The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
What is the greatest school-learning experience you have ever had? The one that sticks with you and brings a smile to your face?
In my case, it was 60 years ago as fourth grader in group of about 70 kids in Northern California. We were on a field trip in the foothills identifying wildflowers, and then pressing them into a little book that we would keep. We also identified and made plaster casts of animal prints.
Later we went higher up into the hills where the marine layer could support redwood trees and we each planted the little saplings we were carrying. It wasn’t just my best learning experience, it was one of the best days of my life.
Days like that were far and few between. By the end of that of year, Mrs. McManigal, the same wonderful teacher who had led the field trip, threatened to hold me back if I didn’t complete a way overdue report on the California Missions.
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She gave me 24 hours. I stayed up the night and finished the report, replete with illustrations and Abraham Lincoln quotes that I made up but that bought tears of admiration to my eyes.
Of, course Mr. Lincoln had nothing whatsoever to do with the California Missions, but Mrs. McManigal took mercy on me and I passed.
Mrs. McManigal brought me joy and did her best to make me accountable. That is what great teachers can do. I had the opportunity as an adult to thank for changing my life.
About 14 years ago I was giving a talk to a roomful of 400 educators. My point then was that we, as a society, have wrung the joy out of education. I truly didn’t know how that would go over. They gave me a standing ovation.
I had actually begun to come to that conclusion in high school, where, despite Mrs. McManigal’s best efforts, I was an indifferent and difficult student. There where many like me then — and there still are. Millions of them.
Millions of them have been home trying to get their educations in varying states of social isolation and emotional wellbeing for well over a year. Despite heroic efforts by teachers, teen suicides and mental health issues have been on the rise for over a decade, and have recently spiked.
Yet, in April, students who had been home all year were ordered to come back to school, not for a mental health check, not for a check-in session or party, but to be tested for as many as five straight hours. Longstanding federal mandates required it. These were later waived, but too late for many. The tests were meaningless.
Where is the joy? Where is the recognition that we are creating a joyless society for many of our children?
We have incomprehensible amounts of data on our childrens’ school perormance, yet pre-pandemic student achievement scores were stagnant or falling.
For American society writ large, children — the greatest learning machines on the planet — have become monetized data points.
Among the many things we have learned or remembered during the pandemic is that life is short. We have also had plenty of time to consider the health of our society in general and of the planet, and both are in unprecedented jeopardy.
When children begin to come back to school this summer and fall, the first order of business should be the reintroduction of joy into the school experience.
We need to back off and let them see the world, its possibilities and their own possibilities with a joyful heart. All the rest will follow.
For now, we are failing them, miserably.
Which leads to my last question.
If a largely joyless education is all they know, how will they be able to create something other than that for their own children?
Greg Hart is president of Edge High School and the former director and dean of Pima County Adult Education and Pima Community College.