education

Higher Education in the Crosshairs/at a Crossroad

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

Let me begin with an assertion that may upset some readers: Most American colleges and universities are glorified vocational institutions whose primary purpose is to prepare people for the work force. Most students understand this and go about ‘building a resumé’ that will earn them a good job.  This is, I think, a devil’s bargain for the vast majority of students.

It’s the rare college student who focuses on the challenge of ‘building a self,’ even though jobs come and go, and one’s inner self is your only sure companion for the rest of their lives.  And while some professors push their students toward personal discovery and intellectual growth, the primary drivers of higher education are jobs and careers: ”Learn to Earn.”

It has always been thus: Harvard, the country’s oldest college, was established in 1636 to train ministers, and Yale was founded in 1701 to serve the same purpose.  

That said, I think that colleges have an obligation to guide their students in directions that are likely to lead to gainful employment, and perhaps to “lives of significance” as well.  Teach ‘the Principles of Management,’ not ‘Stagecoach Maintenance.’   But also expand your students’ horizons and encourage their dreams.  

Universities cannot accurately predict the future or the future job market, and that can have awful consequences for their students.  I encountered this in 1969 when I was teaching English at Virginia State College, in Petersburg, Virginia.  Virginia State (now a university) was and is an HBCU, serving mostly first generation African American students, many of them from challenging economic circumstances.  A Virginia State education and diploma offered a huge opportunity, the chance to join the middle class.

Remember now, 1969 was the dawn of the computer age. You’ve seen photos of large main-frame computers and the armies of key punch operators who punched, collated and then fed cards into the machines. But even then savvy people knew change was coming.  It didn’t take long: The first personal computer was introduced in 1971, and three years later, 1974, the Altair-8800 became commercially available.

I was shocked to discover that some VSC officials were steering students into a major that essentially taught them to be key punch operators, and I learned that that particular major was the college’s most popular. Students were being told that good jobs would await them upon graduation, and they believed it.

Fast forward to 2025, and something similar is happening. While nobody is being taught how to key-punch, thousands of students majored in computer science and other math-related fields because they were told that good jobs would be theirs for the taking. Now they are discovering that to be false. 

The New York Times dug into this recently.  

“Growing up near Silicon Valley, Manasi Mishra remembers seeing tech executives on social media urging students to study computer programming.  

“The rhetoric was, if you just learned to code, work hard and get a computer science degree, you can get six figures for your starting salary,” Ms. Mishra, now 21, recalls hearing as she grew up in San Ramon, Calif.

Those golden industry promises helped spur Ms. Mishra to code her first website in elementary school, take advanced computing in high school and major in computer science in college. But after a year of hunting for tech jobs and internships, Ms. Mishra graduated from Purdue University in May without an offer.”

Many others are in her situation; they have degrees and debts, but no job.

How widespread is over-vocationalization, if such a word exists?  In a casual conversation a few weeks ago, a friend told me that his grandniece was majoring in “Golf Course Management” at one of the country’s best programs and that her course work included a summer internship at a nearby golf course.  “Do many colleges offer that major,” I asked?  Yes, he said, dozens do.

He’s right. A casual Google search turns up a surprising number that offer a major in Golf Course Management, Golf Tournament Management, and/or Turf Grass Management.  On the list: Penn State, Ohio State, the University of Nebraska, Florida State, the University of Colorado, the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore, New Mexico State, Western Kentucky University, Coastal Carolina University, Mississippi State University, Kansas State University, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and (her school) Eastern Kentucky University. 

A few more institutions, such as Michigan State University, offer a “certificate” after 4 semesters and 54 credits.  Sixteen of these programs are certified by the PGA, professional golf’s governing body. 

Internships are a crucial part of the training; one university insists on an 16-month internship, meaning that students are working away from their university for nearly a year and a half, while presumably paying tuition!

While running a golf course can pay more than $100,000 a year, are there job openings awaiting the 600-800 or so men and women who graduate each year?  The US has about 16,000 golf courses, but 75% of them are public courses, under management by a political entity.   There’s probably not a huge turnover in the public or private arena, which suggests that the vocational training that these men and women have paid for (and will continue to pay for) may not lead to jobs in the field they have immersed themselves in.

What do they do now? Are they prepared to switch careers, from one that didn’t want them to something else?  Has specialization done them wrong?

Colleges and universities have larger and more public problems than what I am describing: President Trump has them in his crosshairs, the supply of 18-year-olds is about to drop dramatically, and, on average, one college closes every week.  

However, I believe what you’ve just read gets at the root of the issue.  Higher education has embraced ‘learn and earn’ as its Golden Rule, with disastrous consequences, including isolation and polarization.  How many of those young people who majored in Golf Tournament Management also  took courses in philosophy or classical music, or computer science for that matter?  How many of those math and computer science majors branched out?  

American Higher Education is failing its students by allowing and encouraging specialization, instead of providing and requiring a broad curriculum, an experience that ‘builds a self,’ to again use Jacques Barzun’s memorable phrase.  

He’s worth quoting at length on the value of a broad liberal arts education.  Professor Barzun begins by asking why one should tackle the classics.

The answer is simple: in order to live in a wider world. Wider than what?  Wider than the one that comes through the routine of our material lives and through the paper and the factual magazines—Psychology Today, House and Garden, Sports Illustrated; wider also than friends’ and neighbors’ plans and gossip; wider especially than one’s business or profession. For nothing is more narrowing than one’s own shop, and it grows ever more so as one bends the mind and energies to succeed. This is particularly true today, when each profession has become a cluster of specialties continually subdividing. A lawyer is not a jurist, he is a tax lawyer, or a dab at trusts and estates. The work itself is a struggle with a mass of jargon, conventions, and numbers that have no meaning outside the specialty. The whole modern world moves among systems and abstractions superimposed on reality, a vast make-believe, though its results are real enough in one’s life if one does not know and follow these ever-shifting rules of the game. 

And then he addresses the consequences of living in the silo of one’s speciality:

The need for a body of common knowledge and common reference does not disappear when a society is pluralistic. On the contrary, it grows more necessary, so that people of different origins and occupations may quickly find familiar ground and, as we say, speak a common language. It not only saves time and embarrassment, but it also ensures a kind of mutual confidence and goodwill. One is not addressing a stone wall, but a responsive creature whose mind is filled with the same images, memories, and vocabulary as oneself. Otherwise, with the unstoppable march of specialization, the individual mind is doomed to solitude and the individual heart to drying up. The mechanical devices that supposedly bring us together—television and the press, the telephone and the computer network—do so on a level and in a manner that are anything but nourishing to the spirit. 

The message to students should be crystal clear: do not put yourself into a pigeonhole by specializing. Instead, take courses across the curriculum. Find out who the most interesting professors are and enroll in their classes.  Stretch, because you might discover parts of yourself that you didn’t know existed.   

And, remember, that job that you think you want, that job may not even exist three or four years from now.  Or less, as AI picks up speed.  Before you’re through, you may end up having a dozen or more jobs, and two or three careers.  

The way to prepare for change and uncertainty is to embrace them.

“The Play’s the Thing….”

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , , ,

Before I get to the point of this essay, I want to tell you a story that you may find interesting. Paul D. Schreiber High School is in Port Washington, New York, only 23 miles from Times Square, the beating heart of New York City. Like most public high schools in the 1960s, Schreiber was rigidly tracked, 1-5. Most of the kids in Tracks One and Two were clean cut and had last names like Wilshire and Braddock. They were destined for college and success, and so they got the most attention. Threes, the ‘average’ kids, were on track to become mechanics and hairdressers; many of their surnames ended with a vowel. As for the Fours and Fives, the system didn’t really care much about them, although a few teachers dedicated all their energy to getting them through high school.

I had expected to be teaching English in Kenya but failed the Peace Corps physical; out of desperation, I got the job at Schreiber. However, because I was an untrained rookie teacher just out of college, the system didn’t let me anywhere near the Ones and the Twos. Instead, they assigned me five classes of Threes and Fours, maybe 130 students in all. And when a young history teacher suggested that she and I combine our classes and team teach our 10th grade Fours for the second semester, the powers-that-be just shrugged and gave their approval.

Patty, who just happened to be tall, blonde, attractive, and full of energy, was in her second year of teaching. Anyway, because she and I now had 25 or 30 disinterested kids for a double period, about 90 minutes, every day, we needed something to hold their attention. I think I got the idea of having students write a play from The English Journal, one of the magazines I started reading when I realized I had no clue about teaching.

