The Listening Room

The Listening Room, Rene Magritte

         Molly Ivins, that great political satirist, once said, “What you need is sustained outrage…there’s far too much unthinking respect given to authority.” What a lovely jolt to my brain after a friend gave me an article published in The New York Times on May 22, 2012.  She handed me the clipping and said, “Bill Gates is putting his focus on helping teachers improve. He finally gets it!” Well, that’s nice and tidy huh?  I found myself wanting to believe it, but the moment passed and sanity returned. How easy it is to read a piece, dust off our hands and decide the problem is solved.

     As if Bill Gates is the savior of public education. As if he really knows all about it. What he’s got is money and influence. He pays people to promote his agenda. Where is the outrage? Where is the understanding about the complexities of education reform?

     Outrage requires the ability to think, and, on the face of it, the article makes a few compelling points: (see Joe Nocera, Gates Puts the Focus on Teaching)

• Bill Gates objects to New York City’s decision to publish the performance rankings of its teachers. He believes this a “kind of public shaming” that won’t result in better teaching. Bravo on that one!
• The Gates Foundation has begun working with school districts to help design evaluation systems that would improve the overall quality of teaching. With data provided by Harvard University, the Gates Foundation has begun a pilot project in Hillsborough County, Fla. to create a personnel system that measures teacher effectiveness. The unions had to agree to participate. Okay, sounds fair.
• Gates remains a supporter of charter schools, but says that charter schools alone will not solve the crises in American education. Absolutely.
• Gates does not dismiss the need for test scores, but he views them as the least important in terms of helping teachers improve. Hmmm…the test score part, great, but helping teachers improve?

 Here’s where it gets a little tricky. Gates believes that true education reform requires engaging all of the country’s teachers, to work with them on the nuts and bolts of teaching. Education does not function like business evaluation systems, which are supposed to improve employee performance. Education has not been sensible because they have used either seniority or test scores as the basis for teachers keeping their jobs.                                

Oh brother. All of this reads like it makes perfect sense, but as a reader it’s important to be aware of the basic assumptions here: that teachers actually need help to improve and the problems in education remain squarely with them. All of them. Poor teaching is rampant, otherwise students would be achieving. Teachers are not sensible; they are not smart enough, and education needs a business model for reforms to work.

Now, I’m not saying there aren’t bad teachers, but lots of non-performing folks in corporate jobs stay around for years. A friend of mine who works in human resources for a large company assures me that companies expect and accept that some employees won’t be productive.

     So then I read an interesting article by David Macaray, Blaming Teachers for Our Low Test Scores Is Like Blaming Doctors for Our National Obesity Epidemic, (see the Huffington Post, June 25, 2012). Now here’s some outrage: 

• People like to believe that if incompetent teachers did not belong to a powerful labor union, if they did not have cadres of union lawyers standing by ready to defend them, the administrators would be free to do the right thing – to drain the swamp and rid our schools of those union-created monsters who are holding our students hostage and depriving them of a decent education. That may be a compelling narrative, but it’s total fiction. Macaray goes on to quote statistics on teacher firing in California (heavily unionized) and North Carolina (non-unionized). California fires a greater percentage of its teachers. I wonder how that looks in other states?
• Why don’t these non-union schools fire more teachers? The answer is obvious. It’s because teachers – everywhere and anywhere, union and non-union – don’t deserve to be fired. And why would they? Why on earth would we expect our schoolteachers to be fired for general incompetence? Are our colleges, universities, and credentialing programs turning out such lousy, substandard candidates, we have no recourse but to get rid of them? That doesn’t even make sense. It’s like the guy in a friend’s office who shows up late, won’t learn new software, takes an hour and a half for lunch, and leaves early. He’s been doing this for fourteen years. He’s been coached and counseled and everyone knows the deal. He still has a job. He is one person out of a department that otherwise functions very well.
• We need to understand something. This move we’re witnessing against public schools and teachers’ unions is being orchestrated not by educational reformers interested in improving our schools, but by greedy entrepreneurs looking to privatize toe whole shebang. Having millions of kids leave the public schools and enroll in privates or for-profit charters represents a potential bonanza. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: follow the money.

