Poor Elijah’s Almanack: Resolution and resolve

I’ve never really gotten the hang of New Year’s resolutions. The strangest part is, we designate a date after which we resolve to do what’s right, but before which we implicitly resolve to continue doing what’s wrong. Imagine resolving to stop tap dancing blindfolded on the Garden State Parkway — next month.

So here’s one resolution schools could act on anytime: Exercise common sense.

I’m not talking about good-old-days, cracker-barrel nostalgia. Since my father’s old days included the Great Depression, they clearly weren’t all good. Despite their flaws though, we did some things better then than we’re doing them now. It’s misleading and dangerous to idealize the past, but it’s just as perilous to dismiss old, established practices solely because they’re old and established.

Education reformers often charge that teachers are unwilling to accept new ideas, but they’re entirely wrong. If anything, schools have been too willing to hop on every bandwagon brainstorm that’s descended from the clouds and towers where education experts dwell, and real students don’t.

Reformers accuse teachers like me of being stubborn and set in our ways, and I freely admit that I am. I stubbornly teach the liberal arts and sciences, even though they’re not trending on Facebook, and I’m set on maintaining a conventionally safe and civil classroom. Reformers are stubborn, too. They’ve stubbornly clung to their failed 1970s notions, from whole language and self-esteem to putting children in charge of their own educations. For 50 years, each time their ideas have proven bankrupt and achievement has declined, reformers have blamed the old ways that in many schools they’d all but eradicated, renamed their innovations, and presented themselves as recycled saviors. They zealously discard old truths, even as they cling to their “new” follies.

Periodically, advocates have challenged the new status quo under banners like “back to basics,” but they’ve never really displaced reformers at the helm of public education. On those rare occasions when they’ve gained ascendancy, their equally immoderate creatures, like No Child Left Behind, have frequently proven just as excessive and fruitless. NCLB’s cosmetically altered successor, the Every Child Succeeds Act, is the most recent example of the species of loudly hailed education “change” that changes little except the name at the top of the stationery.

Common sense requires we stop mocking and demonizing methods that have served well for centuries just because they’ve served well for centuries. Lecturing isn’t a tool of the devil. Sometimes it’s the best way to impart information and foster understanding. We can’t allow ourselves to be shamed out of embracing elements of the scholastic past that work. School reform can no longer mean repeating the reform failures that have devastated half a century.

Common sense requires you can’t educate people without teaching them things. During the reign of reform, in the name of “learning how to learn,” schools have increasingly offered an education devoid of content. Except, students learn how to acquire new knowledge and skills by acquiring new knowledge and skills. That means teaching them math and science and history. It doesn’t mean letting them decide what’s important. How can they decide if they don’t know anything?

The Encyclopedia Britannica always contained more information than any student could master. That didn’t excuse me from learning how to multiply or where Europe is. Boosters may tout this as the “Information Age,” but information and knowledge aren’t the same. Knowledge is information you understand and carry around as part of you. Access to a glut of web pages doesn’t make you knowledgeable.

Check back a century, when the 19th became the 20th, and you’ll find their world changed even more than ours. Some changes in our age entail adjustments in school programs, but we’ve too often used the brave, new millennium as an excuse to institute innovative regimes that suit our philosophical fancies more than they serve students’ real needs.

Common sense requires a realistic assessment of technology. I’m not proposing that students write on slates or only read words on paper. But computers can’t materially change the skill of reading and writing any more than ballpoint pens did when they replaced inkwells. Putting our trust in Google makes as much sense as counting on Bic to make America literate.

Common sense requires schools be allowed to focus on what they do well. Instead, we’ve turned classrooms into clinics dispensing social services, counseling and health care. Yes, healthy, well-adjusted children often learn better. Yes, there’s a role for government to play in providing resources to needy families. But the primary responsibility for raising physically and emotionally healthy children belongs to parents. Schools can’t replace families, and the more they try, the more they’re forced to divert time and resources from their academic mission.

Common sense requires teachers and communities make schools safe. “Empowering” children to “mediate” and maintain order when adults can’t constitutes an abdication of our responsibility. When upholding decency and order necessitates removing unruly students, we can’t shrink from that necessity. Advocates cite the societal cost when suspended children grow up without an education. We need instead to weigh the cost to their classmates and society when the antics of a disruptive few persistently deny an education to so many.

Common sense requires we stop making excuses for ourselves and our students. School needn’t be joyless, but learning isn’t easy or pain-free. Disciplining children isn’t pleasant. There is no wonder gadget or packaged program miracle.

“Resolution” comes from “resolute,” which means firmly determined, despite obstacles and hardships. Consulting common sense is only a first step in making schools right.

Resolving to heed the lessons it teaches us has to follow.

Peter Berger has taught English and history for 30 years. Poor Elijah would be pleased to answer letters addressed to him in care of the editor.