Patty liked the idea, and that was that. We didn’t have to ask permission or even inform our supervisors, because, after all, we were teaching Fours. We presented it to the kids as a challenge and an opportunity, and perhaps because I had taken my Fours to a Broadway play during the first semester, most were willing, even eager to try something different.

We told them about plot, character, story arc, scenes, and acts, but what I remember is the story they wanted to bring to life. At its center was a group of teenagers that no adults seemed to care about, students who went through the motions in school but who led full lives outside of school as members of a group (not a gang!) that took care of each other and also helped elderly neighbors by repairing their cars, etc etc. Rough-looking and tough-talking, these kids were misunderstood.

They were also scorned by the elite students in their school, largely ignored by teachers, and looked upon with suspicion and hostility by local merchants.

Art imitating life, you’re thinking? Yup.

So those were their characters. What was the plot? What would be the arc of the drama?

What I remember is that it involved shop-lifting. The owner of the neighborhood ‘five and dime’ store had accused a couple of the teenage ‘roughnecks’ of regularly stealing packs of cigarettes, and he banned them from the store. Their friends knew they were innocent, because they had seen two other kids, the football captain and the head cheerleader, taking the cigarettes, but they had to catch them in the act.

Our students were on fire, and we would spend class time trying out lines, acting out scenes. We tried to convince them to introduce some complexity into the plot, so the ‘bad guys’ weren’t all bad, the ‘good guys’ not entirely good. Shouldn’t there be some sympathy for the store owner, who was losing money every day, for example, even though he was lashing out at the wrong kids? I don’t know if we were successful at that, but I remember that I had the kids doing a lot of writing and rewriting, not just of the play itself but also about the process of creating a play, what they were learning about that.

Soon the students were pushing to stage their play, not just in our classroom but on the school’s stage! Word had gotten out that Miss Ecker and Mr. Merrow’s class was doing something cool, and eventually the Principal gave his OK.

That brought a whole new level of energy, because it meant creating and building sets, finding costumes, and rehearsing after school. It meant significant responsibilities for a lot more students, not just acting and directing but also set design and construction, lighting, etc etc. Suddenly these Fours had real status in the halls of Schreiber.

We–they–put on the play, maybe two or three performances, and it was a hit. Students loved it, and some of the parents were overjoyed to see their children succeeding. In the eyes of other Threes, Fours, and Fives, our kids mattered. They were now achievers, a status they had never attained–and perhaps had never had the chance to attain. How the school’s elite students, the Ones and the Twos, felt, I don’t remember, but that didn’t matter.

What I realized only later is that Patty and I had inadvertently and accidentally invited our students to become producers; we’d given them permission to seemingly take control over their own learning.

I say ‘seemingly’ because she and I, their teachers, still held the reins, albeit loosely. It was our responsibility to see that they became capable writers, learned some history of theatre, learned to work together, to fail and try again, and so on, but we were using their energy and curiosity to make it happen.

Generally speaking, school back then, even for the Ones and the Twos, required Consumption, not Production. Students absorbed and regurgitated information, but we had invited our kids to become Producers, and not just of a play that allowed them to work out their resentments. They produced real knowledge, and they went forward knowing that they had achieved something significant.

That opportunity can and should be extended to all students, as often as possible.

The next year I invited/challenged my Threes to put MacBeth and Lady MacBeth on trial for First Degree Murder, and they jumped at that chance. We had defense and prosecuting attorneys, a judge (the Principal!), and lots of witnesses like Banquo’s Ghost and MacDuff. The only down side was there weren’t enough parts, so a handful of students had to be jurors. If any teachers reading this decide to do it, I recommend that those ‘extra’ students be reporters, assigned to produce a news report at the end of each trial day. Talk about learning opportunities!

I tell you that story because I am concerned about what’s going to happen–or not happen–because cellphones use is being restricted or banned entirely in so many schools.

Simply put, banning is the right thing to do, but if that’s all schools do, it’s going to be a disaster. That’s the negative step: “NO YOU CAN’T DO THAT.” But have the adults given serious thought about what new opportunities they’re going to offer students?

That’s why this essay is entitled “The Play’s The Thing….” Just as Shakespeare used the staging of a play to ‘catch the conscience of the King’ who had murdered Hamlet’s father, schools could use drama, music, and other creative arts to catch and engage the creative energy that kids bring to school, lest it turn negative and destructive.

As I write this, about half of all US states, and thousands of school districts and individual schools have banned or severely restricted the use of cellphones, and that number seems certain to increase. This is a good thing, a necessary but hardly sufficient step forward. In addition to banning cellphones, schools must provide stimulating opportunities and experiences; they must bring back theatre, art, music, and other ‘extra-curricular’ activities that all but disappeared when George W. Bush’s disastrous “No Child Left Behind” bill became law in 2001.

First, here’s why a complete ban makes sense:

  1. Nearly all teenagers–95%–are on social media like TikTok, WhatsApp and their counterparts. One-third of teens admit to using social media “almost constantly.”
  2. Social media is damaging our kids, according to the U.S. Surgeon General: “The types of use and content children and adolescents are exposed to pose mental health concerns. Children and adolescents who spend more than 3 hours a day on social media face double the risk of mental health problems including experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety. This is concerning as a recent survey showed that teenagers spend an average of 3.5 hours a day on social media. And when asked about the impact of social media on their body image, 46% of adolescents aged 13-17 said social media makes them feel worse.” A ‘national mental health emergency’ for children and adolescents was declared by the American Academy of Pediatrics back in 2021. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that “In 2021 and 2022, 21% of adolescents reported experiencing symptoms of anxiety in the past two weeks and 17% reported experiencing symptoms of depression.” Undoubtedly, matters have only gotten worse, as teens’ use of social media has increased.

Unrestrained use of social media damages children in many ways:

  • Social media exposes young people to “extreme, inappropriate content.”
  • Social media makes them–especially adolescent girls–feel bad about their bodies.
  • Social media is a haven for predators. Nearly 6 in 10 girls say they’ve been contacted by strangers online “in ways that make them feel uncomfortable.”
  • Social media can overstimulate the brains in ways similar to addiction, leading to problems sleeping and difficulty paying attention.
  • Time on social media is time that is NOT spent with peers, developing relationships, learning about life’s give-and-take, what Erik Erikson calls ‘identity formation.’
  1. Teenagers access social media on their cellphones, and 95% of teenagers have their own cellphone. These ubiquitous devices are their portal, their entry point, their lifeline to social media. Without cellphones, teenagers have extremely limited access to social media. Cellphones, which are ubiquitous, are the lifeline and portal to social media.

(It’s not just teens, of course. According to the National Institutes of Health, “Mobile phone adoption in the United States is starting in late childhood and early adolescence; currently, 53% of children have a smartphone by age 11.”)

Without cellphones, teenagers won’t be taking 100 or more selfies to get the ‘perfect’ photo to post. They won’t be making 10-second videos for TikTok or spending hours watching cats being cute. If they aren’t on social media, the thinking goes, they will be more social. If they aren’t communicating with a machine, they will engage in genuine personal communication.

Banning phones is necessary, but it is not sufficient, not even close. What are adults offering in exchange? What’s the rest of this bargain? Without some other steps, some quid pro quo, this will be perceived by most teens as heavy-handed and punitive, something being done to them against their will, something that makes school even less appealing.

Of course many kids see the ban as punitive, and why wouldn’t they? When adults try to reassure them by saying, “Trust us. This is for your own good,” that only confirms their suspicions. This is being done to them–and so they are going to devote a lot of energy to beating the ban.

Unfortunately, schools and the adults who run them are too often reactive, when thoughtful proactive behavior is called for. Instead of simply banning phones, the adults ought to be trying to get young people to want to come to school regularly, not simply ‘to attend school.’ To do that, schools (with or without cellphones) need to be interesting, challenging, and safe.

Here are four specific steps that should, I believe, accompany the cellphone ban:

1) Restore the full range of extra-curricular opportunities–because most kids come to school so they can do interesting stuff with their friends! Invite them to write and perform their own plays, as Patty and I did back in school year 1965-66. While schools today aren’t officially tracked, most students know whether they are unofficial Threes or Fours. That energy can be tapped into, for good.

Oskar Eustis, the theatrical director of New York City’s Public Theatre, believes that participating in theatre brings kids together and teaches all the skills and virtues we hope all children will acquire: teamwork, self-discipline, compassion, courage, a strong sense of their own worthiness, and more.