     Why aren’t we hearing more about these different points of view? Why isn’t this article next to the Bill Gates interview in The New York Times? If education is in crises, why aren’t these articles on the front page? Because it’s overwhelming. Because it takes time to read it all – and there’s lots to read (I counted 59 articles on the education page of the Huffington Post alone). Because it’s easier to read about what Kim Kardashian wore on the red carpet last night. It’s easier to read about crime and sports and the best places to retire and the latest food being fried at state fairs. Who has time to read and consider the issues in education when we are bombarded constantly with information? Lots of people don’t have the time. They are just trying to pay the bills.

     The education community has many websites like Edutopia that have tons of information about best teaching practices. On Edutopia, they don’t want to hear about anything negative, which seems dismissive of reality, but maybe they have a point: Teachers are creating amazing things, thoughtful and smart: project-based learning and experiential learning and engaging lesson ideas.

     But who wants to read about that? It’s the negative that sells and sways public opinion, not people finding real solutions. I can’t wait to see how Obama and Romney address education reform in this election. My guess: not with much that we haven’t already heard. Really listening means thinking about what we’re told. Too much information dulls the senses and prevents the kind of outrage we need.

      Which brings me back to Molly Ivins: “It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.” Amen.

Invention is the Finest Thing

A Hunger After a Thousand Year Nap by Jacek Yerka

       This time I will not complain. I am not angry. I’ve actually found something to swoon over: a group of writers using modern and contemporary art to inspire children to write.

      Now, this probably isn’t a new idea, but the impact it had on children was completely different from anything they would experience in their classrooms, smothered as they are with objectives, tests, and data. No, this was about thinking and responding, creating a piece of writing using a spark of inspiration from paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs.

     Here’s how it works: Schools contact the museum and set up a day to visit.  The museum can handle up to five classes, usually from second grade through high school. Schools don’t pay anything to tour the galleries, but they must arrange for buses. Once they arrive, children are put into small groups, assigned a writer, and off they go. The writer’s job is not to teach about the art. The writer’s job is to teach children to look at art and help them create poems, stories, observations, descriptions, characters, and memories.  

     Picture this: 

     An emerald green lawn with a stainless steel sculpture by land artist Michael Heizer carved into the ground. Fifteen second graders walk slowly down its three sections, shouting out what the shapes looks like. “Can we do it again?” And back they go along the curves, the loops, and the pointed turns. They sit on the sidewalk in the shade and begin to draw and write.  

Emily writes:

It looks like a roller coaster doing a loop to loop.

Next… this reminds me of flashing fire.

This reminds me of slippery slides.

 And then Zarya:

Looks like a snake going around looking for food and starving to death.

It feels like I am in a tunnel trying to get out, but I am trapped.

I am going down and down the stairs trying to find beautiful art.

      After they finish reading their pieces, one little boy says, “That was fun. I think we need a group hug.” And that’s exactly what they did, the teacher, the children, and the writer, all of them in a tight circle, laughing.  It sure beats a classroom with a chart on the about similes and metaphors.

     I watch third graders as they look at Magritte’s Dominion of Light, that mysterious painting that’s both day and night at the same time. The shadows speak of deep quiet, and the children place themselves inside the painting in the dark of night, to imagine the sounds they might hear. Zulek writes:

I hear leaves crumbling.

I hear birds chirping.

I hear ripples of water.

I hear bats flapping their wings trying to get home.

I hear bears yawning to go to sleep.

I hear a tree falling in the water calling for help.

I hear the sun fall down and go to sleep so the moon can awake.

As the class leaves this gallery to visit another, they pass a group of their classmates. With thumbs up, they say, “You guys are going to love this.”

