I
wish I had a dollar for every time a parent told me their fondest wish was that
their child be happy. As in: "I'm not worried about Jason's grades--I just
want him to have friends and be happy." Or: "I'm not going to insist that Mandy practice her flute. If it doesn't
make her happy, she can just quit." 

I sometimes wonder about the pursuit of happiness as iconic American goal.
I'm quite sure that Jefferson had something more noble and laudable in mind
than deciding whether he should jot down a bit of transformative political
philosophy--or perhaps take a nap, whichever seemed more fulfilling at the
moment.

It's
a good week for thinking about what makes us happy--and how we, the village,
can raise our collective children to pursue the kind of happiness that matters,
while simultaneously being aware of and grateful for their many blessings.

In
TIME magazine this week, Nancy Gibbs muses on the confounding information that
Americans scored higher on the ongoing Gallup "well-being index" this
summer than they did last summer. Although happiness plummeted in the months
after the economic meltdown, our national sense of well-being began to increase
in the spring, and has remained relatively high since, even though the news--pretty
much all the news--has been downright awful. 

Gibbs
suggests that Americans have adjusted their expectations, and that's a healthy
thing:

While optimism
is the all-American anesthetic, at some point Expectation Inflation was bound
to take its toll. I'm struck by how many people tell pollsters that the
voluntary downshifting and downsizing of the past year have come as a kind of
relief. Maybe we've lowered our standards. But we already knew that money can
buy only comfort, not contentment; happiness correlates much more closely with
our causes and connections than with our net worth.

How
does this square with current education oratory and thinking, wherein "low
expectations" are now equated with soft bigotry? It's clear that our
generational train of progress-through-education--the laborer's son becomes a
merchant, the merchant's son a professional, with each subsequent generation achieving
more--is creaking to an end. We are outstripping our natural resources and have
tilted our economy into crippling debt. The gap between rich and poor is
growing; I'm guessing the people who expressed relief about downshifting were
moving from the top tier into the middle. 

We
can expect all we want, but the reality is that we seem to be heading into a
period where the Real Housewives of Atlanta might become appalling symbols of
tacky excess, rather than an amusing glimpse into the style and habits of
people lucky enough to pursue their personal pleasures. Are we re-defining
happiness as much more than recognition, entertainment and stuff?

Speaking
of expectations, how can we blithely critique teachers for not using "high
expectations" as a handy tool to leverage student learning, when we're
ambivalent about providing those same kids with adequate health care? Don't we
want all children to reach for more than credentials and possessions--should we
expect them to become productive in ways other than generating wealth?

Maybe
we need to re-examine our current goal focus on college degrees, and how many
more dollars they're likely to yield over a  lifetime of work, and start looking at non-material
aspirations and rewards, for our own children and for the nation. Here are the three
core outcomes I want for my own children, as a result of their formal and
informal education:

• Important
  work. Work that leads to making something better, whether it's particularly
  lucrative or not. Work that is variable, challenging and absorbing.

•  Civic
  engagement. Involvement in groups, relationships with people who have similar goals,
  volunteering, participating in relevant ways in the life of their community.

• Intellectual
  curiosity. A life-long interest in a broad range of issues and disciplines, and
  willingness to read, travel, discuss, ponder, and consider alternative points
  of view. 

Of
course, I want my children to be free from hunger and fear (and the fact that I
take such basic needs for granted probably speaks to the privileges I enjoy as
an American citizen). Continuous happiness, however, seems like a pretty
lightweight and empty goal.  Gratitude is
a better place to begin.

Thanks
for reading Teacher in a Strange Land. 
Happy Thanksgiving.

Image: TheABU@ Flicker Creative Commons

At
the last high school graduation I attended as faculty member, I sat on the
stage, robed and hooded, with the rest of the teachers who served as honor
guard for the class. Normally, commencement was held in the football stadium,
but a downpour forced us into the auditorium where all graduates and attendees
were up close and personal, not to mention damp and uncomfortable.

From
my vantage point, I could reach out and touch graduates as they crossed the
stage--and see right up the gowns of the young men sitting, splay-legged, in
the front row. In spite of the class advisors' admonitions--and, probably,
their mothers'--many of the boys were wearing shorts and flip-flops and didn't
appear to be duly impressed with the ceremonial aspects of the occasion. I was
surprised at how many of them were bearded, or sporting cool-dude facial hair;
physically, these were full-grown men.