As I related at the top of this essay, I can attest to that.

2) Homeroom could become an extended period, not just a quick five minutes when attendance is taken. Make daily homeroom a pressure-free time when students–without phones to distract them–can catch up with friends, forge new relationships, finish homework, or even take naps. “Home” is the operative word here. For most high school and middle school students, “Homeroom” is the equivalent of the starting blocks in a track meet. They touch base, listen to (or maybe ignore) morning announcements, and, when the bell sounds, dash off to class. In truth, “Homeroom” matters to school administrators only because it gives them a head count, but it’s a meaningless perfunctory exercise for kids. For them, “Homeroom” is just a room, about as far from actually being a home as one can imagine.

That could change. America’s teenagers desperately need more “Home” in their lives, more opportunities to connect with others, more moments that tell them they matter. The rigidity of today’s high-pressure school schedules makes matters worse, not better.

The simple—not easy, but simple–fix is to make “Homeroom” more of a HOME, not just another room. Some teachers will have to be convinced that this new time period is an opportunity for them to expand their own professional repertoire of skills to include their students’ social and emotional growth. The challenge may be to train teachers to listen and not react, in order to allow young people to identify and share their feelings. NewsWeek magazine reports that Tacoma, Washington, schools are doing this, training not only teachers but also parents and school bus drivers.

In each of these new extended Homerooms, teachers and their students will have to work together to figure out how they want to use this time. Some students may want to finish homework, or sleep, but the teacher could steer the conversation in the direction of “team building.”

Perhaps one day a week could be set aside for discussion of some interesting questions (“If you could meet one figure from history, who would it be, and why?”), even trivial ones (“What questions would you like to ask Taylor Swift?”).

Ideally “Homeroom” will turn into a safe space where students can learn to share and will agree that what’s shared there stays there. No bullying allowed.

3) Expand course offerings to include some college classes and vocational training opportunities. Meet kids where they are, not where you think they should be.

4) Work harder to make schools safe in three vital ways: physically, emotionally, and intellectually.  Emotional safety means that bullying and cyber-bullying are not tolerated. Intellectually safe schools celebrate curiosity and honor academic achievement. In these schools, adults encourage students to admit when they do not understand or are confused, often by modeling that behavior. Intellectually safe schools don’t treat kids as numbers but as growing and changing individuals. (And young people who are treated with respect are unlikely to bring their dad’s semi-automatic rifle to school.)

Without cellphones as a crutch and given a more stimulating environment, most young people will be inclined to engage with each other. With adult guidance, they can explore new ideas, share curiosities, make plans, and so forth. They can learn that there is life without cellphones.

Removing cellphones creates new opportunities and challenges, but that won’t happen if adults simply enforce the ban. That is, banning cellphones in school is NECESSARY but not SUFFICIENT.

It’s time for the grownups to grow up and step up!

(POSTSCRIPT: Miss Ecker was a marvelous teacher who cared deeply about her students. I left Schreiber High School after two years and lost track of Patty. However, about 12 or 13 years later I was in Los Angeles reporting for NPR and happened to turn on my hotel room’s TV–and there she was, an anchor for a local station! We had a cup of coffee and a pleasant reunion. A few years later she married a colleague, Joe Benti, and later gave birth to twins.)

HOW TO DEFEAT TRUMP

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

Donald Trump has inadvertently handed anguished Democrats, angry Independents, and disappointed Republicans the key to defeating MAGA and taking control of the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate in the 2026 Midterm elections.  

While I hope you will keep reading, here’s the key: support public schools (and other public institutions as well).

 About 6 weeks ago, Trump ordered his Education Department to withhold nearly $7 billion in funds for public schools, money that had been appropriated by Congress.  

The outcry was immediate, loud, and non-partisan.  Republicans made just as much noise, maybe more, than their Democratic counterparts.   And it worked!  Three weeks later, the Education Department announced it was releasing the funds.

As the savvy education reporter Jennifer Berkshire noted, “And just like that, the Trump Administration has released the billions in funds for public schools it had suddenly, and illegally, frozen earlier this summer. The administration’s trademark combo of chaos and cruelty has been stemmed, at least temporarily. That Trump caved on this is notable in part because his hand was forced by his own party—the first time this has happened in the endless six months since his second term began.”

There is, as Berkshire notes, a ‘cross-class alliance’ that supports public schools, which close to 90% of students attend, in Red, Blue, and Purple states.  Republicans in Congress eagerly push vouchers (chits to allow students to attend private schools), but those efforts have been soundly defeated in state legislatures for years.  The best example is Kentucky, a deeply Red state whose voters last November soundly rejected a voucher proposal, 64.8% to 35.2%.  

Another savvy analyst, David Pepper, has been watching, and his insights are worth your while.  Here’s a sample:  “10 GOP Senators stood up to the administration’s freezing of $6 billion funds for public school programs across the country. Yes, GOP politicians who are silent on almost everything were willing to call out the freeze, which was crippling public schools every day it lasted, and demand it be ended.

They actually defended the programs in a public letter: ‘This funding goes directly to state and local districts, where local leaders decide how the funding is spent, because as we know, local communities know how to best serve students and families…These funds go to support programs that enjoy longstanding, bipartisan support like after-school and summer programs that provide learning and enrichment opportunities for school aged children which also enables their parents to work and contribute to local economies. …. Withholding these funds will harm students, families and local economies.”

Too many Democrats seem to be running against Trump and his assaults on our democracy. Too much energy is being wasted examining the plusses and minuses of potential Presidential candidates like Andy Beshear, J.B. Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer, Jamie Raskin, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, Pete Buttigieg, and Reuben Gallego. 

The first priority has to be articulating its First Principles, and I suggest that the first of these should be THE PUBLIC GOOD: That means strong support for all things public:  public education, public libraries, public transportation, public parks, public health, public safety, public spaces, and public broadcasting.  Democrats must be the party of the Common Good.

But a second pillar must be Individual Rights.  Because the fundamental rights that are guaranteed in our Constitution are often subject to interpretation, debate, and even violent disagreement, Democrats must be clear.  Free speech, freedom of worship, habeas corpus, and other fundamental rights are not up for debate, and nor is a woman’s right to control her own body.  

Health care is a right, and Democrats must make that a reality.  

Conflict is inevitable–think vaccination requirements–and Democrats should come down on the side of the public good.  

Because Americans have a right to safety, Democrats should endorse strong gun control measures that ban assault weapons that have only one purpose–mass killing. 

We can and should argue about other First Principles, but Democrats must take control of Congress and begin the arduous tasks of stopping Trump and rebuilding America.  While the Trump regime continues to be a disaster for a majority of Americans and for our standing across the world, it’s not enough to condemn his greed and narcissism, even if he goes to prison.  Let’s first acknowledge that Trump tapped into serious resentment among millions of Americans, which further divided our already divided country.  

The challenge is to work to bring us together, to make ‘one out of many’ in the always elusive ‘more perfect union.’  The essential first step is to abandon the ‘identity politics’ that Democrats have practiced for too long.  Instead, Democrats must support policies that bring us together.  Here are five suggestions:

1) Adopt sensible and realistic immigration policies that welcome newcomers who arrive legally but close our borders to illegal immigration. 

2) Adopt fiscal and monetary policies to address our burgeoning national debt. This should include higher taxes on the wealthy, emulating Dwight Eisenhower. 

3) Rebuilding America also means rebuilding our alliances around the world.  Democrats should support NATO and Ukraine, and rejoin efforts to combat climate change. 

4) Urge states and local school districts to beef up civic education in public schools, teaching real history, asking tough questions.  At the same time, federal education policies should encourage Community schools, because research proves that schools that welcome families are more successful across many measures. 

5) Bring back the draft for young men and women and offer a deal to those who volunteer for two years of (paid) National Service. In return, they get two years of tuition or training credits at an accredited institution.  They may serve in the military, Americorps, the Peace Corps, or other helping organizations.  One may teach or work in distressed communities, or rebuild our national parks, or serve in other approved capacities.  JFK famously said “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”  Let’s ask BOTH questions.    (Perhaps National Service should be mandatory, but that’s a long row to hoe, and we should begin with a voluntary program.)

But the key to defeating Trump and saving our democratic republic from his vainglorious and petty fascism is support for public education and other vital public enterprises.  

PROJECT 2029?

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

Anybody else out there feeling depressed about what’s happening in our country? Frightened? Angry? All of the above? 

Well, join the crowd!

