The Crisis in Education Revisited

I read with interest Stephen R. Covey's recent piece in Huffington Post (Our Children and the Crisis in Education 4/20/10) and frankly, I could not agree more. The world is certainly moving toward profound change and, indeed, our children are not being prepared for that reality. Nor, in fact, are we. Unfortunately, as I have written in the past in this blog, the adult communities tend to begin to prepare themselves for change first, and our children last. It appears to be an old fashioned, even gallant, attempt to protect our children from harsher realities, but in effect it is an archaic approach to education which stultifies attempts to condition our children to facie the radically changing world in which they must live. Yes, traditional education is archaic.
As Covey writes, "Parents see the chaos, the economic uncertainty, the stress and complexity in the world, and know deep down that the traditional three "R's" …reading, writing, and arithmetic…are necessary, but not enough. Society's present and future needs and opportunities demand increased capacity for responsibility, creativity, and tolerance of differences." Covey further suggests that society needs people who are autonomous, trustworthy, socially competent, and will take initiative - in other words, leaders, and that our current educational system is not designed to produce these attributes. Again, I agree. I agree with Covey's proposed solutions as well. Education today does need to directly inculcate the attitudes and social competencies that Covey outlines and that are currently being taught in the leadership magnet school that he describes. The A.B. Combs school in Raleigh, N.C. has gone about it correctly with full immersion in the ideals, staff accepting themselves as role models, and a whole school positive mindset. The school uses an "inside out" methodology, as Covey describes it, teaching the teachers Covey's seven principles first so that they may live, model, and integrate the teaching into their classes every day. As Covey states, there is no new curriculum. While I agree wholeheartedly with this mission, I must disagree with the procedure. And here is why.
Those skills and capabilities that are necessary for the development of strong character, autonomy, and intra/inter personal competencies are not be taught by promotions, sayings, quotes, and role modeling alone (although such an approach is way better than no approach at all). Yes, the application of these principles in context in classrooms is valuable. A picture is worth a thousand words, and a teacher with the awareness to present such pictures within the framework of history, or science, or other disciplines is a huge asset. And certainly an entire community dedicated to the promotion of these principals is going to experience success. All of these reminders are needed. But the skills and competencies composing autonomy and trustworthiness and caring need to be nurtured and taught.
Character education is all about the brain. The integral traits need to be developed and the skills learned over time, the neural paths established and traveled repeatedly. And to do so requires a curriculum, a curriculum that is carefully crafted to reflect the needs and capabilities of children at each developmental stage. Leadership skills, social competencies, ethical decision making…all are centered in brain growth and processing (after all, what isn't?)…and how and what to teach at each level of growth must reflect an understanding of the brain's maturity and capabilities. All of this knowledge is available. A huge amount of neuroscience research has been done in the last decades, so much that there has not been time to disseminate it. While I believe that every primary and middle school teacher should be responsible for seeking out this research, to better understand what a child brain can be expected to assimilate at each developmental stage and to understand the importance of relevance and the power of peer influence, I understand that time is our constraint. But a prepared leadership curriculum, even a simple generic framework designed to be taught easily by any and all teachers, can insure consistency, accuracy, and sensitivity. In teaching such skills, the empowering of self is critical, and therefore the manner of teaching is as critical as the subject being taught. A designed curriculum can outline specific presentation techniques for creating such an environment.
While much more may (and probably should) be said to advocate the use of a designed curriculum for teaching those self leadership skills that Mr. Covey so correctly declares are critically needed in education today, I will resist in the interests of preserving the central point of the issue, which is that a sea change toward such thinking is necessary immediately, and that the strength of mind and character to preserve our world in the future can only come from the demand that our children be sufficiently prepared with these qualities.