schooldog

As the class I have been tracking over the last three years prepares to enter its senior year, and prepare for graduation a year from now, I begin gearing up for the frankly onerous task of managing the complex process of making sure all students are guided properly in the vagaries of graduation credits, projects, and testing. It is spread sheet making and maintenance. I hate it; it will drive me out of this game, has little to do with counseling as I think about it, or with motivating students. The senior counselor, which I will be, is more akin to a chief accountant.

Which leads me to reflect – is this another way we enable and infantilize our students, and by extension their parents as well? We make available all the information needed for students and their parents to make informed decisions and chart their path to graduation, but the wheel has so turned that it is our fault when a mistake gets made that puts graduation in jeopardy. Granted, the ins and outs of the various rules of graduation from high school can confound those who do not deal with them regularly. But those of us in such a position live in fear of the inevitable mistake that happens where there are literally five figures of data bits that go into a high school senior class’ graduation. Angry parents, seniors in tears. It has become our fault, inexorably, and we become the focus of ire. Where was the student, where was the parent in the making of the error? Intimately involved, of course. But it is primarily our fault. The social system prescribes it. Something is wrong with this picture.

The day is overcast, but thankfully the rain has held off, and for now the greatest worry is that the top of Mt. Index will be socked in by the lower reaches of the cloud cover, and rob us of our view. Years before a companion and I have climbed to a ridge a couple of hundred feet above Lake Serene, and marveled at the cliffs of Index rising 3500 feet above the lake, and at the enormity of the natural amphitheater formed by the peak, the huge bowl of the lake, and the surrounding rock fall. The Northwest Avalanche Center warns of “considerable” avalanche danger this Saturday, so we hope the relatively low altitude (2500 feet) of the lake, though its approach holds snow, will provide us a safe outing, and perhaps a return to the viewing platform I hold in my memory.

Those of you who are hikers and climbers will understand that one of the pleasures of the mountains is the conversation that winds its way up the trails and into the hills, sometimes personal, sometimes professional, sometimes nothing memorable other than companionable. The perfect outing involves insight as well as the satisfaction of pitting body and psyche against the mountains. The better the talk, the less wearying the climb, a psychic anesthetic.

On this stage I begin to tell my friend Karl of my students and what seem to be the cultural baggage with which they walk into my office. Too many seem not to know what it means to be held accountable, seem rather to expect for them all shall be provided. Too many seem not to know how to respond constructively to challenge, and to adversity, or even to not know that they should do so. They seem not to hear the crunching feet of reality speaking to them from their future, “prepare, prepare.” Sometimes they do not seem to be able to start, and then to sustain.

Former Marine, Karl, he links my tale to the decline of the masculine principle in our culture, which fits neatly with what I see from a different vantage point as a failure of culture to hold kids accountable.

One of the revolutions of the last forty or fifty years is an increased feminization of our culture. We raise children in a manner that we see as enhancing their self esteem and which attempts to shield them from the assorted slings and arrows of childhood and adolescence. The viewpoint of the individual is accepted as valid – in fact all viewpoints are valid – as part of avoiding that confrontation where one person or argument is wrong and another is right. (In fact, isn’t it true that there are few absolutes, and that reality is many headed?) Articles appear in prominent media arguing that the rise of the corporate woman is timely as interpersonal skills are needed to manage the complex interactions of the corporate environment. And so forth.

Meanwhile the higher education of men slips behind the ascendance of women, and our boys in school lag well behind the accomplishments of our girls.

These are familiar cultural trends, both celebrating the rise of women to equality and lamenting the seeming confusion of men as the masculine principle seems to be subtly degraded, with exceptions such as in the military.

So let me posit for now a rough definition of the masculine principle for the sake of elaborating on Karl’s hypothesis and how it might relate to what cultural implications we see in schools. To be clear, I do not imply that masculine implies only men, or that feminine implies only women. The masculine “principle”, to the contrary, refers to certain archetypal characteristics that traditionally have been linked to men, but not only men.
So here goes. Let’s start with accountability. Because the concept draws a line and says, in effect, “you get this only when and after you do this,” it seems to me to be a masculine principle, an unambiguous order, a rule without elaboration. Let me attempt again to be politically correct! Women, too, are rule givers. But I would argue that we have fuzzed the rules in raising our children, well intentioned as we are, men and women both. Maybe we have fuzzed too much, raised our children with too little of the masculine, of accountability. Can too much understanding and sympathy, arguably feminine attributes, leave our kids with too little resilience in dealing with challenge? Do we not develop ego strength and self confidence by dealing with slings and arrows? Don’t get me wrong, guarding self esteem is a good thing, and likely in earlier eras personalities grew constrained in negative ways by harsh child rearing and unthinking actions of the adults around children. Clearly we should guide our children as they learn to surmount challenge. This does not mean to protect them utterly.

