Most of us know more than one or two things about school. After all, when you spend anywhere from thirteen to seventeen or more years involved in the thing, you acquire a certain expertise. And opinions.

I used to have to exercise more than a little patience with parents and people at large who wanted to assert their expertise on this or that dimension of the whole thing. I’d sigh in private and couldn’t help thinking it would be like yours truly who has driven cars for many decades … without a single ticket I might add … sharing all sorts of wisdom about how the vehicle actually works, when in fact my knowledge is extremely limited. Is there any other field where so many people have so much experience and so many opinions?

I have written several books on education in my head. And, many people who have worked with me have urged me to do the real thing. Some of those thoughts have been flights of fancy. Say after a 16 hour day as a high school principal or assistant principal when any single hour, pick it, would have stunned the uninitiated into silence. As in they’d never believe it. Probably not that different from the reflections of an ER physician or nurse in an urban hospital or a soldier boots on the ground in a forward base. You need to have been there …

In my twenty years leading schools I can pretty honestly say I wasn’t bored for five minutes. Way too much going on. Way too much to do. Life often on overdrive as thousands congregated at all hours, bringing all of their wonder and dread and hopes and fears and abilities and disabilities. Oh, and yes, we were charged with educating them. Taking something limited and malleable and fashioning it into something … well, something.

I’m a veteran of both private and public education, although not in equal measure. Not counting nursery school, I spent something around 25 years in school to get my degrees and various credentials, all but four years of which were in public schools. I also spent approximately 35 years working in and with schools, all but 9 years of which were public. That’s 60 years (some contiguous) engaged in education as student, teacher, site and district leader and consultant.

I’ve written countless papers on education, taught and run countless workshops and trainings, trained countless students, teachers and educational leaders, have developed boatloads of programs and contributed to a massive supply of curriculum and instructional materials. I’ve probably considered every piece of educational philosophy there is and have watched as a seemingly endless supply of initiatives have been developed and frequently discarded. I’ve been desperately chilled by the magnitude of issues facing the entire thing while being filled with immense joy at the many successes (most small but some large) that occur on a regular basis.

So, I think I’ve gained the right to ask, “What’s the point?”

Oh, we can discuss all of the points and there are many. But, I’m asking what’s THE point?

I’ve heard all of the lesser points and agree that many of them are extremely worthy, even fundamentally necessary. But, in the latter part of my career, more and more I pondered what’s the underlying and organizing principle upon which all else stands?

If you’ve been reading my musings, you’ll probably recognize where I will be going. We pay attention to all sorts of things, prioritizing this or that, considering the value of this or that thing. But, I’ll toss it out that, for most of us, we don’t spend the time and energy to really inquire what’s behind our motivation to do or value these things.

As a quick aside, every school is supposed to have a mission statement in some form or other. In fact, while great deliberation goes into developing these for all sorts of reasons, only rarely do they actually mean anything practically. And, frequently for good reason.

Some of us used to get jaded and try to create the perfect mission statement that reflects every other school’s mission statement. I’m a bit rusty but it may have read something like this: “The Mission of Albert Einstein School is to create lifelong learners who will become productive and creative citizens in our democratic society.”

You like it?

What’s not to like? Who’s going to stand up and say lifelong learning is a bad thing? Who’s going to say we don’t want our kids to become productive (make stuff or make stuff happen) or creative (think on their own, show initiative and demonstrate unique qualities)? Who’s going to say we don’t want them to be citizens (people who have a stake and share some equivalencies)? And, who is going to argue against democracy (that complicated political philosophy that says everyone should have some kind of voice in the way things get done)? Great!

Except, I have to ask, where does all of this lead?

Let’s step back for a moment but, first, I’ll gladly say there’s a lot I like about our standard mission statement for schools as they express their purpose for existing. I’m a big fan of humans being both productive and creative. I’m a big fan of people participating in making decisions about how their lives should be lived and how we organize structures to enhance our lives. And, I’m a big fan of people learning throughout their lives. I’d have to object to someone telling me in my dotage that it’s time to stop learning anything!

