Nikhil Goyal is a very articulate high school senior who just published a book about what is needed in American education.
He wrote a letter to the editor of the NY Times, and his letter was so impressive that it became the focus for one of the Times’ Sunday dialogues.
That means that the Times invited readers to respond to his letter with their own.
This led to quite an interesting exchange.
The only addition I would make to the discussion is that the test results are used to bash teachers, knock public education, mislead the public about the condition of American education, and lay the groundwork for privatization.
As terrible as the overuse and misuse of testing is in relation to creativity, it is even more terrible in the way test scores are now being used to inflict damage on a basic democratic institution.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
NY TIMES today also…Dear Teacher, Johnny isn’t sick. He’s just boycotting the test:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/education/dear-teacher-johnny-isnt-sick-hes-just-boycotting-the-test.html?pagewanted=all
I have to hand it to Nikhil Goyal, whose energy, vision, and initiative will likely inspire many students his age (and younger and older). He is on fire, and it’s hard to argue with fire, especially fire with a soul and brain. I admire him for what he does. Yet I have a few disagreements with him.
Yes, if young people take charge of their education, the schools will be in some way transformed. But one must go about such transformations wisely, combining the good of past and present.
Goyal often sounds similar to SIr Ken Robinson, Salman Khan, and even (with some adjustments) William Kilpatrick, L. Thomas Hopkins, and other reformers of the early twentiefth century. Versions of his proposed “revolution” have led in the past to misguided and exaggerated reforms–because they were too swift in their dismissal of traditional subject matter.
In the introduction to his book, in his discussion of the changing workplace, Goyal writes, “Being average does not cut it any more. Are you inventing, adapting, and re-inventing your job each and every day? Are you adding significant value to your job, more than a foreigner, a computer, or a robot? If you fail to answer even one of these key questions, do not be in shock when you are handed a pink slip by your boss.”
But the best “inventions, adaptations, and reinventions” are often the subtle ones. Most, if not all, of my jobs, and my own approaches to my jobs, have involved such activity. It is part of what you do when you immerse yourself in something; you are continually tinkering and experimenting, gaining insights into the work, and finding better ways to get it done.
Goyal calls for a revolution, an overhaul of schools as we know them, without acknowledging the richness of traditional study of history, mathematics, literature, and so forth. (By “traditional study” I mean study built on a foundation of important works, ideas, and methods; there’s much more to it, but for now, that will have to do.) Traditional study does not preclude original thought; it opens up the way to it.
In subtle ways, you can combine structured curriculum with creative approaches every day. In a single assignment, you can foster both concrete knowledge and individual thought. You just have to plan it well. Some lessons will tip more toward the one or the other. You need both. You want to play an instrument creatively? You have to be able to play it in the first place. Yet even a beginner need not be limited to technical exercises, as important as they are. There’s room for much more–for pieces that beginners can handle, for chamber music where the beginners play simple parts, and for improvisation and composition.
I recently asked my students to write a continuation of Book VIII of Plato’s Republic, where Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus discuss how aristocracy devolves into timocracy, timocracy into oligarchy, oligarchy into democracy, and democracy into tyranny (a fascinating discussion, whether or not one agrees with it). They were to have Socrates and Glaucon discuss how tyranny devolves into something else. This assignment required both understanding of Book VIII (which we had studied closely) and the ability to imagine further. The students came up with delightful, ingenious, profound responses (sprinkled with a good deal of wit). But to do well on this assignment, they had to know their Plato.
With standardized testing today, we see not traditional education, but a cheapening, emptying, and homogenization of it. Traditional education is not monolithic or static; it takes many forms and has, at its best, involved a great deal of critical thought. I protest the current cheapening, not traditional education itself. Traditional education can grow with the times; to reject it is to reject the very things that will help us think keenly.
Along similar lines, I heartily recommend James O’Keeffe’s recent blog post, “Learning by McJective: The Common Core and Junk Education”:
http://www.dissidentteacher.com/2012/10/learning-by-mcjective-common-core-and.html
I may expand on these thoughts in a blog post one of these days, after reading Goyal’s book in full.
We ought to adopt this quote from the 1960s TV show, The Prisoner:
Number 6: I will not make any deals with you. I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
From one of the responses:
“As a future teacher, I want to be held accountable for my students’ learning.”
–RYAN HEISINGER
Boy does this kid have a good kick in the pants coming. I want to hear him repeat that statement after he’s had his first kid sleep through class or not turn in a single assignment or whatever.
I’ve heard it before. Reality is humbling and so is the Thanksgiving break.
I love it when reality hits and they cry foul, it isn’t fair when it turns to them and they are on the hook. They truly do not know of what they speak. Just read the posts from Gary Rubenstein from all the TFA folks that run into reality and find out being enthusiastic and believing aren’t enough. Some things you can’t fix no matter how hard you want to.
Ryan has some other interesting ideas:
http://www.diamondbackonline.com/article_393782c0-ff1a-557f-8164-73f75cfa8e02.html
The prevailing ideology in the United States from about 20 years ago was students from low-income backgrounds in urban and rural school districts could not perform at the same levels as their suburban counterparts. Now we know that isn’t true — and we have a slew of examples in which students in the most high-need areas are excelling. And the vast majority of these examples come from students at charter schools.
Charter schools are publicly-funded, and operate autonomously from their school districts. They are not forced to abide by the restrictive laws and contracts that hinder teachers’ and schools’ abilities to adequately educate their students.
After having read this it all makes sense. Ah, so sad that youth is wasted on the young. The truly young, inexperienced and dare I say naive.
If it were so simple Ryan, don’t you think the problem would have been solved long ago?
Here’s one for you: Talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words. Hope you stay at least two years before moving on like so many “expert educators.” Soldier on.
Perhaps the editors and reporters at the Times should be required to read the exchange. They might just learn something.