My philosophy on life  

One thing I have learned in life is that you must always be willing to learn. This one thing, the willingness to learn, is the silver bullet to solving all of the problems in the world. That may sound obnoxious or pretentious, but it is true.

Think about it, in order to navigate the world everyone must learn some basic skills, learn! The ability to learn language and understand the natural world allows us to interact and communicate effectively. Learning about new cultures allows us to imagine a world that becomes more inclusive. Misunderstanding based on the inability or unwillingness to learn has caused so much hardship in the world.

To that end, I wish to change the nature of education today. I want education to become more than the sum of its parts, something grander an institution.  Professionally, I am a High School Social Studies teacher, but my education is informed by Sociology and Women and Gender Studies. I try to provide my students with a big picture approach to history. All too often we teach children about history using a timeline approach; each event follows another. But imagine if history education was a multi faceted approach that explored an event from not only time, but also from the perspective of context and its impact on politics, religion society and ultimately what it means for the future?

Where I am coming from

When I was in high school I was less than what you might call a model student. Years of moving around, divorce, abuse had taken its toll on my drive to be educated. In high school I did just what was required of me, and sometimes less. I often joke that my senior year I majored in screwing off with a minor in cutting class. I graduated, unsure how I did that as I was out of School more than in. I started the next fall at the local community college, but still had no respect for education. I received excellent grades, but learned nothing. this culminated in my final night of class in which I told the professor my true feelings about her class and school.

Years went by before I even entertained the thought of attending college again. when I did I was going for all the wrong reasons. I decided to major in history and become a teacher. As part of registering for your first semester you must meet with an adviser. In my meeting with her she asked me why I wanted to become a teacher. In my bests snarky voice I told her it was for summers off and paid vacation! Not amused,  she gave me a few moments to think about my response. When she asked again, “to mold the minds of future generations.” She was pleased with that answer and let me go. trouble was I still believed my first response.

I often reflect on that moment in her office and wonder why I said what I said. Where had my life become so cynical that I would use something so cliche to sum up something so important. I believe now that it stems from my experience in high school. Classes are taught in a vacuum with no global context. I do not mean pulling up the morning news feed and showing children how the US has a global reach, I mean how the decisions in one place affect the rest of the world. that is what was missing from my early education, context and impact. I mean, if you think about it we hear it all the time, specifically with math, “when am I ever going to need this as an adult?”  The biggest problem in education today, we don’t answer that fundamental question. We expect our children to have a global view but do not teach them the importance of such a view. We do not teach them to explore the opposing views and ask the questions that must be asked. We tell them to be informed, but to what end?

Has education become irrelevant?

I recently listened to a TED talk from a scientist in India whose basic argument was that  formal education is no longer needed. He based his argument on the notion that with all the world’s knowledge accessible to every individual on mobile devices, what is school needed for? he came to this conclusion based off of an experiment that showed children could teach themselves to use a computer. I disagree with his summation that we do not need formal education. His view is that children should be taught to search for information and not expected to know it. the problem with that, Google provides no context. It is like looking up ingredients for scrambled eggs but not knowing how to turn the stove on.  You have the knowledge of what goes in the eggs, but no context in how to combine or cook them. Education has not become irrelevant, but it does need an upgrade, a new approach that embraces the ability to have the world’s knowledge at your fingertips, but allows students to apply context to that information.

 Education Should Be Spherical not Linear

The problem with education today is that it follows the same model it has followed since the days of the Greeks. Everything is taught in a vacuum, the vacuum of academics. everyone Knows this; how many times has a student said “I am never going to need this in real life.” Education has failed this student.

Students need to be taught that everything they learn has a context in the outside world. You may not specifically need a history course on the rise and fall of the American Indian, but understanding how the American Indian fits into the history of america and the world can help you understand concepts like oppression, domination, slavery, colonization, property rights, globalization, rape, family, cultural interaction, military power , conquest,etc. Instead of teaching students that the US captured and slaughtered an entire people, Teach them the reasons why, how, and the impacts of those decisions. This will help them understand Sectarian violence in the Middle East, the endless conflict over Israel, and why we still deal with the ramifications of slavery today. To accomplish this, education needs to be structured around three main tenets.

Communication is key to learning

Communication, this is where learning starts. Even as a child with no language skills, you can still communicate. When you are hungry you fuss; fussing is your first form of communication. There is a social understanding between you and your parents that when you want something, you fuss and it is up to them to figure it out. Sometimes this goes well and other times it does not, but for the most part they get the message and you grow up.

Language. The primitive communication between you and your parents will give way to actual language skills used to engage with the rest of the world. All language is is an agreed upon set of rules put in place to avoid misunderstanding. We humans learn this over time and it incorporates many of our senses, including touch, taste, vision, perception, and sound, and physical movement, body language. All of these work together to allow for communication, but the most important of these is often never considered.

Listening. The last thing we are formally taught, if ever, in language and communication is listening. Most individual’s training in listening is someone yelling “would you listen to me!?” Listening should be an early lesson in language and communication. Consider how effective booth are if no one wants to hear what you have to say. Words on deaf ears are lost to time and space and serve no purpose.

