Teach your children well?

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
- Carl Jung

Hey, guess what? We're screwing our kids. And not just here in North Carolina, though we're happily leading the charge. Everywhere. At every level.

We're screwing them because we're not even treating their teachers like second class citizens; we're not even treating them like afterthoughts. We're treating them like a scourge that needs to be destroyed.

We're screwing them because we've turned their curricula into the modern day equivalent of cod liver oil. It doesn't matter if you like it, just hold your nose and get it over with, it's good for you.

We're screwing them because we've allowed them, or their parents, to build tiny little homogenous worlds for them to live in, where they're not really exposed to anything that might challenge their thinking and they're taught that the individual is more important than society.

And please, don't say that it's not you. Yes, it is (and me, too). We have all done this at times, perhaps unconsciously, perhaps not. Whether it's not paying attention to a politician's record on education funding until it's too late, or asking your high-schooler if they can take that non-honors, non-AP art class pass/fail, or leaping in to "protect" them from a teacher (or another student) they have a personality clash with. We all do it.

There are many news items about this lately. Two that have particularly set me off are this one from the Washington Post, and this one from The Atlantic. The first highlights the differing course offerings in high-income vs. low-income schools; the second speaks to the inability of our college kids to accept challenging views, and the harm that is doing to their psyches.

Now, let's be clear. I'm not suggesting that we move back to a world where the teacher is always right, at the expense of the students. I'm all in favor of a rigorous academic schedule. I'm not suggesting that we ignore a child's background, and the traumas that they may have experienced, and expect them to cope without help.

But I am suggesting that when freshmen at one of the top schools in the country can just decide to not read the summer reading assignment, because it challenges their religious beliefs, then something is wrong. (For what it's worth, I'm also of the opinion that if your religious beliefs can't withstand challenges, they may not be as strongly held as you think.)

I am suggesting that when my kids have, as their choice of arts electives, ceramics, line drawing, painting, theater, technical theater, chorus, choral ensemble, symphonic band, jazz band, orchestra, and more that I'm not even aware of, but schools in, shall we say, less-affluent areas get a single class, because someone, somewhere, thinks they're not spending enough time on "the basics," then something is wrong.

I am suggesting that when my son comes damn close to a perfect score on the writing part of the SAT, and not only can't write as well as I, but can't write as well as I did at 18 (sorry, Peter, but you don't), then something is wrong.

I am suggesting that when we claim to be concentrating on math and the sciences, but ignore research that ties arts education to strong performance in math and science, then something is wrong.

My husband has a favorite t-shirt, which reads, "Experiment. Fail. Learn. Succeed." He would add "Repeat" in between Learn and Succeed. He loves it because he's a scientist, and that's the way he works, but the shirt actually comes from a Drum and Bugle Corps. That's pretty much the way music works as well. And writing, and sports, and drawing...

Except we've taken the first two steps out of our kids' lives. We don't have time for them to experiment; we don't want them to fail. We don't want them to take plain old chorus, because an A in chorus is "only" worth a 4.0. We claim to want them to challenge themselves with AP courses, but we hover over them as they do, keeping up with whether they've done the work, or getting them a tutor, and by doing so, ensure that they'll never fail.

Let's be honest, we got here through the best of intentions. I know that when I was growing up, there were kids who needed accommodations who just didn't get them. And, my kids benefit from certain accommodations now. I enjoy drawing, but I quit taking art class as soon as I could; I hated the first week in May, when we made Mothers' Day cards. Not because of the card (I made one for my Nana, and was OK with that), but because, for that split second, I was reminded in front of the world (my world, at least), that my mother was dead. Would I have liked a trigger warning? Yeah, probably.

So, we have made accommodations, and we've warned, and we've removed obstacles. We've concentrated our budgets on what "matters". We've somehow gotten the notion that being a good parent doesn't just mean protecting our kids from the electrical outlets and cleaning supplies when they're toddlers, but also means protecting them from those who don't think like they do, and even from their own mistakes. Even the ones they haven't made yet.

The result is, we're teaching them that to stretch themselves, to push themselves, to challenge themselves, are all risky, and we must avoid risk. I know 14 and 15 year olds who debate whether it's "better" to take an honors class that they know they'll get an A in vs. an AP class that they might get a B in. Seriously, doesn't anyone else think that's just twisted? They don't look at whether they'd enjoy one class over the other, they don't look at who's teaching it, they wonder about what a hypothetical admissions counselor, at a college they've not even chosen to apply to yet, might think of it.

In Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad writes that the way to "be", to achieve our dreams, to live, is "...to the destructive element, submit yourself...." His meaning is that, if we only stay with what is safe, we will be crippled by our own dreams, because we'll never realize them. He uses as an example a man thrown into the sea; struggling against the waves will exhaust him, and he'll drown. But by submitting to the ocean, and using his arms and legs to tread water, he will survive.

We, as a society, won't let our kids out of the house without a life-jacket. So we shouldn't be surprised when our world is made up of people who can only bob along directionless in a current not of their making.