I
started thinking about my district's four-option school entry program: students
could enter school via "developmental" kindergarten and/or regular
kindergarten, and those who "needed a little more time" could do a
year in junior first grade, before moving on to regular first grade. Parents tailored
two- or three-year combination plans to get their kids to second grade, and the
large majority of those taking three years were boys. Because of the desire to
give their sons a leg up, back then, many of the young men sitting in front of
me were a hormonal nineteen years old. They'd been driving for four years, and
could easily have been carrying an M-16 in Iraq. In an earlier century, they
would have struck out on their own long before, as farmers, wayfarers or
fathers.

Today,
of course, the conventional wisdom is that their economic goose is cooked
unless they seek further education. This week's cover story in
Newsweek--"Why College Should Take Only Three Years" (by Lamar
Alexander), and a follow-up roundtable with higher ed luminaries discussing
"What is College For, Anyway?" don't manage to make an airtight case for the
three-year plan. But both pieces shed light on the big questions that we ought
be asking about a college education:

• Are
  high school seniors poorly educated and thus unready for college--or are they merely
  bored with the low challenge of high school?

• What
  does anyone need to know and be able to do to make a success in a modern
  economy? Seriously. Is there a formula for job readiness in non-technical
  fields?

• What
  comes first: a broad, internalized knowledge base, or the skills to analyze and
  evaluate the surfeit of information and data available to everyone?

• Does
  technology make it easier and faster to learn--or more challenging to develop
  focus

• Is
  there a one-size-fits-all plan, a general agreement about how much coursework represents
  a bachelor's degree? And does the new standard for being well-educated now automatically
  include a second degree, beyond the B.A.--upping the educational ante once
  again?

No
consensus reached. In fact, the various experts did not agree on the primary
purpose of pursuing a college degree--is it building workplace skills, developing
an educated citizenry, or simply the credential needed to the lock the bearer
into a higher socioeconomic stratum?

Here's
an image from Robert Zemsky, education reformer and professor at the University
of Pennsylvania: College is like a supermarket where we let students freely
choose courses. When they get to the cash register, we tell them they don't
have the right things in their shopping carts, so they must continue shopping,
for five or more less-than-fruitful years. Might it be an intellectually
productive thing, that academic mucking about? Or is it a nationally
embarrassing inefficiency, a waste of time and money?

I'm
not sure. At some point, young people need to grow up, spend time working,
traveling, living independently, making their own choices. Going to college or
trade school should be motivated by a desire to learn something, be it plumbing
or Shakespearean sonnets. You can't put off adulthood and real life forever.

Image: Uhuru1701, Flickr Creative Commons

In the Internet dark ages—1993—I was invited
(coerced, actually) to do a “flyaround” media tour with then-Governor of
Michigan, John Engler, to promote a school funding initiative.  It was kind of fun, in a surreal way. We
started at dawn in Detroit with a few grumpy reporters, and then flew to a
half-dozen cities doing pre-arranged media events with various conscripted audiences
serving as backdrop. Two of our stops were at middle schools, where TV cameras
captured the governor’s remarks to school assemblies.

Being thoroughly familiar with gymnasiums full of
bored 13-year olds, these performances were no big deal to me, but the governor
was more than a little anxious about his prepared remarks and how they would go
over with preadolescents. I reassured him that any school would prepare
students for a gubernatorial visit by threatening kids with serious
consequences for any untoward outbursts. He could expect respectful, quiet
behavior, but couldn’t count on anything like comprehension, let alone enthusiasm,
from the kids.

You may be wondering how I was selected as the
governor’s sidekick for this experience. It was done scientifically, in fact:
the media consultant for the campaign (Republican stalwart Mike Murphy) held a
focus group session, to determine whom Michiganders trusted most on issues of
education. Their #1 pick was the State Teacher of the Year. Since the
governor’s trust numbers were significantly lower, and I was currently serving
as MI Teacher of the Year, I was drafted. The third member of the media team was
the president of the Michigan Education Association, a distinguished-looking
African American gentleman who was not on speaking terms with the governor. The
three of us were an appealing public relations mix, evidently, a diversity dream
team—but the atmosphere on that four-seater plane was pretty frosty.

I also shot a few TV commercials endorsing the
proposal, in a borrowed classroom, which had been tarted up with fake
blackboard writing, Palmer-method penmanship borders and—naturally—an apple or
two.  I didn’t mind doing any of this—I
strongly supported the funding proposal, which represented a shift away from
property taxes that left enormous funding gaps between the wealthy suburban
districts and the generational poverty of tiny community schools in the
northern woods.  But I was repeatedly
struck by the calculated manipulation of symbols and people to make political
points.