Although the fire hose of disturbing news can be overwhelming, panic and despair cannot be options, not on Memorial Day and not ever.  The smart people I’m listening to suggest at least three courses of action: 1) Support the ACLU and others who are fighting Trump in the courts; 

2) Focus on taking back the House, and perhaps even the Senate in 2026; and

3) Help figure out what Democrats stand for, rather than playing the parlor game of arguing about the strengths and weaknesses of Gretchen Whitmer, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, JB Pritzker, and others.  Parlor games and being against Trumpism aren’t enough; it wasn’t enough in 2016 or 2024, and it won’t be enough in 2026 and 2028 either.

#3, Figuring out what Democrats and the Democratic Party stand for could lead to ‘Project 2029,’ which should be the opposite of ‘Project 2025,’ the GOP’s blueprint for dismantling much of the federal government.  In sharp contrast, ‘Project 2029’ has to be forward-looking and positive, even as it seeks to undo the damage Trump has done and is doing.

So….what should be in Project 2029?  For openers, I would argue that Democrats should support almost anything that has the word ‘public’ in its name: public libraries, public parks, public schools, public transportation.

AND: Bring back the draft…for men and women….to require two years of universal National Service. This could be compensated service in a branch of the military, the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, a state’s Civilian Conservation Corps, or other similar organizations.  And this time National Service includes an additional reward: Two years of tuition or training credits, at an accredited institution.  JFK famously said “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”  Let’s ask BOTH questions.

ALSO:

A) Fiscal and monetary policies that help people buy their first home;

B) Higher taxes on the wealthy, a ban on trading by Congress, and other reforms of the tax code;

C) Community schools, not just stronger public schools.  These schools welcome parents and take full advantage of whatever the community has to offer. 

(And while we are at it, let’s make it harder to become a teacher but easier to be one. Higher entry standards and better training, and then more trust and better pay);

D) Rebuild our aging infrastructure;

E) Aggressively combat climate change;

F) Resist autocrats and support NATO and Ukraine;

G) Health care is a right. Make that a fact as well.

That’s my two cents. What would you add or subtract?

NECESSARY, BUT HARDLY SUFFICIENT

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

Banning cellphones in public schools seems to finally be happening in lots of states and school districts, but, unfortunately, the numbers are slippery. One source reports that, as of January 17th, 8 states had passed either bans or restrictions on cellphone use in schools, and another 15 states were considering legislation.  The newspaper Education Week, using a slightly different metric, reports that at least 19 states have laws or policies that ban or restrict use OR recommend that local districts enact their own bans.   Meanwhile, the federal government’s National Center on Education Statistics reports that in 2022 at least 77% of schools had “some sort” of ban in place–whatever that may mean!

The US has over 14,000 public school districts, with about 96,000 schools. We have another 20,000 private schools.  How many actually ban cellphones? No one knows, unfortunately. However, the evidence against cellphones in schools is mounting.  The New York Times covered the issue of violence in detail in December.  

Across the United States, technology centered on cellphones — in the form of text messages, videos and social media — has increasingly fueled and sometimes intensified campus brawls, disrupting schools and derailing learning. The school fight videos then often spark new cycles of student cyberbullying, verbal aggression and violence.

A New York Times review of more than 400 fight videos from schools in California, Georgia, Texas and a dozen other states — as well as interviews with three dozen school leaders, teachers, police officers, pupils, parents and researchers — found a pattern of middle and high school students exploiting phones and social media to arrange, provoke, capture and spread footage of brutal beatings among their peers. In several cases, students later died from the injuries.

That cellphones are damaging the mental health of our children is beyond dispute. As the Columbia University School of Psychiatry reported: 

Smartphones have transformed the way we communicate, learn, and entertain ourselves. However, their omnipresence can lead to compulsive use and a sense of dependency. The constant stream of notifications and updates can create a sense of urgency and a fear of missing out, leading to increased anxiety and stress. Furthermore, the excessive use of smartphones can interfere with sleep, which is crucial for mental health.

Social media platforms, while enabling us to connect with others and share experiences, can also contribute to feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem. The tendency to compare oneself with others and the desire for validation through likes and comments can lead to a distorted self-image and feelings of worthlessness.

Moreover, studies have shown a correlation between heavy social media use and depression, anxiety, loneliness, and suicidal ideation.

What changes when cellphones are banned?  As far as I know, the evidence is anecdotal;  here’s a typical story, this one from The American Prospect:  “One Minnesota school discovered, as do many schools with similar policies, that teachers and principals notice positive developments in student behavior. And even students, when prodded, agree that taking cellphones out of the school-day equation has made them more productive, social, and happier overall.


Reliable data doesn’t exist in part because “ban” means one thing here, another there.  Some schools require students to deposit their phones whenever they enter a classroom but allow usage in the halls and lunchrooms.  Others rely on the honor system, and some have full-fledged bans that do not allow cellephones inside school buildings.

Banning cellphones is, in my view, necessary but hardly sufficient.  In fact, it may turn out to be counterproductive unless we change our approach to teaching.  What’s essential are new approaches to instruction that give students more reasons to engage in learning.  

Let me give you one example of teaching differently, a 5th Grade class that is studying US geography.  In normal times, the teacher might hold the students responsible for knowing all 50 state capitals, and perhaps their major cities, rivers, and industries.  That’s largely rote memorization, the ‘drill and kill’ that turns off so many students.

Rote memorization makes no sense at all, because every kid knows that the information is readily available on their cellphones, with a few keystrokes. (The teachers know it too!)

Instead, let’s imagine the teacher saying, “Well, there are 25 students and 50 states, so each of you is responsible for two states.  Let’s figure out how to assign them.  Anybody have a favorite state, perhaps one your grandparents might have lived in, or one you’ve always wanted to visit?”

Once the states are assigned, the teacher might say, “Now what I want you to do is find out–using your cellphone for research, if you wish–the capitals of your two states, why it was chosen as the capital, whether the state has had more than one capital over the years, and so on.  Whatever seems interesting, write it down, learn as much as you can, and be prepared to share what you’ve learned with the rest of us.”

“One of you is going to discover that one of your states has had EIGHT capitals over the years.  A couple of other states–including one of the smallest–have had at least SIX.  Maybe you will be able to tell us why they changed capitals. Was it money, religion, the environment, or what?  Have fun digging.”

“Maybe you can also try to figure out how the capital cities got their names.  For example, the capital of Ohio is Columbus.  How did that happen? Columbus came never within a thousand miles of what’s now Columbus, so why is the capital city named after him?  And, while you’re digging into that, check to see whether other cities are named after Columbus, and when they were named.”

“What I want you to be, kids, is curious.  You have a world of information on those phones you carry, but let’s never forget that information and knowledge are not necessarily the same thing.”

What’s happening here, in the age of cellphone bans, is actually revolutionary, because the students are in the business of creating knowledge, knowledge that they will own and share with others.  

That beats texting and TikTok any day….

Democrats Didn’t Lose the November Election in November…..

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

Some pundits are blaming Kamala Harris for not doing this or that, and others are blaming Joe Biden for not dropping out earlier, but I am convinced that Democrats lost the Presidential election long before November 5, 2024.  Here are three possible dates that help explain Trump’s victory:  August 24, 2022; December 22, 2020; and July 24, 2009. They represent bad policies and missed opportunities, all of which came back to hurt Kamala Harris.

August 24, 2022 is the day Biden announced that his Administration intended to forgive the debts that hundreds of thousands of (mostly) young people owed to the federal government, loans they had taken out to pay for their college education.  Low income debtors could have as much as $20,000 forgiven; others, $10,000.  The Supreme Court intervened and overturned his original plan, but he persisted. And as Election Day neared, he and Vice President Kamala Harris took pains to remind everyone that his Administration had forgiven about $175 Billion in government loans for about 5 million people. 

But I want to go back to that day in August, 2022.  When we heard the news that morning, my wife’s immediate reaction was ‘Bad move.’  Why, I asked?  Because, she said, this is going anger the millions of people who worked hard to pay off their loans, and it’s also going to alienate people who never got the chance to go to college.  

I think she was correct.  I’m guessing the vast majority of those 5 million who benefited from Biden’s move would have voted for a Democrat anyway. He didn’t need to give them preferential treatment, but what about the nearly 40 million adults under the age of 65 who have some college credits but no degree?  And the millions more who borrowed money and paid it back–or who may still be paying those loans off?   Or voters whose gut instinct is to treat everyone fairly?

