Lefty Parent » many paths of learning

The Case for Many Educational Paths

Cooper Zale — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:45:41 +0000

Starting in third grade with learning the multiplication tables, our son Eric started having a problem with school. By seventh grade he would not do any homework, had been diagnosed with ADD, was taking Aderall, had been through an IEP, and had had a number of sessions with an educational therapist. When he got to the point in eighth grade of writing “F**k Math” on his standardized math test, we pulled him out of school.

We looked at alternative schools with a more holistic approach to learning. The few public alternative schools we found were not really that different, they were equally bound by the standardized curriculum and high-stakes testing. We identified one or two very alternative private schools, but they were way too expensive. We ended up homeschooling Eric, and after some false starts, we worked out a path forward for his education that truly worked for him.

So Eric, now 24, is an accomplished young adult and entrepreneur who has partnered with three others to launch a computer business. Eric, the math-phobic kid, has spent the last two years as the Chief Operating Officer, dealing with all the personnel, logistical and financial issues for the business.

One Size Does Not Fit All

From our son’s experience, the experience of many other families and youth we know or have read about, and the sobering statistics about how many kids don’t finish high school, I have come to the conclusion that the ubiquitous, one-size-fits-all conventional instructional public school does not, and cannot work for every youth, no matter how fully it is funded or how much it is “reformed”.

Based on my research and direct experience, I am drawn to the conclusion that when it comes to education, don’t even try to argue that any one learning path can fit everybody, one size does not, cannot, and should not fit all!

Making Conventional Instructional Schools Better

From my past experience as a student, from talking to my kids and their friends about their school experience, and talking to friends who are public school teachers, it seems one of the main things that drags down the conventional instructional public school is that teachers have to try to teach all the youth who don’t belong or otherwise don’t want to be there. There is a mythology that if teachers are good they can motivate any student to learn the required material. But I hear teacher after teacher I know complain about having to spend so much time and effort trying to motivate many of their students to learn and at the same time deal with the behavior problems of those who won’t.

So many of the features of a standard classroom – rules clamping down on behavior, required graded homework, and copious behavior modification techniques – are there to try to motivate or coerce students to learn who do not want to be there. For the rest of the students, who are interested in what the teacher has to teach them, these strong-arm tactics and the general negative energy of the other youth can poison the classroom environment.

I ask teachers how different it would be if every student in their class wanted to be there. They generally roll their eyes and tell me that it would be wonderful, for them and for their students. Wouldn’t the conventional instructional school be transformed by just that one profound change, a teacher interacting with a classroom full of students truly interested in and grateful for the lessons the teacher was providing?

How Else Could a Kid Get an Education?

There are other schools that are significantly different than conventional public schools. Some are categorized as “holistic”, like Waldorf, Montessori, or those inspired by the education philosophy of John Dewey. Others are called “democratic/free”, like Sudbury Valley in Massachusetts and the Albany and Manhattan Free Schools in New York.

These “alternative” schools are generally private, because their educational approach is so profoundly different than the conventional instructional schools. They are more student-directed, including allowing those students leeway to work at their own pace and focus more on areas of interest. This can be great for a self-motivated student with some keen interests, but not necessarily in sync with the state standardized approach to testing and school in general, which assumes, for example, that every fourth grader has had the same instruction in English, math, science and social studies.

I believe that a lot of the kids that struggle in our conventional public schools would do much better in one of these “alternative” schools, or even being educated at home (if the family has the resources).

A Third Voice in the Education Debate

As a lifelong liberal and Democrat, I find it ironic that Republicans are often closer to the many educational paths position. They are more likely to support homeschooling, “school choice”, and giving more educational decision making to parents. Then again, Republicans have also been the strongest proponents of scripted learning (like Open Court) and high-stakes testing, which makes it so difficult for truly alternative public schools to pass muster.

I would like to see the dialog and debate on education and educational policy include a third position that champions “Many Paths” and educational alternatives behind a banner of liberty, democracy, and self-direction, within a context of local community responsibility for educating their young people.

I believe that embracing the idea of “Many Paths” to transform our education system, is sound policy for the 21st century. The dimensions, complexities, knowledge-base and skill sets needed to maintain human society and facilitate our continuing evolution require a profound move away from the “command and control”, one-size-fits-all education system that we developed in the 19th century to address an earlier phase of our evolution. Today’s challenge is to create an enriched environment for learning so that our youth can find satisfying and rewarding careers that also contribute to their communities, which in turn would contribute to our larger common good.

