treatise on post-industrial humanness

Sometimes you forget that they are humans.

You forget that you are a human. Sometimes, especially at times when test prep is all day every day, the kids are like multiple-choice machines, and you're the mechanic, meant to repair them when they are not performing, tweak them until you can rid them of all the glitches. When you see them, you see incomplete homework, you see sloppy handwriting, you see 3 wrong answers AGAIN!

You're not always thinking about whose parents had a fight last night; whose mother is on bed-rest after her operation; whose sister had an asthma attack; whose neighbor's dog wouldn't stop barking all night; who had to babysit all afternoon for their little cousins.

You don't always remember that everyone in that classroom is a human, even if no one is really allowed to act like it.

Stanley Aronowitz says, in his introduction to Pedagogy of Freedom, Paulo Freire's case for restoring a lost universal human ethic to education:

"In this age of subsumption of the human spirit under the imperatives of alienated work without end, society has lost its tolerance for even kid pleasures [such as recess], and school authorities have, sometimes enthusiastically, subordinated themselves to business by imaging schools in the modalities of the factory or the large corporate office."

My school is a case study in this wierd industrialist mentality, the morphing of schools into information-acquisition assembly lines and corporate training camps. For some reason, schools haven't caught up with the way the world is these days.

If you think about the problems the world is facing today, the really big ones, the ones the kids will be inheriting in a decade or so, what comes to mind?

I get war, of course, political conflict, hunger and water shortages, depression and mental illness, health care crises, poverty and homelessness, climate change, widespread waste and destruction of natural resources, economic collapse, upsetting the global "food web," unfair labor practices, racism, sexism, all the other "isms," violent crimes...

You'd think we would, as a society, choose to teach the kids about economics and globalization, about the environment, about conflict resolution, health and emotional well-being, conservation, sustainability, political awareness and activism, tolerance, government and the legal system...

How come these things are not a priority? How comes these are afterthoughts, leftovers for when you're done measuring angles with a protractor or identifying factors of prime and composite numbers...

You'd think it might be disheartening to read about Paulo Freire's vision of education as I am a participant in the very form of "banking" education that he deplores. By his standards, I am an enabler of the status quo.

But it makes me feel good to know that the ideals I came into education with are still out there somewhere. It is encouraging to believe that I am a part of a group of people who can conceive of another way of doing things... "conditioned but not determined" by the circumstances in which I find myself. I am willing to embark on a long slow journey towards something better. I am willing to take a leap of faith towards Freire's optimism and hope, not "false optimism or vain hope." I am willing to take issue with the "immobilizing ideology of fatalism" that Freire names.

Like the story goes, I'm willing to throw the beached starfish back into the ocean, one by one, because it makes a difference for that starfish. I am willing to help move heavy stones, centimeter by centimeter, in hopes that we might build a pyramid of dreams. I am willing to dig holes because I believe there is something of value to be unearthed; that something out there is worth finding.


When I spend a whole entire month (10% of 5th grade) teaching "testing strategies" like identifying the six most commong types of questions on the ELA; when we memorize the brainless formula for answering "short response questions" - it makes me feel like a part of the problem. I feel wasted and wasteful, like throwing recycleables into the garbage can. I am a henchman and a faceless cog. I am a contributor to the de-humanizing of the next generation...

What happens is, you have your agenda, you have your data, you have your dinosaur of a deadline looming up large and close. And you have the threat, real or imagined, of dire consequences if you and your robots do not perform up to industry standards. You are worried about the efficiency of your educative assembly line. You are worried about having all the right parts, about putting them together in the right order. You hope your products will turn out uniformly and perform well, get a high rating in the Consumer Report.

But despite all these things, you are also a warrior. And, best of all, you are a human being.

Alice Walker said, "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."

And as it turns out, kids still love jump ropes and stickers bubbles and modeling clay and yo-yos, even ones who've been assessed within an inch of their lives. And as it turns out, resistance is possible if you're flexible with the definition...

I started Quote of the Day as part of my campaign to re-humanize my classroom, so we could discuss ideas like courage and optimism and life choices and making changes and self-acceptance and other concepts that are not explicitly stated in the New York State Learning Standards... Do I sacrifice a few minutes of test prep each day to do it? You bet. This is my medicine-dropper of independence in the Olympic-sized pool of mandated instruction. This my microscopic flipping-of-the-bird in the shadow of a giant. An iota of action in the mire.

Do I still think my kids are going to ROCK the state tests? You bet. It helps to have an external enemy -- it is not ME they are fighting against, it is Testing Vader, my pop-culture scapegoat and icon for all that is wrong with education. I tell the kids that the reason they must do well on these tests so that they can grow up and become the chancellors and mayors and governors and principals, and tell everyone kids don't NEED tests like these. That what they really need is music and dance and art and recess and gardens and parks and causes to believe in.

And are my kids still human? You bet.
I take it as a compliment that their eyes well up from time to time with tears because they did something that has disappointed me, and themselves, (even I--'s, who is now bigger than I am and has a mohawk and tries to act tough). It is actually a relief, an indicator of humanity. It tells me I have not lost them yet.

And I savor the moments of unfetterred openness and humanity that do sometimes arise (despite everything working against it), like when J-- modeled their shiny blue graduation cap and gown so they could see what it will look like, strutting around and hamming it up. The laughter in the room was comforting and reassuring, and also invigorating. It reminded me, "This, this is what I am fighting for."