The Fruit of Procrastination

In all the time I’ve spent not working on my final projects, I’ve wandered across a bevy of great education-related links. Who ever said dawdling “…was thief of time” clearly never had wireless broadband access. A quick Google search says it was credited to Edward Young. An even quicker Wikipedia search reveals he was an 18^th century English poet. He definitely didn’t have wifi. Isn’t the internet great?

Here, and in my next blog post, I’ll highlight a pair of the better links that I’ve found lately:

Stephen Colbert’s Interview with The War on Kids director Cevin Soling\

The War on Kids official site

A new film by director Cevin Soling paints a landscape of American secondary education in grim shades of charcoal in his new documentary called The War on Kids. The six year project studied middle and high school across America in an attempt to diagnose what was and remains wrong with our schools. Soling and his team’s conclusion is that, while many point to financial and cultural reasons for a downturn in test scores and student performance, our society’s overemphasis on in-school security is creating an environment too hostile to learn in. Furthermore, he believes the very foundation of American education systems (a Prussian model) churns out controllable drones of human beings, not curious, thoughtful, status-quo challenging students that we should admire.

Thought Soling’s stances are a bit radical, harsh, and stark, they are not without merit. Poorer districts I’ve seen in New Orleans and New York, with front gate metal detectors and bulletproof glass in every window, appear more like prisons than schools. His assertions about overmedicated children are spot on. Having done some reading into our system’s foundations, our educational models were more fit for troops than citizens in a democracy.

Agree or disagree with Soling’s views, I think they are at least worth hearing out. Any perspective, however contrary to your own holdings, is important to consider as we develop our own classroom philosophies.

If we enter districts like the ones The War on Kids describes, how will we create safe, inviting classrooms where students feel welcome and comfortable? Is that achievable under our current cultural conditions? Can we, as educators and activists, work against the conditions that Soling maligns?