Let's Redefine the "Carolina Way"

       I am a direct decedent of William R. Davie, the founder of UNC, my grandfather attended law school there, my dad graduated there in 1940, my oldest sister graduated there and thus my addicted loyalty.  Dad took great pride that his name, along with Mom’s, is on the donor plaque at the Dean Dome.   As a child I wanted to attend, but out of state admission required an academic prowess I never attained.   My eldest daughter was a very good student in Charlotte who desperately wanted to attend, well over a 4.0 with honors and AP classes throughout her high school career, but was denied entry due to the competitive academic standards of UNC.  The latest revelations of academic fraud for athletics at the University of north Carolina, coupled with my daughter’s experience, sickens me.

This is not limited to athletics.  A country, founded on the philosophy of an intellectual enlightenment, is teetering on the edge because we value celebrity, fame and selfish wealth over knowledge and the value of community and service. We fund athletic arenas and departments with obscene amounts of cash while universities hire more and more part time professors.   Yes, this is bigger than UNC and the athletic fraud perpetrated by an overheated win at all costs culture. Most, if not all, universities carry this stain of corruption. It is important to remember that as Rome fell, the colosseum entertainment apparatus was more popular than ever.  Arizona is defunding community college and higher education, Oklahoma is banning AP history, Wisconsin is changing the mission of its flagship university to jobs over knowledge and most states are cutting their K-12 budgets to the bone. If we don't begin to understand that knowledge and meaningful self-reflection are what build community, culture and character, then we are doomed to the fate of all great powers in history.  Invariably, because power is historically recognized by material wealth, which we currently seem to value over all else, rather than cultural maturity; the world may now be headed for a fall.  Yes, our overheated attention toward the fame that becomes athletic accomplishment is a bad sign.

I have always loved sports at all levels.  I love the challenge, the conversation, the individual and collective sense of accomplishment.  The most important part of my personal athletic experience has always been the story.  Yet, our human weakness is causing this to crumble.  William Friday, President of the University of North Carolina in the 1960’s, was a great man who hired Dean Smith, not to win national titles, but to clean up a mess.  We need a William Friday who is willing to unilaterally clean up a mess.  UNC should not wait on the corrupt and weak NCAA.  The UNC administration should dramatically reduce athletic scholarships, ban special admission and fire any coach or professor with any stain of complicity. The Ram's club, or any corrupt athletic booster organization, should be required to provide 60% of it's income to academic departments determined by an organization independent of the university.  Would UNC then disappear from the national spotlight in athletics? Probably.  The most important legacy here is the academic legacy.  Somebody needs to have the guts to show this. We have to reverse the trend of anti-intellectualism in America and what better place to start than college athletics.  What better means to re-introduce the "Carolina Way."

The Double Helix?

So today I have been contemplating the double helix.  Yes, the DNA double helix.  The colorful representation of four proteins that purportedly determine who we are or who we will be.   Now, I am not a biologist.  As a matter of fact it has been 34 years since I cracked a biology text.  So, why think about this now?   I have always been curious if my DNA looked like this.  Not being a biologist it seems to me appropriate that the double helix is represented in a way that I might comprehend in a text before the genetics exam that inevitably comes in the biology class.   Thus my point:  Those who understand biology have a daunting task when it comes to explaining the inner workings of a living organism to lay people such as myself.  Particularly lay people who studied art and later decided to become a school principal.   When engaged in conversation about biology I can always revert back to that graceful double helix and its colorful manifestation.  That way I do not appear completely ignorant, as I am, when it comes to biology.  

Many of our opinions are formed based on limited information.  To change a perspective or opinion requires that we take a risk or are forced to do so.  In the Genesis creation story, the sky is referred to as a dome, periods of time are called days and humans begin to contemplate that there is no way they are alone.   Humans then begin to be fearful, construct city-states, bully weaker neighbors, and eventually move into gated suburbs with pristine swimming pools.  There are only a few true explorers among us.   Most of us stay behind to see if it is ok to follow. If the explorer does not return, we assume he has fallen over the edge.  

