More Words For Grace
Mindy Nathan
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

”Forty years ago MLK anticipated that our schools, our communities and our cities would all die if we continued to view our young people mainly as cogs in the U.S. economy. Thus in the present debate over stiffening graduation requirements to increase U.S. economic competitiveness,  I believe he would be urging us to stop viewing education chiefly as a means to economic ends and start viewing it in terms of the human needs of our kids to be of use, especially in helping to bring the neighbor back into the hood.” (from Grace Lee Boggs, Michigan Citizen, Feb. 19-25, 2006)

When I read Grace’s interpretation of Martin Luther King’s prescient words, it crystallized what have been my seething objections to the increased graduation requirements being proposed by our Governor here in Michigan, our State Superintendent and our State Board of Education, not to mention the similar tide sweeping those states participating in the “American Diploma Project” of Achieve, Inc. (A bi-partisan, corporate-political entity that boasts our Governor as a board member). To criticize anything that demands more “academic rigor” of our young people these days is like criticizing motherhood and apple pie—two mighty powerful values within Americana.  If I criticize these “improvements” as an educator, then I am accused of protecting the “status quo,” or worse yet, being lazy—or worst of all, being racist. It will be said that I’m not willing to demand as much from my students of color. But this is not a quantity problem, it is a quality problem. The conversation should not be about teaching all the same standards, it should be about whether or not I am teaching each child the right set of standards for him or her. More importantly, if trust were put in educators, then the discussion would be about what skill set each child will need to become his or her own curriculum director for life—his or hers, not mine, and not corporate America’s.

Identifying the real problem has long been the problem—and the truth is that our educational system has only been really good for about half the kids it serves at any given time.  The numbers are higher in the wealthy suburbs, and lower in the urban and rural areas—no surprise. The “problem” is not a lack of standardization, it is just the opposite. The more we centralize and standardize kids and curriculum, the more we defy the very nature of teaching and learning and human development. We disallow children to become who they are, who they may want or need to be, by superimposing capitalistic, materialistic values upon them and demanding that they be machined into people who can fill high-power careers in the world economy. How and why do we continue to do this to our precious children?  And at what cost?

Several different writers, thinkers, and educators have caught my attention recently. Amid ongoing conversations with Grace Lee Boggs about the unconscionable dropout—or walkout—rate of students leaving our urban school systems, I have struggled to understand our state’s quest to garner more high-tech professional jobs for our graduates by increasing the required high school classes. The more I have read, the more I have been convinced that though this may be well-intended, it is predicated on several falsehoods, not the least of which is that you can somehow convince a non-math-science kid to love these fields by improving teaching and increasing “rigor.” While that may be true for some, it insults the children we serve if the purpose of their learning is to fill some externally driven job need—especially if it means their success is based on defying who they want to be. Other falsehoods attached to this notion are that kids who struggle will somehow magically be raised by these increased standards—and not “locked out” of the system as too many are right now, or that in this new global economy the only jobs that will matter are math and science related, or that corporations will salivate to have American-bred math-science-tech workers who will demand higher wages than their foreign counterparts. The proposed policies suggest by implication that our students aren’t doing well enough in the core academic subjects to compete, and that this must be the fault of our teachers and our schools. Standardization is the answer—but what is the question? What is the problem that the powers that be are trying to solve here, and is it the most important one we currently face?

Instead of looking at children as units, can we instead support a system that honors and celebrates their uniqueness—including their own ideas about who they wish to become? Ironically this is not that difficult. If we really believe that all children can learn, and that all children have value, then it makes the most sense to determine with them and their families what kinds of people they will want to become.  Given that we all live in a time of information overload—it has been estimated that we created more information between the years 2000 and 2003 than we did in the previous 300,000 years—we have to acknowledge that we cannot possibly teach children everything they need to know. This is despite the lock that the textbook and testing industry have on the curriculum that most of our children are taught. The only way to really prepare all children for the future they will inherit is to engage them in the conversation about what they will need to know and do. In asking the question, “What will your community need from you?” children will learn that they are invaluable as human beings to their communities, and that they can participate in sustainable outcomes and solutions. Yes, even very young children can learn about recycling plastic—and they can do counting and measuring and reading and speaking and listening and know that they are doing important, relevant, meaningful work.  They will learn skills not necessarily tested on a standardized test, but skills that are necessary and right for them and their communities.

This is one example of learning that might be relevant to a child, and though there are math and science skills and content included, there are other subject areas covered, as well. If we have this level of faith in our young people, then we understand that the dropout problem really is a walkout choice—too many kids see the daily irrelevance of their learning. They are not stupid or lazy—but they are fairly powerless in a system that is all but impossible to change—and they know this. If it is true that under these new increased requirements teachers will be accountable for their students’ test scores (and in many districts this is already true), then what an impossible task engagement becomes—a true recipe for disaster.  If as the gurus are now suggesting, the good teachers “harass” their kids into learning, then why aren’t we as communities and parents and educators asking the better question—why? Why is it necessary to harass children into learning?  If the stuff being taught was useful or relevant, the learning would happen.  Harassment would—and should—be unnecessary. As a society we should be outraged about any professional development that touts harassment as a technique.

The essential questions in this debate really come down to a cost-benefit analysis. Who is harmed, and who is helped by increasing the high school graduation requirements across the board?  Who is helped has a clearer answer—the politicians are riding a wave of popular support for academic rigor—it’s a great sound byte. The economics of the proposal may or may not play out—but even if some corporations invest in Michigan, or if some CEOs find the tougher requirements attractive for their kids, then it will be a win for the pro side.  Schools will have to ante up—this is going to be another unfunded mandate to many schools that will have to adjust their teaching staffs and materials. The textbook and testing folks have probably started their new course sequences—even before the congressional debate. Businesses may ultimately win, and colleges, too—though ironically almost all colleges and universities these days have far more eligible applicants than they have room for—and this is truer at the elite schools than at all the others, even though our school system is somehow failing and the solution is standardization. 

Who is harmed is a little murkier but far more significant.  Whether the approximate number is somewhere around 45%, 75% or 2%, the kids who leave school are the ones who require our utmost attention and commitment. A system can be measured any number of ways—and a significant part of its story is the number of people it fails. Increasing required classes that are irrelevant to many students ensures the continuation and expansion of a two-tiered educational system, and the irony, of course, is that “the haves” in the system already are doing just fine. While it’s true that it can’t be proven that more students will be forced out of a system that is more rigorous, it is counterintuitive to think otherwise. I have yet to encounter one teacher who wanted a child to fail, or worse yet, encouraged a child to do so. Implicit in the new plan is that teachers would be mentored and developed to “push” (or harass) kids to be their best, particularly in math and science. While it is certain that all education can and should be improving all the time, “academic rigor” as the politicians define it, and the textbooks package it, is not going to rescue one kid from dropping out of school. The better and more pressing need is to create and support meaningful choices for those kids who choose to leave the system—and curriculum—that fails them. Increasing standards diverts us from this essential and much more urgent task.

We are on a collision course between dropout rates in Michigan and “tougher graduation standards.”  Though this relationship should be fairly intuitive, it is not, due to the competing interests at hand. I would submit that none of these interests has a primary concern for the children whose lives are or are going to be involved in the educational system that results. Instead this is about politics, false economics, fomenting competition and producing a “product,” not developing fulfilled human beings who desire to do their part to contribute to the world community because it is the right thing to do.