Educational Frankenstein: Collateral Damage on the Way to AYP

I am now seriously considering homeschooling. I'm not so much attracted to homeschooling as I am repulsed by traditional education. I support public schools, but not in their current bastardized form under NCLB.

I’m an example of how the system works and yet doesn’t work. I’m part success, part failure.

Kids can be educated in the basics, but the basics is not the solution. It’s part of the problem. Critics charge that the basics were good enough for them, why aren’t they good enough for everyone else? The basics seemed to work for me. After all, by almost any measure, you might say that I’m a successful product of a basic education. I graduated from Princeton University, went on to get my master’s at New York University, and now work as an instructional designer at a state university. But I achieved all these things DESPITE my education, not because of it. As a student, I valued winning above all else. “Learning” was a means to an end, not an end in itself. Sure, I learned a thing or two along the way, but the underlying message was always “Prove that you are better than others.” So I did.

Upon reflection, I feel like I was robbed of the kind of education all children deserve. In an extraordinarily twisted way, I turned out to be a success in a dysfunctional system, an educational Frankenstein. I suspect that many people are also educational Frankensteins, monsters that were taught to compete, to win, to value grades, to do just enough, to seek praise, to read to pass a test, to memorize Spanish vocabulary words to pass a test, to memorize state capitals to pass a test, to memorize the preamble of the Constitution to pass a test. I memorized the Spanish vocabulary words – every one. I got a perfect score on almost every test I took. But can I speak Spanish? No. I studied the names of Roman senators and the symbols for all the chemicals, but I can remember neither senator nor symbol.

As a student, I was passive. Or, more precisely, the educational context governed by the basics put me in the role of a passive learner. Teachers did the teaching. Students did the learning. Or, again more precisely, students were taught AT by teachers. So I sat back and took hundreds and hundreds of pages of notes. From about the 6th grade until my second year in graduate school, I sat and listened and took notes. And took more notes. And still more notes. Because the basics assumes I am an empty receptacle into which knowledge is poured, I sat and let knowledge be poured into me. In grades 6-11, I’d go home, read my notes, memorize my notes, and come back the next day and regurgitate the contents of my notes onto a multiple choice or short answer test. And I would do well, every time. I was good at regurgitating information from short-term memory. But after I had taken the test, I would promptly purge my short-term memory of all that information. Well, not all of it. I pride myself in my ability to recall trivial bits of information about geography. I know that Burma is now called Myanmar, and that the capital is Rangoon. I know that Ho Chi Minh City was once called Saigon. And I know that the Nile flows north. So, as you can see, my basic education has prepared me well to be a contestant on Jeopardy and to impress people at parties.

We have to ask ourselves: do we want our children to grow up to be contestants on Jeopardy? Or do we want something else for our kids?

Even at such an impressive school as Princeton, I sat and I sat and I sat and I took note after note after note and I regurgitated, regurgitated, regurgitated. I wrote paper after paper after paper. I don’t remember any of it, none of it, not a lick. I go back to my old files and read papers that I wrote and think to myself, “Wow – I used to know this???? Gee, I used to be smart!” Oh, sure, I definitely became a better writer as a result of all the papers I wrote. I’m not saying there was absolutely NO benefit to it. But much of the value – most of the value – was and is lost. It’s not about the Nile flowing north or Burma changing to Myanmar or the mitochondria – “the powerhouse of the cell” – or “to find the percent of a number, change the percent to a decimal and multiply” or the storming of the Bastille in 1789 or the fact that the Battle of Bunker Hill was actually fought on Breed’s hill. It ain’t about none of that. But that’s what it was for me. And that’s what it is for most kids. This is the basics. And there could be nothing more antithetical to learning than the basics.

And why? Because under these terms, you are either good at the basics or you are not good at the basics. I was good at the basics because I liked winning and I was good at memorizing. So I got all A’s. From the time I was in the 4th grade, I was on the Headmaster’s List at my school. I worked hard – very hard – to stay on the list. Was I driven to learn? No. Was I driven by a burning curiosity? No. I was driven to be better than everyone else. And by George I was!

Talk about a monster. So here’s a success story. A kid who gets all A’s. A kid who goes to Princeton and NYU. A kid who has this impressive vocabulary. But it’s also a kid that hates reading books. I abhor novels. Reading was never something I did for pleasure. From the very earliest age, I had to read a book and write this thing called a “book report” to prove that I had read the book. So reading was all about writing a report that showed I had done the reading. There was nothing – NO THING – that was inherently interesting, challenging, or valuable about writing the book report. For the most part, book reports were about summarizing the plot. So the little voice in my head kept asking, “If I read in order to write a plot summary, what inherent value is there in reading?” The answer: there is none.

Now, mind you, I could prove that I had read books. I wrote book reports until they were coming out of my ears. I read lots and lots of books and wrote lots and lots of book reports. And guess what? Every single book report got an A. Every one. But in getting an A on all those book reports, my love for reading was destroyed. Like “gone.” As in “I don’t have a love for reading.” Reading is about proving that you have read. While reading, I felt this pressure to remember everything that happened because, if I forgot, how could I ever write the book report? And if I bomb the book report, I won’t make the Headmaster’s List! But that can’t happen! I’ve ALWAYS made the Headmaster’s List! What would people think of me if I didn’t make the Headmaster’s List?

Now imagine all the kids who are not good at the basics. Not only do they get to have their love of reading destroyed, they also get the distinction of being labeled “slow” or “needs improvement.” They’re not so good at memorizing Jeopardy-style nuggets o’ facts, so they can’t walk into a test and regurgitate the contents of their brains onto the page. So they fail these tests. The teacher calls them “average” or “not too bright.” Their parents call them “good kids.” They call themselves “stupid.”

What kind of future do these kids have? And what kind of future would I have had? Sure, I’m “successful” by most measures. But how much more successful could I have been? More importantly, how much more fulfilled would I be as a person? Living a life where learning was synonymous with self-expression, not competition? Living a life where reading was a joy, not a burden? Living a life where I didn’t have to live in fear of failure, having to prove that I was smart, fearing that I really wasn’t?

So, for me, educational reform is inextricably linked to my desire to seek revenge. I simply cannot imagine what my life would be like or who I would be now if I had received a truly extraordinary education. Nor can I imagine what the planet would be like if the millions and millions of kids who have been chewed up and spat out by the basics had had a truly extraordinary educational experience.

In me, there is a profound need to make things right. Because what we have today is not right.

So is homeschooling the answer? For me and my kids, perhaps. But I shudder to think about the other kids, the kids who will continually be ground up and spat out, collateral damage on the way to AYP.