In this faux self esteem era, we have children that think so highly of themselves in narrow dimensions by adult standards, that they tune adult authority out by the time of adolescence, before they have learned how to negotiate the increasingly rigorous learning standards we place before them. Rather than engage such difficulties, too many retreat into their social networks and their baubles they have not yet earned.

Moreover, my diverse suburban kids seem not to know how to begin. Here again, the masculine takes action, the feminine is more passive, receptive. Some among my students, though they wish to improve their academic imprint on some level, and know they need to do so, seem to waver before they begin, flail at brief fits and starts, and muster an effort only greater than that before by mediocre dimensions. I find myself wanting to kick them in the rear and, dear God, I admit, wanting to tell them to “Just Do It,” so imbued as I apparently am with the essentials of sports marketing.

In fact, finding ways to teach the concept of starting is surprisingly difficult. The images that occur to my thinking, that of a mule moving forward dumbly, though with purpose, up a trail, the sports image of putting one’s shoulder down and driving through a tackle, or challenging one’s body in a climb up a mountainside, are physical metaphors, blunt brute instruments, masculine in content and not particularly subtle. “Fight through it.”  “Figure it out.” I adopt simple strategies. “Just do the work”, which too many have not been doing.

This last strategy is in honor of a bright former student who I hounded to realize his potential. At one point I realized I hadn’t seen him for perhaps six to eight months. I ran into him in the hall shortly after. I asked how he was doing academically. He was doing well, more than passing all of his classes. “What was the secret of your turnaround?” “It’s pretty simple,” he replied, “all you have to do is do the work.” You might imagine I have retold that story more than once.

The Buddha would tell me that one learns also in contemplation, but am not sure my students have reached that rarified a plane.

As a counselor, my work has a significant feminine quality. I listen, I understand. But I find myself getting angry with the passivity of too many of my students. I begin to wonder if that anger is diagnostic of their overt dependence, and that they need masculine signals, pointed direction as to what they should do next, without question, because we adults who know better tell them to do so. My German father and my very self disciplined mother would be proud. And so, too, perhaps, my friend Karl would concur.

The frustrations of staff in schools do not all stem (by any means) solely from the stultifying effect of bureaucracy, or even the oft encountered lackadaisical (or frightened) attitude of too many entitled kids.

Some of the frustration, I suspect, stems from teachers’ and other staff‘s inability in the time they have available to intervene even adequately with each kid that needs attention, and then sustain the adopted strategy over time.

Though I can’t claim to have my finger fully on the progress of the many charter schools and other American experiments intent upon bringing our lagging students up to standard, in my reading I have encountered what seem to me two major variables that typify either promising starts or documented gains.

One set of conditions might be called “structured culture”, and would include additional focused time such as tutoring, use of uniforms (which reflect other changes in expectations), profound linkages with parents and community, including parent involvement in school, and teaching immigrant parents English.

The other major variable would be increased staff time with kids, often one to one, or in small groups. Though money enters the “structured culture” equation as well (required tutoring obviously has to be done by someone), it is in the people variable that funding is most critical. The power of relationship over time, whether to provide adequately structured experience, continually propounded expectations, or simply nurture for kids who may have had too little, is what successful alternative settings provide.

Which means enhanced staff/student ratios. I can hear frustrated administrators country wide snorting, “That ain’t gonna happen!”

I understand a skeptic reluctant to throw more money at schools that don’t seem to be doing the job. Other countries get significantly better results while spending far less money. Why throw more money after bad?

New money does need to be targeted rationally, which means to invest in principles that show promise that have been replicated successfully already in multiple settings. The scientific standard is not to accept as proof the first experiment, but the “proof” does emerge gradually as other similar studies/programs repeat with similar results, ideology aside.

The point is not to simply elevate staff/student ratios, but to do so following promising if not proven models.

