It’s not our Schools, Teachers, or Administrators that are Failing Us.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” ~ Buckminster Fuller

The other night I had a nightmare in which I was literally screaming down a crowded corridor, “HEY! HEY! HELP! Please! Our kids are dying! Look at ’em! Wake ’em up! Shake ’em! Shake ’em. We have to wake them up! Somebody!?!? Anybody? Please.” I have had this dream before.

I know that dreams can get pretty weird, sometimes leaving us wondering, “What the heck? Where did that come from?” But these dreams haven’t come from nowhere. They aren’t like dreams of a locomotive that swims like a snake or my ability to fly. They come from what I’ve seen. They come from what I see.

Of course there are a few beautiful exceptions to the following observations. I’m so grateful for that; even hopeful. But I see that our kids are withering, wilting, figuratively and literally dying. First their spirits, then their hearts, then their bodies and minds. It’s not the same in 2024 as it was in 2004 when I started teaching. It’s not the predictable, age-appropriate, boundary pushing sarcasm, disrespect, and rebellion. It’s darker. It’s sad.

Waking after this particular nightmare left me asking…yet again…where is the joy in the lives of our kids; our students? I don’t mean “Where is the absence of discomfort?” We’ve done a brilliant job in that capacity. Too good, in fact. Most kids wake up to iPhones and Monster Energy Drinks. What I mean is…where is the eagerness, the enthusiasm, the fun, and the unbridled exuberance? In life? In school? A more pointed question is…when are we going to fix our bloated, antiquated, ineffective, impractical public school system? OUR public school system! It’s ours. It’s yours.

It doesn’t matter whether you have kids or not; whether they’ve grown up and moved on or not, because these kids, these adolescents, these young adults are gonna be the ones building our futures. They’ll build our streets and they will police the streets they’ve built. They’re gonna create what we consume, and they’ll police what we consume as well, from our food to our entertainment to what we see (and don’t see) on the news. They will protect our borders, cure our diseases, nurture future generations, and leave the world a better place! Or.. they won’t. Looking into the eyes of these kids, year after year, I don’t see a desire to do that, or anything else.

I see apathy.

From the Oxford Dictionary:

ap·a·thy /ˈapəTHē/noun
: lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern. “widespread apathy among students”

(I found this to be a disturbing coincidence: I was going to discuss the sadness, emptiness, and dangers share the dance floor with apathy by first posting the literal definition. What are the odds that the Oxford Dictionary uses ‘students’ as the subject in their example? Evidently it’s not just me that sees this trend.)

Yeah. I know, I know. Every generation has had the same observations and fears, right? The decline of western civilization! Right? I can hear my grandparents and my parents and my peers already…”The kids these days…blah blah blah…” But ask yourselves this: In your gut, do you think there has ever been a time when adolescents and young adults have displayed (through formal assessment or informal observations, in school or at church, with friends or at home) less of an interest, less of a willingness, and less of an ability to engage; to plug in; to believe that life can or will get any better…any happier? Apathy. I see apathy. I see it sometimes so boldly that it’s palpable, almost worn as an unconscious badge of honor.

I have an unpopular opinion among educators today. Yes, I have (repeatedly) been “that guy” in the staff meetings. The one who stands up and says to his colleagues, “I hear you. I understand your frustration. Go ahead and blame the parents. Blame technology. Blame cell phones. You can blame a lack of sleep, the western diet, broken families, and good ol’ adolescence. You can gripe and complain. You can say ‘It’s not my responsibility to raise these kids! I get paid to teach chemistry!’ But I beg to differ.”

In my eyes, it IS our responsibility to raise these kids!

Like Kennedy said, “If not us, who? And if not now, when?“

You don’t have to admit it. You don’t have to accept it. You don’t have to like it. You may not have knowingly signed up for it, but when the kids are with us (as teachers, coaches, mentors, pastors, bosses, leaders)…it most certainly our responsibility to raise them, to connect with them as whole beings, to guide them, to lead them, to encourage them, to comfort them, to redirect them, to ignite them, to cry with them, to celebrate with them, and to love them.

Here are a few thoughts on causes…and some ideas about possible solutions. But, at the end of the day…I could be wrong. Maybe it’s all a just bad dream.

First let me say that I LOVED college! Earning my Bachelors Degree was an amazing experience, and earning my Masters Degree was equally amazing yet completely different. With that out of the way,let’s dive in without bias.

Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard (HP Computers) have a number of things in common. Not the least of which is astonishing levels of success in their respective careers. Another fascinating (and perhaps illuminating) point is that they all dropped out of college. In fact, David Murdock (Dole Foods), with a net worth of over $3 Billion, dropped out of high school in the 9th grade. Truth!

Einstein earned a PhD in spite of dropping out of high school at 15. And why did he, arguably the brightest mind in history, drop out of school? Because he was frustrated with the rigidity of the curriculum. He wanted to think, not recite!

Chimamanda Adichie didn’t need to understand 16th century English (read; Shakespeare) in order to passionately teach us about the real life pains of civil war?

Five time James Beard Award winner, Tom Colicchio didn’t go to college or culinary school. What wasn’t self taught during his high school years was later learned and honed on the job.

Gillian Lynne, who struggled with attention and focus in school, went on to become one of the world’s most recognized and prolific choreographers.

Dyslexia complicated Ray Bradbury’s formal education, because he struggled to understand what he was reading. In spite of his struggles, he became one of the most celebrated authors of the twentieth century…

…and on and on and on.

“Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school. It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. ” ~ Albert Einstein

These characters and minds and spirits didn’t necessarily thrive because of school, but often in spite of it. I think it’s long past time to start thinking inside the box about what we need to be teaching in learning in the 21st century.

We need to stop teaching facts and start teaching ideas and perspectives. We need to stop believing that if it’s rigorous…it’s good. Learning doesn’t have to be rigorous. In fact, when it’s done naturally, organically, it’s nearly effortless..and it’s exciting…and it’s rewarding…and it perpetuates curiosity and exploration and it leads to even more learning and at higher levels.

“But, but, but…”

But before you stomp your feet and tell me that we need rigorous national math standards so kids can get into good schools so they can become engineers, consider these points:

• As of 2020, in the United States, 1.29% of the workforce had engineering related jobs. 1%!
• At the same time, 28.9% of students in one particular county in New Mexico didn’t graduate high school on time. While researching graduation/dropout rates in the US I read reports from the National Center for Education Statistics that highlight dropout rates as low as 5%. Following my gut, I dug deeper to learn that this data considers graduation to be a diploma, GED, or equivalent, for students “16 to 24 years of age.” 16 to 24? However, when I added the term “Graduated On time” to the query, the percentage of dropouts increased dramatically; more than five fold in the nations poorest counties.

Nationally, the cliched obstacle to graduation is math. It’s the subject area that derails more students than the others. Honestly speaking though, and maybe you’re an engineer (feel free to chime in), how much actual math do engineers use on any given day? I don’t mean how many engineers use platforms and applications that use complex maths to model real world engineering feats. I mean, “Put your notes and your calculators away. We’re taking a test” kinds of math. More importantly, when and where did engineers learn the math they use? They certainly didn’t learn that level of math in high-school. Yet we will disrupt and derail and disenfranchise otherwise passionate and healthy kids by forcing them to take (and often fail) truly impractical rigorous math courses. Adding insult to injury, most public schools require little if any exposure to life’s most universally practical maths, like personal finance and probability (skills and perspectives we all need, especially prior to having student loans and credit cards shoved down the throats of incoming college freshman!)

It probably sounds like I’m bashing math. I’m not. I promise. In fact, I’m quite good at math, and I’ve always enjoyed teaching it. But this ineffective tendency of teaching impractical facts and skills applies to all of our core areas of study. Do you think Eminem knows what iambic pentameter is? Like him or not, he’s one of the 21st centuries most prolific poets. We’ll test students on names and dates and people and places in history, which collectively serve no practical purpose, but we won’t ask ’em, “OK! How many different solutions can you think of in the next 10 minutes that might have resolved the issues of World War II before we resorted to dropping nuclear bombs on innocent people?”

We teach knowledge, but we don’t pass along the wisdom.

“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.” ~ Miles Kingston

We teach our kids that lincoln freed the slaves, but we don’t teach ’em the life that the 13th amendment ushered in to these formerly enslaved people. We don’t teach our youth why the devastation of “Black Wall Street” happened in Tulsa in 1921. We ask them to understand a 450 year old English poem, but we won’t teach ’em how to listen to a friend, and to listen with the purpose being to understand and to connect. We don’t teach ’em to say, “Man, I’m so sorry. I’m really glad you shared. Are you saying that….?” to check for understanding.

Like cattle in a slaughterhouse, we push and squeeze and force until our kids give in. We don’t explore and discover and unlock. We don’t inspire and motivate and sit in awe of the achievements of the spirits who come through our doors. Rather, we are forced by the powers that be, and by standardized assessments, to, as Einstein remarked, “…judge a fish by how well it climbs a tree.”

We encourage or even require students to take challenging and complex courses, many of which are outstanding courses taught by outstanding teachers. But at what cost? How many engineers will we actually create? More importantly, how many dancers and bakers and psychologists and entrepreneurs will we lose because these courses sucked the wind from their otherwise passion-filled sails?

No. Not everyone will be or can be a Jobs or a Zuckerberg. Yes, rigorous learning is excellent for our minds and often for our spirits, when administered practically and appropriately. But, damn it, does everyone need courses (outside of their areas of passion and interest) that are that challenging? Courses that ask students to deeply explore the realm of imaginary numbers? Working numbers that won’t exist through computations that lead them to a future that won’t exist…at least for them?

Rather than shoving every shaped peg through every shaped hole, can we please at least let them be…complete…first? Then, and only then, we can help them explore their needs and wants, their passions and talents, rather than mow them over with ours? They’re not pegs. They’re kids; our kids; our future. Can we please leave them whole? Can we leave them better equipped for real life? Their lives?

Looking back at the title of this post: It’s not our Schools, Teachers, or Administrators that are Failing Us, who or what is failing us?

I could be wrong (I’m not), but it’s the U.S. Department of Education who’s failing us. OUR U.S. Department of Education. More specifically, it’s the officers that create and set our curriculum standards that appear to a) have no children of their own, b) have become so far removed from reality that they can’t effectively lead, and c) appear to be too afraid to simply do what’s right: to revolt. To refuse. To stand for young people.

I wish it was just a bad dream. I’ve said it before. We (teachers and administrators), in spite of our years and in spite of our tears, do a mediocre job of missing the wrong target. Let’s tell the ones in power the truth, that we can do more. Imagine what we could do if we’re allowed. Imagine what we could do if we were supported.