Why Educate?

I was going to write something different today, but I was inspired by one of the comments from a previous post (see what power you have if you leave a comment?) to draw together some thoughts I've been pondering for a few weeks about what is the point of education.  That was not her question; her question, posted in response to my post about the latest battle over whether or not our local school system in Wake County, NC should drop its accreditation rather than to submit to the questions posed by the accrediting agency, is how people can continue to deal with the frustration of trying to resolve the numerous issues that are dividing our community about the fundamental principles of our educational system.

But I think those are both really the same question, or at least, the same set of questions.  Why does it matter?  Who cares about education?  What is it that education should be doing?  Why care?  Why educate?

So let me give you my perspective on this issue.  As I've said before, I'm from the DC area originally, and between growing up there and spending most of my professional life there, I've met lots of important and significant people in many different realms (not the least of which is my father, who held presidential appointment-level positions under six? eight? different US Presidents, along with teaching in two universities and serving as a top-level executive in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York).  But no matter how accomplished (or not), almost everyone I've talked to who has children tells me that their children are at least as important as, if not more significant than, whatever they have achieved in their professional lives.  I think for most people, if you ask them the most miraculous moments in their lives, the top ones include holding their child(ren) in their arms for the first time--whether the children were naturally born, adopted, born through a surrogate, or whatever.  For the vast majority of those of us blessed with children, other things fade in comparison with them.

Even those who haven't raised children themselves usually have a soft spot for children.  Some chose to forego them because they thought they couldn't be the kind of parent they wanted to be, given their professional or other life situations.  Others wanted to be, but things just didn't work out.  And some just never felt the call that parenthood was for them.  But that doesn't mean that such people don't care about and work towards the safety and well being of children.  Because, as the saying goes, it DOES take a village.

So at least in the US, once you've got the child's basic food, shelter, and physical safety needs met, the next need we deem most important as a society is the child's education (we could make a good case here for children's health care, but we'll leave that for another post).  But education is kind of a funny thing with us Americans.  With our rugged individualism mythological past, we tend to think it is up to the parents to take care of feeding, clothing, sheltering, and providing medical care to their own children.  But everybody wants to have some say in how the children are educated, since our historical analogy was education as a melting pot where all sorts of different cultures came in, blended together, and were poured out into multi-colored molds, producing components that fit together to build an ever bigger and better America.

So this is part one of the question--Why does it matter?  Why deal with the frustration?  Why bother?  We care and we fight and we bother and we persevere despite frustration because, really, what else can be more important?  Yes, we can do other things---we can acquire wealth, or fame, or accomplishment, or lose ourselves in hedonistic pleasures, or just surrender ourselves to staying in bed all day.  Does any of that matter all that much in the long run?  Most of us want to invest at least some of our energy in making sure that the next generation not only survives, but flourishes.  And for many of us, the education system is the most tangible way we can do that (beside supporting the raising of our own immediate families).

So people have a high level of investment in the fact that education matters, not just for their own family, but for society in general.  High enough that for many of us, at least, it is enough to forego the frustration and negative energy to continue to fight for what we believe.

This point of view assumes agreement about the importance of education and the future of "our" children.  So our real issues, then, are about what it is that education should be doing.

I can't be a good advocate for the point of view of the current majority of the Board of Education--who, it is important to remind ourselves, were elected by a majority of the voters in Wake County.  If there is every a reader from that side who would like to present that perspective, I would LOVE for you to send me a guest post, which I PROMISE to post (with full credit, of course).

Until that happens, though, I can only present my perspective and the things that inspire me.

As I've said before, we homeschool, and one of the reasons we do so is because I don't like the current commitment nationwide to evaluating education only by those things that can be rated by standardized tests.  We are just starting a study of Dickensonian English history and literature, so when thinking of the present approach to education, I can't help but recall the opening passage to Dicken's Hard Times (his novel that deals most specifically with education):

'NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!'

Maybe it is my personality, maybe it is my education philosophy, or who knows...but I while I think facts are definitely important, there are other important things.  As Albert Einstein says, "Imagination is more important than knowledge.  For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."  So facts teaches our children what we know from the past, but in the rapidly-changing world in which we live, preparing for an unknown future must be, I think, equally important.

(Note:  Of course, this is not one of the battles that are even being debated in the ongoingly-contentious Wake County School Board public meetings.  But perhaps we can get to it once we settle the issues about who should be going where and how we should distribute the resources and children of this county.)

Let me add a few links of other people who have asked this question about the ultimate role of education.

In honor of Martin Luther King's Day yesterday, here is a link to his article on this issue.  Dr. King makes the point that it is not enough for education to make our children smart; it must give them character as well.  He gives an example of a man who is an accomplished scholar within the realm of academia, but can still justify discrimination against people based purely on the color of their skin.

Then, in the Washington Post today, the president of Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia wrote a nice piece about the purpose of a liberal arts college education today.  According to Dr. Christopher Howard, the role of COLLEGE (let alone undergraduate education) is to help today's students make sense of their individual experience with the world, past, present, and future.  Dr. Howard calls for engagement, which he describes as purpose, passion, and calling, rather than providing them with specific skills, knowledge, or employment tracks.

One of the other blogs that I follow, a lovely site called Fairy Dust Teaching, kind of sparked my thinking along these lines with a post she had last month.  She is a Waldorf-trained Kindergarten teacher, so she is the other end of the spectrum.  But one of the thing she said in her post was:
I have a sticky note posted in the front of my lesson plan book that says, "A good education gives you goosebumps."  It reminds me to not forget to add a little wonder and curiosity in the plan.  


I love that reminder.  I may not always get there, but I think that is a great goal to aim for.  To read the rest of her inspirational notes, see her post on Why Educate?

I have one last reference to add.  I have been reading the magnificent book, My Reading Life by Pat Conroy, a writer that I have adored now for about 20 year now.  This book is like a Valentine's Box of Godiva Chocolates for literature, and each essay is like the richest literary truffle you could ever imagine.  But Conroy is only the latest to write about the impact that an individual teacher made on his life.  In his case, it was an English teacher whom Conroy describes as:
Gene Morris didn't just make his students love books; he made us love the entire world.  He was the essential man in the lives of a thousand boys and girls who dwelled in the shadow of his almost unnoticeable greatness.

Conroy had one other fantastic quote from that essay that I must add:
If there is more important work than teaching, I hope to learn about it before I die.

And that, I think, sums up why we continue, despite the frustration.