Listen to Your Kids

With apologies to one of my heroes, Martin Luther King, I have a dream. I dream of a day when all school systems nationwide adopt values-based curricula centered on such values as caring and trust, respect and responsibility; values such as individualism and community, such as honesty and idealism, such as love and compassion; values such as courage and commitment, such as integrity and honor, tolerance and forgiveness. Curricula that will help all of our young people enter adulthood, not with minds crammed full of stuff but hearts overflowing with caring. Too many people think too much and care too little. Or, as succinctly stated by Leo Buscaglia, “What are we doing stuffing facts into people and forgetting they are human beings.” Before you non-liberal arts teachers strenuously object that it cannot be done, especially without undermining your academic goals, I strenuously object to your inevitable objection. To holler a knee-jerk “no way” must no longer be an acceptable response. It is high time we reject the negativism that has engulfed us for too long in hidebound tradition. In novelist-humorist Mark Twain’s words, “Loyalty of petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.” If you have been entrusted to stimulate the minds and hearts of our youth, surely you are sufficiently intelligent and imaginative to figure out how to break that chain, free that soul, how to create curricula that can incorporate an examination of values, especially if all of you combine your knowledge and wisdom. How about faculty and department meetings that seek these solutions rather than spending inordinate amounts of time reinventing the proverbial wheel and pouring over faculty minutiae that could easily be disseminated through paper or electronic bulletins—or better yet—ignored … This is not a story about one kid or one teacher or one whatever. It is the story of the search that has remained hauntingly elusive as educators have sought, largely unsuccessfully, first, to determine, and, second, to buy into the cornerstone of successful teaching/learning. I can’t remember the number of staff meetings, department meetings, committee meetings, and meeting meetings I have attended, mostly not of my own volition, where we educators have agonized for countless hours about how to improve the learning experience for our kids. The answers have ranged far and wide: more money; more localstatefederalinternationaluniversalintergalatic testing (read No Child Left Behind); less of this testing; smaller student-teacher ratios; much smaller ratios; better text books; more field trips; fewer field trips; no field trips; more administrators; fewer administrators; no administrators; more local control; no local control; return to basics; redetermination of the basics; more emphasis on certain subjects; less emphasis on the same certain subjects; more staff meetings (every faculty features its resident sycophants); fewer staff meetings; no staff meetings; more speakers to enlighten local teachers during more staff meetings should that persuasion win out; better classrooms; less paperwork; fire the current principal or superintendent; hire a new principal or superintendent; fire or hire both; new grading systems; elimination of grading systems; more etc.; less etc.; no etc. Blahblahblah. I could continue but you get my drift. I taught high school for thirty-four years during which every last one of these suggested solutions, including etc., was hashed and rehashed, accepted and rejected—sometimes during the same meeting. I vividly recall grumbling teachers, mumbling teachers, even bumbling teachers leaving meetings swearing never again would they spend time searching for classroom nirvana. More vividly I recall other teachers leaving such meetings simply swearing. The shame of it all. Yes, the shame of it all. The answer unmystifyingly lies not in generations-old mumbo-jumbo but in acknowledgment that nearly all electrifying teaching/learning springs from an emotionally rich, respectful, trusting kid-teacher relationship. There, I’ve said it—but it bears repeating. An emotionally rich, respectful, trusting kid-teacher relationship. Eureka! At long last! The Rosetta stone. The answer didn’t require a teachers’ meeting, an expert from down the pike, hand wringing ad infinitum, soul searching. It didn’t require the proverbial rocket scientist. It simply required careful observation, common sense, and thoughtfulness. Oh yes. One more thing: the courage to publicly acknowledge that all too often the simply obvious is overlooked or rejected in a world grown so increasingly complex that we tend to believe (there’s that word again) that solutions, themselves, must be equally complex.