Back to the double helix…It is always comforting to know that there is an explanation, even if it doesn’t tell the whole story.   It gives me something to believe while allowing me to construct a worldview that is incomplete.  We all do this.  Each of us understands one small piece of our universe and constructs an explanation based on the incomplete nature of that understanding.   Therefore, there are 7 billion universes on earth.  We use terms such as tea party, progressive, liberal, conservative et. al. as a means to incompletely formulate an understanding of oppositional and collective thought.  The problem is that each description is incomplete and thus creates misunderstanding, distrust and conflict.   When Pearl Harbor or 9/11 occurred we had one threat and, for a brief moment, a singular understanding of what it would take to deal with that threat.  Once the external threat was over, the threat then became internal due to the individual incomplete formulation of what such an event meant.  We understand one thing while our neighbor understands something else.  Thus we are right and they must be wrong.   I know that DNA exists within me, or believe that it does because I was told so 30+ years ago.   If some other discovery says this is not so, I must be open minded enough to accept the new theory or simply believe that my textbook is always right.  I am a school principal after all!

Here’s why testing is irrelevant

Here’s why testing is irrelevant, and does not work, in American Public Schools…

            Just before the American Revolution there was this “Tea Party.”   When the current manifestation of the American Tea Party reared its ugly head in 2010, I frequently thought that the leaders of this movement were using the Revolutionary event out of context.   I have changed my mind.  The contemporary Tea Party is exactly what the Revolution was about.  “We don’t want to pay for anything that you give us because it’s all about me.”  

            The ongoing battle over testing in America, and the misuse of results to illustrate our intellectual fall world wide, has focused on testing as a magic bullet to improve our teaching force.  However, many proponents of testing are beginning to discover that tests are ill suited for this purpose.    Some have discovered that the instruments are in many cases poorly made, but more have discovered that these tests are an inappropriate measure of what children in the U.S. can actually do.  More importantly, tests are typically about norms and Americans are about the individual.

            The Tea Party of the 18^th century represents an excellent manifestation of American culture.   The libertarian vein, that actually began with the Puritans, has constantly reinforced this idea of individual manifestation that has lead us to catastrophe and triumph.   Each individual child in the United States has developed a social-emotional attachment to a selfish “pursuit of happiness.”   In an educational context, students act in their perceived self-interest.  I frequently tell folks that schools are designed by those who value school performance; therefore, about 1/3 of the U.S. student population values school as indicated by the their success with standardized tests and grades.   In other words, many, if not most, students in American schools could not care less about test results. 

            I often find it puzzling when pundits refer to random international testing data as evidence of our instructional crisis.    Anyone who has spent any time in an instructional setting can tell you that standardized tests mean very little to most students.  Too often, the U.S. student simply wants to get the test and irrelevant curricula done to move on to more important things.  As Ron Berger of Expeditionary Learning puts it, ”The most important assessment is that which is going on in the students head.”  The problem with tests based on standards developed by educators is that, too often, they don’t match the individual student’s priorities.   Unlike many of the developed countries that out perform our students on standardized measures, American students are about me, not us. 

            The concept of school, along with the typical physical and intellectual design of an academic setting, sets limits on opportunity for American students.   John Dewey attempted to address this through the Progressive Movement, but the paternal nature of a systemic public education hierarchy kept the Open School concept from taking hold.   The good news is that those of us in education are now seeing students as individual learners, but the autocratic habits of public school culture continue to act based on normative results rather than individual need.   The Common Core represents the ongoing conflict between individual learning and systemic solutions.   The misapplication of Common Core philosophical premise with normative testing models is a sign that the systemic is, once again, overwhelming the needs of the individual learner.   Normative tests will never get us to better outcomes in the United States, because the American student is wired to see self first.   In some ways, the American Revolution, along with the Enlightenment, represented the true agenda of our fore fathers and mothers: Individual justification for action.   I see this daily in students who dismiss tests as irrelevant to their existence.  Gaining a balance between systemic and individual interest will require a school environmental revolution that focuses on meaningful interaction and experience; not bubbles on a page.