     The seventh graders sit in front of Cy Twombly’s huge 1994 work, Say Goodbye Catullus to the Shores of Asia Minor. This work tells a story through color, shapes, and words. It is a story of great love and the desolation that comes with great loss. The writer has the group copy these words lifted from the painting: shining white air trembling. Students can respond in any way they choose. Here’s Giselle’s:

White air, I’d like to breathe when I step out to the real me. White to me is peace and warmth and all the good stuff that you want to be. I find myself in the opposite direction, not knowing who or where I want to be. My life has never been real clear for me. The sky has disappeared from my dreams. I lie in fear hoping one day to see the white air in me, but so far all I see are my dreams breaking apart. One day I’ll find my way to the free where I can breathe without any fear.

This is magical, like nothing they are getting in school because the arts are gone, cut, slashed away in favor of high stakes testing. But this is here, and it changes and enriches how children put words on the page.

      I follow a group of hearing impaired fifth graders, watching to see how this impacts them. All can use sign language, two can speak, but two are silent, and all of them struggle to make sense of words. The writer helps Raphael by showing him what specific words look like, so he can describe who he is and what’s important to him. She encourages him with smiles, asks to look at what he’s doing. Pretty soon the vacant stare drops away, is replaced with a smiling boy, a boy who wants to be a part of something, a boy who holds the door open as the group moves through the museum. His teacher said, “I’ve never seen him like this before. I’m amazed. We can’t get him to respond like this. He’s totally different here.”

      Yes, it’s a hunger satisfied, nourishment absorbed into every cell. These moments don’t show up on the principal’s desk or make into the newspapers. But the interactions here, in this space, make a difference forever in the lives of children.

      That means everything.

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

 I swoon when I think about whoopie pies, a lovely dessert made of two cake-like chocolate cookies sandwiching a creamy, white filling. As a child, I couldn’t get enough of them. Occasionally, my mother would vary the recipe, and present us with moist, red velvet cookie cakes instead of chocolate ones. Yes, red velvet, filled with smooth, seductive buttermilk, a hint of cocoa, and a few drops of red food coloring. I could eat a pie in two bites.

It’s interesting to me that the name has nothing to do with what the dessert actually is. And whoopie pies cannot sustain my body or my mind, being mostly sugar and fat.

I think politicians’ words are red velvet whoopie pies when they talk about education reform. Sweet, but without fuel. Silky, like velvet, but offering nothing original. And like whoopie pies, what they say has nothing to do with what’s really needed. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and yes, even the Democrats working to re-elect Barack Obama, believe that competition, school choice, and test data are all that’s needed to turn low performing schools into high achieving ones. As Diane Ravitch wrote in The New York Review on March 8, 2012, these are “strategies similar to the ones that helped produce the economic crash of 2008.”  Politicians say what’s necessary to get elected. They have become “corporate reformers” because, after all, that’s where the money comes from. Who cares about the realities of schooling and current research?

Politicians don’t. They know nothing.

        Here’s what Mitt Romney’s website says:

• Global competitiveness begins in the classroom.
• As Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt pushed for high expectations, accountability for results, and increased parent choice via access to high quality charter schools.
• As a result of his leadership, Massachusetts scored first in the nation for reading and math (4^th and 8^th grades) during the third year of Mitt’s term in office.
• No parent should have to send their child to a failing school. Parents need choices, because this leads to better outcomes for all students.
• States should recruit the best teachers and reward them for a job well done.
• Education is the key to the American dream. Creativity, ingenuity, and bold vision must apply to education.

           Can’t you just taste it? All that creamy filling, easy words across the tongue, this tastes good, sure, give me some more, the solutions are right here, it’s all so simple really, and before I know it I’ve actually got a stomach ache.

 Politicians want education to feed corporate America, where those in power hold onto power. Which means we can’t have an educated population. Just believe what they say, even if it’s not working, or hurts children and teachers, or is not supported by current research. If we adopted Finland’s model where “the central aim of Finnish education is the development of each child as a thinking, active, creative person, not the attainment of higher test scores, and the primary strategy is cooperation, not competition,” then everything changes.

 None of these bozos would get elected, because we would have people who could actually think for themselves. They would see the whoopie pies for what they are, a sweet treat, that’s all. Not something you want to swallow by the plateful, just because someone tells you to.

