A Thought or Two About Secondary Education

I taught high school history and government for four years. My students were often poorly motivated and many considered high school a sour joke. I've pondered why and I'd like to offer a couple of suggestions.

First of all, I'm not sure anyone has actually determined what high schools are trying to accomplish. Is secondary school a job training place, a location for teaching our kids to think, or a means of encouraging young people to enter technical professions such as medicine or engineering?

These are lofty goals and worthy of the teacher's and students' time, but are any of them being addressed in the "one size fits all" modern high school? One hears often of the lack of science and math in our high schools with the warning that we will fall behind other nations that do emphasize these subjects, but has anyone honestly ever heard an adult say, "I wanted to be a doctor or scientist but I just couldn't get enough science and math in high school?" A young person who wants to get this kind of course work will find a way to get it, and must be encouraged to do so. Why feed the disinterested or inept through levels of math and science they will never use again? It's good for them, I grant you, but so are art and music, subjects the modern school curriculum gives short shrift to and which would undoubtedly interest more of our young people.

This emphasis on "hard curriculum" is often accompanied with the statement that the schools need to "get back to basics." In truth, if we wanted to get back to basics we would use the Greek and Roman educational curriculum. Think if we taught young people how to speak and argue persuasively. For one thing the incidence of violent crime would be reduced if people were articulate enough to settle their differences with words, not bullets.

A question I liked to ask students at the beginning of the school term is, "Why are we here? Why does the state and why do your parents think it's important for you to know something about history?" Answers, when any kids were confident enough to say anything, usually claimed that history makes us better citizens, helps us detect glib promises politicians and salesmen make, keeps us from repeating old errors, and grounds us in the present. After a time I dismissed all these ideas and gave the students the only reason for studying history that ever made any sense to me: it's fun. Of course, if a student doesn't agree, why burden her or him with a year of drudgery?

When I taught in Virginia, even the contention that history's fun was undermined by the mandated Standards of Learning tests that bled whatever fun there might have been right out of the curriculum. The standards were so poorly drawn they completely ignored the western movement in the 19th century! When I pointed this out to the department chair and exclaimed, "No cowboys! No Sioux or Cheyenne people! No sourdough miners, no labor disputes, no Wyatt Earp for crying out loud!" she said,"It's not in the standards, so ignore it."

I've ranted long enough. We need to return to the Deweyan model of drawing out from the students what they want to study. The process of cramming knowledge into unwilling minds certainly hasn't worked, so why not make our schools places where students can learn what they want to learn?

BTW I haven't even talked about government class yet!