I was
supposed to be on tour as decorative moral support, but when the gov’s dry,
wonky remarks fell embarrassingly flat with middle schoolers in Saginaw, he
turned and asked me--surprise!--to say a few words to the students. When I made
them laugh with a comment about how their teachers were strategically placed
next to known outlaws, I was suddenly part of the official program. Somewhere
between Grand Rapids and Traverse City, the governor decided I looked like
Hillary Clinton (a definite stretch, but oh well), and started joking about how
even Hillary thought the proposal was a great idea. That inanity and
accompanying photo made several local newspapers.

Did the governor have the right to shamelessly use
seventh graders as scenery--or make a pitch in a public school, even if that
school would benefit greatly from a funding shift? I would say yes. Just as
much as Barack Obama had the right to urge kids to take responsibility for
their learning, Ronald Reagan had the right to disguise his tax policies as a
history lesson, and George W. Bush had the right to read "My Pet
Goat" in a photo op arranged by his own personal governor, after a night
of Republican fund-raising in Florida. The purpose of schools is not to shield students from politics and media; it's to educate them about those things.

Here's how it works: media is about
attention, and politics is about influence. 
Neither is about considered and noble principles or genuine communal
good. Want to distract attention from an important national speech where someone is
constructing a thoughtful policy argument before your eyes? You aren’t going to
get it with debate or dialogue. So just go ahead and call the guy a liar—better
yet, bawl it out on national TV, knowing that the incident will go viral on
YouTube, the notoriety lasting much longer than any pro forma apology you may
offer later. Attention guaranteed.  Influence? Remains to be seen.

Too bad that South Carolina Congressman Joe "You lie!" Wilson didn’t hear the
principal’s admonitions about appropriate behavior in an assembly. Too bad
there wasn’t a teacher sitting next to him, reminding him that the president
was an honored guest. When we demand respectful behavior from students but
public officials demonstrate appalling rudeness, how can we expect students to
take the policy process seriously?

This
is a tough one. A blog that must be written with infinite care. People I love
are involved, and the subject is painful to think about. The overarching
essential question: What are our real purposes in educating children in America--what
are we preparing them for?

Applying
that question to my personal circumstances at the moment, however, it comes out
like this: Are we increasingly focused on the wrong goals in our schools? Have
we stopped paying attention to the qualities and competencies that really
matter in shaping healthy adults, in favor of empty credentials, data targets
and media spin?

Last
week, my son's good buddy, Erik, died of catastrophic injuries sustained in a
car crash. Erik was more than Alex's confidante, cruising companion and
photography partner. He was a long-time Friday night basement dweller, chez
Flanagan--part of a tight-knit group of "car guys," who survived and
thrived in high school by creating their own society (and making my basement
smell like Teenage Boy for approximately five years). When Alex was in 10th
grade, he spent $50 of his own money to buy a huge, ugly sectional sofa at a
garage sale, which the guys creatively re-arranged into a kind of subterranean bunkhouse
for six. I gave up making them pancakes and smoky links on Saturday mornings
somewhere around the time they got driver's licenses, also the point at which
they began sleeping past noon. These boys are like brothers to each other and
sons to me; many of them were also my students in middle school.

Erik
played the trombone in my middle school band. His wonderful parents (and often,
his grandparents) attended concerts, traveled with the band on field trips and
supported Erik in all his academic and extra-curricular goals.  Erik was affable, genuine, kind and
responsible--he took care of our dogs when we went on vacation. The accident
occurred the day before Erik's 22nd birthday. He was living at home. He was
tight with his older sister, traveled with his family, and hunted and fished
with his dad. He took photography classes at community college. He also held a
variety of jobs since high school.

Erik
never failed to first say hello to us, Flanagan's parental units, when he was
over. Last summer, he stopped en route to the basement for a little chat while
I was working at the computer. He told me he was currently employed spreading
asphalt, part of a construction crew. "That sounds hot and boring," I
said. He stood up and struck an Abercrombie pose--thumbs in the  belt loops, jaw extended. "But haven't
you noticed how buff I'm getting?" he said, and broke into a grin. A job
was a job--and I had to admit that he was lookin' good, all right.

The
worst part of losing Erik is what he will not become: a great husband, a
terrific dad, a good neighbor, a productive and reliable career-employee. All
of the best parts of Erik's adult character were already established; he just
needed more time. It was painful to see the sad and stricken faces of his
friends, home from their current lives at school and work, shockingly adult in
their dark suits. What lessons can they take away from this loss? Quoting Jackson Browne: Nothing survives, but the way we live our lives.  And as my Lutheran pastor friend says--grief is the price we pay for loving someone.

