Completing Our Toolkit

Hey Everyone,

There's something I've been thinking about for a while that I wanted to share. It has to do with the number of mass shootings we have in the US. Particularly, the shootings that take place in schools, but also in general. And isn't it a testament to a horrendous failure on the part of our society that the previous sentence even makes sense? This post isn't about gun law reform, though I agree that's necessary. Instead, I wanted to consider other contributing factors. Because I think working to solve a problem from multiple angles is generally more effective than putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak.

Also, I want to be clear up front that I'm not trying to excuse people who engage in violent behavior. Personal responsibility does exist, and people are responsible for the choices they make. Both good and bad. If someone chooses to murder other people, no matter what their motivation is, they deserve to be punished under the law. This post isn't meant to dispute that. But, just like the calls for the reform of gun laws are meant to prevent tragedies from occurring, I wanted to explore other possible solutions to achieve that same goal.

 In his book, 1984, George Orwell talked about Newspeak and how the government was removing words from the English language because people have a harder time expressing dissent if their vocabulary doesn't contain the necessary words to convey the thoughts in their heads. It occurred to me that something similar has been happening in our schools with the increase in standardized testing and the resulting limiting of flexibility in curriculums.

Adolescence is, by its very nature, a time of strong emotions, frustrations, and new experiences. Teenagers are often faced with adult-level stresses and problems, but it's not unusual for them to still have the coping mechanisms of children. Not to mention the physical changes inherent in puberty and the resulting emotional turmoil that comes with them. It's no wonder that, for many teenagers, their maturity level has often not caught up with the needs posed by their daily challenges.

The teenage years are not an easy time in anyone's life. One thing education is supposed to do is expose students to the thoughts and experiences that other people have recorded and shared throughout time. To provide them with ideas and practical examples of how to process and engage with concepts and situations that might be unfamiliar to them. In other words, schools should be teaching children how to think, not what to think.

Subjects like philosophy, literature, history, and debate teach students how to examine problems from multiple angles, think about non-obvious solutions, consider alternative perspectives, and express disagreement through civil verbal exchanges using thoughtfully crafted and articulated arguments supported by evidence. When subjects like philosophy and debate are cut from curriculums because they might offend someone or because there's no money to support them, some of the training children receive in how to effectively interact with the world is lost.

When subjects like literature and history are reduced to dry lists of facts that can be presented in multiple-guess formatted tests, the context, motivations, human emotion, and consequences that give value to their study is lost. To truly appreciate history, students must delve beyond lists of dead men's names and dates. While geography is often important to understanding historical events, studying history means more than just memorizing the names of places. One must learn why people did the things that they did. What the details are of what happened and what the outcomes and ramifications of those actions were. It's also vital that students learn how people accomplished their goals and if the goals they ended up accomplishing were the same goals they started out with.

The arts, including literature, are how people throughout time have sought to communicate their experiences. They go hand-in-hand with the study of history because they provide a wider range of perspectives. Official history books are generally written by those with some stake in the power structure. But art can be created by just about anyone. The arts also do a better job of conveying emotion, which gives historical events context.

There's a reason that art, music, philosophy, literature, debate, and history are all listed among the humanities. They help us understand and define what it is to be human, and give us insight into the thoughts and feelings of others. Which often leads to the inevitable conclusion that we have more in common than in difference with our fellow Homo sapiens. And by removing these subjects, or severely curtailing the parts that we allow students to be exposed to, we are denying them a vital connection to our shared human experience.

What I'm trying to say is that none of these subjects are more important than the others. Just like they aren't more or less important than mathematics or the hard sciences. Every subject is just as important as the others, each one giving children a different set of skills to use to meet the challenges their lives present them. And together making up a complete toolkit. But instead of acknowledging the importance of each of these areas of study, instead we've played politics and been stingy with our pocketbooks. Isn't it funny that when the President of the United States says he wants to arm teachers with guns, no one is asking how we would pay for such a thing? But let a teacher ask for paints and brushes, and suddenly there's no money.

By denying students the opportunity to be exposed to more flexible and comprehensive curriculums, I think we might be denying them the tools they need to express their concerns and frustrations in constructive ways. By increasing class sizes to the point where teachers barely have time to take roll, never mind engage children with deeply meaningful lessons, we eliminate the opportunity for them to get to know their students and identify the ones who might need additional support. And, yes, parents also play a role in this, but there will always be some parents who, for whatever reason, are derelict in their responsibilities.

Schools could be a safety net, and I'm sure they still are in some cases, but we, as a society, can't seem to resist unweaving the strands of that net. I think it's time to stop allowing our government to take funding away from our schools. I think we need to limit the size of classes so that teachers are able to get to know their students on a one-on-one basis. I think we need to provide teaching assistants in each classroom to help address the non-academic needs of students and to better allow teachers to focus on teaching. I think that art and music programs need to be reinstated and bolstered. I think that teachers need to be empowered to bring thought-provoking and, yes, even "controversial" material into classrooms and to encourage students to learn how to present and defend their viewpoints in non-violent ways. And I think we need to support our teachers, through paid sabbaticals and tuition assistance programs, in pursuing their own continuing education so that they will be better able to design and implement this kind of enriching curriculum for our children.

And, before anyone accuses me of "just wanting free stuff," I'd like to point out a couple of facts. First, I have no children of my own, nor do I plan to have any. Second, I pay taxes. So, this isn't about me or what's good for me, personally. This is about building a society of people who know how to solve problems, find information for themselves, and who understand how to interact with each other in positive ways. This is about living in a country with people who are granted equal opportunity to pursue their own destinies because they all have the tools necessary to make those journeys. This is about making America great.

Peace!