It’s bad politics to clinch the votes of 5 million people while alienating 50 million or more voters. And it’s also bad public policy to divide an already divided nation.

But Democrats may have lost the 2024 election even earlier, on December 22, 2020 even before Joe Biden was sworn in: That’s the day that President-elect Biden announced his selection of 45-year-old Miguel Cardona to be his Secretary of Education.  On paper, Dr. Cardona sounded perfect, with his inspiring rags-to-riches, “up from bootstraps” story. Dr. Cardona, who was raised in a housing project in Meriden, Connecticut, entered kindergarten speaking only Spanish.  He went through the city’s public schools and earned a college degree before returning to work as a fourth-grade teacher in the district in 1998, rising to principal, then assistant district superintendent and State Superintendent.   Along the way he earned his doctorate, as well as praise for handling the Covid pandemic.  This was, it seemed, The American Dream of social mobility writ large, but it turned out instead to be a missed opportunity to chart a new course for public education to recognize the gifts and interests of all children (and not just their test scores).

The central point of Dr. Cardona’s story is not his remarkable rise but its exceptionality, because, unfortunately, most of our public schools have become rubber stamps for the social, educational, and financial status of the parents.  Schools are much more likely to be barriers, not gateways.  Sure, most schools do a decent job of educating most children, but it’s as rare as snow in July for a child to do what Dr. Cardona did: climb the ladder.  

Social mobility–the idea that anyone who is willing to work can make it–is central to the American story. If social mobility is just a myth,  if children are born into what amounts to a caste system, then the American experiment is doomed.  

Assuming he’s aware of the petrification of the public schools, Dr. Cardona had the opportunity to tell us how embarrassingly and tragically infrequent it is for someone to do what he had done. He could have used the Bully Pulpit of his office to lobby for policies and programs to bring about change.  Unfortunately, he did none of these things.

Which meant that the rigidity and calcification remained, perhaps increased, on his watch.  And the palpable resentment of so many ‘forgotten Americans’ increased, making it more likely that they would vote the incumbents out, first chance they got.

Which they did on November 5th.

Now let’s go back to July 24, 2009.  How can anything that happened more than 15 years before an election determine its outcome, you may be wondering.  Well, that’s when Education Secretary Arne Duncan, armed with $4.35 billion, came to a fork in the road–and quite deliberately took the one that led to more frequent high stakes multiple choice testing, more (largely unregulated) charter schools, the fiasco known as The Common Core, and–eventually–an exodus of teachers, parents, and children from the public schools, as well as a significant backlash against any and all federal involvement in public schools.  

But just as significant–just as tragic–is what the Obama Administration could have done with that unprecedented opportunity.  America was in the throes of ‘The Great Recession,’ the hangover from the Administration of George W. Bush, and Congress had given Secretary Duncan more discretionary money than all previous Education Secretaries combined!  

School districts, desperate for dollars, were willing to do whatever Duncan wanted. He could have “encouraged” (i.e., mandated) 1) all-day kindergarten and pre-school; 2) more art, music and physical education (slashed during Bush’s “No Child Left Behind”); 3) more apprenticeships and vocational-technical education for the roughly 50% of students not interested in attending college; and 4) more opportunities for ambitious high school students to take college classes .  

Instead, he sided with the technocrats and embraced test-based accountability, making it harder for good teachers to do their jobs, and making schools less interesting places for children and adults.

Good public policy ought to bring us together, not just right wrongs or settle grievances.  If Democrats want to win more elections in the future, they must figure out how to welcome disaffected and angry voters into their tent. Unfortunately, too often public policies are treated as a ‘zero sum game’ with winners and losers–like the inmates and guards in a federal prison in Virginia, where I taught English in the late 1960’s. 

What I remember most vividly about teaching in prison are intelligent students, determined to keep their minds active, and angry guards, who were furious that ‘common criminals’ were getting the chance to go to college, while they were being left behind.  A few guards did their best to sabotage the program, with some success.  

At the time it didn’t occur to me that my class could have easily been open to guards and inmates. However, years later, when I learned that the Ford Foundation was funding 30 or 40 prison education programs, I urged the program officer, whom I knew personally, to see that at least a few of these experiments were equal opportunity ‘dual enrollment’ programs for inmates and guards alike.  Why not see if that approach–studying together–could bridge the divide between inmates and correctional officers, since nothing else seemed to be working?

My plea was ignored, but I would bet you just about anything that these programs, however deserving they are for giving some people a second or third chance, also created lots of resentment. Resentment  may be an unintended consequence, but it is  also predictable…and avoidable.  In other words, inmate-only prison education as currently practiced is arguably dubious and perhaps even bad public policy, the equivalent of Biden’s loan forgiveness programs.  Both exacerbate the divide, even as they help a chosen few.  

That approach loses elections.

Many Americans know that something’s not working the way it’s supposed to.  Some citizens are losing faith in public schools (and in other public institutions as well). Today’s Republicans act as though education does not have a public purpose. However, it most certainly does, because some of the kids in middle schools anywhere in the United States now may one day be the physician’s assistant monitoring your IV drip, the EMT trying to resuscitate your spouse, the mechanic maintaining the jet you’re flying on, or the fuel company worker seeking to contain that gas leak in your neighborhood.  In other words, it’s in your interest to see that as many children as possible reach their potential.

The new Trump administration seems to be intent on burning bridges. This will create opportunities for Democrats to build bridges.  It’s not ‘us versus them,’ because quite a few of those ‘them’ folks are a lot like us.  

Enough of the hand-wringing about Harris’s campaign, or Biden’s late withdrawal.  That’s not why she lost.  Think about the policies (and attitudes) that need to change, in order to bring us together.  Perhaps it’s national service, more civic education, more apprenticeship opportunities, or fairer tax policies.  Let’s figure out how to work together.

“Make America HATE Again”

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity

W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

Are ‘the best’ and ‘the worst’ of Yeats’s poem groups of people, or is he referring to the human condition, the internal struggle that each of us wages daily between our better angels and our lesser impulses and temptations, between good and evil? The latter reading fits the current presidential race: Democrat Kamala Harris’s platform stresses joy and positivity, while Republican Donald J. Trump has been stirring up negative passions among his supporters. And while those red hats do not say “Make America Hate Again,” they might as well, because the former president and his enablers have made it perfectly acceptable to wallow in bigotry, hatred, threats of violence, and–far too often–violence.

Don’t dismiss Trump as a clown, riffing and rambling and ranting in his interminably long rallies.  His off-the-cuff references to sharks, windmills, and Arnold Palmer’s genitalia may amuse his passionate followers, but this ‘bread and circuses’ approach should not be allowed to obscure what’s really going on, “laughing into fascism.”

November 5th–the most significant election of our lifetimes and perhaps in our nation’s history–is around the corner, and one candidate represents a clear and present danger to America and the world.

Early in October the New York Times printed a special section, “30 Days Until the Election,” to contrast and compare the views of Harris and Trump on major issues.  “Here’s what you need to know,” the Times’s subhead declared. Because I spent 41 years reporting on public education, I was disappointed to find not one word about education or schools. 

In fact, the two platforms’ positions on education could not be more different.  Project 2025, the real GOP platform, calls for the virtual abolition of public education.  Schooling becomes a private family matter, flipping centuries of tradition out the window.  More precisely, that would mean vouchers and what are known as ‘Education Savings Accounts.’  An ESA means that parents can direct their share of education funding to a private school or whatever entity the family is using to educate their children–including themselves.  Homeschooling your children?  Keep the money and spend it as you see fit to ‘educate’ your children, including trips to Disneyland and athletic equipment!  

The Democratic party still believes in what the former Republican party once believed in: Free public education with a common purpose:  to give all children the opportunity to acquire the knowledge, skills,  and tools they need to thrive as individuals and as citizens of our democracy. In short, Democrats believe in the importance of community.   Project 2025 would abolish the U.S. Department of Education completely, while the Democrats would emphasize the federal responsibility for ensuring that all children–particularly those from low income families, those with handicapping conditions, the homeless, and those whose first language is not English–are treated equitably.  Basically, Democrats believe that all kids should have access to the resources they need, regardless of which state they live in and their family, racial, or religious status.   Project 2025 would end any federal oversight and protection.  

I don’t mean to whitewash the record here, because Democrats in Washington have done as much damage to public schools as Republicans in recent years.  Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top” was just as destructive as George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind.”  But it seems likely that having a former high school teacher as Vice President will bring some common sense to Washington and end the federal overreach that characterized those two Administrations.

