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You
are here: Investing in K-12 Education, One Child at a Time
by Joan Jaeckel
"Our nation is at risk," the report stated. "The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people."
After hearing from President Reagan's blue ribbon commission in "A Nation at Risk" I had an epiphany:
Alternative education could end the rising tide of mediocrity if it was available on a large scale. Alternative education contains the nutrients children and youth need to excel: an understanding for the way childhood works, intimacy and close-knit community ties, and a well-rounded curriculum with arts and social-emotional learning in the core curriculum.
The little-known American 'free,' art-and-movement-based 'alternative' educational movement, of which Waldorf education (my origin) is a part, is not just an extension of a counter-culture lifestyle leading to a hippie existence on the fringes, but it is the ticket to a productive life in the mainstream.
I am a systems thinker, and understand that when a system senses the need to self-correct, it tends to first swing to the opposite extreme. You decide to go on a diet and pig out on pork chops. It wasn't surprising, therefore, that "A Nation At Risk" resulted in the federal government taking over with high-stakes standardized testing, scripted teaching, the narrowest possible curriculum, and sanctions and rewards, not only for the child but for the teachers, the whole school, and, eventually, entire districts.
Our efforts to 'reform' public education out of its mediocrity by imposing strict centralized rules has resulted in even greater mediocrity and our goal to "leave no child behind" is as elusive as before.
From a systems-thinking perspective, this has nothing to do with 'lazy' teachers, 'the kind of parents we get', or 'at-risk' students. Mediocrity is the inevitable result of a system that is too closely controlled and micromanaged from the top. Ironically we, as a compassionate society, send 'at-risk' children to schools that eliminate all forms of 'competition' so that it will be 'fair' to everyone, but because of these traits, they tend to be 'fair' but mediocre.
Excellence happens when a system has room to self-organize and self-correct. The anti-individualistic, un-personalized design of the system itself undermines a sense of craftsmanship and personal commitment that results in excellence.
Fortunately for the children and youth of today, society's values are shifting in the same direction as the alternative schools movement: the idea that excellence is more than bean-counting is part of enlightened business today as well as the idea of the learning organization, the organization as an ecology that self-organizes like a living-system. Feelings of social responsibility cause socially conscious corporations to rethink how they work with their human resources, their environmental footprint, and how to give back to society. In medicine, an integral holistic concept of health has mainstream acceptance. For over 50 million Americans, leading a lifestyle of health and sustainability is more important than just making a profit at the expense of people and nature. The concept of the double bottom line was born.
Each of the approximately 58 million children and youth between the ages of six and 18 in America today attends some kind of a public or private school, including 1 million who are schooled at home. This is a tremendous accomplishment and speaks to our growing collective social consciousness.
There is much reason to believe that the future continues to look bright for children, youth, and their educational experience going forward if we look at current positive trends in society and the recent democratization of global communications. Many more people now have input into the direction of their lives, their workplace, and their societies than was true before. A gradual shift from relying on centralized authorities to values-based "lifestyles of health and sustainability" is evident in the remarkable growth of "conscious business", "green business", "fair trade", and "socially responsible investing."
There are signs that these trends are taking hold in education as well. Following the larger cultural trend towards more individual responsibility for self and planet and more productive input, already in 2002, 16% of public schools students attended a school their family has chosen (like a magnet, charter or other 'theme' school) and 22 % of students in private schools (which serve 10% of all students) attended non-sectarian (not Catholic, not other religion) schools with an 'alternative' pedagogical emphasis or 'theme.' 68% of teachers in these non-religious private schools had input in establishing their school policies and, in public schools, 44% of teachers said they had some say.
Efforts to 'privatize' schools, i.e. the trend to allow corporations who stand to gain commercially sell their services to schools, districts, and states is beginning to backfire as the relevant parties realize that these commercial products, including standardized tests and the scripted texts accompanying them, have the undesirable effect of undermining a well-rounded education for students and the attractiveness of the teaching profession. Conscientious school leaders are beginning to sacrifice needed funds to reject commercial products that undermine the health of the students.
Besides the rise in social responsibility and conscious, informed choice, another positive trend for education is an explosion of discoveries about the human being. We now know much more about the unfathomed dimensions and capabilities of the human mind and have laid a solid scientific foundation under the transformative power of the arts and social and emotional learning. Word of these developments spreads in best-sellers and countless other books, articles, and workshops around the country. Better than ever before in history, we understand the way childhood works.
A trend towards small, customized schools that children love is well under way. Already there are many organizations beginning to train teachers to teach in new ways based on this. Just as medical schools have added complimentary medicine to their curriculum, so, in the future, teacher professional development will include much more than it now does about "brain-based learning", "teaching for intelligence", the "heart-brain connection", and the countless experiences through which children learn best and thrive.
We can trust that these trends will continue. Even though we also live in a time of great misdeeds by figures great and small, I choose to believe that the fact that no misdeed stays secret for long is a sign that we are growing in a positive direction at the end of the day.