So, what’s the problem? Well, bluntly, none of the operatives in that mission statement says anything about what they’re for, with the possible exception of creating citizens for a democratic society, whatever that means.

For starters, let’s take productive. What do we want them to produce? Are we comfortable with students who graduate from our schools and universities producing anything? Anything at all? Well, most people would say we want someone to produce the cure for cancer or cold fusion or anything to make us live life more comfortably and cheaply. Probably not much argument there and I’ll probably come back to that. Are we comfortable with them producing guidance systems for military drones? Whoa. Hmmm. Well, maybe some of us are fans of drones and some aren’t. Are we comfortable with them producing genetically modified organisms to do all sorts of creative thing with life forms? Whoa. Again, some yes and others no. Are we comfortable with them producing media accessed by millions that objectify women, ethnic minorities, religious groups, and the list goes on.

To be honest, we like when people produce things that we like and we don’t like it when they produce things we really don’t like. But, we can maybe still support the value-less concept of productivity because we can’t conceive of not promoting it. Where would we all be, then?

And, the same goes with creativity. In the modern and current post-modern eras, creativity is a really big thing. Expression is a biggy. Freedom to express is right at the top of the most valued things. Except when someone else’s creativity impinges upon my creativity. Then we have problems.

When you think about it, Mein Kampf is a pretty creative piece of political literature, the production of which was accomplished despite prison conditions that resulted from Adolf Hitler’s arrest after some considerable disobedience. Much like Letters from a Birmingham Jail were produced by Martin Luther King while imprisoned for considerable disobedience. Both were watershed documents whose gestations were similar, the results of fertile minds.

Or, take for example the creative production of the atomic bomb, whose “father” Robert Oppenheimer quoted Hindu deity Vishnu at the first Trinity explosion:

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Let’s now shift momentarily over to the citizen/democracy dimension before getting to the real meat of where I want to go.

At the risk of being incredibly simplistic, I’ll lay out that I think a citizen is one who is invested in the community. He or she has a stake in the community and feels both a responsibility to contribute to its functioning (or even flourishing) with the right to receive some kinds of benefits. The political philosophy that best represents this is a thing we call democracy, however misunderstood that concept is. (After all, everyone uses it, even brutal dictators who argue they’re only being brutal because they have to oppress people’s freedom in order to eventually get them to be free. Before leaving that line of thinking, however, this logic is also used by non brutal dictators to push limitations on freedoms in the name of enhancing freedom and democracy. The Libertarian Party has a small place at the table of American politics because of this issue.)

Back to our point. The concept of citizen is to be invested in the community. Now, interestingly, the concepts of community and individuality can often act as contradictions. Not necessarily so but they certainly can. A citizen in a community voluntarily gives up freedom for the greater good. This sacrifice is seen as a responsibility so that society can function and the rising tide will lift all boats, as the saying goes.

But, do we actually teach this? I mean, really invest in this?

Interestingly, to some degree we do. While we don’t do a particularly good job teaching history and “civics” anymore despite valiant attempts to do so, our 18 year olds as a whole are not graduating with a very developed sense of what being a citizen really is. Sure, we can teach some foundational principles but how much time and energy do we invest in training them for how to give as well as receive from the various communities they align with?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of compulsory education, subsidized through taxes in that education can produce good things, although not necessarily so. Interestingly, I do not believe a lack of what we would see as formalized education necessarily precludes the production of good things.

Now, the German people were arguably about the best educated people in the world in 1938. Compulsory education. Top universities.They certainly produced a whole lot of stuff and had lifted themselves out of the worst of all economic downturns. Did they make good citizens? Well, if you use Nietzsche’s metric, perhaps. The majority was certainly unified in their idea of their collective role and scope of responsibilities. And, the party that they ceded power and allegiance to was the National Socialist German Worker’s Party … very egalitarian in their terms. How is that?

