Yesterday, a second grader asked, Mrs. Bush, what is the purpose of school?  I gave him an answer he obviously didn’t want to hear, so next he asked, “what if all I want to do is play video games and eat doughnuts?”  I responded, with a polite smile, “well, you’ll live in your parent’s basement for the rest of your life”, to which he responded, “that’s okay.”  A funny story perhaps, but as I kept thinking about it, I’m not sure if the answer I gave him is really what’s happening in schools these days.

My philosophy of what school is (or should be) is a place where children should learn to love learning.  It should be a place to gain fundamental knowledge in a large variety of subjects to give the child the opportunity to be a well rounded human being and to help them discover their passion.  This includes soft skills like kindness, respect, responsibility, etc. When a student graduates from high school, they should have the tools to choose the direction they want to take as an adult who contributes to his or her family, community and society as a whole.  Lofty?  Maybe.  But for me, the ideal of what a great education should be. Most other educators I know got into teaching for the same types of reasons.  It’s an opportunity to change a child’s life for the better, and therefore, society as a whole.

But let’s really look at this from another point of view.  As I’ve been working with my student teacher, one of the thing we’ve talked about is choosing the activities that match your goal.  For instance, what is it you want students to know and be able to do, then what kinds of activities and assessments do you do and administer to enable them to learn and demonstrate that they have learned?  It should be so obvious that if someone just walking in should observe you, they would know what goal you were working towards.  So, if I walked into a classroom or school today, would I actually see my philosophy of education at work?

Well, I would see kids rushed around and thrust immediately into academics, even Kindergarten, with a  prescribed number of minutes to learn and work on certain subjects, particularly reading and math.  There’s a lot of talk about things students “have to” do and not a lot of what they “get to” do.  Very few people learn to love things they “have” to do.  Students are rushed through bathroom and water breaks, transitions during and between classes, lunch and short recesses.  Teachers always insisting that they sit still, stay quiet, take the next test.  And are the tests really for the students?  Well, a lot of data is collected on how well they do on tests, but they seem to be used more to compare with schools and districts around the state/country and not just a measure of how an individual student is progressing.  It’s used as an accountability measure for teachers, schools and districts, with major consequences if seemingly arbitrary, sometimes ridiculous goals are not met.

So much time is spent on required academics that teaching soft skills at the very best is taught in tandem with the academics, or the very worst, not taught in a meaningful way to students.  Those skills that somehow people think kids just eventually “get” don’t just happen if they’re not taught with as much seriousness as the academics.  We talk kids to death about safety, respect and responsibility but we never really spend the time required to do these things well. So many times kids don’t even grasp the concepts, can’t really define them and certainly can’t show examples of them.  I believe these concepts can be really abstract for them, especially if we have adults in their lives who do everything but bubble wrap the kids to keep them safe, so they never experience the consequences of not being safe.  Responsibility needs to be in the form of age appropriate tasks that not only teach them how to take care of themselves but others as well.  Wiping up tables after lunch, sweeping up their mess under the tables, picking up paper towels from the bathroom floor and cleaning up around the school are tangible ways to help teach them about serving the larger community responsibly and to create pride in their environment.

Respect is also a pretty abstract concept, so having simple concrete expectations of saying good morning, yes ma’am or no sir, please, thank you and may I, are all ways to initiate kids into the world of respect.  These must be insisted upon until they are habit.  As kids grow older, more abstract concepts can be added, but we must begin with concrete, habit forming behaviors if we want to have the kind of learning environment where they will begin to love it.  Otherwise, the concept of “school” cannot function as it should.  Please don’t misunderstand.  I do not want to raise little robots and I don’t believe we should make them do this out of fear.  But there is nothing wrong with teaching kids a concrete, functional, expectation of how we deal with and treat others.  After all, we can see on a daily basis where NOT teaching this has gotten us.

So, in looking back on my conversation with this laid back young man, I really lied.  Right now, schools are in the hands of people who have no business deciding what is best for children.  Right now we have schools/districts/states who are more concerned with keeping up with the Jones and bragging rights in the newspaper than bragging on individual progress or diversity in the classroom.  Right now we care more about getting a certain number of  minutes in for a few subjects instead of whether or not the child has a well rounded education.  We care more about shoving information into little brains to succeed on tests than taking time out of the academics to teach kids to be good human beings.  It’s not hard, it’s just a matter of priorities.  As an educator, one who believes in that philosophy I shared in the beginning, could someone walk into my classroom or my school and know what my philosophy was, just by observing what was happening with my students?  Is the purpose of school what we want it to be or is it a lie?  These are hard questions and the process to change it will be even more difficult.  It’s up to those of us who care about these kids to do something about it.  Are we up to the challenge?