However, if I am right that a common theme in student success is improved staff/student ratios, then there is no ducking a reckoning down the road. Is this society communitarian enough, or does it see its self interest well enough, to invest the money it will take to bring our lagging students into the mainstream where they can find their own success and in the process buoy the economy, and so lift all parties, even those narrowly self interested, to greater security and well being?

Of course, it is not only in the federal and state approach to education that questions of level of investment arise. There are broad cultural implications of a similar kind at stake in the health care tug of war between conservative/capital elements in society who wish to limit the scope of government reach and are skeptical about its efficacy, and those progressive elements who argue that the greater good lies in social investment in human capital via the public’s representative, that is to say via government. At stake are not just feel good notions of taking care of others in our national community, but also our national vision as to how better to float our economy in the long run in global competition.

To what extent will we preserve the elemental individualism that has been gut and sinew of our expansion across the continent, and to what extent will the dulling of westward movement and the slowing of perpetual newness promote a reinvestment in what we already have?

Arguably we are in the midst of an historical transition from a culture whose identity has been seated deeply in the limitless (seemingly) call of the frontier of the west, to a more mature culture which balances a reflective community ethic with that of the American brand of individualism.

In fact, as I have argued implicitly in other posts, that very individualism is under attack from none other than us, to paraphrase the immortal Pogo. When our students in heavily significant numbers do not understand what it means to be held accountable, seem not to be able to respond to adversity, and seem to expect to be given the next bauble – then we, ladies and gentlemen, no longer have youth prepared to take up the mantle of adult responsibilities, let alone that of rugged individualism. We have a failure of culture which for a couple of generations has produced too many of these youth. Perhaps schools are the incubators in which our cultural mistakes can be rectified, as a matter of national priority, and as a matter of national reinvestment.

Toward such issues of national priority, some conservative elements clearly have loftier motivations than some of their capital supporters. In Wisconsin, for example, it is difficult to take the Koch brothers political interventions as civically high minded. From the perspective of their responsibilities to their stock holders, rationally they work to lower the costs of government by undermining public unions, which in turn takes pressure off corporate tax liabilities. That these manipulations may in fact be short sighted because limits to middle class income in turn weaken the market for products and services, and arguably undermine the American economic outlook, and hence that of the Koch enterprises, requires a longer term and wiser perspective than they currently muster.

On the other hand, for those conservatives that doubt the ability of government to deliver, I salute them, for it is their skepticism that could drive results oriented expenditures.

Meanwhile, we have the frustrations of current teachers laboring under the existing status quo. Does every well meaning teacher, every staff member, consider these foregoing cultural tussles as they struggle with their frustrations? No, or at least I doubt it. I do watch and hear teachers shake their heads and bemoan their inability to intervene even adequately with struggling kids. For my part, as a counselor responsible for 500+ kids, at least 150 of whom exhibit symptoms that beg for sustained attention on my part, I know I cannot impact the full number to the extent I like to think I could. Some studies have suggested a 200 to 250 case load is an appropriate number. I echo my hypothetical administrators: “fat chance of that!”

So there is some measure of frustration in the schoolhouse with self, and with circumstances that defy well meaning, communitarian intention to do good. Too often, rather than promote change, the frustration breeds resignation, both figurative and literal, and energetic young staff, the type schools need to progress, find themselves in a no win situation, and so hunker down, or with regrets shift to careers where their energies produce more obvious benefit, and a fighting chance.

We do need more help; yet the public is skeptical, and the politics are problematic.

Schedule change time at the end of one semester and the beginning of another. I gird myself. If there is one request for change I hear more consistently than others, three to four times a day at this particular juncture, it is to change teacher, most frequently of math, but generally of any class with an uptick of rigor. Chemistry, AP classes, etc. Second most, or possibly equally most requested, is a drop out of rigor to “regular” level class in that academic discipline.

Universities increasingly tell us they look for proof in the rigor of course work for evidence that applicants are ready to handle college level classes – hence, in part, the stampede to AP curriculum and the like. And they are right.

The statistics on freshman year failure, whether community college or university, are sobering. Some of it is the freedom of the first time away from parents, and the attendant party mode.

That noted, I suspect more of the freshman year failure rate is due to lack of readiness for university level coursework, and its expectations for writing, critical thinking, and commitment.