            

Breathing

“I Can’t Breathe…”

Public Schools and urban police forces formed within a decade of one another in the first half of the 19^th century in America.  Although altruistic motives influenced the development of Public Schools, the greater influence was fear and ethnic prejudice.  Affluent fear lead to the development of the New York City police department and thus two institutions were born that focus on control and conformity.   Adolescent males were running amok in cities and they needed to be reigned in.   Later, schools and police were two means to enforce segregation.  It is often said that people seek the path of least resistance.   Our fear impulse is an example of this.  If there is an unknown, be afraid.  Set up walls.  Hire someone to keep out the boogieman.  Form a police force. Institutionalize fear. 

 As a person builds walls to keep others out, more walls are required as the individual is surrounded.   Fraternal organizations are formed to build walls.  Priests throughout the centuries, kings, soldiers, police and, in many cases, schools all act to protect, to control.  Eric Garner’s plea that he could not breathe therefore becomes the perfect metaphor for those who cannot afford walls.  Those who are loathed by a society that builds walls to promote fear are justifiably afraid.  

Fear becomes the default position for those of means and privilege.  It allows us to rationalize oppression without guilt.  The trouble is that the walls created by fear eventually cave in.   We suffocate in an environment that we initially built to keep others out.  It is not just that we are a racist country.  We are a scared country.  We killed one another in an attempt to continue slavery.  We murdered African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos and Chinese immigrants.    We promote gun ownership.  None of the strategies to keep others away has worked.  As we move through the path of American development our attempts to assuage our fears through tools of oppression make circumstances worse.  Many of us cannot breathe.   People of color are losing oxygen.

As there are fewer reasons to be afraid, we fear more.   Anecdotal

dangerous events displayed in the 24 hour news cycle, or on social media, reinforce our primal responses while numerical data shows that we may be safer than ever.  The wealthy horde more, the “Tea Party” trusts no one, the Elizabeth Warren fan club believes no one, institutions become defensive and the rest of us throw up our hands.  It’s time we got up and took a long walk.  It’s time we looked for good and not blame.  It’s time we forgave one another.   It’s time we realized we always have the potential to reach out and be ok.  It’s time to breathe…

Rousseau and Me

In the 18^th century the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote a tome he entitled Emile.   The purpose of this treatise was to propose developmental criteria for child rearing among the privileged class.   As a product of the enlightenment, the criteria established in Emile was interpreted by scholars as a framework for curricula deemed appropriate at different stages of a child’s intellectual development.  At first blush, this seems logical.  As the brain grows with the child, the capacity for learning logically increases.  Therefore, the child’s capacity for complexity improves as the child gets older.  Addition and subtraction in the early years, later multiplication and division, algebra, geometry, calculus etc., follow this line of thinking.  For centuries, the brain of a child was considered an empty vessel, “tabula rasa” or blank slate.  According to Rousseau, if you time concepts and activities correctly, a logical intellectual mind will develop properly prepared to contribute in adulthood. 

As logical as this all seems, the developmental presumption of Rousseau ignores significant influences on intellectual awareness.   First, the genetic equation that results in each of our brains impacts our capacity for types and breadth of learning.     Second, the social and physical environment influences decisions that impact learning priorities.  Rousseau’s prescription was appropriate for a child of privilege in the enlightenment and has proven to be effective for many children of means today.   A child from poverty, a working class family or a dysfunctional home does not have the luxury of such upbringing.  There are outliers that say a powerful intellect can overcome underprivileged status, Maya Angelou comes to mind, but those are rare circumstances.

