The buses arrive. In come numerous students ranging from age 12 to 21. Their entrance is noisier than a Fenway Park crowd. They are young and youth by definition is synonymous with energy and vitality. The question is how we are educating our children. The programs of public education remind me of Jacques Brel's anthology of music, Jacques Brell is Alive and Well and Living in Paris":
Carnivals and cotton candy
Carousels and calliopes
Fortune-tellers in glass cases
We will always remember these
Merry-go-rounds quickly turning
Quickly turning for you and me.....
Thirty years ago I remember a means of saving public education was a strategy that eliminated the walls between the classrooms of a school. In fact, whole buildings were built in order to emulate the "open classroom concept". Within weeks teachers put book cases between their teaching spaces in an effort to undo what many experts thought was brilliant.
And the whole world madly turning
Turning, turning 'till you can't see
I believe the, "No Child Left Behind"; program had the most effect on my career as a teacher. Whole local districts and states were no longer given the responsibility of educating their own children. The federal government took charge and put major penalties on any school district that dared to not follow their lead.
We're on a carousel
A crazy carousel
And now we go around
Again we go around
And now we spin around
We're high above the ground
Differentiated Learning and Multiple Intelligence programs reared their heads forcing teachers to teach all levels of students at the same time within the same classroom. Howard Gardner of Harvard University, who developed the program, never intended it solely for public education. The only people who thought this was possible were the people who never taught.
And down again around
And up again around
So high above the ground
We feel we've got to yell
We're on a carousel
Technology then took hold of the way we educate our children by demanding the teacher get away from teaching their student through their knowledge and use computer technologies that flooded the market. The concept of a teacher being a 'sage on a stage' was replaced by an LCD transmitted image of a computer screen. The idea of having teachers display what they are passionate about to young men and women searching for something they can be passionate about is being digitally replaced.
A crazy carousel
We're on a ferris wheel
A crazy ferris wheel
A wheel within a wheel
And suddenly we feel
The stars begin to reel
NCLB has now failed and will probably go the way of the open classroom. In its place a new catchy-titled program is being forced into public education replacing century old programs that produced innovation and defined our society since the advent of our nation. "21st Century Learning" with its school wide rubrics, Virtual High School, VLACS, and ALECKS systems hope to one day eliminate the necessity of teachers. The idea of placing our children with individual computers in large auditoriums being monitored by non-teachers is not far from reality. I guess what goes around comes around.
And down again around
And up again around
And up again around
So high above the ground
We feel we've got to yell
We're on a carousel
A crazy carousel
The day ends like it began with students displaying the same amounts of energy they showed when they arrived. Some realities of public education will hopefully never change. I remember when one of my students told me that what I taught her about biological relationships between young men and women made a decision she had to make easier. As she was leaving my room she turned and thanked me for being a teacher; her teacher.
Carnivals and cotton candy
Carousels and calliopes
Fortune-tellers in glass cases
We will always remember these
Merry-go-rounds quickly turning
Quickly turning for you and me
Jim Fabiano is a teacher and writer living in York, Maine Feel free to read his other essays on education at: "Dinosaur of Education".You can contact him at: james.fabiano60@gmail.com
