It’s so nice to read an article in the newspaper that celebrates what is good about education. About things that are working. About things that, as the article says, “bring the humanity back” to our schools.

And it’s the ancient art of storytelling in which hard-scrabble kids are finding their voice, a sense of community and personal empowerment which are the keys to this taste of student success.

Places are using council to reach and teach kids. As the article states…

“Schools are so focused now on testing and assessment — the download and regurgitation of content. Council is the practice of listening to children and to one another.”

Wow, listening.
Wow, story.
Wow, building relationships that are meaningful.

Take a moment to read the hyperlinked piece above from the L.A. Times. It’s good stuff. It’s working. It’s critical.

Careful though… if this catches on, we’re gonna need bubble tests to provide data-driven council. After all, that would be a natural evolution, right?

Last weekend I took my daughter to LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art). I hadn’t been in a decade and WOW, was I blown away by the incredible experience.

LACMA is a really good museum. And I like really good museums. Why I haven’t been in more than 10 years, I have no idea.

Anyway, LACMA lured us to their museum with an offer of free art for kids. (My daughter’s 3 1/2 so what a great way to spend a Sunday, right?) Of course, it was a home run. Of course, there were scores and scores of other parents taking advantage of the day. Of course, 10 minutes after I arrived I was thinking to myself, “Why haven’t I waited so long?”

And then the nice lady at LACMA asked my daughter if she wanted to become a member of the museum. She said “Yes!” without asking the price. (She does that a lot.) But as it turns out, the price was free.

As it turns out, they gave her a free membership until she turns 18. It’s called NexGen. And everytime she comes, we get one free adult admission as well.

“Cool!” I said. “What a great program.”

“Yeah, well, we have to develop the next generation of artists and kids people who appreciate art,” the lady told me. “Cause our stupid schools sure ain’t,” she said.

Owch!

It was an unprompted comment. She didn’t even know I was a teacher. She just blasted away with a genuine sense of nobility about what she was doing combined with contempt for what our schools are doing mixed in her voice.

And I could not have agreed more completely.

Is modern day education striving to stamp out the human spirit on purpose or is all this nonsense just a by-product of stupidity, short-sightedness and an a fear that if we do not create enough child-widgets, our country is going to turn into a widget-less adult workforce?

As the proverb says, “Man cannot live by bread alone.”

School budgets need to be cut! But you better not shortchange MY child’s education. This is the schizophrenic mantra being shouted by policy-making parents today.

On one hand, when they put on their bean counter hats, they see the excess, the fluff, the areas which can “justifiably” be scaled back. On the other hand, when they wear the hat of a being a parent and they look at the education that their own flesh and blood are getting in our schools, suddenly it’s a whole different tune we hear being sung.

Art and music are expendable, non-core luxuries when policy decisions are being made for other people’s children. But when it comes to their own kids, if they don’t have flutes, paint, percussion, and piano, they bark the accusation, “What kind of Neanderthal schooling is being provided by you philistines!?”

If only the folks that made the decisions as to what’s best for other people’s kids viewed these decisions through the prism of how they would evaluate the very same questions when applied through the lens of “What would be best for my own kids?” things would be so much different.

When we start to educate our kids as if they really are “our” kids — and not the kids of “other” people — we are going to make a heck of leap forward in national education policy.