- - - - - - - - - - T A B L E++T A L K Do strollers, jumpers, baby gyms and all that other equipment really simplify your life? Lug your thoughts on baby gizmos into Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Sexual harassment law: Relax and try to enjoy it
The silence is deafening
Giving experts the Big Slammu
Slaves in the family
Wise women
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Mamafesto
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TOTALLY WASTED | PAGE 2 OF 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Botstein does have a plan -- to "reinvent grades six through 10." He would eliminate the "disaster" of junior high and end high school at 16. "We must provide American adolescents with a school system that encourages ambition, idealism, concentration and self-discipline." In this plan, the years of early adolescence are harnessed into intense learning and gradual movement toward true responsibility. A core curriculum is taught in small classes similar to college seminars, with discussion, controlled argument and analysis taking the place of criticism and failure. Arguments over what a high school curriculum should be are many and complex. Botstein suggests a grounding in math, the sciences and humanities; much practice in critical thinking; certain "real world" skills such as the ability to understand statistics, interpret advertising and political speech and follow complex instructions; and experience with "something that challenges the tendency to conform and that is foreign and strange to themselves," in the form of other cultures, religious views and foreign languages. Classrooms, he adds, should function with the same clear standard for success and responsibility for one's own actions as a varsity sports team or orchestra. The age of 16, which often marks the shift from adolescence into the first steps of adulthood, becomes a true rite of passage here. At 16, teenagers in this system could leave home or stay with their parents a while. They might attend community colleges prepared to provide the advanced and elective curriculum currently now offered in a shallow form in the last two years of high school. They might enter the military, a national service system or a vocational training program, or simply go to work. Some will be ready to leave home and enter a four-year residential college, as I was at that age. (Good colleges shepherd freshmen carefully while allowing them considerable freedom as well; I think many 16-year-olds could flourish there.) Others, perhaps, will drift a while -- as 18-year-old graduates sometimes do now. Another possibility might emerge, something that has been reserved until now only for the rare prodigy: concentrated training of young adults in a single discipline, such as music or writing or a sport. Botstein's plan requires not only more, but better teachers. He would eliminate the undergraduate degree in education, requiring instead a degree in one discipline with graduate training in education, much of it practical. He would significantly change the rewards offered teachers -- giving high school teachers highest salary and status and university professors the lowest. Would this work? Would anyone want it to work? My recent sojourn in high school was not the entire success I desired; many of the students seemed disengaged, barely tolerant. The most disruptive students reminded me of how I'd felt at that age -- constitutionally resistant to the imposed system, longing for a challenge, resisting direction. The energy rose and fell away; discussions were often desultory and vague. So, in the last few days, I dropped my plans and read them sections from Botstein's essay instead. What followed were the two most spirited days we had. Almost every student spoke up with feeling and asked questions. They argued with each other, still talking when the bell rang, and came to school the next day with new ideas. To my surprise, no one complained about required classes -- though several complained of boring teachers. Girls were especially vocal in saying they were glad they'd had to take math. "Algebra taught me to think analytically," one said. Other disliked subjects, such as history, were also seen as useful. All wished for longer periods or a varied block schedule, as done in college -- but only, said one girl, "with the good teachers." One student suggested a fluid schedule with team teaching, "so that if you really don't want to stop studying one subject, or there's a good discussion, the teachers can all agree to let you keep going." (What she didn't add should be obvious: Team teaching provides opportunities for multi-disciplinary projects and connecting one idea to another, vital to developing analytical skills.) Several described endless days of bus rides, homework and exhaustion; they longed for more sleep and less change in the schedule, for more frequent but shorter breaks. All agreed sex education was inadequate. "I think I should be able to be responsible for my own attendance," said one, to rousing agreement. And another: "I'm 18 years old and I still have to take a progress report home for my mother to sign." And yet, to my surprise, some of the highest achieving students were the most hesitant. Teens are quite conservative in many ways, and the ones who have, through talent and effort, made the most of this bad situation are sometimes least interested in change. David, a gifted student, said, "I don't know what I want to do and I'm 17. I shouldn't have to choose now." Others echoed this theme: "I don't have any idea what I want to do with my future. I can't decide. I'm not ready." I pointed out that this is also true of 18-year-olds, that decisions can change and adults do it all the time. But many fixed on the idea that only a single and permanent decision about their futures is possible. I think Botstein would agree with me (and with several loudly dissenting students) that this feeling is precisely the result of how children and teenagers are taught. The long process of infantilization, of withholding responsibility and control, makes such decisions harder when the time comes. The simple matter of tardy slips and the roll call do this. The endless hours of listening to adults talk do this. So does the repeated experience of having to stop what one is doing -- no matter how enlightening, how thrilling, how important -- at someone else's command. I looked at them, knowing that in Botstein's world, they would be gone from here, having slowly been brought to the point of being in charge of themselves, prepared in very different ways than they are now. It worked for me. It wouldn't work for everyone. But neither does what we have. Said Cameron, a senior, more excited than she'd been in three weeks: "This is unrealistic. It won't work. The whole society would have to change, too." I tried to tell Cameron that societies change by increments, in dominoes, not all at once. That new schools would mean new adults, seeing the world in new ways. She wouldn't agree. Botstein believes that young people like Cameron are not only failed by high school, but by being denied the "virtues" of college. A good college offers the privilege of self-control, an environment that treasures learning for the love of it, a supported place to nourish a sense of self and independence. Most of all, it is in the early years of college when one grows into adulthood over time in a diverse group of peers. She will be there next year, but she has already given up on change.
"It won't work," she says. "It won't work. Things won't change." And I
wonder where she's been slapped down, why she's so sure the world would not
make a place for her, wouldn't allow her to emerge as herself, right now. I
wonder if she's right.
Is high school a total failure? Talk it over in Table Talk. |
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