Education
Today education seems like a fraught topic. There are court cases, laws, protests, advocacy groups all aiming to influence what is taught, how it is taught, how education systems are funded, who should have access, what roles schools should play in society. We can’t agree on much. It even seems like there is a lot of disagreement on the purpose of education. That may lead to the conflicts about the issues mentioned above.
Where does that all leave us as a society attempting to figure out how to educate the young?
I have no answers about that. Even as a former educator.
Last holiday season, the Weekend Edition Saturday host, Scott Simon, had a short comical radio editorial about a run-in with Santa Claus, who is sitting on a bench enjoying a latte. Apparently, Santa’s life has modernized — he takes Ozempic now and has trimmed down, his elves are working from home, his reindeer are all gig workers, Rudolf has a podcast (that doesn’t paint he best picture of his former boss). Santa asks Simon if he has a holiday wish, and of course, he does:
“Give each child a chance to be happy, healthy, and to play, that’s all.”
“Why don’t we all work on that together?” Santa replies before heading off.
This may seem like a tangent, but it got me to thinking about education, about the social realities that we create — of which education is one. Are we all working on that wish to give each child a chance to be happy, healthy, and to play?
What if we admitted that education is more a matter of faith than anything else? Might that disrupt the certainties we all seem to have in our various corners? Maybe make us more willing to compromise or attempt not to politicize education so much?
If we were working on that wish, would it be as easy to build such inequitable systems where the children of the wealthy, who have all the advantages that come with that, have well funded schools while the children of low-income parents, who have all the disadvantages that come with that, have underfunded schools?
If we were working on that wish, would we be able to accept the neuroscience and psychology about the developmental importance of play in children’s lives? Sure, we want our children to engage in a rigorous education, but rigor is not necessarily or always the opposite of fun.
If we were working on that wish would we maybe see what John Dewey meant by education as growth? And that every child should get the chance to grow to be happy, health, and to play?
I don’t know, but maybe it is worth a shot.
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Beyond education though, what if our top priority, as a society, was to make sure that every child had a chance to be happy, healthy, and to play?
What might that mean?
Would our government allow corporations to so easily get away with polluting our air, our water, our bodies, our children’s future, all in the name of economic growth?
Would we allow gun violence to be the main cause of death for children in our country?
Would we allow social media companies to exploit our children’s psychology, mental health, and personal data for advertising revenue?
Would we allow health insurance companies to deny care based on their own self-serving determinations that treatments doctors order are not medically necessary?
Would we allow private equity firms to buy up houses and apartment buildings driving up the cost for everyone, especially low-income families who have children?
Would we allow the wealthy and corporations to pay lower taxes or to evade paying their taxes?
Maybe these issues have nothing to do with education. Or maybe they do. Maybe they all affect our children in so many ways that impinge on their educational opportunities and their ability to function in schools — regardless of how the schools are approaching the process of education.
Maybe this is something we can all agree on? That every child should have a chance to be happy, healthy, and to play.
If not, maybe we need a Children’s Congress.