emphasize Linefork and what it inspires

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I've told in earlier postings about Linefork's involvement with the return of the American Chestnut tree to the Appalachian forests, but I haven't told that story well enough. I'll have more about Chestnuts and Linefork in a week or two..

Bob Cornett