So, we get to the heart of the matter. I used to think creativity and productivity were ends in themselves. After all, we were trying to “create” creative and productive young adults. But, just as our educational practices are means to something else (that is what education is “for” after all!), so are the so-called values of creativity and productivity. We can add to them things like critical thinking or taking initiative. Each of these are values, things we almost give lip service to as foundational truths to guide our practice in school. But, they only have value in relation to other things. What are those things?

For starters, Knowledge gets high marks. Most people would reflexively say that Knowledge is ipso facto a good thing. Uh, maybe. Or, maybe not necessarily.

Ok, let’s move the needle a little closer to what it is we value about Knowledge, say Wisdom. Now, one way of looking at Wisdom is to see it as good knowledge with the added feature of good judgment. We don’t typically refer to poorly constructed knowledge or knowledge that is destructive as wise.

There’s a certain attraction to thinking we want to create wise people through our compulsory educational system. These people will have the ability to think through things that are beyond our abilities and to help guide us in ways we’re not set up to consider. Unless, of course, their wisdom is extremely selective and under the influence of values more fundamental than wisdom.

As an aside, I’ve come across people that other people would consider very wise. At one time or another, I might have thought them wise. Now, I consider them only deluded. How is that?

It must be that we use different metrics. Different values that are essential to help us to determine what it is we want people to learn.

One of the hot topics these days is Artificial Intelligence. We are devoting unbelievable amounts of resources into its development, for all sorts of reasons. Tens of thousands, maybe even millions of young people are being trained in the skills that can help advance these technologies. You have to be a pretty creative, productive and knowledgeable person to work in these areas. Through AI, we can reach new levels of material wealth, better health, greater comforts, and who knows what else. I read about these things.

From The Singularity is Near homepage:

The Singularity is an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity.

Or this from the beginning of the definition in Wikipedia:

Singularity is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial superintelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.

Wow. The dawning of a new civilization. Runaway technological growth. Transcendence of biological limitations while amplifying our creativity. Heady stuff.

Is this my job as an instructional leader and an educational expert? To assist in the radical transformation of what it means to be human? To foster runaway (out of control) growth? To help usher in the dawn of a new civilization?

After all, that would mean the old concept of being human is assigned the trash heap. I guess that just might have some sort of impact on a thing like citizenship or democracy.

Oh yea. It also might have some kind of impact on such things as the notions of good and evil, any semblance of the moral kinds of structures that have guided all human civilizations, especially those in the Judeo-Christian traditions that value highly the importance and sanctity of the individual.

Or let’s just take Materialism. Is this a foundational value? There are, of course, some groups and cultures (largely non-western) that seek escape from the material world, some of whom profess it as an illusion. But most of the world is pretty absorbed in a material reality. Both Karl Marx (communist) and Adam Smith (capitalist) built their economic and political systems around some variation of the value of materialism. As does Madonna. 🙂

Is the goal of education to create material wealth in order for everyone to live longer or more comfortably or both? Is that what we should say to our students when they ask why we are seeking for them to be creative and productive and lifelong learners? And, what if the inquisitive young person asks how they will benefit from comfort or a long life? What do we say?

Will we say it will lead to you being happier? More content?

Now, we’re getting somewhere.

And, if they ask, “does comfort equal happiness? Are comfortable people happier? Is that the basis of happiness? Are people who have more material wealth and the goods that come with that wealth more content?”

“Are people in poverty less happy or content?” a bright student might ask. “And what of those whose lives were cut short from disease, disability or privation or who did not have the occasion to learn to read very well or to practice the scientific method? Their lives were certainly shorter and less comfortable. Did their lives contain less value?”

Anyone who professes easy answers to these questions, I insist, is jumping to conclusions too readily.

I have said before, we all value something or many things. We sometimes value things heavily of which we are unaware. Think on that. So, let’s peel away the outer layers and try to get to the kernel. Because, absent that, we are building our houses on sand, sorry to say. I should know. I happen to be quite the expert on education. 🙂

Next: What do we replace the sand with?