Every Child Left Behind
Another sadly unpublished piece about the incredibly inane concept of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Policy.
I never cease to be amazed by what I learn when I ask people a simple question—What did you do before your current job?
Most people are just waiting to tell you that story. My wife says they’re actually just waiting to tell me the story, since it seems to happen regularly, even when I don’t ask the question. The example she loves is the car salesman who ended up sobbing uncontrollably on his desk after telling me the details of his divorce, bankruptcy, collapse of a successful private business, all leading to his being forced into selling cars. And that was after I bought the car.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with selling cars. I also had a car salesman (and yes, I bought a car from him, too) who said it was his favorite thing after flying commercial airliners…which was actually his job most of the time.
But in the past year, I’ve had three people give the same answer, one that disturbs me far more than any car salesman crying on his desk. Essentially, each answered “I was a teacher. I loved teaching. But I felt compelled to leave it for something completely different. Because I wasn’t really allowed to teach my students at all.”
A coincidence? My gut, which I trust as being much more accurate than my brain, tells me it’s not. I think it means something has gone terribly wrong with the most important thing we have to offer our children—a real education. Not just the academic kind, but one that prepares them for what life is really all about.
There’s a common perception, one I admit I used to share, that most people end up being “successful” by following the plan so many of us have sold our kids from the very first time they walked through the school door in the first grade…Work hard, get good grades, graduate from high school, go to college, pick a major in a field that leads to a job with a good occupational outlook, get the highest paying job you can, and work hard to get ahead in your brand new career.
My own life experience has proven that perception to be mostly false. My wife is an electrical engineer turned software developer turned nurse. I’m a near high-school dropout turned career military professional turned mental health professional turned writer and social critic. Most people I know have some similar seemingly disconnected career progression.
But this particular flawed perception is tough to get rid of, with damaging consequences. It’s led to things like “No Child Left Behind,” where students are tracked at every point, essentially confirming nothing more than that they’re all moving together like a slow herd, rather than challenging them to race each other to the finish.
That requires being able to constantly measure their progress, which in turn has moved us slowly into the mindset that things that can be easily measured—math and science, for example—are essentially more important to overall life success than things that can’t—music, art, literature, and critical thinking, to name a few. And, consequently, that scientists and mathematicians are somehow more valuable to society than artists, musicians, writers, and critical thinkers.
In the education system that runs on this flawed ideology, teachers still present material to students. But their role now is more quality control technician than trusted mentor. As a result, their primary responsibility is no longer instilling the joy of learning. It’s making sure their students can pass a test, even if the test itself doesn’t really predict a given child’s future success in life. Not because they believe in it, but because they know they might be fired if they don’t, or at least branded “substandard” in the profession they still love.
It makes me wonder where we’re heading. When I look back over my life, I can see that my journey, however chaotic, was guided by the teachers who looked at me, saw something, and then helped me see it, too. If teachers don’t have the time or ability to do that any longer, I suppose I understand why they have to leave the thing they love.
But our children? Well, they’re all left behind as a result.