W. B. Yeats’s magnificent poem, “The Second Coming,” is painfully relevant today, because our center has not been holding, and that rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem is an unqualified, self-absorbed would-be dictator and convicted felon with clearly diminished capabilities.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

When Yeats composed ‘The Second Coming,’ the world was in turmoil, ravaged by World War I and a flu pandemic that killed 18,000,000 people. Does that sound eerily familiar?  When we cast our ballots, will our ‘better angels’ win out over our selfish and negative impulses? Do the best of us lack all conviction, while the worst of us are full of passionate intensity?  

We will find out on November 5th.

BEWARE ‘THE SCIENCE OF READING’

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

“The Science of Reading” is a real thing, so real that it’s required by law in schools in 40 states and the District of Columbia.  They have been ordered by politicians to adopt what is known as the “Science of Reading,” which mandates ‘evidence-based’ reading instruction, often in the hopes that test scores will improve. (The three states I have lived in in recent years–Massachusetts, New York, and California–have resisted the pressure to jump on this bandwagon, I’m happy to say.)

While this bandwagon has been picking up steam, something unfortunate has been happening: Our kids are reading for pleasure less and less.  For example, only 17 percent of 13-year-olds say they read almost daily for fun, compared to 27 percent in 2012 and 35 percent in 1984. That’s a huge dropoff. 

While we know that correlation is not necessarily causation, could those two developments be connected?  

Let’s start with ‘The Science of Reading.”  Here’s how the newspaper Education Week explains it (with my emphasis added to some words I want you to pay special attention to):  “In a science of reading framework, teachers start by teaching beginning readers the foundations of language in a structured progression—like how individual letters represent sounds, and how those sounds combine to make words. 

That’s Phonics, sounding out words.  In other words, schools and teachers are required by law to teach kids that letters make sounds and, by implication, that they can trust those sounds….

Makes sense, if reading is in fact a science…..

Hold on for a minute, please!  Very often we cannot trust the sounds,  because our language, English, is about as unreliable and unpredictable as possible.  It breaks its own rules willy-nilly.  

My personal favorite example is these three words, which I ask you to say out loud:  Anger, Danger, Hanger.  By the rules of Phonics and the ‘science of reading,’ those three words should rhyme……

Here’s another demonstration of our English language’s weirdness and irregularity, based on a comic routine I found on YouTube a few days ago.

Say this word aloud: EAR

By the rules of Phonics, this word, BEAR, should rhyme with EAR….but it doesn’t

Now that you have learned to pronounce BEAR, it stands to reason that adding a D, making BEARD, will produce a word that is pronounced BARED.  But it’s not; it’s pronounced BEERD.

Back to the rules: EAR and HEAR rhyme, as they should, but HEARD isn’t pronounced HERE-D; instead, it’s pronounced HERD.

And if we add a T to HEAR to make HEART, we don’t get HERE-T.  No, it’s HART.

Back to hard core phonics:  By its rules,  DEAR, FEAR, HEAR, GEAR, and PEAR should rhyme….and they do, with one important exception. Let’s talk about the exception.  What if we add an L to PEAR, to make PEARL.  It should be pronounced PAIR-L, but of course it’s not.  It’s PURR-L.

I wrote about two competing approaches to teaching reading, Phonics and Whole Language (which includes teaching students to recognize some words, not just sound them out), back in January.  You can find that piece here, but below you will find my description of  how one first grade teacher gets her students interested in reading:  

That First Grade teacher often takes pages out of the Whole Language playbook to talk about words that don’t follow the rules of Phonics.  

One day she writes these sentences on the blackboard: COME HERE!  WHERE ARE THE MACHINES?

“OK, kids. On your toes now, because only one of these words follows the rules.”

She asks them to pronounce each word according to the rules they have learned. They do, pronouncing COME with a long O, WHERE with a long E, ARE with a long A, and MACHINES with a long I.  Then she pronounces them correctly, cracking up the children.

“I told you English was tricky and sneaky, but we won’t let it beat us!”

To finish the lesson, she writes HERE on the blackboard and asks the children to sound it out, which they do with ease.  Then she puts a W in front of HERE and challenges them to sound it out.  They rhyme it with HERE.  She replaces the W with T, making THERE, and again asks her students to sound it out.  WHERE and THERE, she explains, break the rules. They will have to learn to recognize them. 

My point then–and now–is that ‘The Science of Reading’ is wildly over-hyped and arguably even dangerous when reading is reduced to drilling in Phonics.  

Never forget these two truths: 1) Every child wants to be able to read because reading gives them both pleasure and power over their environment, and 2) The teaching of reading is both an ART and a SCIENCE.  That is, Phonics is necessary but not sufficient!

I worry that the fervent acolytes for “The Science of Reading” may be taking the joy out of reading, and I know that hucksters are asking school boards to buy their expensive ‘evidence-based’ blah blah blah reading programs. I fear that the focus on “The Science of Reading” may, inadvertently, be producing children who can read but do not and will not, because what they endured to achieve the status of “reader” (by passing state tests) was painful.

“Necessary But Not Sufficient”

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

Many schools, both public and private, are banning cellphones. Is this a good idea? Let me present three connected points and a (seemingly) logical conclusion:

  1. Nearly all teenagers–95%–are on social media like TikTok, WhatsApp and their counterparts.  One-third of teens admit to using social media “almost constantly.” 
  1. Social media is damaging our kids, according to the U.S. Surgeon General: “The types of use and content children and adolescents are exposed to pose mental health concerns. Children and adolescents who spend more than 3 hours a day on social media face double the risk of mental health problems including experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety. This is concerning as a recent survey showed that teenagers spend an average of 3.5 hours a day on social media. And when asked about the impact of social media on their body image, 46% of adolescents aged 13-17 said social media makes them feel worse.”  A ‘national mental health emergency’ for children and adolescents was declared by the American Academy of Pediatrics back in 2021. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that “In 2021 and 2022, 21% of adolescents reported experiencing symptoms of anxiety in the past two weeks and 17% reported experiencing symptoms of depression.”  Undoubtedly, matters have only gotten worse, as teens’ use of social media has increased.

How does it hurt our kids? Let me count the ways:

  • Social media exposes young people to “extreme, inappropriate content.” 
  • Social media makes them–especially adolescent girls–feel bad about their bodies.  
  • Social media is a haven for predators. Nearly 6 in 10 girls say they’ve been contacted by strangers online “in ways that make them feel uncomfortable.”
  • Social media can overstimulate the brains in ways similar to addiction, leading to problems sleeping and difficulty paying attention.
  • Time on social media is time that is NOT spent with peers, developing relationships, learning about life’s give-and-take, what Erik Erikson calls ‘identity formation.’
  1. Teenagers access social media on their cellphones, and 95% of teenagers have their own cellphone.  These ubiquitous devices are their portal, their entry point, their lifeline to social media.  Without cellphones, teenagers have extremely limited access to social media.   Cellphones, which are ubiquitous, are the lifeline and portal to social media.

(It’s not just teens, of course.  According to the National Institutes of Health, “Mobile phone adoption in the United States is starting in late childhood and early adolescence; currently, 53% of children have a smartphone by age 11.”)

Ergo: Without cellphones, teenagers won’t be on social media, so cellphones should be banned. Without cellphones, teenagers won’t be taking 100 or more selfies to get the ‘perfect’ photo to post. They won’t be making 10-second videos for TikTok or spending hours watching cats being cute.  If they aren’t on social media, the thinking goes, they will be more social. If they aren’t communicating with a machine, they will engage in genuine personal communication.  

In fact, a growing number of public school districts and private schools have come to that conclusion. They have banned cellphones or developed policies designed to severely limit their use. 

The Washington Post reported in depth on this issue in late August, just as schools were opening.  According to the Post, at least seven of the nation’s 20 largest school districts have banned or severely restricted cell phone use. It’s not just large districts, of course.  The school district on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, where I live, requires students to put their phones into pouches when they enter the school building, and they can retrieve them at day’s end.  

Banning phones may be necessary (I think it is), but it is not sufficient, not even close.  What are adults offering in exchange? What’s the rest of this bargain?  Without some other steps, some quid pro quo, this will be perceived by most teens as heavy-handed and punitive, something being done to them against their will, something that makes school even less appealing.

Of course many kids see the ban as punitive, and why wouldn’t they?  When adults try to reassure them by saying, “Trust us. This is for your own good,” that only confirms their suspicions.  This is being done to them–and so they are going to devote a lot of energy to beating the ban.

