11/01/2021
I think public education has been an “imperfect panacea” (title of a text I had awhile back) for our society since its inception. I think this is true because, among other reasons, educators throughout history and today cannot agree on the fundamental purpose of education. What is the most basic mission of our schools? Is it to train our youth to be materially successful as adults, to achieve prosperity with the use of the skills they have developed in school? Is it to achieve a type of reason and understanding and wisdom so that as adults these students will be kind and generous and noble in values, so that then the hungry will be fed and the poor will have provision? Are we training the next generation with the ultimate purpose of making the world a better, safer, nicer place?
Is it simply so that everybody can eventually have better lives, each according to his or her own definition of what that means? Or is the public school system really just a vast daycare facility so that parents can stash their kids somewhere safe when they go to work? Well…in some ways, maybe so.
I think that the purposes of education are complex but simple at the same time: to help us all have better, richer lives, and to make the world a better place and humankind a nobler and worthier species. And of course, the one feeds the other.
Fine, that was easy. Education is supremely important. That’s very easy to argue. The next step shouldn’t be that much trickier, but the record shows that it is. If we educate our children so that they may have better lives and make the world a better place, what are the tools and tricks we can best instill in them to achieve these lofty goals? Information? Insight into the subtle systems of the universe? Wisdom in their minds and hearts? Teaching love of learning first and foremost is just like the old saw about if you give someone a fish, you feed them for a day, but if you teach them to fish, you feed them for a lifetime. If you teach kids to love learning, they’ll teach themselves.
Education doesn’t amount to much if it can’t sustain itself. To be really efficacious, education must be a perpetual motion machine, which does not exist in nature. Education must sustain itself, no easy trick. How? By promulgating the love of learning.
Education can sustain itself if the alpha and omega of educational philosophy is the love of learning. I believe we only need to figure out how to make students love to learn.
What?
I said I believe we only need to figure out how to make students love to learn. I also believe that the answer to this profound riddle is the kind of answer upon which great men, deep thinkers, will bash themselves to death like ships on the shoals, but the least thoughtful child can answer almost without a thought.
Learning needs to be fun.
What!?
Learning needs to be fun. Not silly fun, not idle play. Fun is a fairly broad concept if you think about it, and learning needs to be it. Fun, I mean.
No, learning needs to be work, not fun. This is insane. How will anybody ever learn anything if they’re having fun? Somebody get the fruit hook for this guy, we’re trying to have a serious discussion here.
If learning is fun, at least to some extent, kids will like it. They will like learning. If learning is this wondrous thing we all claim it to be, kids will learn to love it. And education will be a perpetual motion machine, the only one in the universe, fueled by an eternal love of learning.
Neat as a pin. Sort of. How do we make learning fun?
Have you guys really forgotten? This would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. Or the other way around.
Last year I was doing a long term sub gig for the art teacher at our local high school, who was on maternity leave. It was fourth hour, the honors class, young artists who had to jury in and be invited to be a member of this class.. These people were all serious artists, as their work clearly showed. They were all stellar people, into athletics and other extra-curriculars, good students and good citizens all around, as you might expect. They were also being driven so hard by the demands of their curriculum that more than one was beginning to question their passion for creativity. This was confided to me more than once, in direct discussion and a myriad subtler ways. Some of these exemplary youth were in real danger of getting burned out. The pressure to excel, man. Crushing.
No fun.
It was customary in art class to play pop music in the background on those days when the kids were working on their next project, and these days were many.
I’m not entirely sure how this got started (it couldn’t have been me) but one day the song we happened to be listening to was very rhythmic, a good dance tune, and somebody must have turned it up when I wasn’t looking. Due to the nature of the class, students were in and out of their seats all the time anyway, getting tools and materials and such, and high schoolers being what they are, it was not unheard of for one of them to dance a step here and there as they crossed the room.
So, this day everybody started dancing, and for the briefest of moments, the austere activities of higher education were laid aside. I saw no harm in this moment of frivolity; I thought (then and now) that it was a good thing for them to blow off some steam and cut loose for a moment. Have a little fun.
The tables in the art room are large and low, the type around which 15 or 20 kids can easily sit. Quite sturdy. When a couple of girls climbed up on one table and began dancing there, the other folks reacted gleefully. Judging that there was not much danger of anyone getting hurt, I let them continue. I would have called them back to order at the end of the song. I remained seated, but the truth is, I’m a dancer at heart myself.
When the principal’s secretary walked past in the hall and glanced in, her eyes went from slits to like sand dollars and she nearly walked into the wall. Executing a pirouette like a prima ballerina, she hastened back from whence she had come. The whole charade was beginning to take on the ambiance of a Looney Tunes episode.
The party was over, and then some. We all went back to work. Needless to say, in about 90 seconds, the principal and one vice-principal were at the door.
“Mr. Platt, may we speak to you for a moment?”
“Of course.”
With a few meaningful glances exchanged between me and my co-conspirators, I exited into the hall.
“Mr. Platt, I got a report that female students were dancing on the tables in here. What in the world is going on?”
“Oh. Yes. We were…cutting up, sir. A bit too much, perhaps. I’m sorry.” Straight-faced. Which was more than the vice-principal was able to manage. He turned away, struggling to control himself.
So, the principle predictably spoke at some length about safety and protocol and decorum, and I predictably apologized and assured him it would not happen again.
They left, and it did not happen again. Whether or not the honors art kids liked me a little more after that, and paid a little more attention to my tutelage, is a matter of conjecture. There were no injuries, except when the regular art teacher heard about it, I was told she almost had another baby. I believe that report to have been facetious.
I believe the fact is that education is a little about information but a lot about inspiration. I didn’t make that up. If inspiration isn’t fun, what on earth is?