Communication In Education

The education of communication is a very interesting thing. We teach children communication skills, we focus on writing skills and the ability to convey an effective message, we teach reading comprehension so students can understand what they are told to read. And finally we teach children speaking skills and how to effectively communicated using their voice in the world. But one communication skill is missing: listening. Think about it, we teach reading and reading comprehension, but we assume children know how to learn.  Why is it assumed that we automatically know how to listen? In my belief we need to focus on the skill of listening. We continually stress the ability to effectively reach an audience, tailoring your message to reach people and this is fine, but if no one is listening, your tailoring is worthless. What is amazing about focusing on listening, teaching people how to listen, people will begin to understand automatically how to tailor their message for the audience.

 Intersectionality in Education

Intersectionality is a term that comes from Sociology and it was born out of the understanding that you can not just focus on a single human right to the exclusion of all others. You can not be a Feminist if you only care about the rights of white, middle class, suburban women. You must care about all women and the issues that are important to all women. Intersectionality attempts to correct that thinking by explaining that nothing exists in a vacuum. the world is fluid and ever changing, it is impossible to observe the same world from one second to the next. by employing intersectionality in education you teach students that historical events have an impact beyond the era they happen in and the world is interconnected.

Take the most recent Iraq war; ask someone on the street what were the causes of the war and you will get a multitude of opinions and answers. One will not doubt be 9/11 and in the short term you would be correct. But what if I told you the seeds of the most recent war were sown in the beginning days of World War I ? That’s right, WWI caused every war that came after it, the world has been fighting the same war for a century now. If you are interested in how i come to this conclusion click here and you will find an in-depth timeline. That is the point of intersectionality and students must be taught that, if only so they understand the consequences of decisions they make today.

Intersectionality also targets education in another way; Common Core. The idea of Common Core is a beautiful thing; students all over America will learn the same thing in the same grade at the same time. But there exists a fatal flaw in the system: A student in rural Tennessee is not the same student that exists in urban Detroit and is not the same Student in suburban Long Island. The Common Core is based on the assumption that all is needed for great education is a common set of agreed upon standards. It ignores any and all socio-economical factors. It denies that some schools simply do not have the resources to provide this education. It excludes the culture in some communities that view education as a waste of time.

It refused to recognize that students are more than grades and students. In some inner-city schools children face violence, both at home and school, lack of adequate education facilities and good nutrition. Rural communities face transportation issues, financial restraints, lack of access to higher education and overall economically depressed areas. Even the idealized suburban communities face challenges that differentiate them from other districts; Dual earning households where children go home to an empty house, the working poor that have no time to cultivate their children’s education, Domestic violence that often exist in higher rates than other communities. all of these factor affect a child’s education and all must be considered.

Complexity: Nothing worth having is simple

The third tenet, we need to stop expecting a singular fix for education. Every so often another politician comes out with another policy that will make up for all the failed policies of the past. They always claim to have the endall in education reform that will challenge students, cost less, hold teacher accountable, and produce students able to compete on the world stage. The problem is we are treating education: A) like it was broken in the first place, and B) it requires a simple solution. Well I’m here to tell you both are wrong.

Think about it, we are the nation that broke the atom, sent men to the moon and created the biggest technological advance in modern human history, the computer. All of this done with an education system from seventy years ago. That’s right all of that done without common core,standardized tests, and No Child Left Behind. now admittedly there were many problem with that education system; It was racist,sexist, and military dominated, but it gave humankind amazing scientific and technological advances while excluding the majority of the population, imaging what can be done with the whole of the world’s population?

For Starters we need to stop treating education like it is a gift and more like a right. We need to fund it like we fund our military. think about that, our military is larger than the next 25 militaries combined, 22 of which are our allies. The war in Iraq, funded by appropriation bills outside the normal budget, last estimate 6 Trillion with interest. In 2004-05 $536 billion is what was spent on K-12 education in the United States across Federal, state, county and municipal governments. In contrast the Federal budget for military expenditures was $610 billion in 2014 a full 400 billion more than the next closest spender China. Education in this country is treated like buying cookies from your co-worker for theirs kids, you do it because you have to and you want them to buy from your kid. that needs to change.

New teacher on average leave the profession within 2 or 3 years. This is because of relatively low pay compared to high work loads and little support from your community and the constant attacks on your profession.  Many people assume teachers work 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, 180 days a year. They forget the time it takes to grade papers(at Home) weekends spent planning lessons, following up with administrators and parents. How about the fact that teachers are expected to continue their education for the rest of their careers. It is called professional development, but what it really is is an undue burden placed on teachers that many other professions need not suffer the indignity of.                             

 Where this fits in my Professional Goals

The education of children gives me the opportunity to change the world one mind at a time. I am hoping to cause a ripple that becomes a tidal wave understanding and information. If the average public school class has 32 students, that is 32 chances every day to change the world. Every ripple starts with a pebble. That pebble can cause a wave of unimaginable effect on the world. Even if I only reach half of my students, and they reach only half of the people they know I have still made an impact.

        I want people to understand their past and how it shapes their future. I want people to understand the intersectionality that exists in their lives every day. I want children to understand that they can change the world. How to do that? Teach them to listen, so they can teach others to listen. People must understand that the world is bigger than any one person. Children must learn that education begins at school and never ends.