On education
Not long ago, I had a sudden and distressing realization. A day doesn’t go by without another of this country’s endless and seemingly unstoppable mass shootings—the United States is averaging around 1.5 a day so far this year. Horrific as it sounds, they’ve become background noise given their frequency. Yet my realization came when my older son’s school had an “active shooter” drill designed to teach the kids what to do if (hopefully not when) tragedy comes their way.
He’s seven. In second grade. And while they don’t tell the kids “imagine there’s a deranged man (it’s always a man) with automatic weapons (it’s always automatic weapons) killing people in the school,” that’s what hiding in closets and under desks and barricading the doors boils down to. It’s insane that the country seems to have accepted traumatizing kids as a tradeoff for unfettered access to objects whose only purpose is to kill, but that’s where we are.
My realization, though, was around options. If you’re American born and bred, this is the world you live with. But as an Australian with the ability to move and have my kids educated there, I said to their mum: “At what point are we negligent here? At what point are we consciously endangering them by not moving where they don’t have to worry about this stuff?”
Maybe that’s oversimplifying a really complex issue, but I don’t think it is. The issue of guns in this country is, for me, not complex—the Second Amendment has been willfully twisted, and the net result is a nation simply awash with weapons. Of all the factors contributing to gun violence—mental health, video games, and anything else apologists like to squeal about—the only one where the US differs materially from other countries is access to weapons. Period. But the odds of anything changing are … remote. It’s become a charged political issue and, for many, deeply cultural and ingrained, with a side of “us versus them.”
Yet the whole “should we move the kids?” notion made me more sensitive to other aspects of the US education system I’ve long wondered about. Let me preface this by stating an unfortunate truth: like almost everything in the States except the quality of coffee, money can buy you the best of anything. Those with the means to afford it have access to some of the best schools on the planet, just as those with the means to afford it can access the finest healthcare in the world. The problem is too few have the means, and the balance has to deal with some truly weird shit.
Exhibit A: a high school in Texas just narrowly failed to win approval for a $94 million football stadium (the measure failed 54% to 46%, which meant around 400 people switching their vote would have seen it pass). Let me repeat that. At a time when books are being banned, kids can’t get milk, there are widespread teacher shortages, and actual teachers are buying supplies themselves when their students aren’t beating them up, a school district wanted to spend $94 million on a football stadium. For high schoolers.
Exhibit B: in my home of Evanston, Illinois, a school that should know better—Northwestern University—wants to spend $800 million on a stadium. The proposal has divided the city, for a few reasons. First, university is supposed to be about academics. Why the hell would you spend $800 million on a stadium? Note: The school has a stadium, and it’s just fine. Second, university is supposed to be about academics. Third, university is supposed to be about academics. Oh, and fact the school pays no property tax despite owning great swaths of Evanston doesn’t help, since residents make up the difference. Update: after last week kicking the can down the road, the city council approved the redevelopment with the mayor casting the tie-breaking vote.
The fact the National Football League has managed to outsource its player development to America’s universities is one of those phenomena that gobsmacks anyone from anywhere else in the world. If the NFL wants a robust development path, no problem—it can fund entire division two, three, and four leagues with its gazillions in revenue. Instead, the country’s universities foot the bill (well, they’re also in cahoots to sell the television rights for eye watering amounts of money, and for decades refused to let the players share in the spoils). For what it’s worth, I find the obsession with college sports generally insane with a big dollop of weird. These are, I remind people, a bunch of amateur “student athletes” (an oxymoron: they’re athletes, and barely study). A tiny sliver of them will actually go professional, and the rest is … a bunch of amateur “student athletes.” So … yay?
Exhibit C: I was chatting with the father of one of my seven-year-old’s schoolmates. The dad is from Denmark and was struggling to understand two things: why kids were already taking standardized tests, and why they change teachers every year. In his home country, he explained, kids do no structured learning until they’re older and instead spend most of their time engaged in free play. And they get the same teacher for several years, ensuring consistency, familiarity, and routine. Oh, and Denmark consistently trounces the US when it comes to educational outcomes.
It’s hard not to look at the US education system, compare it with elsewhere, and conclude one of two things. Either the US has consciously decided to do things that don’t work just for the sake of being different, or it’s trying everything that doesn’t work before finally realizing it has something to learn from countries that have been around a lot longer. I would argue it’s a combination of both—the US sticks rigidly to stupid things like the imperial system despite the rest of the world having gone metric (“that’ll show ‘em how exceptional we are!”), and it’s incredibly slow to accept that others may in fact know better.
I’d equate the latter with US attitudes to work, by way of comparison. Americans are unhealthily attached to working long hours as something of a badge of honor, and particularly begrudge Europeans who take the month of August off (it’s a mix of “how dare they?” and “I wish I could do that”). The idea that countries that have been around, oh, ten times longer than the US may have figured out the workism con and balanced their lives better is just dismissed out of hand.
I’d like to think Americans will eventually come around—I see hopeful signs among the younger peeps I work with. And maybe—just maybe—that humility to learn from others will eventually extend to a whole bunch of areas, including education. But … I’m not holding my breath.