Rick Santorum believes that parents, as education consumers, “have the fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children with the support of local schools, as desired.” As a homeschooling parent, Santorum feels that “flexible and personalized approaches to education for each child maximize their potential.”  Gee whiz, that’s great! I wonder where the money for all those personalized approaches is going to come from? What if you are poor, black and living in Mississippi?

 Santorum also feels that the federal role in education should be limited. Well, say goodbye to Title I funds and free lunches. I guess teachers will have to figure out how to feed poor, hungry children so they can pass the tests!  In addition, the federal government’s role should be limited to inspiring educational excellence and supporting civil rights. If the federal government only supported civil rights in the 1960s, schools would still be segregated.

Mr. Santorum’s website goes on to say that schools should be held accountable, and that baby steps were taken with No Child Left Behind passed during the Bush presidency. But it should have been initiated at the local level (um, it was – in Texas). States may adopt common core standards, but they should not be forced on anyone. Reform should reward excellence, innovation and meeting the needs of individuals, not the needs of government or unions. Yes, it’s that damn government intervention, those terrible unions. We don’t want or need institutions in place to protect people against injustice.  We want to restore America, (white America ) to greatness “through educational freedom.” 

Newt Gingrich agrees with both Romney and Santorum regarding the importance of competition, accountability, and school choice. However, he does offer a few more specifics. For example, he wants to set up a grant system for kindergarten through twelfth grade students where per student school district funding would follow the child to the school the parents want them to attend. The parents of home-schooled children would receive a tax credit or keep the grant. But who benefits?  Not the poor, and that’s who would be left in the public schools with fewer resources available from funding cuts, increased class sizes, and limited involvement by the federal government.

Gingrich also feels that business talent should be recruited into classrooms for one or two hours a day to impart “knowledge and business-like adult expectations” to students. As if that’s the only way to be successful in the world. As if anyone would have time for these people with all the pressure for test results and no excuses. I suppose someone could earn some money by coming up with an assessment for business-like adult expectations.

Gingrich thinks it’s important to restore American history and values into classrooms, which pretty much ignores the contributions of blacks and women, and is mostly written in praise of those who still run the country: wealthy white guys.

No politician addresses exactly how funds will be allocated, or what happens when a parent wants to send their child to a private school. Per pupil state funds don’t cover private school tuition. And how, exactly, will children get from home to the school of their choice?

Those with the means will benefit the most, and the underclass in this country will remain where they are – blocked from educational opportunity and economic prosperity, and more likely to end up in prisons. Diana Ravitch writes that even Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration, agrees there should be “no excuses for schools with low test scores. The no excuses reformers (Bush, Gates, Rhee, etc.) maintain that all children can attain academic proficiency without regard to poverty, disability, or other conditions, and that someone must be held accountable if they do not.”

They don’t know what they’re doing.

But here, pass the plate. Take another bite. It won’t hurt. Just don’t think too much.

Too Many Rats

Rat King by Katharina Fritsch

As I drove down Hays Street towards the school, I stopped to watch the dog pack. Three wandered through yards and across the broken sidewalks. One was pregnant, or had recently given birth. Her fur was flattened in places, stiff and bristly in others. All three were no one’s dog, just hungry animals trying to survive. The neighborhood looked as hungry as the dog: small, wood framed houses, some behind rusting fences, most in need of paint, many with sagging roofs and broken porches, missing windows covered in plywood, an abundance of cars in driveways, some without tires, or with tires piled in stacks underneath the front windows. Few yards had grass, just dirt or weeds.

I parked in front of Martinez Elementary School. It looked like a nineteenth century orphanage – windows covered in stained, beige shades, an old, sooty gray brick building, a large swath of dirt interspersed with scraggly grass, a chain link fence. Keeping an eye out for the dogs, I opened the brown metal door at the front of the school and checked in at the office. They’ve tried to make it pleasant. They’ve painted the trim around windows and doors blue. But no amount of paint can hide the cracked floors and smell of disinfectant and old cheese. Ninety-five percent of the children here qualify for free or reduced price meals. They eat both breakfast and lunch at school, and, for some, these are the only meals they get each day.

