What Exactly Do You Want Your Children To Learn In School?
We hear over and over again how bad our educational system is. We experience its failures ourselves as students, and we watch our children experience its failures. What are our main criticisms? Children don’t learn the basics is usually what I hear. I would have to add to that school’s (government’s) growing usurpation of the rights of the American family.
What if, however, the main problem with public school lay not with the institution of school itself, but with our own confusion about what we want school to be and provide? Sometimes situations are challenging because we’re not asking the right questions. Change the questions, change the outcome. Let me explain…
The institution of public school as you and I know it in America is only about one hundred fifty years old, if that.
To see what we did as a nation before mass public school we need to look at the lives of our grandparents and great-grandparents.
My grandfather never finished high school. My great-grandfather never finished elementary school!
My great-grandfather was born ten or fifteen years after the Civil War in the South, which was, of course, completely devastated. In North Carolina at the time, the first cotton mills had just been built, and even as a child, he had to go to work to help put food on his family’s table.
Although he had very little formal education, my great-grandfather never quit learning. He was naturally brilliant and apparently a hard worker. As he worked his way up the chain of command at the cotton mill, he learned all aspects of the business. To supplement what he was learning at work, he took correspondence courses in business and mechanics. He was also a prolific reader of literature. (I even have some of his correspondence course materials, which is one of the reasons I know so much about him.)
In the 1920s, now married, he moved his family from North Carolina to South Alabama. According to my great-uncle, his son, my great-grandfather’s main love in life was farming. He bought a farm in South Alabama, near Opp and Elba, and settled down to farm.
The State of Alabama was just beginning to industrialize in the 1920s, and the Governor of Alabama contacted my great-grandfather and asked him to put together a group of investors to build cotton mills. He did, and they built more than one mill.
So, a little boy from the war ravaged South, who never even finished elementary school, became one of the fathers of industry of a whole section of the country.
Was his an isolated story? Not at all!
Despite what your teachers told you in school, excellence in public school does not necessarily correspond to success in life.
You know the mantra: you have to do well at school to get ahead? That’s bunk.
Now, just to avoid confusion, I’m all for getting ahead. I’m a capitalist and a firm believer in the American Way. It’s just that the correlation between school and success of not nearly as tight as most people think.
Remember Thomas Stanley’s book, The Millionaire Next Door? If you haven’t read it, you should. Just click here and order it. It’s a revelation.
Stanley interviewed hundreds of self-made millionaires. One of the most striking things they had in common was the fact they were not, as a group, good students.
Entrepreneurs tend to come from the middle of the pack academically, not the top. A huge percentage of the men and women Stanley interviewed were “C” students in high school and college.
To me as a teacher, this makes total sense.
“A” students are the teacher pleasers. Entrepreneurs are not pleasers; they’re mavericks, do-it-yourself types. “A” students tend to go to college and get jobs with Proctor and Gamble. What’s left for the not so good student? How is she going to get ahead? Start her own business.
I’m a father of eight year old twins. What do I want for my own kids academically? It might not be what you would expect.
I’ve noticed over my life that the security of a job is just a myth. Who works for Enron anymore? I’ve also notice that the Internet is redefining work. 100,000 people make full-time incomes selling on eBay. Look at the work at home movement. “There’s a tide in the affairs of men” (and women), and that tide is definitely pointing toward more career autonomy.
By the time my kids are old enough to work, the whole notion of employment is going to be radically altered. Corporations are going to be legal entities, not a collection of buildings where everybody goes and “works.” We’re going to become a nation of free-agents, of entrepreneurs.
What my kids are going to need most of all for this brave new world is the basics as far as academic subjects are concerned, an understanding of economics, and flexibility. Perhaps more important than these three, my kids are going to need the skill of learning on their own and people skills.
One thing that’s totally missing from the public school curriculum is basic entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is taught at the college level. Why not teach it to younger kids? Who knows how many kids there are out there just waiting to get in touch with their inner Bill Gates.
I don’t preach to my children. I specifically try to lead by example. So, I was very gratified the other day when my son told me he didn’t want a job when he grew up.
“Why,” I asked. “What are you going to do about money?”
“I’m going to start a business and get rich,” he said.
“How are you going to get rich?” I asked, probing further.
“I’m going to save my money and just buy stuff that makes me money.”
Honestly, I was blown away.
“Where did you get that idea from,” I asked.
“From you, Daddy!”
It doesn’t get much better than that!
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May 18th, 2007 at 1:02 am
Hi Lee. Yes, many of my friends from high school did not go to college and are doing fine today. I’m conflicted on the issue, though. I was one of those kids that did well in school, went on to college, got crazy but eventually got a degree which came in handy when it came to getting jobs later on. So I guess the education system agreed with me and I got out of it what I could.
So what about my boys? That has definitely been a challenge as they have not had the same attitude towards school and authority as I had. Fortunately I’ve refrained from trying to drill my views into their heads, appreciating their tendency to question things. But we still are encouraging them to do their best in school (well, at least to put some effort into it), and then get some higher education after high school.
I guess the basic idea is for them to keep as many options open as possible, until they know what they really want to do with their lives.
May 18th, 2007 at 1:05 am
Hey, California is going through the whole high school exit exam struggle right now, with more students not graduating because of it . Would be interested to hear your thoughts on that subject.
May 18th, 2007 at 1:59 am
Chris, Thanks for the comments! As usual, my thoughts clear up after I write my post, rather than before. I think what I’m trying to get at here is not a reversal, or a return back to a time when most Americans didn’t get formal educations in the sense that you and I would define that. I think what I’m aiming at is aligning education with what I see coming down the pike in the near future.
Surely, it’s good for your children and mine to learn academic subjects and to do well in school. They need a broad range of basic skills both vocationally and personally. (By personally I mean the types of skills that are leading you on your spiritual path, for instance.)
My problem is this. Public school was made with the work for someone for thirty years model in mind. Problem is, we don’t do that any more.
The Internet is putting entrepreneurship within the reach of the masses, not just elite mavericks.
I can envision a time in the not too distant future when very few of us will be employed in the sense that you and I understand the word. Through the Internet, we’ll basically be selling our skills freelance on the global market. Instead of a value system that prizes things like getting to work on time and keeping the boss happy, we’ll all need to be able to think in strategic business terms. That’s what’s so cool about those of us who blog, create online businesses, and whatnot. We’re actually the avant-guard of this trend.
As far as the exit exams. I’m very ambivalent about government’s roll in education in the first place. Given public school as we know it, however, I think exit exams are actually a good thing. Maybe I’ll write a whole post about my thoughts on this soon. The gist of my thinking is this, though. The main argument against exit exams is basically one of definition. Doing well on standardized tests does not measure what education is supposed to accomplish, is usually what exit exam detractors say. To my mind, this is a cop-out. If you never define what education actually is then there’s no way for any of us to question the authenticity of the education our children are receiving. Perhaps standardized tests are crude and imperfect measurements, but they are at least measuring something!
As usual Chris, you’ve made me think, and for that, you’re a very valued reader.