Undoing Education

I have been writing about myself lately. I was the kid who didn’t understand math.

The teacher had taught it. I knew she had taught it. I had been sitting there while she taught it.

I still didn’t understand.

The next lesson needed something from the previous lesson, and I was already missing that piece. Eventually there were enough missing pieces that I stopped wanting to ask. After a while, I said fuck math.

Years later, I became a teacher.

Now I’m writing about my childhood while going to school to become a therapist, and I keep coming back to education from different directions. What it felt like to be a student. What I could see as a teacher. What I’m learning to ask about the person sitting in front of me.

I think we need to rebuild the whole thing from the ground up.

The Trump administration’s moves toward dismantling the Department of Education bring that question into the present. Its stated direction includes returning responsibility to states, and it has been moving functions into other federal agencies. I agree that education needs substantial change. I don’t see an adequate answer in those changes to the question that concerns me: what will school actually become for the children attending it? (ed.gov, reuters.com)

Taking something apart carries a responsibility to think about what happens next. I worry about an educational Wild West in which the help a child receives depends even more on where they happen to live and what their family can arrange.

I want us to invest more in education. I would rather put more of our money into children learning how to live and less into war and bombs.

And I want us to be willing to reconsider things we treat as settled: when children start school, how long they attend, how their days are organized, and why being the same age should mean being ready for the same lesson.

A birthday tells us something about a child. It cannot tell us everything that child understands.

I want education organized around mastery. Find out what students know. Find the gaps. Teach them what they need next, and give them ways to demonstrate that they understand it.

A student could be ready for demanding reading while still needing help with foundational math. That student needs an education capable of responding to both.

The calendar should leave room for the learning to happen.

I don’t have an exact starting age or a new graduation timetable worked out. I do think those questions deserve more than “this is how we’ve always done it.”

Part of the school I imagine already exists in an old story of mine, Red Sparrow and The Egg. I revisited it in A MAG, Not a Warden. Inside the Egg, an artificial teacher named Pete adjusts instruction to the student. When something hasn’t connected, he goes back to find it. He can explain again without making the child feel stupid.

I still want that patience and attention. My later reflection also questioned the control built into the story: the institution knew things about the child that it kept from him. That part deserves questioning too.

In an actual school, I picture individual learning spaces. I call them pods. You can think of them as cubicles if that makes the idea less science fiction.

Students would spend part of their day there, working through material suited to what they currently understand. Teachers would track their progress, bring together students with overlapping needs, and work individually with those who needed individual attention. There would also be classes together, conversation, and shared work.

The groups would change as the students learned. Needing help with fractions would describe something we were working on. It would not need to become the child’s identity.

Some of the tools for this were already visible to me when I was teaching. I remember the feedback from MAP testing: information about what students did well and where they struggled. I could see how useful that kind of information could be.

Teachers need access to it, and they need time to use it.

I hate the idea of turning every useful practice into another strict rule. I want teachers to have a detailed enough picture of students’ academic and activity progress to make thoughtful decisions. That picture should include their work, their questions, their projects, and what teachers notice while helping them.

If we want teachers to do that well, we have to build it into their working day. We cannot keep adding responsibilities and act surprised when there isn’t enough time.

We should also pay more attention to what individual teachers do especially well.

I think of using teachers more like Swiss Army knives. The system can deploy them so bluntly that their particular skills get lost inside the assignment to cover a broad curriculum.

A teacher who is especially good at explaining fractions should be able to reach the students who need that explanation. That expertise should have room to travel beyond one classroom or school.

Remote instruction makes some of that possible. Students could remain in a supervised local space while learning from people elsewhere. Local teachers could prepare them, help during the lesson, and follow up afterward.

Good lessons should travel too. Record them. Build a widely available collection of strong curriculum, with different ways to approach the same concept. Let students revisit an explanation and teachers find something useful without having to recreate everything themselves.

And pay the teachers who make it.

I would like teachers to receive compensation for creating those materials and a share based on their use. We should be able to recognize that someone has made something valuable and reward the work that went into it.

But the school day I’m imagining contains much more than individual instruction.

Children need play. They need recess, especially in their formative years. They need time to invent something together without an adult turning every minute into an assignment.

They also need deliberate help learning how to deal with other people.

Putting children in the same space creates opportunities to socialize. I want us to take responsibility for teaching some of the skills involved: entering a conversation, handling disagreement, recognizing hurt, managing frustration, respecting boundaries, and repairing harm.

Those things deserve a consistent place in education. So does learning to understand your own emotions.

I would give every student access to a therapist—someone they could meet with and get to know as part of their school life.

I mean that therapeutically and intersectionally. I want someone who tries to understand the different circumstances a child is living within and how those circumstances interact. Family, money, race, culture, disability, identity, belonging. The child needs room to explain their experience rather than having adults decide what a category means for them.

That relationship would need trust and privacy. A student should understand what can remain confidential and what cannot.

I would also give each child an educational advocate, almost like a social worker, who follows their education from entry through graduation. Ideally, that would be the same person for as long as possible.

Someone who knows what we’ve tried. Someone who follows up. Someone the student can approach when a plan isn’t working or they feel misunderstood.

That would require manageable caseloads and real time with families. The advocate would need to keep getting to know the child as they changed.

As students grew older, I would open the day into more specialized activity.

The beginning of the day would concentrate on core academic learning. The second half would move toward something like Greenville’s Fine Arts Center or the Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities.

The Fine Arts Center already pairs specialized arts instruction with academics at students’ home high schools. The Governor’s School combines academic education with intensive training in a chosen art. They offer concrete examples of giving young people sustained time, skilled instruction, and resources to develop an interest. (fineartscenter.net, scgsah.org)

I want that possibility extended across fields: engineering, mechanics, mathematics, culinary work, science, technology, writing, music, visual arts, and more.

Let children encounter enough possibilities to discover interests they didn’t know they had. Then give them increasing opportunities to pursue those interests seriously.

For some students, that could eventually connect to a place like Greenville Tech and preparation for an actual job. Others might pursue university study or another direction. They would have guidance, experience, and a voice in choosing where they went.

And they would be allowed to change their minds.

Kids need flexibility just as much as they need a guided path.

A student who discovers that mechanics isn’t what they want has learned something. We should help them figure out the next step and what preparation it requires. Choosing a direction at fourteen shouldn’t amount to signing away the right to become interested in something else.

There are costs and difficult questions throughout this idea. Staffing. Facilities. Transportation. Access. How we judge mastery. How we keep choices open. How we make sure an advocate genuinely has time to advocate.

I’m offering a direction I want us to take seriously. Parts could be tried, examined, and changed with the students and teachers doing the work.

My experience as a teacher is part of why I want this. So is my experience as a student. I know what it feels like to sit through an explanation and still need help. I also know something about trying to reach a room full of children when each one brings a different life into it.

When I think about rebuilding school, I keep returning to that kid with the math book.

He was asking a question.

I want us to build a school with enough time, people, and imagination to stay with him until he understands.