Unfortunately, schools and the adults who run them are too often reactive, when thoughtful proactive behavior is called for. Instead of simply banning phones, the adults ought to be trying to get young people to want to come to school regularly, not simply ‘to attend school.’  To do that, schools (with or without cellphones) need to be interesting, challenging, and safe. 

Let me suggest four specific steps that should, I believe, accompany the cellphone ban:  

1) Restore the full range of extra-curricular opportunities–because most kids come to school so they can do interesting stuff with their friends!  

2) Homeroom should become an extended period, not just a quick five minutes when attendance is taken. Make daily homeroom a pressure-free time when students–without phones to distract them–can catch up with friends, forge new relationships, finish homework, or even take naps.  “Home” is the operative word here.  For most high school and middle school students, “Homeroom” is the equivalent of the starting blocks in a track meet. They touch base, listen to (or maybe ignore) morning announcements, and, when the bell sounds, dash off to class. In truth, “Homeroom” matters to school administrators only because it gives them a head count, but it’s a meaningless perfunctory exercise for kids.  For them, “Homeroom” is just a room, about as far from actually being a home as one can imagine.

That could change. America’s teenagers desperately need more “Home” in their lives, more opportunities to connect with others, more moments that tell them they matter. The rigidity of today’s high-pressure school schedules makes matters worse, not better. 

The simple—not easy, but simple–fix is to make “Homeroom” more of a HOME, not just another room.  Some teachers will have to be convinced that this new time period is an opportunity for them to expand their own professional repertoire of skills to include their students’ social and emotional growth. The challenge may be to train teachers to listen and not react, in order to allow young people to identify and share their feelings. NewsWeek magazine reports that Tacoma, Washington, schools are doing this, training not only teachers but also parents and school bus drivers.

In each of these new extended Homerooms,  teachers and their students will have to work together to figure out how they want to use this time. Some students may want to finish homework, or sleep, but the teacher could steer the conversation in the direction of “team building.”  

Perhaps one day a week could be set aside for discussion of some interesting questions (“If you could meet one figure from history, who would it be, and why?”), even trivial ones (“What questions would you like to ask Taylor Swift?”). 

Ideally “Homeroom” will turn into a safe space where students can learn to share and will agree that what’s shared there stays there. No bullying allowed.  

3) Expand course offerings to include some college classes and vocational training opportunities. Meet kids where they are, not where you think they should be.  

4) Work harder to make schools safe in three vital ways: physically, emotionally, and intellectually.  Emotional safety means that bullying and cyber-bullying are not tolerated.  Intellectually safe schools celebrate curiosity.  In these schools, adults encourage students to admit when they do not understand or are confused, often by modeling that behavior. Intellectually safe schools don’t treat kids as numbers but as growing and changing individuals.  (And young people who are treated with respect are unlikely to bring their dad’s AK-47 to school.)

Without cellphones as a crutch and given a more stimulating environment, most young people will be inclined to engage with each other. With adult guidance, they can explore new ideas, share curiosities, make plans, and so forth.  They can learn that there is life without cellphones.  

Removing cellphones creates new opportunities and challenges, but that won’t happen if adults simply enforce the ban. That is, banning cellphone in school is NECESSARY but not SUFFICIENT.

It’s time for the grownups to grow up and step up!

Appreciating Teachers

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

As another ‘Teacher Appreciation Week’ comes to a close, let’s ask whether classroom teaching is truly a profession. Perhaps it’s a calling. Or maybe it’s just a job…and not a very good one at that.

Whatever the case, these are tough times for teachers and teaching. Here’s why:

Not enough of us want to become teachers: Between 2008 and 2019, the number of students completing traditional teacher education programs in the U.S. dropped by more than a third, according to a 2022 report by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. The report found that the steepest declines were in degree programs in areas with the greatest need for instructors, such as bilingual education, science, math and special education.

Too many teachers leave the classroom every year: With 3.6 million teachers in employment, roughly 288,000 leave each year. If the US had a similar attrition rate to Finland, only 108,000 teachers would leave each year. That would mean an additional 180,000 teachers for schools to choose from, according to this report.

Here’s why many of them are leaving:  According to Dr. Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania, teacher turnover is mostly driven by dissatisfaction. Ingersoll says this dissatisfaction is a result of a lack of freedom. Teachers are micromanaged. While they are being told to differentiate and tailor to each specific child, they must also stick to a scripted curriculum. At the same time, they have no say in school-wide decisions.

And so our schools have real teacher shortages: Based on data from the states with published information, 47 states plus the District of Columbia had an estimated 286,290 teachers who were not fully certified for their teaching assignments, according to the Learning Policy Institute.

States having the most trouble filling vacancies: Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island.  Not far behind are Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Wyoming, according to data compiled by the Learning Policy Institute.

“So, are they quitting because they’re fed up with their heavy-handed union bosses?” The hostility of the question took me by surprise. I was explaining to my dinner companion, a veteran lawyer, that 40% of new teachers leave the field within five years, and right away he jumped to his anti-union conclusion disguised as a question.

No, I explained. Unions don’t seem to have anything to do with it; it’s most often related to working conditions: class size, discipline policies, and how much control and influence they have over their daily activities.

“It’s not money?” he asked, aggressively suspicious. Not according to surveys, I explained.

I described what I’d seen of a teacher’s daily work life. He interrupted, “How can it be a profession if you can’t take a leak when you need to?”

While that’s not a criterion that social scientists use to define a profession, my cut-to-the-chase acquaintance might be onto something.

Can teaching be a true profession if you can’t take a bathroom break when nature calls?

When I wrote about this a while back, many teachers were upset by that comment, including Susan Graham, who wrote, “It seems to me that taking a bathroom break whenever the individual feels the urge has little to do with professionalism and a lot to do with time, context and management of workflow.  Do lawyers take a “potty break” whenever they want? I can’t remember a single episode of Law and Order where a recess was called for Jack McCoy to ‘take a leak’ or for Claire Kincaid to ‘go to the ladies room.’ Of course that’s just TV. A lawyer would tell you that they spend most of their time meeting with clients, collecting information, reviewing case history, meeting, analyzing potential outcomes, negotiating with other lawyers, and preparing presentations. The courtroom is just the tip of the iceberg. 

The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be an awareness that the time in front of the classroom is the tip of the iceberg of teaching. No, teachers don’t get to “go” whenever they need to. For one thing, teachers are expected to practice in isolation, something neither “professionals” or “knowledge workers” rarely do. Not having “enough time to pee” isn’t as much of a complaint as not having enough time to plan, to assess student work, to collaborate with colleagues, to do or read research, to make meaningful contact with parents. Teachers don’t expect to stroll out of the classroom for a potty break any more than lawyers expect to “take a leak” during the middle of cross examining a witness. What they seek is acknowledgement that teaching is highly complex work.
 Whether you call us “professionals” or “knowledge workers”, what we want is enough time to do our job well; the discretion to apply the knowledge and skills we have worked to acquire; sufficient collaboration to continue to inform and improve our practice; and respect for our intention to act in the best interest of our students.”

Certainly, teachers and their supporters want teaching to be seen as a profession. They’ve won the linguistic battle. Googling ‘the teaching profession’ produced nearly 3 billion references, while ‘teaching as an occupation’ and ‘the teaching occupation’ produced only 69 million.

Social scientists have no doubt about the status of teaching.  According to Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania, “We do not refer to teaching as a profession. It doesn’t have the characteristics of those traditional professions like medicine, academia, dentistry, law, architecture, engineering, et cetera. It doesn’t have the pay, the status, the respect, or the length of training, so from a scientific viewpoint teaching is not a profession.”  He carefully refers to teaching as an occupation, noting that it’s the largest occupation of all in the USA. And growing at a faster rate than the student population.

Jennifer Robinson, a teacher educator at Montclair State University in New Jersey, believes our familiarity with teachers and schools breeds disrespect for teaching. “We don’t treat teaching as a profession because we’ve all gone to school and think we’re experts. Most people think, ‘Oh, I could do that,’ which we would never do with doctors.”

Robinson suggests that a significant part of our population–including lots of politicians–does not trust teachers. She cites the drumbeat of criticism in the media, blaming teachers for low test scores.

A common criticism is that teachers come from the lowest rungs of our academic ladder, a charge that Ingersoll says is simply not true. “About 10% of teachers come from institutions like McAlester, Yale and Penn,” he says. “Perhaps 25% come from the lowest quartile of colleges,” meaning that close to two-thirds of teachers attend the middle ranks of our colleges and universities.

