The American Dream (Part Two)

On Education and Involvement

When I was in Junior High learning about the Civil War, our history teacher made us watch Ken Burns' documentary on the subject. In all, the movies comprised about 2 weeks of black and white pictures, dulcet narration, and fiddle solos for my history education that year. If you've never seen it, the series combines the use of "history facts" (when the battle of Shiloh was, the site of Pickett's charge in relation to the rest of the Gettysburg battle field, etc.) with newspaper reports and first hand letters home from the soldier to tell the story (or, rather stories) of the War Between the States. The part that struck me, even as an over-energetic young teen with a borderline ADD case, was the eloquence of the letters they read. Granted, Burns probably had the luxury of choosing the best out of a number of sources. And, granted, a skill or lack thereof in something such as spelling is edited in the speaking.

Nevertheless, the Privates, many of whom had come from poor, rural backgrounds where the words "boarding school" were unlikely to ever have been uttered, possessed an uncanny ability to convey some very unique and complex thoughts with an incredible depth of vocabulary. These men who were lucky to have seen the inside of a one-room schoolhouse possessed a command of their language and depth of thought that certainly rivals, if not surpasses that of men and women today, for whom 12 grades of education are a given.

What, then, is the difference between education then and now? Certainly, it's more than a mere coarsening of the vernacular to a point where the language from then is "flowery" by today's standards, though that certainly plays a part. Today's students have access to more books, more paper, more pens, and their learning is funded by more money and taught by better-trained teachers. But it would appear that the rising tide of modern times has not necessarily lifted all ships. What is the fundamental difference between then and now? I submit that the differences are twofold, and can be found in expectations and in accountability.

The world around us is awash in bad writing. Misspelling is an advertising method. The news is no longer written in detailed explanation complete with contextual analysis, instead using small-yet-sensational words to increase buzz and therefore sales. The thinkers of the day are relegated to PBS or short segments on cable, while "reality TV" gets all the ratings. Instead of manipulating language to communicate with those separated by distance and time by letter, a few short sentences over the telephone can now say as much.

Simply put, speaking well is no longer a requirement for survival in today's society. With no external societal forces driving learning, expectations must arise from elsewhere. The two forces driving this expectation with respect to formal education are parents and teachers. Parents, obviously, should encourage success by maintaining high, but achievable expectations, and enumerating them clearly. Teachers must demand excellence and, yes, punish failure. "Thy rod and thy staff shall guide me," and in this circumstance, the parents are the staff - guiding by holding - and the teachers the rod - guiding by prodding. Obviously not all situations are like this, and it becomes incumbent upon our well-trained teachers to recognize which methods work best with which students. But the simple requirement remains - expectations must be clear, high, and held to.

Accountability is the check to ensure that the above three descriptions apply to expectations. In short, accountability is involvement. Some have tried to substitute money for accountability, without much to show for it. School resources are simply not tied to test scores - in fact, richer districts often don't do as well as poorer districts. Simply, there is no statistical tie between the input of money and the output of education. This is not to say that schools should be unfunded, it is to say that since money is not the problem, it necessarily follows that it is not the solution. If we look elsewhere, unlike with money, parental involvement is in fact a statistic directly tied to success. There is no substitute for accountability.

A system is already in place at most schools that leads to strong ties of involvement and accountability. Every Friday night across America, towns empty out, to fill stadiums and arenas to cheer on their local school's teams. There is a strong sense of identity in these communities, and therefore a strong sense of accountability to the activity in question. Sometimes that influence becomes destructive, because the goal of a good sports team is not a fundamentally important one - a win in a game is not as important as the path of teamwork, discipline, and hard work that leads to that win. Similarly, grades are not as important as the path of learning - but when the metric is set by solid and fundamental expectations, good grades are the end of that path.

How does one get as much involvement in drier subjects like education as they do with sports? Sports activities create the identity of the community as it ties to the school, and that will not change, thought the subject of the activity does. Communities can be involved through exhibitions and contests, such as Science Fairs, Speech Contests, and Band Concerts, as well as by the further opening of the doors of the school through meetings with teachers and active organizations like the PTA. Additionally, a little healthy competition never hurt anyone: compare your school's annual test scores and scholarship totals with those of your hated rivals.

These ties, however, are implicit, and are often already in place. Nevertheless, the problem of a lack of parental involvement remains. There is one last, very direct method of involvement, one employed best by private schools. That method should be obvious - involve the parents' bank accounts in the education of their children. Really, it's a simple economic principle: if a product is free, the quality is of little consequence to the consumer, but when we pay for something, the expectation of quality goes up. Therefore, the final piece of the accountability puzzle is a certain amount of privatization of the schools. If parents become economically invested, the incentive to want greater quality for the cost will be the result.

As the clever reader notices, that concept raises both of our quotients - expectations and accountability. The goal of applying those to education is of course societal improvement. A society that has a vested interest in the value and quality of its education becomes a better society. There is simply no reason that America cannot be that society, if only we will begin building it.