The
education system seems so huge, that it would seem impossible to simplify its
problems into a short essay. But, while the system is huge, we can boil it down
to individual students and teachers. There are certain truths of human nature.
When these truths are grasped and applied—from both the teacher and
student—then education begins to be transformed.
True transformation is an inside-out
process. Besides being involved in education, I’m also a born-again Christian.
I’ve been around churches and church folks. In those circles, you will hear
people talk of legalism. Legalism boils down to people whose whole perspective
on their faith (and life) comes down to following a set of rules. Internally
they are often dead, but outwardly they appear righteous.
It’s
frightening how closely this mirrors our education system. The system at its
core is an external system of rewards and punishments that are designed to
bring people into conformity. These rewards and punishments take the form of
tests, papers, and other assignments, as well as rules, policies and
procedures. Of course, some will argue that those things aren’t always wrong.
No, they’re not always wrong. The issue is focus. When the externals become
both a means and an end, and they have in many ways, people learn to play the
game. Outwardly they conform, but inwardly they aren’t developing creativity or
critical thinking. The ones most highly rewarded are the ones most conforming
to the system.
Think
about those people who most changed society in a positive way, people like:
Einstein, Beethoven or Shakespeare. What made these people unique wasn’t that
they conformed. What made them unique was they did new things—or, perhaps old
things in new ways. Uniqueness always comes from within. If we want to produce
these type of people, our system must change from an outside-in to an
inside-out focus.
Grabbing the heart first. Grab a
syllabus for a class or read a textbook. Ask yourself, is this person primarily
focused on making a head-to-head connection? Or, is the primary focus on making
a heart-to-heart connection? While there may be some exceptions, for the most
part our system focuses on making a head-to-head connection.
I
can already hear some bureaucratic sighing, “Oh no! He’s another one of those
liberal hippies who wants us all to have a group hug. Let’s make every child
feel good, blah, blah, blah!” I don’t think we need to make everyone feel good.
At times, anger can be a useful tool for teaching—particularly when a slacker
student is pushed into the corner and comes out with an I’ll-show-them
mentality. The truth is, we think about those things that impact us
emotionally. The heart is the engine of the mind. Deep thinking without
emotional engagement is virtually impossible.
Individual
teachers in the system do connect emotionally. But, the system as a whole is
not designed for this. The system is designed around content when it should be
designed around human nature!
Detached from real world application. Academia
is detached from real world applications. We divide things into artificial
categories—Math, English or History. Problems outside the class are seldom
chopped up into these little boxes. The classroom is such a detached
environment. Kids don’t care about a train leaving Chicago at 60 mph and
another train leaving Los Angeles at 45 mph. When will they meet? They do care
about problems in their own neighborhood—like hunger, or crime or why there are
people living underneath the bridge. This is particularly true when some of
them are hungry or living underneath the bridge. People face problems
everyday—problems they care deeply about and problems that will require
applications of math, English, science, government and a whole host of other
disciplines.
The
most detached people are often the ones at the top of the academic food
chain—the tenured professors. The farther up the ladder they climb, the more
specialized they become. Pretty soon the Ph.D. in education is no longer
applying the dynamics of human nature in artistic ways in the class. He’s
sitting in front of a computer screen, crunching numbers—boiling down something
as complex as classroom interaction into a set of variables and looking for
correlation and causation. And, with each number entered into the computer, he
becomes a little more detached from the dynamics of the real world.
Give
them a big ugly problem. I see many students who lack the essential skills
of creativity and critical thinking. I’ve asked myself the question over and
over, “How do I teach those skills?” I keep coming up with the same answer. I
need to give students a big ugly problem. It has to be a problem they don’t
know how to solve. Then, I step back and let them struggle with it. And, I let
them struggle some more. I let them work, work and work until they’ve either
come up with a solution or they’ve exhausted all their resources. If they’ve
exhausted all their resources, I give them a nudge—not much help, but just
enough resources to continue the struggle. Then, I sit back and wait until they
either solve the problem or exhaust all their resources. This process continues
until they finally come up with a solution to the problem. This is how to teach
creativity and critical thinking.
Now,
go ahead and try that with your average high school or college student. I dare
you! Try it! The bitching, pissing and moaning from students will be
unbearable. Some will complain to your supervisor. Some will just stare and
you’ll feel their violent thoughts. Some will curl into the fetal position and
stare out into space. Few will do the assignment. Most of their education up to
this point has told them what to do and how to do it. It has given them answers
instead of questions, and they simply don’t know how to handle the big ugly
problem you just gave them.
Most
don’t know how to tap into their internal drives. Everything has taught them to
follow externals, because the system is designed that way. They need to become
emotionally engaged, because they need that fuel to think through and tackle the
big ugly problem. This answers those who responded earlier in this essay by
thinking, “Well, he just wants to engage people emotionally, so he can have a
big group hug.” No, no, no! I want to engage people emotionally not to make them
feel good. I want to engage them emotionally, because they’ll need that
emotional engagement when I throw a big ugly problem in front of them. I
don’t want fragile little flowers that wilt at the first sign of drought. I
want people that when they’re pushed, they will push back—not in defiance or
anger, but will push back by throwing their all into tackling the problem.
I’m
been teaching college over a decade and I’m in the process of working through
my exit strategy. I can no longer play the game. I am a great teacher. But, I’m
not going to keep working in a system that is in such utter ruins. I’ve tried
to push students. They never push back. They deflect, manipulate and complain.
And, students are often far more open to true education than administrators and
bureaucrats—who are masters at deflecting, manipulating and blaming everyone
but themselves. I believe the system is so sick, that it cannot be cured. A new
system must be designed. All the problems in our system can be boiled down to
one. Our education system doesn’t work, because it’s incongruent with human
nature.
