If progressive American scholar Noah Webster were here, says Adam Cohen [1] in the Times, he would be clamoring for two things: real public education (not mere school) and real public leadership (not mere politics).
He was "never more eloquent than in his screeds against excessive partisanship."
"The party which, while in a minority, will lick the dust to gain the ascendancy," [Webster] warned, "becomes, in power, insolvent, vindictive and tyrannical."
Public education is supposed to be the universal solution, not the universal problem. Maybe the problem isn't so much our schools but our own ignorance -- we can't or won't interrelate language, learning, liberty, and leadership as Webster did so well, 200 years ago. It seems we dutifully completed our own schooling yet cannot understand the meanings most important to our own lives, liberties and pursuits, never mind anyone else's. And in our ignorance and impotence, schooled yet ill-equipped as self-governing citizens of our free union, we yell more than we think, point fingers, shove, stampede and then start shooting.
Police Chief Nannette H. Hegerty of Milwaukee calls it "the rage thing." [2]
"We're seeing a very angry population, and they don't go to fists anymore, they go right to guns," she said. "A police department can have an effect on drugs or gangs. But two people arguing in a home, how does the police department go in and stop that?"
It's clear something big is missing; the education essential to independently enjoy one's life, liberty and pursuit of happiness somehow isn't reaching all its intended beneficiaries. Ignorance of ideas and poverty of purpose are combining to make a daunting social villain that threatens us all (far more threatening in my view than ignorance of algebra or poverty of teachers.)
But why, how, what to do? Seems we have our own ignorance problem then, about what public education means and how to make it work. Maybe we don't even know what we mean by our own words anymore, like leadership and learning, or the "education" we say will secure the blessings of "liberty."
Charles Darwin, born 197 years old today [3], figured out that free thought is more art than science and less adamant than ignorance.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much [4], who so positively assert . ."
Might we expect educated citizens to answer limited knowledge with unlimited questions, from their own independent thinking, especially about what they know they don't know? Would that make a fair working definition for third-millennium education? (What good are the answers we already know, after all, compared to the ones we seek next?)
What do we mean by public education as national defense, if not what our school systems have been providing in its name?
Can we imagine no better meaning for education than mere school?
Cognitive scientist Dr. Howard Gardner described one possible path, practical ways for public schooling to construct a complete 12-year cross-disciplinary curriculum on truth, beauty and goodness - see The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand [5]. His view of what education means in enlightened societies is reinforced by progressive educator Herbert Kohl, author of Discipline of Hope.
Gardner's latest thinking led him to contribute Harvard Business Review's Number One Breakthrough Idea for 2006 [6] which happens to connect creative synthesis of knowledge with world-class leadership, and evokes Charles Darwin (don't you love it when a theme comes together?) himself as exemplar:
A breakthrough idea is a springboard, not a perfect landing; a conversation provoker, not a definitive answer; a starter’s gun, not a finish line. It’s something that makes you stand up and take notice, not sit down and work out the application of a specific formula. . .
designed to deliver sharp-pointed concepts that may pop open a whole new way of looking at a particular management challenge—or simply prod you into some long-overdue thinking about an issue.
Pretending schooling and education are the same (or leadership and politics) as an excuse to change nothing about either, would be downright ignorant. If not the educated thinking and proposed solutions of Gardner and Kohl, then we can try something else; seems to me if we re-educate ourselves first about the meanings that are most important to us, we can't go too far wrong.
Back to the Times and the public crimes of ignorance and rage:
" . . .recognizing that the problems have deep roots, cities are also going beyond traditional law enforcement, trying to involve churches, schools and social service agencies. In Boston, the neighborhood sweeps are followed by work crews that repair potholes, trim trees and remove graffiti. . .Still, some of the problems are hard to address with tougher laws.
. . .[if my] situation looks desperate, do I really have hope?" said [Chief Corwin of Kansas City]. "I think that ties into the anger. If the only thing I have is my respect, that's what I carry on the street. If someone disrespects me, they've done the ultimate to me."
Widespread ignorance able to cause such rage isn't over ABCs and 1-2-3s, nor the ACTs and SATs. And it's not likely to be solved by even more rage (channeled into politics or otherwise) especially if our young are watching and learning well what we teach, just not in school . . .
Darrel Stephens, Charlotte's police chief [7]:
"It's hard for people. . .to understand that they're not likely to be a victim if they get along with their family members and neighbors and don't live a high-risk lifestyle."
What we call public education apparently isn't, but it could be, should be, somehow.
Soon.
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