One challenge remains: to capitalize on the growing trend towards 'conscious living' and 'conscious investing' to launch a sustainable, strategic, cross-sector campaign to invest in every individual child and youth's right to an appropriately customized education.
We have to look at the challenge to fund every individual child's education as a necessary commitment by citizens towards our collective, healthy future. This needs to not just be an ideal, but a practical reality. As Terry Mollner, co-founder of the Calvert Family of Socially Responsible Mutual Funds and one of the earliest pioneers of socially responsible investing suggests, capitalism, unrestrained, inevitably leads to poverty for some just as socialism, unrestrained, inevitably leads to mediocrity.
In American education, therefore, we face the challenge of numbers of children growing up in poverty. They go to school in a paternalistic system designed to make up for what they lack due to their low socio-economic status. The aim is to even the playing field.
(1) welfare = two square meals, safety and care for six or so hours per day, the vigilant eye of others besides possibly unhelpful family members, and perhaps a bit of medical attention.
(2) minimal education
The only way to realize the ideal of an excellent education for every child is to invest in every individual child and youth's inalienable birthright to an appropriately customized education.
This quest is the reason for an invitational gathering of 50 individuals called "Investing in Socially Responsible Education" held in San Francisco February 1-3, 2004 at the Presidio. A list of most of the 50 attendees, including participants from New Horizons for Learning, and the 'white paper' describing the rationale and timing of the meeting are published online at www.whole.org, a temporary web site.
Attendees were chosen by the meeting's initiators, Ron Miller, Founder and President of the Foundation for Educational Renewal, and me. Ron started out as a Montessori teacher, I in Waldorf education. We are both convinced that the 'holistic' and 'whole systems' concepts are key to transforming K-12 education in America. Ron published The Holistic Education Review for many years and now publishes Paths of Learning magazine and Encounter magazine. All of these publications, plus the many books Ron has written and made available from other authors through his newsletter Great Ideas in Education, are the connective tissue that has held together the network of new concept educators until today.
The meeting concluded with three decisions:
1. We want to continue these explorations and want to widen the circle.
2. We are inspired by the example of the MoveOn organization and want to pursue a related short term strategy to educate voters about the federal No Child Left Behind legislation leading up to the election this fall.
3. For the long haul, we are inspired by the concept of a "1% Solution" and like the idea of a "Citizen's Endowment for Education" to leverage investment strategies to raise capital so that every child has sufficient resources for their education.
We're moving ahead to embody this energy into an organization with the working name of "Citizen's Endowment for Education & Democracy" (CEED).
At the conclusion of the ISRE meeting, recognizing the obvious mission overlap, Steve Bonchek, Executive Director of the Harmony Education Center, invited Ron Miller and Joan Jaeckel to join with Harmony Education Center. Harmony Education Center has an impetus to promote an alliance to create a permanent national institution leading to the transformation of K-12 schools across the country into "democratic, collaborative learning environments". Harmony was recently recognized for its vision and capacity by the award of a $2.5 M lead gift towards a multi-million dollar fundraising campaign for this purpose by the Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation.
CEED will operate as a new component of the existing Harmony Education Center, a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit corporation. CEED will serve as a connective web and open space in order to continue the conversation. This will inevitably involve message development, strategic planning, networking, and fundraising as we work towards an educational system that values the special circumstances of childhood, validates teachers and teaching, and in which informed families have standing to decide which path of learning is right for their child. We share in the concern that social justice must be a core element of our agenda, even if it takes some deep discussions to reach common understanding about what that means.
References
Miller, Ron. (1997) What Are Schools For? Holistic Education in American Culture. Brandon, VT: Holistic Education Press.
Miller, Ron. (2000) Creating Learning Communities: Models, Resources, and New Ways of Thinking about Teaching and Learning. Brandon, VT: Foundation for Educational Renewal.
Joan is known for her commitment to new social concepts that uplift the human spirit and 'living systems' approaches to bringing new educational concepts into the mainstream. She lives in the LA area and is the mother of three grown children and honored to be the stepmother of husband and contractor Roman Janczak's three grown children and "Nana Joan" to his five grandchildren. Before partnering with Ron Miller to produce the "Investing in Socially Responsible Education" gathering, and subsequently forming CEED, Joan was the Project Coordinator for the Ocean Charter School development group's successful petition to start the first public "Waldorf" methods charter school to be authorized by the Los Angeles Unified School District. (www.oceancharterschool.org) OCS opens this fall in Culver City, CA.
In 2000, Joan co-convened a roundtable, "Strategizing for Educational Change" at State of the World Forum 2000 inviting her trademark collection of cross-sector visionaries. Joan Jaeckel began her campaign to build a network of alternative and progressive social thinkers to transform K-12 education in the 80's as Director of Development for the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America. Email: jjaeckel@whole.org
Joan Jaeckel, Director
Citizen's Endowment for Education and Democracy
CEED
12137 Viewcrest Road
Studio City, CA 91604http://www.reimagineeducation.org/
©June 2004 New Horizons for Learning
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