It's
a cliché to ask what you would do today, if you knew you had only 24 hours to
live--but that thought ran through my head constantly over the past week. If
you knew your child's life would be rudely cut short just as he approached
adulthood, what would your priorities be? Would it be pursuing the traditional school
model of success--grade points, honors night, stress over the right competitive
numbers to leverage his place in the next academic institution or workplace? Or
would it be spending more time with friends, sharing family events and stories,
working and playing, enjoying and exploring life's possibilities?

When
we work with children, we have no idea how they will turn out--a truth that
ought to be both obvious and humbling, but is routinely ignored by educators.
We don't know who will be rich, who will be malicious, who will have great
power and influence--or who will unexpectedly be lost to bad fortune. All we
can do is try to stay focused on what matters most. Tonight, I am thinking that
a joyful life, no matter how long, is a life well-lived. The rest is unimportant, in the long run.

Image: Alex (l.) & Erik (r.)

Tracking
is a technology. You can't plug it in, but--like 3-ring binders, twelve grade
levels, and the agrarian calendar--tracking is an educational technology. A
device dreamed up for the purpose of making schooling more "efficient."  A tool.

And
just as a man with a hammer sees every problem as a nail, school technologies
are often considered the "obvious" solution to every dilemma we face
in schools. Many of these durable cogs in the vast education machine date back
to the era when poor immigrants were flooding city schools at the same time the
industrial age promoted a technical approach to everyday tasks. Everything from
traffic management to measuring the intelligence of army recruits could be done
better through science--and many of these efficiencies were translated into
educational practice as the system expanded.

We
seem to have a national compulsion to sort, identify, select, test, standardize,
compare and compete in our schools. Intellectual growth, unfortunately, does
not automatically thrive via classification or homogeny. Human learning is neither
predictable nor controllable, and doesn't happen at a consistent rate. Students
respond in different ways to varying content, disciplines and instructional
models--not to mention different teachers and emotional states.  Lots of bad education policy has been created
by people who assume that uniformity is a great virtue. And even more bad
policy has been instituted by folks who believe that the way they learn best is
the way all people learn, or should learn.

And
so it is with tracking, the technological solution to the non-problem of having a roomful of learners
who don't know precisely the same things.

Here's
my worst experience with tracking, from the early 80s, when I was teaching one
section of 7th grade math. The 7th graders were divided, using reliable assessment
data from 6th grade state tests, into five tracks: Honors (which was Pre-Algebra),
Advanced, High/Low Basic, and Special Education. I taught Low Basic. Every 10
weeks, we gave a common assessment (from the math text) and moved kids from
track to track, based on their scores-- in theory, a system that would allow us
to continuously fine-tune our stratified instruction, and use the
"motivation" of quarterly opportunities to move up to higher tracks. Even
though students were not studying the same topics at exactly the same time, the
assumption was that since we were all following a sequenced curriculum, but
differentiating the pace and amount of practice, kids who mastered something in
September (or 6th grade) would still know it in January. That turned out to be
not true.

After
the first 10 weeks, 16 of my 30 students qualified to move up--two went all the
up to Honors--and I got 16 new kids who'd struck out in the higher tracks. With
every 10-week shuffle, I got dispirited kids whose math egos had taken a
beating, and had to convince them that they could indeed re-master ratios,
probability, negative integers or whatever had stopped them in their tracks.
Approximately a third of the kids got moved around every quarter. By the final
quarter, I had only 6 of my original kids (one of whom confessed that he
deliberately blew his quarterly move-up tests so he could stay with me).

It
was hard on my Basic kids, who felt that they'd been written off, early in the
game. But it was hardest on the kids who started out in Honors, then drifted
downward all year, ending up in Basic. Tracking did much more than impact egos
and the social system--it made a muddle of instruction. My Basic kids were
constantly saying "I already learned this"--even when their tests
indicated that they were clueless. In each of the four quarters, my group--scientifically
selected for uniformity-- had superstars and laggards. And students continued
to need different ways of learning critical content and skills.

There
are a number of education critics who believe that differentiating learning in
mixed-ability groups is not truly workable. I know that it is, because I've
done it, for decades. You start building equity by demanding excellence from
everyone, rather than trying to figure out who might not be "capable"
of excellence, or how to stretch achievement data over a curve rather than pushing
everyone as far and fast as possible. Everyone should get the good stuff--the
most rigorous content, their teachers' confidence that high levels of learning
are within reach for all. There are more insidious beliefs hidden by the
practice of tracking. But let's not go there--because that would be giving the
creaky obsolete technology of tracking more power and attention than it
deserves.