As a student, my main concern with high school was making it through.  Memorize this.  Pass that test.  Fill in the homework before the teacher walks to this side of the room.  Get good enough grades to get into a good school (and to be able to watch TV and talk on the phone to my heart’s content).  I’d do all that first.  Then I would worry about learning.

It worked.

For me.

But there were far too many kids for whom this model didn’t work.

As a teacher, I have different concerns for my own students.  Now I spend much of my time thinking about and focusing on how to encourage my students towards to success, both in and out of the classroom.  It is my educational philosophy that much of what we focus on in school (standardized testing, grades, and minute details from four hundred year old tragedies) are much less important than the lessons surrounding them.

In other words, my end goal isn’t that my students read and understand Macbeth and then pass a test on Shakespeare.  I prefer to use Macbeth as a tool to teach my students how to pick apart a text, how to analyze literature, how to write for an audience, how to find pleasure in what can be a difficult reading, how to talk to their classmates and hold an intelligent conversation, and how to navigate the often difficult waters of societal norms and values.  I will consider my mission accomplished when I have students that can read, write, and participate in class and that are also prepared to do the same when they leave school.  I will consider my mission accomplished when I have students that are kind and compassionate, open minded and thoughtful – both when it comes to helping each other, reading a new piece of literature, and deciding how to live their everyday lives.

Some days, students tell me that they discussed something from class with their parents.  Old students return and tell me that something we talked about in class helped them with something they’re doing in college…or in the army… or at work.  However, some days, I’m not sure if my mission will ever be accomplished.  I’m not sure if I’m anywhere close to getting to this point.  Many times, I feel like the gears of the educational juggernaut are too difficult, too rusty, and too imposing to go up against.

Is it possible?

There are many, like professor Nicolaus Mills, who argue that things like the recent SAT scandal (in which students, desperate to get high scores so that they can get into a good college) show that standardized testing has become too important.

Just before Thanksgiving, Nassau County district attorney Kathleen Rice leveled criminal charges against 13 students for their part in the Long Island testing scandal. Rice was right to treat as a criminal matter the testing fraud, which, after seven arrests in September, now includes 20 Long Island students.

But if colleges and high schools sit back and regard the Long Island scandal as primarily a security issue to be corrected by better policing, they are failing in their mission. They bear a huge responsibility for the degree to which a high score on a standardized test has become disproportionately important for college admission.

The Long Island testing scandal reflects the extent to which high school students across the country are responding to what their teachers and colleges are telling them will bring success. They are acting on the premise that in the race to gain admission to the nation’s most prestigious schools, getting a high score on the ACT or College Board tests is the equivalent of winning the lottery.

This obsessive focus is exactly the opposite of the generous ideal that in 1934 led Harvard president James Bryant Conant to pioneer the use of the SAT, Scholastic Aptitude Test, for admission to Harvard. Conant’s aim was to find worthy students in schools across the country who were not part of the elite private school system from which Harvard traditionally drew most of its students.

Schools are focused on scores and not on what really matters…which is what? 

Q. and A.: Can You Teach Character? – SchoolBook.

Two schools have been attempting to change the focus of what students are taught, by looking at teaching kids character – “grit” and “optimism” among them – and teaching them to overcome.  This is directly at odds with the culture of success that many teachers are encouraged to build.  In the New York Times article “What if the Secret to Success Is Failure?” Paul Tough examines this question as he looks into the way these two schools are trying to shift education.

Cohen and Fierst told me that they also see many Riverdale parents who, while pushing their children to excel, also inadvertently shield them from exactly the kind of experience that can lead to character growth. As Fierst put it: “Our kids don’t put up with a lot of suffering. They don’t have a threshold for it. They’re protected against it quite a bit. And when they do get uncomfortable, we hear from their parents. We try to talk to parents about having to sort of make it O.K. for there to be challenge, because that’s where learning happens.”

Cohen said that in the middle school, “if a kid is a C student, and their parents think that they’re all-A’s, we do get a lot of pushback: ‘What are you talking about? This is a great paper!’ We have parents calling in and saying, for their kids, ‘Can’t you just give them two more days on this paper?’ Overindulging kids, with the intention of giving them everything and being loving, but at the expense of their character — that’s huge in our population. I think that’s one of the biggest problems we have at Riverdale.”

At this school, the headmaster did away with Advanced Placement classes.  He did away with the vast amounts of homework teachers were giving to kids.  He even disagrees with standardized tests which test kids on IQ and not on what they have the ability to learn.  Many parents worried that this wouldn’t help their kids get into college, thus reenforcing the system that has, ostensibly, led situations like the Long Island SAT scandal.  Of course, no one wants to see their kids fail – but the question is a good one.  Do kids need a little hardship to encourage them?  What can we do to improve education for our students?

So now that you’ve been through about thirteen years of schooling what do you think would have helped you along the way?  You’ve known kids that have succeeded, and known kids that have failed.  You’ve seen kids who have graduated and are doing great, and you’ve seen kids who were not served by the schools.

You know the drill.  Read about it, think about it, then write about it.