February 17, 2011 at 8:11 am, by Carl

If you came late to the party, I’ve been writing about education and our culture over the past two weeks.  You can read part 1 and part 2 here, or just dive on in because, well, the news isn’t good, is it?  We see continued economic crisis all around us, though we also hear of many companies making record profits.  How in the world is that possible?  Can things be bad and good?  What does that portend for our national future?  Moreover, what message does it send children?  Are they learning that one must work hard to make something of themselves, or are they watching our society on TV to determine that they are better off doing no work and letting the government bail them out of each and every issue they confront. . .just like their parents have done?


This is our situation right now and the best place to see the crisis is in the classroom.  As a college educator, with a sister who works in the K-12 system and two parents who spent decades as educators (Mom in Kindergarten, Dad in High School vocational education), I know from experience that we are watching society change before our eyes.


So, how to we confront this change?  What should we be doing as a society to help our students, and in the process, help our nation? It is clear to me that unless we have a true change of heart, all this talk of needing to do better in education will be pure noise.  To start with, we adults (or at least those in the country who really get it that everything about our country that we like is in peril) need to return to the historic understanding of the American Dream. We have to say, again and again, that the point of success is about a life well lived, and a life well lived is in concert with values, not with wealth.


We must help our children understand that we live in a Darwinian world, even if you don’t really believe in macroevolution; Darwin’s points about survival of the fittest are seen over and over again in the competitive marketplace.  No one shed any tears for the loss of the iceman when refrigeration took over in the past century.  As cars became more popular, no one rallied in the street to protect the jobs of the horseshoe maker.  Just the other day, I was talking with someone from my church who told me that her father’s job was helping to replace the stenographers in the court systems with digital tape players.  I doubt Congress is going to try to save their jobs, saying the industry is too big to fail.  Like it or not, businesses come and go, industries are born and they die, and, in reality, no one really cares.  It is the way of life.  Life is hard, and only those who work hard at life succeed.


Thus, only those who hustle, work hard, stay vigilant, consistently sharpening the saw, and always ready to innovate can hope to survive in the world.  In the real world, those who go around assuming they are due, will be destroyed.


We need to give real grades to students, allowing them to fail if they do poor work. Trust me, no one in the NFL gets to keep their job just because someone is afraid that cutting a player will hurt little Johnny’s feelings.  We need to teach that average is normal, and that no one, NO ONE, is exceptional (which is what an “A” grade should mean) in every topic, every subject matter.  A bell curve needs to mean something, so some students will be on the low end.


We need to get honest with our students and our society about jobs that really matter. Probably half of the students in college should not be there, nor do they want to be there.  Again, society has betrayed them by implying that only dummies end up with blue-collar jobs.  Society has also worsened that lie by selling the “success = wealth” lie to the point that a person who would be a great mechanic or electrician or hair dresser or worker on the line feels like a failure because they aren’t making the big money.  Worse still, society has priced so many things in our world to the point that average salaries simply can’t afford those things.


So, we need to do a better job of supporting vocational education, of helping students see that they can be a huge success without ever going to a normal college.  We should put more money into the community college, especially to the AS degree side that puts people out into the work force in 2 years, and into technical schools, both at the high school and post-secondary level.  My father has worked for decades with the fabulous SkillsUSA organization and can tell you testimony after testimony to the power of young adults in real jobs that make the world a better place—vocational and technical jobs.


We must also empower teachers and professors to spend more time teaching students how to be successful adults, how to value hard work and curiosity, and allow those same professors and students to quit worrying about the grades. We all know that most of us forgot 90% of the semester’s material the moment the final exam was over.  Professors who don’t admit that are simply lying about their own pasts.  Sure, in their specific field (mine is history and theology), we remember material, but on the whole, especially in what is considered the core classes, or intro classes, most of us are not going to remember any of that material.  So, what’s the point?  If 75-85% of my students are not going to be historians, why bother?  Obviously, there must be something deeper going on in the classroom, and according to my students, there is.  We must be learning about thinking, about decision making, about how to listen respectfully and how to offer our opinion graciously.  Yes, in my class, students should learn about our national history, but we do so in order to learn about to make better choices for our future, both personally and corporately.


In the end, we are now facing our own stress (potentially our own doom) because of our national economic success since World War 2, and as such, we believe that great wealth is an expectation, even a right.  Instead, we should be expecting to live happily, able to pay our bills, living in a safe neighborhood, have good friends, raise polite and happy children, invest our lives in others and then, ultimately, die having lived a magnificent life.  Those were the dreams and expectations of our Founders.


Instead, we have 10s of 1000s of students believing that they should expect to be rich and famous, able to travel the world or live a life of leisure where they do no work whatsoever, living in a gated community (the antithesis of real community), have few friends but rather other rich people for whom they show off and preen hoping to induce jealousy, raise indulgent children who don’t know how to work hard either, invest only in themselves and, are trying to figure out a way to try to take all the wealth with them.  Got bad news on that last front.


We can make a change.  Parents like Chua may be too harsh for your taste.  Guess what?  If we don’t start returning to those kinds of standards, your disagreement with her won’t matter.  Economically we aren’t going to be able to really turn things around long-term.  Culturally, we will go down the road that Rome went down.  And, internationally, other countries will take their educational advantage and leave us in the dust.


The good news is that every semester, I meet students who are ready to meet my challenge.  They rise to the occasion and raise their game.  I meet students who understand, either through the teaching from a unique educator in their previous schools or, for a sad few, from their parents, what is at stake and are already making the investment.  I encounter student after student, both at my college and at the other schools where I speak, who are desperate for someone to show them how to work hard, to take notes, to study well.


There is hope.  The fiber of greatness that started this country 400 years ago is still embedded.  We just have to light that fire.  Let’s get honest about our problems and the fact that those problems lie internally within ourselves.  These kids deserve that from us.