National Service

Tonight, Barrack Obama and John McCain joined a CNN crew at Columbia University to talk about, among other things, the idea of a "national service" initiative. Unlike many countries, the United States does not have a service requirement, military or civilian, and McCain and Obama both spoke very strongly in favor of establishing one.

What do you think? Do you believe that young people ought to be required to serve upon graduating from high school? Should high school graduates have to serve in exchange for scholarship aid? Should tuition loans be forgiven in exchange for military or civilian service? How will this initiative impact our families, economy and country?

Dancing the Dance

If Shakespeare is correct and politics makes strange bedfellows, what an interesting week this has been!

First, Barrack Obama, the candidate for change, picks one of the Senate's longest serving members as his running mate. To be sure, Biden brings to the ticket a sense of statesmanship and experience that Obama ostensibly lacks; however, Biden is the ultimate insider. He is so connected in Washington and at home that his son is mentioned as his potential successor if he and Mr. Obama are successful.

Contrast Mr. Obama's pick with that of Mr. McCain. By choosing Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running mate, McCain steals the thunder of Mr. Obama. The ultimate outsider, Mrs. Palin could not be any further from Washington unless she were from Hawaii! Mother of five, married to an Inuit man, supremely in touch with the people, and younger than Mr. Obama, Mrs. Palin looks to be everything that McCain's candidacy lacks.

To me, it looks like Obama vs. Palin and McCain vs. Biden. Won't it be interesting to see how this process unfolds?

If only we knew now what they knew then - or maybe not?

In 1895, 8th grade students from Salina, Kansas had to pass a five hour final exam that covered the subject areas of grammar, arithmetic, US History, orthography, and geography. The test consisted of a total of 50 questions and was administered orally; teachers evaluated the students on the content of their answers as well as their penmanship. Some of the questions seem appropriate for a modern day 8th grade curriculum, including:

• Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
• Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
• Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
• Use the following correctly in sentences: Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
• What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
  

Others seem completely out of place in today's schools, such as:

• Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
• If a load of wheat weights 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cts. Per bushel, deducting 1050 lbs for tare?
• Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
• Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
• Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall, and Orinoco.
  

What do you make of this? Are we requiring less of our students? Does this exam provide evidence of a decline in the American educational system or are the needs of our students so different today that knowing the nine uses of capital letters is no longer relevant?

To read the entire exam visit the Smoky Valley Genealogical Society's website at http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/saline/ and click on School Exam 1895.

Ken Burns Is Right

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

A Whole New Mind

This past summer I asked the faculty and staff at Long Trail to read Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers will Rule the Future. In his introduction Pink suggests that the Information Age - an era dominated by "left brain" thinkers like accountants, MBA's, radiologists, and software engineers - is giving way to the Conceptual Age, a "high touch" and "high concept" age during which "right brained" artists, inventors, designers, and storytellers will "reap society's biggest rewards and share its greatest joys." What do you think? Will the MFA be the new MBA? If Pink is correct, what are the implications of his hypothesis and how do they pertain to Long Trail School? Read the rest of Pink's introduction at http://www.danpink.com/excerptwnm.php or buy the book to learn how he thinks design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning are the six essential aptitudes of the future.