I have been silent for sometime now and you, my loyal
readers, may have been wondering where I went. Well I have been reading. I like to take the summer, the nice weather and the long
days to stretch out with a good book.
I read voraciously during the summer. Books, articles, magazines, anything I can get my hands
on! I recently read an article in
the New York Times Educational section about educating the children of
India. The article talks about the
shortage of affordable and qualified teachers for the Indian public schools. It then describes a system of
recruiting and training mostly uneducated, poor, women to be trained
specifically to teach in these educational settings. The idea of specific training programs, apprenticeships if
you will, for teachers seemed so innovative—and yet we have been here before.
We hear so often of the children who failed in school who go
on to be super successful. Bill
Gates, Albert Einstein, Mark Zuckerberg, Todd Rose I could go on…
leads me to another book I read this summer is called Square Peg, by Todd Rose. In this autobiographical work, Rose speaks of his schooling growing up. He recounts failure after failure in his school career until he ends up a drop out with a dead-end job. Spoiler alert: (Eventually he realizes that he needs to advance his education in order to make a living for his growing family and he goes back to school. After many years of hard work he is a successful Professor of Education at Harvard University, and an author of a very engaging book!)
What do these women in India and Todd Rose have in
common? They each seemed to be on
a fairly predictable path towards poverty and struggles but something helped to
pull them from this trajectory and into a career of educating others. Neither of them could have told you in
their youth that they would be responsible teachers or professors,
professionals or a role model to others.
They were, from an early age, on a trajectory towards failure until some
large, unexpected, event threw them out of orbit.
How can we ensure that all children end up on a path like
Dr. Rose? How can we take these
children at a young age and ensure success? Do we risk pigeonholing children at a young age if we knock
them off their orbits? Can we see
red flags or early predictors before these failures become reality? Do we need to reevaluate our
educational system to ensure more children end up on the successful path rather
than the path of failure? Should
we revert back to an apprenticeship model? Is there a way to identify children’s strengths earlier in
life and allow them to focus on these areas? Do we sell children short by only ‘generally’ educating them
until they are 18 or would forcing them to focus earlier on make them miss out
on the ability to flexibly shift later in life? What is our goal of education? What do we hope for children to accomplish at the end of
middle school? High school? College?
As we start this year, like all years, with a clean slate, I
think we need to take a lesson from ourselves in backwards design. Let’s paint a picture of success and
from there work backwards to make our portrait of success in an educated
American child. Let’s ask
ourselves these questions about our schools, our classrooms, and our
students. Let’s make sure that
Todd Rose or Bill Gates are not exceptions to the rule but true definitions of
what it means to be educated in our classrooms.
