State testing has given new meaning to the term “artificial intelligence.” When I started working in the public schools in the early 90’s I had almost free rein to do groups, counsel individual students and facilitate a large variety of classroom team building experiences. Schools had what now seem to be quaint and archaic offerings like band and FASCE (family and consumer science education---we used to call this home-ec). Some students might be caught welding or tearing apart an internal combustion engine in a shop class. Those days are gone now. Students sit inside now, grim faced and silent, numbed into submission in an endless flood of math and science classes. Even civics has mostly given way to the last gasp of the industrial revolution. The left brain dominates. Right brain thinkers have been marginalized. Creativity and contemplation seem quaint and viewed through eyes of historical wistfulness with fondness but the dominant thinkers have dictated that these soft arts have no place in the society of the future.
“We need more scientists and mathematicians” proclaim the new captains of industry. Everybody must go to college. We don’t have enough mathematicians and scientists and engineers. This is the mantra we all hear constantly.
“Hmmmm….scientists….aren’t those guys who brought us Hiroshima and Super Fund cleanup sites?” asks one longhaired skeptic. Granted, scientists also brought us solar energy and life saving medical equipment but we must look clearly at the whole picture……………………
I have known Leonard for nearly 5 years. He is one of those kids that constantly gets referred to group. He displays a decided lack of interest in most of what the school has decided to offer him. He falls asleep in English class. In one of his three math classed he sits numbly while the teacher draws charts and graphs on her “smart board” with her digital pen. That doesn’t impress him either. Often he is tired from staying up far too late the night before playing video games. That’s what interests him.
Somebody decided quite some time ago what “school” would consist of. At one time that included art, music, shop, PE and consumer education. Those days are gone. Even recess is under scrutiny. The architects of the new world view all that aimless running around, jumping and shrieks of laughter with suspicion. What could the children possibly be learning during that free time? What a waste of human effort. We need to have them inside learning! These conversations actually occur. Education engineers and analysts put the entire school day under a microscope and determine with bizarre formulas that shaving three or four minutes off of recess could bump up their test scores seven to ten points! With Machiavelli as their inspiration……….
Leonard can play almost anything on a piano after listening to it just once. Sometimes he has listen to it twice because he didn’t catch my off tune out of key humming. Anything I play on my iPod he can duplicate almost immediately. He has most of the popular tunes of the last 40 years memorized and can play the entire song with little or no effort. Jesse is a musical genius. Leonard's school has no music program.
Fun suckers.
That’s what Nolan called them. Fun suckers are those joyless people who seem determined to suck all the fun out of life. And for this round in the great march forward of public education, the fun suckers have won. Fun suckers look at others playing and having fun suspiciously. That is nonproductive time. Fun is waste with noise. A child just sitting on a bench contemplating the nature of existence or the cosmos or the meaning of life has no place in the world of the future. After all, how are you going to test that, measure that, quantify that? Gone are the social and emotional skills classes. Juniors and seniors don’t even PE anymore. This in some strange way must prepare them for a future as a workaholic.
Work all your life and save your money until you die.
I don’t think so.
I don’t think so is the first though of the warrior and the anarchist. Looking out upon a soul less machine driven world, the warrior poet and the anarchist has a different vision.
