Over the course of human affairs, as societies have steadily
increased in size and complexity, it has become more and more important to
question. Particularly, as humanity
become globalized in its economy and information sharing, and as the number of
media messages bombarding our brains grows each year, it becomes ever more
important for individual citizens to stay sharp. In 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote to James
Madison, “Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be
attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most
security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.”
The education of everyone is not a privilege
bestowed upon the people by a democratic institution; it is a necessary
condition of a democratic institution.
We simply don’t spend enough time in public dialogue about
what education is, or what qualifies as a good education. Sure, we spend a great deal of time and money
evaluating whether a student can solve basic algebra, or name the causes and
consequences of World War I, and of course, content is important. I agree that we need some basic standards by
which we judge whether someone has actually been educated or not. However, with the takeover of profit-driven
standardized testing in recent years, two issues in education have become painfully
clear: 1) no one method of assessing content knowledge is complete, and 2) we
must be diverse in deciding what that content is, and who decides it.
Especially given the current mental health crisis in this
country as evidenced by the recent rise in mass shootings and other pervasive violence,
basic coping skills and conflict resolution seem like a high priority to me,
yet there are almost no content standards for the one subject that literally
everyone deals with from cradle to grave: conflict.
There is much to say about testing, and a great deal more to
discuss about the narrowing of curriculum that has resulted from corporatized
testing. My point here, though, is that
real education is not something that can be measured like a long jump or scored
like a soccer match. Real learning
doesn’t only happen in a classroom, but in the world, at home, with friends,
and, if you’re doing it right, for the rest of your life. I believe that a full education requires not
just knowledge but wisdom. We need to
learn the critical tools for processing information relevant to the world and
an understanding of our power to influence it. I work for an educational program combining
conflict resolution and social-emotional skills with community project design,
social justice education and a survey of the work of recent Nobel Peace Prize
winners. PeaceJam was developed with the
help of the Dalai Lama and 13 other Nobel Laureates to inspire young people to
learn concrete skills by creating real projects in their communities addressing
global issues at a local level, issues like understanding racism and poverty
and resource conflicts. I have seen
firsthand the way that such an education engages students in the world.
A class working on a water catchment project, for example, will
incorporate geometry, chemistry, algebra, planning and budgeting, and, if the
project is done well, the social and legal context of water rights and access
to building materials, to name but a few.
Students’ progress can be assessed (by the actual teacher working with
them) by measures of work ethic, project completion or even
self-assessment. Granted, this requires
flexibility for teachers in conducting their own classrooms, and there is no
profit in this model for Pearson, the global testing conglomerate, but a great deal of profit for students and
for the society they will certainly be shaping.
Even better, when students have input into creating a
project that is meaningful to them and even fun, addressing a pressing issue,
they become engaged citizens, invested in the workings of their communities. And if education is not about preparing and
empowering young people to be informed and engaged citizens, what is it about
at all? In the current flood of false
information, polarizing political identities and thinning budgets, can even a
fake democracy afford not to invest in such an insurance policy?