Thoughts on Universal Health Care

Cooper Zale — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:26:44 +0000

On the occasion of his 23rd birthday earlier this year, our son had yet another coming of age ritual in our culture, losing his family health care insurance. Our daughter will make that transition as well in three more years. As their parent, I can’t acknowledge those milestones without reflecting on our health care system and all the issues that swirl around it in terms of liberty and our social covenant.

First I think it is appropriate that I confess (or at least share) my own context, my own journey to where I am now in my thinking generally. I grew up pretty much inheriting the liberal values of my parents and the university town milieu I was raised in. Those values involve a strong commitment to liberty and freedom, but balanced with an equally strong stance that in the name of equality of opportunity for all, certain liberties and freedoms need to be restricted. The larger community (represented by our elected government) has the right to set and enforce certain policies to promote if not ensure equal access to health, education and welfare (interestingly enough, the old name of the federal agency that morphed into three current ones), even at times at the expense of personal liberty, in the name of a larger good.

The journey of my life as a parent has found me moving away from some of that classic liberalism toward a position that I am currently calling left-libertarian. This transition was catalyzed in many ways by my son’s rejection of mandatory standardized public education in favor of charting his own educational course. Though at first I resisted, I grew to find his reasons compelling and that realization caused me to question the whole idea of mandatory one-size-fits-all education, even if done in the name of equality for all. That has led me to a broadening questioning of my inherited liberalism generally, though not at this point a complete rejection of it. As with many of us I think, my ideas and values are in some degree of flux.

If I am advocating for educational liberty, many educational paths, and the rights of families to opt their kids out, as we did, of the educational system (for better or worse), then isn’t it consistent to apply a similar logic to our health care system and maybe move away from my classic left position in support of a single-payer system like they have in Canada and much of the European Union. And short of single payer, but still in the name of universal health insurance, isn’t mandating people have coverage based on the same principles I am rejecting regarding education?

Actually, in regard to many paths, I have become a strong proponent for giving more people access to all the emerging alternative approaches to health and health care, including meditation, homeopathy, herbs, and all the “energy modalities” built around the various aspects of the human energy system including chi (tai chi), meridians (acupuncture and EFT) and chakras (yoga), and host of other modalities. There ought to be health plans that incorporate and pay for these approaches as well as the conventional western medicine. This feels very consistent with my support for public charter schools based on “alternative” educational methodologies like Montessori, Waldorf, Dewey, Sudbury and many others.

My apparent consistency in supporting “many paths” is not just a matter of ideology, but is based on very pragmatic judgments on what appears to work based on my 54 years in this incarnation. Life has generally revealed to me that there is no one best path. Many billions of people have lived their lives over the course of many thousands of years in diverse environments and cultures all over our planet. What sort of monomaniacal hubris would make anyone think there was one best way to do anything!

I acknowledge that all of us human types have very much in common, and thus we are social beings and come together in community with shared covenants (laws, rituals, values, mores, etc). But we are also each unique souls, with our own unduplicated spark of consciousness, divinity, or whatever you want to call it. To honor and even leverage that uniqueness we need to as much as possible let individuals chart their own courses and be responsible for bringing forth and taking ownership of their gifts. Limiting educational opportunities to a standardized instructional environment and limiting health care to a standardized disease management just don’t seem to fit that bill.

But again, letting pragmatism maybe trump ideology, I feel that we may be best served as a society by single-payer health insurance or some other permutation short of that where we agree (at least a working majority of us) that everyone needs coverage. What I rarely hear argued in the health care debates, but feel is the most compelling argument for a single-payer type system, is how far it will go to facilitate a real entrepreneurial culture (though maybe not in the health care industry itself).

How many people do you know are afraid to change jobs or leave a job working for someone else to start their own business because they would lose their health insurance? My partner Sally retired from working for UCLA and the state of California with a pension that included lifetime health care coverage for her and her spouse (and the kids until age 23). Taking health care off the table as an issue has allowed the two of us move in and out of various work opportunities freely. As the main family breadwinner since her retirement, I have been able to follow the market and the trajectory of my own unique skill set to jump from job to job, from contractor to employee and back again, to best leverage what I have to offer to the community in terms of skills and to find venues where my work is greatly appreciated.

Having that bulwark of consistent health insurance, particularly given my partner’s health issues with breast cancer, has made this very personally successful path possible. But now our son Eric, 23 and losing that coverage that his parents still have, may have to limit his entrepreneurial spirit (nurtured by his unorthodox unschooling path) for future health considerations, particularly if he should decide to start a family himself.

So you tell me if this is a logical inconsistency between my emerging left-libertarian thinking how those ideas play out in my views of education. My bottom line, to quote the lyrics of one of my favorite bards John Lennon, “Whatever gets you to the light is all right”.