It is now 2015 and we know a great deal more about the brain, psychology and sociology than was not understood during the Enlightenment.   However, we continue to make decisions in education based on the fundamental assumptions espoused by Rousseau.   The brain changes, almost fundamentally, every time we encounter stimuli.   Those stimuli can impede intellectual understanding just as it can expand knowledge.   I learned as a principal of a school with self-contained hearing impaired classes, that the brain quickly leaves senses not available, such as hearing, to find other avenues for survival.  This often results in barriers for language development.  Yet, we continue to develop curricula that prescribe certain learning at specific ages no matter the capacity or experience of the individual child.   If a child is not reading at six, it must be the instruction or there is “something wrong” with the child.  Simply changing instructional strategies should correct the problem.  Right? 

No.  Learning is not a series of prescribed steps.  There is no owner’s manual.  What works for one may not work for others.    We are beginning to act on this in the public schools, but all are not convinced.   The challenge is now to move from a systemic developmental model to one that addresses each child individually.  What we do know is that a strict developmental model leads to a focus on compliance and ignores the impact of individual experience on learning.   It has resulted in schools that serve a narrow group of students and pushes the others on or out.  If we are to make significant strides with all students we need to drastically adjust the formula.  Science has shown us that “tabula rasa” does not apply to children.   They are pre-wired with immense potential, too often untapped.  

I had numerous experiences that enhanced my intellectual curiosity, potential and capacity.   In grades kindergarten through twelve I matriculated through a public school system that was changing due to the Civil Rights movement and the attempts to integrate public schools.  I then attended a challenging private liberal arts college where I had to work hard to be an average student.   Over most of the past 3 decades I assumed that I learned my social skills in my K-12 years and honed my intellectual skills in college.  Since college I have earned two masters where my GPA was significantly better than as an undergraduate.  I attributed this to my “learning how to learn” while being challenged at a heightened intellectual level in college.  In other words, I learned how to study.  

Upon reflection, the supposition that intellectual growth requires structured study, or instruction, is not accurate.   The social and community experiences I had in high school have just as much to do with my success as an educator and a thinker as does the content I learned in college.  I simply believed that the high school curriculum was a disservice to my performance as a college student, because I was not challenged academically and; therefore, not ready to excel as an undergraduate.  However, the experiences I had with a changing school community has had just as much impact on my professional success as an educator as did my improved study habits enforced during college.

Growing up, I spent most of my after school time playing with friends and exploring the woods surrounding my house.   I typically finished homework before I got home each day.  I would frequently engage in all manner of discussions with friends whom I considered superior to me intellectually.   My family would typically spend a month in the summer in a simple 3 bedroom river house in eastern North Carolina where I would swim, fish and explore. The years we only spent two weeks at the river, we would travel and camp at various destinations in the northern hemisphere.  I was fortunate to be able to accompany my parents and little sister to England and France to tour medieval cathedrals, chateaus and cities.   These experiences coincided with a passion for drawing and painting that allowed me to explore the things around me visually. 

I have learned that the experiences I have had beyond school curricula have had as profound an impact, if not greater, on my intellectual development.   The experiences I faced during busing, the time for free play and exploration, along with the ongoing discussions with friends and family fueled an intellectual curiosity that presupposes inquiry.  The order in which we read particular books or learned specific mathematical formulas did not drive my ideas or passion.  It was the proximity to stimuli that challenged the mind and forced me to change my mindset countless times.   Rousseau’s effort to plan or program particular experiences took individual perspective for granted.  

Empathy is not merely a psycho-social skill.  It is a perspective that enhances intellectual growth.  It is learned primarily through experience, not study.   Empathy allows us to make decisions that incorporate other perspectives, therefore enhancing the possibility of success on particular initiatives.  We often find ourselves on the wrong side of decisions because our empathetic capacity did not influence the nuance for social action.  There is significant literature about the successful leaders having “super-empathy”.   What we know about circumstances not only influences, but directs our intellectual interpretation.  In Emile, Rousseau writes from the perspective of a philosophical courtier who delved in the societal and experiential aspects of nobility.  He knew what was required to excel in such an environment.   Developing a public school system that enhances opportunity for all students requires that all educators seek to empathize with our constituents.