 I arrived here on a recent morning to see a writing lesson. I walked through a labyrinth of metal “shacks” behind the main building. They were painted beige and had brown wooden stairs to the doors. There were no plants or children’s art. There was nothing inviting about crossing the threshold into the rooms. These so-called temporary classrooms were dark, like basements, with old wood paneling and frayed carpets. Not so different from many of the homes in the neighborhood where the children live. But learning is supposed to happen here.

Twenty-five first graders sat in desks bunched together in two long pods. There wasn’t much room to move. The teacher was working with the children on how to write questions. They raised their hands to share their own before starting to write. One little boy, with a round face and slicked back hair said, “Why are there too many rats?” Why indeed. Inside the nervous laughter from the teacher and the children, I saw a dreadful image in my mind: families living in rooms where rats move freely across kitchen counters and sleeping children.

I was looking at the face of poverty. My heart dropped. I wanted to leave this place, not think about what it meant for children to grow up poor. Poverty won’t be found on an analysis of school performance, even though it impacts how children learn, and what happens to them as adults.

Numerous studies show that children living in poverty are more likely to drop out of high school, be unemployed, use drugs, have children young, get ill, and have learning difficulties. How is it that a country as rich as the United States can find billions of dollars to finance wars, but not be willing to completely fund programs like Head Start, which has a proven record of success with children from poor families? What about funding a network of community service centers so families have access to everything they need: decent housing (including exterminators), health care, furniture, and good food? How about spending some billions on decent school buildings?

I remember visiting a fourth grader’s house during my student teaching days, a time when these visits by teachers were required. This child lived with his grandmother and four younger brothers and sisters. The grandmother was welcoming and friendly, invited me to sit on the plastic covered sofa in her tiny, but orderly living room. She proudly showed me the room where the children slept. There were three mattresses on the floor, the beds were made with clean, but worn quilts, and the clothes were folded in piles by the door because there was no other place to put them. She offered me something to drink. I heard smacking sounds from the kitchen, and some kind of rustling noise, like paper. Roaches paraded across every surface, and the children were hitting them dead with the palms of their hands.

I politely declined a drink, but I saw this woman was doing her best to provide for her grandchildren. Mitt Romney has said there are plenty of resources in place to help the poor. Yet the United States ranks 31^st out of 34 countries according to data on poverty levels compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The number of children living in poverty continues to increase. Why is that?

Well, because this country doesn’t care about the poor. Our history has always been about favoring whites, and discriminating against immigrants and people of color. Read about the immigrant experience of people living in tenements in New York City in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Study the Jim Crow laws in place after the Civil War across the south. Study The Great Migration of black families to Northern cities. Look at statistics about which ethnic groups fill the prison system. Many people, especially Republican politicians, think the poor simply need to work harder to improve their lives. Tell that to the grandmother looking after five children. It’s so easy to say something like that and to forget the conditions children live in each day.  

What can schools and teachers do? I remember reading a number of years ago about a principal in an inner city school in Philadelphia who installed a washer and dryer so parents could give their kids clean clothes. She solicited clothing donations and set aside a room in the school where parents could get what they needed for their families. The gratitude and sense of community was powerful.

Some days I don’t know if any of this will get better. I only know it’s important to write and read and listen and talk to those trying to show us there’s got to be another way.

Pizza is Not a Vegetable

Today I am not myself. I just read a horrific story about a 17 year-old girl in Great Britain who has only eaten McDonald’s chicken nuggets since the age of two. She has never eaten a fruit or a vegetable (other than fries). It’s not surprising at all that she collapsed and had to be hospitalized with breathing problems and anemia. The doctors injected her with vitamins and nutrients and sent her home. Her picture is online, yes it is, and despite being told that her diet is life threatening, she smiles for the camera, holding her precious nuggets next to her face like gold. The nuggets are poison, a scary example of how processed food products impact children’s health. Stacey Irvine admits she is addicted and probably won’t quit eating them.

