Nexus - 0404 - New Times Magazine-pages

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much, that is, as I can get away with, given the present institution with the real world as fast as possible so that the independent time of compulsory schooling. can be spent on something other than more abstractions. This is At the core of this elite system of education is the belief that an emergency. It requires drastic action to correct. Our children self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge. Everywhere are dying like flies in our schools. Good schooling or bad school- in this system, at every age, you will find arrangements that place ing, it's all the same: irrelevant. the child alone in an unguided setting with a problem to solve. Sometimes the problem is fraught with great risks, such as the \ ), That else does a restructured school system need? It problem of galloping a horse or making it jump, but that, of needs to stop being a parasite on the working communi- course, is a problem successfully solved by thousands of elite ty. I think we need to make community service a children before the age of ten. Can you imagine anyone who had required part of schooling. It is the quickest way to give young mastered such a challenge ever lacking confidence in his ability to children real responsibility. do anything? Sometimes the problem is that of mastering soli- For five years I ran a guerrilla school program where I had tude, as Thoreau did at Walden Pond, or Einstein did in the Swiss every kid, rich and poor, smart and dipsy, give 320 hours a year of customs house. hard community service. Dozens of those kids came back to me One of my former students, Roland Legiardi-Laura, though years later and told me that this one experience changed their both his parents were dead and he had no lives, taught them to see in new ways, to inheritance, took a bicycle across the United rethink goals and values. It happened when States, alone, when he was hardly out of boy- A they were thirteen, in my Lab School pro- hood. Is it any wonder that in manhood he The Russian attempt to gram—only made possible because my rich made a film about Nicaragua, although he had control Eastern Europe school district was in chaos. When 'stability' re mone and opr expan: wit in- | ag exploded before Our | "mi Laclose,Ias wo ssces award-winner—even though his regular work eyes. Our own attempt We made the expensive, elite programs look was as a carpenter? to impose the same sort | bad. Right now we are taking from our children f P | orthod . There is no shortage of real problems in this the time they need to develop self-knowledge. Of social orthodoxy, using city. Kids can be asked to help solve them in That has to stop. We have to invent school the schools as an exchange for the respect and attention of the experiences that give a lot of that time back. A A adult world. Good for kids, good for the rest We need to trust children from a very early instrument, is also of us. coming apart at the seams, albeit more slowly and painfully. It doesn't work because its fundamental premises are mechanical, anti- human and hostile to family life. age with independent study, perhaps arranged in school, but which takes place away from the institutional set- ting. We need to invent a curriculum where each kid has a chance to develop uniqueness and self-reliance. A short time ago, I got $70 and sent a twelve-year-old girl with her non- English-speaking mother on a bus down the New Jersey coast. She took the police chief of Sea Bright to lunch and apologised for polluting his beach with a discarded Gatorade bottle. In Independent study, community ser- vice, adventures in experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships—these are all powerful, cheap and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling. But no large-scale reform is ever going to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force the idea of ‘school’ open—to include family as the main engine of education. The Swedes realised this in 1976 when they effectively abandoned the system of exchange for this public apology, I had adopting unwanted children and instead arranged for the girl to have a one-day spent national time and treasure on rein- apprenticeship in small-town police procedures. A few days later, forcing the original family so that children born to Swedes were two more of my twelve-year-old kids travelled alone from Harlem wanted. They reduced the number of unwanted Swedish children to West 31st Street, where they began an apprenticeship with a from 6,000 in 1976 to 15 in 1986. So it can be done. The Swedes newspaper editor. Next week, three of my kids will find them- just got tired of paying for the social wreckage caused by unwant- selves in the middle of the Jersey swamps at six in the morning, ed children, so they did something about it. We can, too. studying the mind of a trucking company president as he despatches eighteen-wheelers to Dallas, Chicago and Los amily is the main engine of education. If we use schooling Angeles. EF: break children away from parents—and make no mistake, Are these 'special' children in a ‘special’ program? They're just that has been the central function of schools since John nice kids from central Harlem, bright and alert but so badly Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in schooled when they came to me that most of them couldn't add or 1650, and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of subtract with any fluency. And not a single one knew the popula- Massachusetts schools in 1850—we're going to continue to have tion of New York City, or how far it is from New York to the horror show we have right now. California. The curriculum of family is at the heart of any good life. We've Does that worry me? Of course. But I am confident that as gotten away from that curriculum; it's time to return to it. The they gain self-knowledge they'll also become self-teachers, and way to sanity in education is for our schools to take the lead in only self-teaching has any lasting value. releasing the stranglehold of institutions on family life; to pro- We've got to give the kids independent time right away because Continued on page 81 that is the key to self-knowledge, and we must reinvolve them with the real world as as possible so that the independent time can be spent on something other than more abstractions. This is an emergency. It requires drastic action to correct. Our children are dying like flies in our schools. Good schooling or bad school- ing, it's all the same: irrelevant. The Russian attempt to control Eastern Europe ere Bee ee Le eee fundamental premises are mechanical, anti- human and hostile to family life. amily is the main engine of education. If we use schooling to break children away from parents—and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools since John Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in 1650, and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools in 1850—we're going to continue to have the horror show we have right now. The curriculum of family is at the heart of any good life. We've gotten away from that curriculum; it's time to return to it. The way to sanity in education is for our schools to take the lead in releasing the stranglehold of institutions on family life; to pro- 16 = NEXUS JUNE - JULY 1997 Continued on page 81