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Transforming Education
Part 5: One Teacher at a Time
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Quotes from the article
At a conference that included many college professors, I sometimes found myself in the position of defending K-12 teachers for what many college teachers saw as "unprepared" students. The implication was that their earlier education experiences had failed to give them the tools they needed. As I explained the pressures on teachers in U. S. schools, largely caused by proliferating content requirements and the NCLB Education Act, many of the college teachers were amazed. "Someone ought to do something about it" was a common response. Uhhhh…and just who would that "someone" be?
Thom Hartmann, author of The Last Days of Ancient Sunshine, warns of the "Something Will Save Us" viewpoint. Hartmann suggests that, in the worldview of more recent cultures, there is a belief that science can solve any problem. Or like the Greek plays of old, that a deus ex machina will drop from the skies to save us at the last possible moment.
Hartmann addresses the need for transformation of our culture if we hope to reverse the effects of what human beings have al-ready done. "It's easy to send ten dollars off to the Sierra Club; it's infinitely more difficult to reconsider beliefs and behaviors held since childhood, and then change your way of life to one based on that new understanding, new viewpoint, or new story." Let someone else do it!
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.-C. S. Lewis
To re-form is to rearrange existing parts. The beliefs underlying those existing parts are rarely examined. Transformation, by contrast, is movement to a more evolved level. The butterfly fights its way out of the cocoon. The chick pecks relentlessly at the shell until it is free. Those transformations occur when the organism is ready to take on the challenges of that new level of existence. As Lewis says, eventually one must hatch or go bad. In education, we see several manifestations of those options. Some teachers have glimpsed the world outside the egg and are more than ready to move to a more promising way of teaching. They break out of their shells, but then the threatening weight of government regulations and high-stakes standardized testing makes them question whether they can remain in the present culture and still be the kind of transformed teacher they must become. An increasing number choose to leave education for a culture in which their new form is welcomed and appreciated.