 My God.

 It is tempting to think this sort of thing couldn’t happen here, but I believe it already is, in varying degrees. The food products fed to children in school and at home are impacting their health (obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure), and their ability to learn. Two years before I quit teaching, I had a fourth grade class with 14 boys. Six had ADHD, and three others couldn’t add numbers together or understand the words they read in books.

Over the past twenty years, I’ve noticed a rise in the number of children with ADHD, autism, learning and behavioral problems. I’ve often thought there must be a connection between these difficulties and what children eat. The cafeteria offered plenty of pizza, hamburgers, chips, and ice cream. The kids chose that over the salty, canned green beans and fruit cocktail in syrup. After lunch, many of the children in my class had difficulty staying focused and calm. I’m convinced healthy food would have helped.

Think of it like this: For a car to run properly, it needs the right fuel. If I put sand in the tank, the engine gets full of sludge, slows down and dies. If children’s bodies are like cars, we’re in trouble. Most of what they’re getting is junk. There’s huge amounts of information online about diet and nutrition, but I think most of us can agree that diets high in fat, sugar, salt, and processed carbohydrates aren’t good for health. This is not a wild theory. Bad nutrition affects the body and the mind.  In 2003, Princeton University published a report, which said that high-sugar, high-salt, and high-fat foods can be as addictive as heroin. Heroin? Sure, look at Stacey Irvine.

 According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a review of two-dozen scientific studies confirms that certain foods and food additives can have an adverse effect on behavior in children.  In addition, the effects of a poor diet include lack of ability to concentrate, hyperactivity, and decline in cognitive ability (remembering, problem solving), and poor impulse control. Unhealthy food can also cause developmental delays in vision, language, personal, social, and fine motor skills.

So, we poison kids, and then we punish them when they can’t learn, when they fail the tests, and when they can’t behave.

I decided to look at a few school menus online. I wasn’t surprised to find the usual fare: cinnamon rolls, donuts, blueberry muffins, pancakes with syrup, assorted cereals, chicken tenders, beef ravioli, pepperoni pizza, burritos, and steak sticks. What did surprise me was the availability of some healthy choices: carrots, edamame, mixed vegetables, strawberries, oranges, kiwi wedges, whole grain pancakes, pinto beans, 1% milk, and yogurt. Is there hope for change?

Yes and no.

 In the Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas, which is mostly Hispanic, there are high instances of nutrition related diseases and poverty. The Lower Rio Grande Valley Nutrition Intervention Initiative was working to find ways to assist communities so that children and adults eat well. Unfortunately, the last report I found on this project was dated 2007.

The Healthy School Meals Act of 2010 provides incentives for schools in Florida to provide plant-based meals for students. Hurray!

Revolution Foods in California prepares fresh lunches for kids with the greatest economic need at a reasonable cost. They are currently providing meals to 600 schools around the country. The food has no artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, trans fats, or high fructose corn syrup. Principals say they’ve noticed better focus, fewer discipline problems, less tardiness, and higher test scores. Another hurray!

On January 25, 2012 the U.S Department of Agriculture announced a federally funded 5-year plan to improve cafeteria food in schools and help reduce childhood obesity. The new guidelines will help 32 million kids in grades K-12 by providing them with fresh fruit, veggies, and whole grains, along with healthier choices in vending machines. Fantastic!

But here’s the big one that could ruin it all: In November 2011, Congress bowed to pressure from the salt industry, potato states, and frozen food associations. In the bill fund school food programs, Congress left out sodium reduction guidelines and whole grains. The spending bill does insist that pizza be considered a vegetable because of the two tablespoons of tomato paste smeared under the processed cheese product! Are they kidding? Well, no they’re not. This is all about money, of course. If vegetables were defined as something harvested from the ground, the cost of feeding American’s children would rise by $7 billion over the next five years.

