7 wnt. One of our colleagues is researching Education in America.

Education has many problems and also a few successes. But something called “standards” which are measured by various metrics, seem to be falling no matter what the intervention.

This is for the public schools.  Private schools may have many other options.  The politically correct view is that every student has the right to learn to the fullest.  (Of course, that is not our heritage, even starting out with slavery and the repression of the natives.)  So there is a lot of “baggage” to overcome.

There are many expressed viewpoints.  Some paint a picture of a utopian learning environment, where each child is given what they need in the moment.  Some focus on run-down buildings and lack of books and materials.  Some focus on teacher shortages in critical zones, where non-certified teachers try their luck for a year, (or only for a couple of months before burn-out). Constant teacher churning.

Some analyze intelligence, and of course there are differences.  They focus on those kids who can’t show results no matter what is done, and they make alternative proposals.  So much has been tried, that you can find evidence for just about everything.

One who writes very well, tells exactly how it was for him.  John Taylor Gatto taught Middle school for 30 years.   In 1963, he was hired as a full-time 8th grade English teacher at Intermediate School 44 on New York City's Upper West Side. Gatto moved on to Lincoln Academy (now Horizons Middle School) in 1981, which was considered a dumping ground for kids with behavior problems. Eventually Gatto found a position teaching predominantly poor, at-risk kids, the 8th grade students at Booker T. Washington Junior High in Spanish Harlem.

Admittedly, these are rough schools, and his experience is at one end of the spectrum.

My premise in writing this post is that even with dismal beginnings, people can come out of it, no matter how late in life.  I will compare what Gatto says, with my experience with my Substack subscribers.

OK, Wimsey aside, I am demonstrating my proposal for comparing texts.

For five years Gatto ran a guerrilla school program where he had every kid, rich and poor, smart and dippy, and he gave 320 hours a year of hard community service.

Dozens of those kids came back to him years later, grown up, and told him that the experience of helping someone else had changed their lives. It has taught them to see in new ways, and to rethink goals and values. It happened when they were thirteen, in his Lab School program. It was only possible because, due to various breakdowns, his rich school district was in chaos. When "stability" returned 5 years later the Lab School was closed. It was too successful with a widely mixed group of kids, and at too small of a cost to be allowed to continue. 

___________

I can compare possible learning reversals with my school experiences, which were not without big problems.  And I was in a suburban school reputed to be one of the best. I will just write the trajectory without any details.  Our grade school did “looping”, which means you stay with the same teacher for two years.

In pre-school I had a lot of fear, although I was adventurous on my own turf.
In first grade I probably would have shown an IQ at a dullard level.
I was quite fearful in 3rd and 4th grade.
I was the class clown in 5th grade.
I was very fragile in 6th grade.
In 7th and 8th I started coming out of it.
In high school I made D’s and some F’s, then later managed some B’s and A’s
College started out great, then downhill from there. I was forced out.
After about a 3-year pause, I went back and finished the degree with all A’s
(I think a pause is great, if you can manage it. What sense is bumbling along?)
At 35 I was in graduate school, and it changed my life for good.
Then my business had emergencies and I exited, but learned more from business.
It was quite a while later that I got my first personal computer.
About one week on a word processor and I found I could write.
I fully realized, if I had this tool years ago, my life would have been so different.
Not as any kind of regret, but now I was fully launched into discovery.
Every day I find more and more openness, which has never stopped.

I think that we all can take giant steps in understanding life, no matter how we categorize ourselves, nor what we believe are our limitations.