Ken Burns is a brilliant filmmaker who has been praised by historians and Hollywood alike for producing fair and insightful documentaries, which have explored both the ordinary and the extraordinary people, places, and subjects that have helped shape our nation. From the citizens of the towns of Mobile, Alabama, Sacramento, California, Waterbury, Connecticut, and Luverne, Minnesota, whom he highlights in "The War," to "Thomas Jefferson," "Jazz," and "Baseball," Mr. Burns has a proven natural proclivity for exposing the human side of those themes that have created this country and culture that we have come to know as America.
During his remarks at the Equinox Hotel last week, Mr. Burns stepped beyond his own profession to give a scathing rebuke of the American educational system. He suggested that we - schools, school boards, departments of education, and the like - are missing the proverbial boat when it comes to educating our children. According to Mr. Burns, our fascination with standards of learning and cute technology is reducing our effectiveness; our attention is being diverted from the schooling of our children to feeding something akin to an "education industrial complex." Rather, he argued, we ought to focus on teaching the lessons that our forebears learned as they struggled to build this country and enrich the lives of its people. Mr. Burns is right, and his observation merits a response.
Approximately 1,000 veterans of the "Greatest Generation" are dying every day; with them pass their stories of courage, dignity, and compassion. Too often our curricula overlook these lessons in favor of a cursory study that fails to stimulate excitement in our classrooms. We "check the box" indicating that we covered a particular topic or time period, but, in reality, we blast through the course outline celebrating how far we got without allowing time for the deep investigation and thoughtful reflection for which Mr. Burns longs. The result is an education that is wasteful in its efficiency. We try to cover a little bit of a lot of stuff only to realize that the lack of depth creates no staying power in our student's, and our society's, collective memories. That is a shame.
Daily our educators are faced with the great dilemma to determine what is relevant and necessary in the education of our students. To be sure, we cannot teach it all. There is more history in America today than there was in 1945, and the school year has not gotten any longer. But, somehow we have to make time for the stories that the subjects in Mr. Burns' latest film tell. Parents and communities play important roles in this process, and I commend organizations like Northshire Bookstore for its efforts to extend education beyond the formal classroom. But if we do not embrace the important lessons that the Greatest Generation taught and teaches us, we will have failed.
In his Gettysburg Address, arguably the greatest speech in American history, Abraham Lincoln spoke of the responsibility that the current generation has in honoring our ancestors and advancing the cause for which they fought and died. He said,
"It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced."
Let us - families, schools, and regional and national education boards - rededicate ourselves to this solemn goal so that those who came before us will not have struggled in vain.
This article was originally published in the ManchesterJournal and can be found at http://www.manchesterjournal.com/oped/ci_7660538
3 comments:
First off, I differ in the stated opinion on the role of technology in education. That technology is brushed off as "cute" hardly lends the piece to serious intellectual discussion since I think its safe to say technology is here to stay. Whether we want to admit it or not, knowledge about information systems and knowledge gained using information systems is necessary to have competitive students and schools. Working with middle-school students from a failing No Child Left Behind school incorporating technology into science and social studies curricula, I've seen first-hand how these "cute" computers motivate and excite students like nothing else at school. That is, these machines have great potential in making otherwise seemingly boring and non-relevent material something students are excited about.
Furthermore, especially for a rural state like Vermont, it's certainly not hard to see how the Internet and computers have made accessing resources that would have been unavailable before possible. With promising online e-learning starting to emerge successfully, we should be embracing the technology, not brushing it off as an educational fad.
I think the Long Trail history curriculum did a great job balancing the facts with story-telling, but LTS' students are above average in motivation. Stories are always good to connect with the material, but stories are also just stories. I think we all want to motivate students to become engaged in the material, but I think the best way to do that is not to tell them about the past (that is, bring in the personal side of it) but to relate it to the present. The perrenial "so what?" factor is more important in our schools now than ever. Many scholars believe this is the key to fixing many of the problems of our educational system. They argue that students for which the education system fails (minorities and immigrants, but often white americans as well), it is because the education doesn't connect with them and just isn't relevent to who they are and their lives. Stories of our nation's past heroes and notable figures certainly makes the content more interesting, but does it further the educational goal of making sure the system is serving the students.
Then again, this is just one of the many things that we could argue would be beneficial to add to an overcrowded curriculum. If we want to seriously talk about adding content, we need to first figure out where we can take it away.
I do agree that technology is an important tool for teachers, and I would support theassertion that it helps us motivate our students. But I have also seen resources wasted on technology. It sometimes sits idle in classrooms, and I worry about the percentage of technology use that is actually part of the academic experience. One school did a survey of its users only to find out that 95% of internet useage was non-school related. Is this the way we should be using our precious resources? To be sure, schools need to train their teachers to use technology and to incorporate it into their curriculum, but I believe Burns has a point when he says that technology is not THE solution, but part of it.
I have had a few students enroll in online or e-learning classes with mixed results. It seems the natural give and take of a classroom environment is hard to replicate online, but some students thrive on the self-paced curriculum that those courses offer.
I would agree that Long Trail is fairly unique among the universe of schools in that its teachers provide the kinds of discussions that Burns wants. You are correct in that our AP scores reflect our level of success. That said, the College Board, the organization that manages the AP program, determines the content of those courses, and I think any teacher of AP US History would tell you that they are pressed to cover the entire curriculum. I can tell you from experience that there is a good amount of that shallow learning occurs in AP classes because we cannot teach it all in the time allowed. (The Wilmot Proviso comes to mind.)Perhaps the AP students, who are generally high achieving kids, thrive in that environment, but I am not sure it is the answer for all students. I wonder if deeper, more meaningful discussions wouldn't teach our students more. Unfortunately, this would require us to limit the topics we cover, and, as you mention, these are the difficult decisions.
Thanks for responding to my invitation to dialog. I hope you continue to participate!
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