So what? Two tablespoons of tomato paste doesn’t provide the same level of nutrition as broccoli. This is criminal! How is it we can find the money to finance wars, but not children’s health? It’s better to spend the money on good nutrition than on the astronomical costs of treating illnesses from poor diet. I doubt the pharmaceutical companies would agree. Nutritionist Dr. Carina Norris says, “Fruits and vegetables are integral to long-term health. Without them you greatly increase the chances of developing chronic conditions such as heart disease and cancer.”

The teenager who has never tasted a fruit or vegetable haunts me. Does she know what’s in her food? Chicken nuggets actually contain little real food. Here’s what Michael Pollan wrote in his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Chicken nuggets are 56% corn and corn products (including the chicken). The rest is synthetic ingredients meant to keep the nugget from looking bad. One is dimethylpolysiloxene, which is added to the cooking oil to produce foam during the fry. This substance is a suspected carcinogen and is actually flammable! The other substance is called TBHQ, a form of butane, a.k.a. lighter fluid, which comes from petroleum. It is sprayed on the nugget and inside the box to “help preserve freshness”.  

 Imagine what continuing our addiction to processed food means for America’s future. Plant a garden at your school or in your neighborhood. Grow and harvest and eat the vegetables. Children’s health, and our own, depends on it.

Prayer to the Virgin

Things have a way of piling up, like the pink and blue rosary beads sitting in the basket at the feet of the Virgin Mary. Every classroom at Saint Dominic’s Catholic School has one. Each two-foot statue rests on a table in the corner. Her arms are open at hip level, palms out. I find myself staring at her. I wonder if perhaps she has some answers to our difficulties in educating children. Do private schools make a difference? Does teaching religion build character? For families who can afford the thousands of dollars a year in tuition, the answers to these questions are clear. For me, they aren’t.

It’s hard to tell if the Virgin is actually a model for courage and faith, or if she is more or less ignored because she is a required element on a list of classroom must haves: cursive alphabet line – check, colorful bulletin boards for student work – check, gray statue of the Virgin – check. I wish she had a light bulb to illuminate her from within. Maybe I might see something I haven’t seen before.

Based on conversations with teachers and my classroom observations, it doesn’t appear that private schools do a better job of educating children than their public school counterparts. Sure, the emphasis on tests is missing, which is great, yet teachers at many of these campuses get paid a lot less than public school teachers. They are interrupted just as often with special projects and schedule changes – a food drive, grandparent’s day, letters to veterans, and a constant flow of emails to and from parents, who sometimes believe they have a say in how classrooms should run since they pay tuition. Some administrators let the parents become too involved and do not support limits on their requests and classroom visits. Church services are also part of the weekly schedule and can change depending upon the time of year and what celebrations are associated with the religious calendar. In addition, students are out of the classroom every day for two hours to balance instruction in core subjects with art, music, Spanish, library, computer, and PE. All of this is good on one level, but it significantly limits time in the classroom for in depth study, thinking and creativity. The curriculum is mostly skills driven, with children filling out correct answers in workbooks.

It would be tempting to think that private schools also offer the benefit of smaller class sizes. Not always. I know of a school where each class has between 24 and 26 students in the elementary grades. And of course, there’s the question of diversity. One parent said to me, “I took my daughter out of private school because the only children she interacted with were white. That’s not the real world.”

 I’m also not sure how the schools deal with discipline issues or with students who have special needs (either because of a learning difficulty, or because a child is gifted and talented.) I have observed behavior problems among gifted students who actually just seemed bored. Filling out workbook pages isn’t difficult for them. Yet when given time and the opportunity to use imagination and creativity, both gifted students and struggling ones are totally engaged in performing, writing, and drawing. Behavior isn’t a problem. Janice, a third grader said, “I’m so glad when you come. It’s my favorite time of the week.”

And so, I’m back again to the Virgin Mary. Can the Mary statues be used to teach that learning is sacred, that creativity and imagination and effort are an important part of a soulful, authentic life? Or, is Mary simply there, but not actually seen because she’s always in the corner, like the calendar is always by the door.

It seems important to ask, to step inside the dark of winter and watch for the rebirth of the light.