So we focus on doing a better job in the high school. Some kids arrive on our doorstep well on their way to college readiness. Another percentage, while still in high school, start the long march to full readiness from poor readiness, because somehow they have gotten the message.

But a disturbing number, in my experience, still choose to opt out of the race while in high school. My informal research, and I think that of others, indicates the sloughing starts in early middle school, but that’s for another time.

Most of this latter cadre are capable of better, but choose not to face the challenge for a variety of reasons.  Some are alienated from adult expectations by personal circumstances, others are preoccupied with socializing, or sometimes just bored out of their tree, or lazy, and so on downward into the morass.

Even those who take on increased course rigor too often want to drop an AP class because they are staring a D or an F, or even a C in the face, and assume that an A or B in a regular class will persuade a college admissions committee more successfully. In most of these cases, they are wrong.

Some of the kids who seek out of a rigorous class in fact are over their heads, and we work with them to find a more suitable class.

However, far in the majority of cases the fault is not with the student’s choice of rigor, or the exterior reality she may face in the classroom, but with the student’s understanding of what it takes to be successful in the face of rigor. Some simply have never learned to persevere through any difficulty, not just the academic, but in the broader context of life, as well. Challenged, this student seeks to escape or, just as dysfunctionally, does not find his way to greater commitment of time and energy in order to solve the problem, but becomes resigned to a lack luster performance and then grade, in effect opting out of the game.

My touchstone here is my own experience first as a working adult, then a spouse, then a home owner – I thought I was working hard, near my limits……. And then my wife and I had kids, and I discovered a whole new gear, because I had to, or my children, or my job, or my marriage would suffer. Exigency teaches in a way that words cannot, if one recognizes the “must do it” for what it is. I and my colleagues of various stripes try to persuade these students that their very own lives lie in their hands, for better or worse, but too often our pleadings do not penetrate nor affect student behavior.

So we seem to have a cultural phenomenon, a generation or more of kids that seem to lack the will or the ability to commit, or at least the fear of failure that might drive them to their own next level. The next level might be simply to give more time to the project, or to learn how to manage time better, or to learn how to interact more consistently with and ask questions of those who are teaching them. A high percentage of time the kids who ask out of a rigorous class have spent little time seeking extra help, and most spend too little time on courses that should stretch their time commitment.

Ours is a culture in which kids are given so much, and challenged so little, that they seem not to have had enough formative experiences that would prepare them for the call to higher level. Theirs is a dearth of what used to be thought of as ego strength, and the presence of a false faith that the culture that has given them so much will continue to do so, as jobs sift their way toward burgeoning middle classes in India, or China, or Brazil. In building we have thought their self esteem, worthy enough goal, we have only built a self esteem predicated in stasis, rather than a confidence to meet challenge.

Often such students and their parents assume that the flirtation with failure in a rigorous class is due to the quality of the match between their style and the teacher’s, are predisposed therefore in this situation to failure, and think another teacher will better serve them in the same subject matter. The unconscious assumption is that the problem lies in exterior reality, with the solution simply to  change that exterior reality, rather than learning to meet the new challenge.

In my experience it is true that style of teacher and student, and how they mesh well or do not, is a reality, particularly in math, probably because in math there is generally a right and wrong answer, which can be finessed only within confined limits. But then how and when and where will the student who changes teachers learn to adapt to the rapidly shifting sands of a given employment, or varied expectations of different supervisors, or of the job market in which they must survive? In changing their teacher, except in the most egregious situations, do we not simply serve to perpetuate their essentially juvenile behavior at a time when they are supposed to be shifting to a more adult outlook? Change exterior reality, ah, that is the solution! Reset the problem rather than look to solution in the students’ own growth, as though in the student entry into the adult world they can of course expect such magic intervention.

I see otherwise quality parents — wishing the best for their kids, anxiously pained to see them struggling, worried about their emotional health – in this parenting cauldron losing their nerve and letting son or daughter off the hook when they struggle in a class. In this I am referring to parents of students who otherwise and often perform relatively well in school.

More ominously, the same cultural predisposition not to hold kids accountable is crippling among kids who have not had the good fortune to experience some academic success along with consistent parent support. Such kids wander lost in the back eddies of academic life. They chronically just stay above the failure line and lead undistinguished academic careers, or they fail, and fail, and eventually drop out and off the map.