On the State of Education

Browsing yesterday's editorial page this morning, I noticed a series of entries from high school students contemplating just what they believe to be essential to the adequate preparation of themselves and their peers for future success. I found myself nodding in sage agreement with the initial entries, clearly properly trained, delightfully thoughtful and insightful youth promising good things for the next generation in charge. Then I came across an entry that sounded much more like an echo of contemporary political brainwashing, which made me realize that all that sagacity that had preceded it had to be reflections of older voices as well.

What particularly disturbed me, however, was the emphasis on "hands-on learning" over standards-based learning," at least as it was discussed in the editorial. The writer was particularly enthusiastic about exclusive project-oriented, outcome-based learning. Now what, you may well ask, could I possibly find objectionable in that? Is not the purpose of public education, after all, the preparation of functional adult workers?

Here's the thing: there has always been hands-on learning, whether it was called vocational training, apprenticeship, internship, or shop and home ec. There will always be a place in society for hands-on learning because there will always be a need for those who can and do eagerly seek employment with their hands. We don't actually need formal, government-funded schools for that sort of training. There will always be a place in society for those who wish to pursue entrepreneurship, who seek satisfaction and fulfillment in commerce.

Traditionally, school was not meant for everyone, not offered to everyone. Truth to tell, not everyone appreciates the unique opportunities available in a school setting, nor should they have to experience them. The kinds of work and opportunities best served by school training tend to deal with intangibles, at least in part. Those who seek to serve in government, in law, in medicine - in short, in the professions - are well-served by the rigors of classroom education. The give-and-take of open discussion based on extensive readings, and the thoughtful writing that follows such activities, helps to broaden horizons and open future leaders to new avenues of thought that are also connected to deep wells of tradition. At least, that's the potential and the theory. Going off half-cocked in a public venue for hands-on experience without having first considered what has gone before is not a useful learning activity for such students.

Those who wish to build better bridges, design better transportation, manipulate finances, or otherwise work with tangible constructions are happier in the doing and benefit from extensive hands-on experience early in their educational careers. One would hope that enforced contemplation might help to mold such workers' sense of shared community values, but anything enforced is a crap shoot at best.

And what of our artists, musicians, athletes, and other performers? How do we best serve them as they seek to hone their respective crafts?

Yet we throw all our students into one barrel and then wonder why one system does not answer for all. What idiot composed the initial query that set the question as a dichotomy anyway?

KV

"When my mother went off her rocker late at night, the hatred and contempt she sprayed on my father, as gentle and innocent a man as ever lived, was without limit and pure, untainted by ideas or information." Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut has died. Obituaries are cropping up across the Internet and in newspapers across the country, possibly around the world, as I type this. Vonnegut was one of the most influential writers of the mid-20th century. As a chance survivor of the fire-bombing of Dresden near the end of World War II, his writings touched a chord with the Vietnam War generation. Evidently his works have been garnering attention once again as Americans find themselves embroiled in an unpopular war overseas. Clearly the young people who read Vonnegut so avidly have grown up to assign the reading of his writings to a new generation of activists. In fact, one of last summer's pool attendants was deeply immersed in Vonnegut's works, drowning children left to their own devices.

Don't get me wrong: I'm as avid a fan of Vonnegut's writings as many of my generation. Upon spotting the announcement of his passing, I hastened to read what obituaries I could find. The article that most caught my attention, however, was a two-year-old editorial by the author's son, Mark Vonnegut, a pediatrician in Massachusetts. The younger Vonnegut presents himself as a thinking individual separate from his father, even has he defends his father from slander. More important, he makes an excellent point about today's so-called journalists: "I hope I'm wrong, but if the people actually in charge of this war can't listen and think better than the people beating up my dad, it's not good news for military families and no amount of flag waving will make it so." I find it reassuring that the grandson of a woman diagnosed as mentally unstable and so thoroughly stigmatized by her own son (see quote above) is able to demonstrate such clear and humane thinking, genetics notwithstanding. It's a good argument for nurture despite nature, I think, and hopeful for those of us neither so afflicted nor so blessed.