So, it's the New Year! What does it hold in store for us as a people, as a nation of innovators and learners. Most of our early attention this year will be centered on what's happening in Iowa, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq. Taking our collective eyes off of the ball.
Perhaps we'll even pay some attention to what the Israelis and Palestinian's are up to (vis-a-vis the Bush administration wanting to salvage it's reputation in the world. Can you say, "Condi-NOT!")
The real attention should be on the future of education and what the early Presidential primaries may have in store for the school children in this country for the next three generations. Although we can no longer ignore world events (global warning, enter stage right), we must also keep our eye on the ball as it relates to the dumbing of the American child.
One woman that I spoke to said that No Child Left Behind poses a grave and present danger to the autonomy of our nation as a civilization. Does this sound like a hysterical ranting of yet another John Dewey Progressive who doesn't quite get that the Me Generation ended along with the Seventies and hippies?
Yet, witness the resurrection of Jimmy Carter, a man with plenty of vision and great ideas and very little follow through, at least some folks would say so. Did Jimmy Carter's presidency derail Al Gore's hope at the White House--or Barack Obama's? Can effete men and women of principle win the highest office in the land? Or must all politician's these days be shrewd political operatives who pander to all sorts of special interests in this country to get anywhere at all? The George W. Bushes, the Mike Huckabees, and the Hillary Clintons. With special interests groups firmly in hand, Presidents and candidates like these offer little new or innovative in the way of foreign or domestic policies. Who cares if Hillary will be the first woman President in this country if the results are the very same as they are today. Perhaps she has a little more vigor than our current feckless leaders in power, who lie and steal and cheat and lie, to great effect, shamelessly telling people just what they want (and perhaps need) to hear.
"I won the election fair and square." "There is no global warning." "It's okay to reveal the identity of a CIA agent and have it not matter all that much." "Let's send many thousands of young men and women to the Middle East and fight a war that has always been and will always be about oil." "It's okay to serve up one of the worst educational public policies in our nation's history as long as we divert the attention of the American people on what really matters."
In short, I am angry this New Years Day. I don't feel that we as a people and as a nation are any closer to solving what ails us. In writing this blog (and dedicating my career to education), I have put all of my eggs into one basket--that of America's school children--while they and their teachers are being scrambled to death with meaningless tests, jumping through hoops that will always tell them that they are less than. Also, if the tests that come with the scourge of a law are designed to make the school children in this country be great followers who don't question authority in any way--or the opposite of the root word of education, which is "educere," meaning to "lead out"--then we are in for generations of heartache. We must do more to fight for what matters most and has always mattered most.
Last Century, we spent a lot of time working on infrastructure--dams, roads and highways, schools, skyscrapers, fiber optics. This year and into this next epoch, we must use micro-technologies as our metaphor and rallying cry for what to concentrate on next. People, each and every one of us, especially children, should be moved to the center. No Child Left Behind serves as one of those 1984 lessons of marketing the opposite. While drop out rates soar in middle and high schools, and boys of all stripes and hues lose out in higher ed, then we must re-focus our attention on what matters most and what has always mattered most in this country...
Education.
