Educational activists Alan November, John Taylor Gatto, and Neil Postman have been arguing for years that our traditional school system does a huge disservice to our children. And their various innovative philosophies about changing the educational landscape so that more students can navigate it and travel to the lands they dream of, and creating future lands we all dream about have garnered praise from a variety of lawmakers, educators and theorists. Yet, if the new 4x4 curriculum in Texas, a state that PTA activist Cara Mendelsohn points out in her article is riddled with a dropout problem, is a litmus test of our progress, it would appear we are truly, collectively, failing to listen. What, passionate parents and caregivers must continue to ask, does it really take to make permanent changes to the educational system in America, for the better?

Follow up:

Gatto, who quit teaching in frustration at the height of his 30 year career as a teacher, while still New York State Teacher of the Year, said in his essay, I quit, I think, “School is too vital a jobs-project, contract giver and protector of the social order to allow itself to be "re-formed." It has political allies to guard its marches, that’s why reforms come and go without changing much. Even reformers can’t imagine school much different.” (The balance of this essay is included in his book, The Underground History of American Education. See the complete online text on http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm )
This is a depressing truth for the Plano PTA to carry with them to the legislative forum, not exactly a rallying cry, but of course we have to deal with the truth before we can move forward in hope. As Obama said a couple of nights ago in his press conference, perhaps it is better to believe optimistically that people will, eventually, respond to “civility and rational argument,” but anyone who has struggled to maintain civility when arguing about any issue they feel passionate about, never mind the future of their own children, has had admit to themselves that it takes humility, and a willingness to confront the depth of the problem, to maintain healthy perspective, in order to keep from breaking into a spiral of hopelessness, or throwing a good right hook.

According to Alan November of November Learning, an organization dedicated to getting learners and teachers ready for today’s global economy, (See http://novemberlearning.com/resources/archive-of-articles/) there are two ways we can think about technology, automating and informating. These terms can be applied to our relationship with educational improvements generally. Where technology is concerned, November defines automating as “bolting technology on top of what you are already doing. The best improvement you can hope for if you automate is incremental. For example, if we automate report cards, the result is we have prettier report cards, but we don’t improve learning.” Informating produces long term results. “The real revolution is information and communication, not technology. Let go of the word technology. If you focus on it then you’ll just do what your already doing. The trick in planning as we move forward is to think about information systems, whole systems of the flow of information and communication.” Closing the gap between dropout prevention and the competitive world of college prep could benefit from just such a counterintuitive approach as could educational reform generally.
And to put things in further perspective and remind us not to get tunnel vision, consider the late Neil Postman's words, in Teaching as a Conserving Activity, “The school must acknowledge that in almost every instance where it has tried to do what the family, the church, the economy or the political system has failed to do, it has also failed, at the expense of doing well what it is best suited to do.” Perhaps the best thing we can do to make lasting impressions on the educational systems in this country is to stop giving it attention it doesn’t deserve and start looking for innovation elsewhere. Our education system in this country was designed to be a reflection of our ideologies as a nation. Perhaps once we parents start re-examining these ideologies and our humanity in all other arenas, the educational system will have no choice but to jump on board.