So, I’m not a particularly “crafty” person… but sometimes I try to do a little something.  I carefully wire ornaments into a wreath, or I try to do something new with my hair or my eye makeup.  Things are looking okay, but I keep messing with it, and adding to it… UNTIL…  I have added and done so much that all I have left it a hot mess, and I have to throw the project away, wash my hair, wipe off all the makeup, and start over again with a CLEAN SLATE.

The same thing has happened to education.  Do you remember the three R’s?  Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic?  That’s what schools were intended to teach.  We were intended to give the basics for education.  Yesterday, I had a conversation with a lovely woman who asked me “Do schools still teach students how to conjugate verbs and diagram sentences?  I found that so valuable, but it doesn’t seem that’s happening anymore.”  She is quite correct.  Did it become less important?  Of course not.  It’s just that there literally isn’t enough time in the day to do all of those things anymore.  The TEKS are a mile wide and an inch thick.  We are required to teach far too much in far too little time, so the “less important skills” like GRAMMAR go by the wayside.

So how did all of this happen?

Well, when we first started this whole public education thing, not everyone had to go.  Not only that, but they were able to STOP going whenever they were finished.  If students were going to plow the fields and milk the cows, they didn’t need to spend every day there.  Then, some “cook” somewhere said, “Well, our economy is changing.  We need to have ALL of our children in school all day, every day…”  It seemed like a good idea, and compulsory education was born.

Then, studies started showing that students who are involved in fine arts are better creative thinkers.  Students who are in music classes are actually better at math.  There’s a direct correlation.  And mothers are too busy in the workplace to teach students child rearing and cooking and sewing skills, so we need a class for that…  and computers are a big part of every day life, and we need a class for that.  And the three R’s were no longer enough… so we kept adding class after class after class piling on what schools should teach, so there was less time for those other things.

Then parents saw that schools weren’t teaching cursive anymore and said, ‘We need to put THAT back in,”  so that got shoved in somewhere.  “No multiplication tables?  Don’t be crazy!”  so that was shoved in there, too… and “My child is bullied.  We need to teach students about kindness.” So that became part of the educational code.  And so did bookkeeping and Latin roots and Blackjack strategy and everything else that some parent went to Congress with and said that schools  should be teaching, so we did all that.

Then people started to cry, “How do I know that my child is getting the same kind of education as every other student in the neighboring school district?  How do I know he will be prepared for life?”  so the mass testing came in so that we could check that the Blackjack strategists in Wyoming are just as talented as those in Florida.  And we made sure those tests were as “rigorous” as possible… and that students couldn’t graduate unless they knew exactly when to “hit me” or “stick.”

But some kids had more trouble doing all these tests than others, and a doctor came in and said “Well, it’s not your child’s fault ; he has <insert appropriate learning disorder here>. You need to tell the school.  They need to modify so that it’s fair for him.”  And then it turns out that every kid who has ever learned has some sort of “disorder” which causes him to process information differently, so there are hundreds of different legally required modifications/accommodations in every building, every single day… all leading up to their being able to take the same Blackjack test…

There is detailed paperwork for every single one of these things… Every thing you’re required to teach.  Every kid for whom you’re required to accommodate.  Every hoop you’re supposed to go through…So to make this happen, they add NEW programs that you’re supposed to follow step by step… RTI and Capturing Kids’ Hearts and Curriculum by Design… and they spend MILLIONS of dollars to add one more thing that you need to do.

And then you’re told that EVERY SINGLE STUDENT must graduate from high school.  And that EVERY SINGLE STUDENT, regardless of interest or ability level , must be “college ready” when s/he graduates… because whether or not a student wants to go… we have to make sure that s/he is “ready.”

So what happened… is a hot mess.  A project that started out with the best intentions has fallen apart so drastically that there really is no way to fix it anymore other than throwing it ALL away and starting over. We need to go back to basics.  We need to take the stigma away from apprenticeships and internships and “blue collar” work.  We need to expand the amount of time that we teach the foundation skills instead of worrying so much about HIGHER LEVEL THINKING.  We need to trust experts in their field that they know what they’re doing and stop honoring every squeaky wheel from the outside.

We need to start over.