According to Ingersoll, one hallmark of a profession is longevity, sticking with the work. In that respect, teaching doesn’t make the grade. As noted above, his research indicates that at least 40% of new teachers leave the field within five years, a rate of attrition that is comparable to police work. “Teaching has far higher turnover than those traditional professions, lawyers, professors, engineers, architects, doctors and accountants,” Ingersoll reports. Nurses tend to stick around longer than teachers. Who has higher quit rates, I asked him. “Prison guards, child care workers and secretaries.”

The always thoughtful Curtis Johnson weighs in: “There are now some 75 schools where teachers are in charge, have authority over everything that counts for student and school success. At EE we called them ‘teacher-powered’ schools. In these schools, the teachers are in fact professionals, and turnover is very low.” For readers who find this interesting, check it out here.

James Noonan has a contrary view: “Harvard’s Howard Gardner may be best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, but he has spent a far larger proportion of his esteemed career studying the role of the professions in creating a more just and ethical world (see http://www.thegoodproject.org). The framework that he and his colleagues developed would suggest that teaching (in the U.S.) is not a profession, but that’s not to say that its status is inevitable or immutable. Many countries and systems of education (like Finland, as you suggest, and Ontario and Singapore and a host of others) have placed teachers on par with other professionals and they have found great success.
        … Teaching is not a profession currently, but the first step in changing that is envisioning something different and creating spaces (like the “teacher-powered” schools mentioned above) where teachers can experience what true professionalism feels like.”

Perhaps teaching is a calling? Those who teach score high on measures of empathy and concern for others and social progress, Ingersoll and others have noted. As a reporter and a parent, I have met thousands of teachers whose concern for their students was visible and admirable.

Trying to elevate the profession’s status (or arguing about it) is a waste of energy, according to Robert Runté, an associate professor of education at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. More than 20 years ago, he wrote,

“Since one needs schools before one can have school teachers, teachers are stuck with their status as salaried employees working within large organizations. Teachers have always been and will always be subject to direction from their school board and the provincial bureaucracy. They are, to that degree at least, already proletarianized.  Consequently, the whole question of whether teaching is a profession, or can become one, is a red herring. The real issue is the degree to which teachers can resist deskilling and maintain some measure of autonomy within the school bureaucracy.”

To some, he may be going off the deep end when he asserts that the construct of ‘profession’ is a trumped-up label created to flatter workers and distinguish themselves from others.

The essay continues: “The only feature that ever really distinguished the professions from other occupations was the “professional” label itself. What we are is knowledge workers, and as such we have a responsibility to both ourselves and to the public to become reflective practitioners. As reflective practitioners we can reassert, first our ability, and then our right, to assume responsibility for the educational enterprise. We must stop worrying about unimportant issues of status and focus instead on the real and present danger of deskilling.”

When I first wrote about this, reader Susan Johnson responded: A student of history knows that professions evolve over time. There was a time when a barber could do “surgery” and a lawyer could practice after being apprenticed to another lawyer. My own grandmother ran into trouble for delivering babies without the benefit of specialized training and credentials because that practice was fairly common in her place and time.
        When teachers first formed an association, they wanted the authority to make decisions about curriculum, instruction and personnel, but were only granted the ability to bargain for salaries, benefits, and working conditions. And so, this association became a union, which will only exist as long as teachers are not the decision-makers. So it is likely true that union bosses do not want to see professional independence for teachers. However, these unions have the potential to evolve into powerful professional organizations similar to the American Medical Association.
        But change is on the horizon: teachers are starting to take control of the schools in which they teach. When schools are run by teachers who make almost all decisions regarding curriculum, instruction, selection and retention of personnel, then they will be full professionals. When the next teacher shortage hits, and the “captive women” are no longer available to teach our children, I believe districts will start to offer professional autonomy to people willing to staff the nation’s classrooms.”

“Deskilling,” a concerted effort to reduce teaching to mindless factory work, is the enemy of professionalism.  Remember that awful graphic in the film “Waiting for ‘Superman’” where the heads of students are opened up and ‘knowledge’ is poured in by teachers?  That’s how some politicians and education ‘reformers’ understand the role of schools and teachers. And how much skill does it take to pour a pitcher? Not much, and so why should we pay teachers more, or even give them job protection? Just measure how well they pour (using test scores of course), compare them to other teachers (value-added), and then get rid of the poor pourers. Bingo, education is reformed!

Teaching has taken some big hits in recent years, driven in great part by the education reform movement that argues, disingenuously, that “great teachers make all the difference.” This position allows them to ignore the very clear effects of poverty, poor nutrition, poor health and substandard housing on a child’s achievement.

Most parents are not fooled by this. Their respect for their children’s teachers and schools remains high.

So what’s to be done?  I believe that schools ought to be viewed as ‘knowledge factories’ in which the students are the workers. In this model, teachers are managers, foremen, and supervisors, and knowledge is the work product of their factory. In that model, students must be doing real work, an issue I have written about.

Here’s an excerpt from “Teaching Ain’t Brain Surgery–It’s Tougher,”  a provocative essay by Richard Hersh, a distinguished former college president and a friend:

(In the) face of an acknowledged short and long-term teacher shortage, the imperative for excellent teachers and teaching conditions is profoundly undermined by a patronizing “teaching ain’t brain surgery” mentality–the belief that anyone with an undergraduate degree can teach. Teachers in a very real sense operate on the brain too but teaching ain’t brain surgery–it’s tougher!

How are brain surgeons educated? Four years of undergraduate work, at least four arduous years of medical school, and several additional years of internships and residencies are required to master the knowledge and skills to operate on the finite topography of the brain. With such training, these superbly prepared surgeons are expected by society to operate on one anesthetized patient at a time supported by a team of doctors and nurses in the best equipped operating rooms money can buy. For this we gladly pay them handsomely.
 How are teachers educated? They receive a spotty four-year undergraduate education with little clinical training. At best, an additional year for a Master’s degree is also required for professional certification. Teachers are expected by society to then enter their “operating rooms” containing 22-32 quite conscious “patients”, individually and collectively active. Often the room is poorly equipped, and rarely is help available as teachers also attempt to work wonders with the brain/mind, the psychological and emotional attributes of which are arguably as complex to master as anything a brain surgeon must learn. For this we gladly pay teachers little.

Conditions for professional service matter. Contemplate the results if our highly educated and trained brain surgeons were expected to work in the M.A.S.H. tent conditions equivalent to so many classrooms. In such an environment we would predictably see a much higher rate of failure.                                                                         

Or, consider if the roles were reversed-that brain surgeons were educated and rewarded as if teachers. It is virtually impossible to contemplate because it is hard to conceive of any of us willing to be operated on by someone with so little education or clinical training in a profession held in so much public disdain.                       

We take for granted that the current professional education, training, rewards, and working conditions for brain surgeons are necessary and appropriate for the complexity and value of the work performed. Not so obvious is that teaching well in one elementary classroom or five or six secondary school classes each day is as difficult, complex, and as important a task as brain surgery. But to do it well, to be truly a profession, teachers require exponentially more education, training, better working conditions and rewards than are currently provided. Unless and until we acknowledge this reality we will not solve the teacher shortage crisis, and school reform will inexorably fail.                                                     

To show respect for teaching and teachers, I suggest we leave the ‘profession/occupation’ argument to academics. Instead, let’s consider taking these  steps:

1) Support leaders whose big question is “How is this child intelligent?” instead of “How intelligent is this child?”

2) Elect school board members who believe in inquiry-based learning, problem solving, effective uses of technology, and deeper learning.

3) Insist on changes in the structure of schools so that teachers have time to watch each other teach and to reflect on their work. These are standard operating procedures in Finland and other countries with effective educational systems.

4) Ban cell phones so kids can focus on the present and their immediate surroundings.

5) Expand and improve extracurricular activities, because they are often the most important part of school for many students

Oh, and bathroom breaks for teachers when necessary….

So, as another Teacher Appreciation Week ends, consider the costs of continuing to under-appreciate teachers and public schools generally. We are truly eating our seed corn when we devalue public education. 

Pay attention to politics, to local, state, and national candidates. Listen to students, particularly to those who are staying away from schools.

Public schools don’t need to be more ‘rigorous,’ and anyone who says that ought to be drummed out of the public sphere. Our schools need to be more welcoming, more interesting, and more challenging, for students and for teachers.