Is Our Children Learning?

A thought struck me tonight as I sat and idly watched the hours tick by during my class on "Differentiated Instruction." We were looking through the Individualized Educational Programs (IEPs) of some NYC students and were talking about the kinds of accommodations we’d have to make in our classrooms to fit the needs of these specific students. There were students with mild autism, emotionally disturbed students, dyslexic students, hearing-impaired students, and many others. The basic idea was simple (and ultimately knowable without having to take a whole damn course to understand): different students require an instructor to take different approaches to ensure that the material is accessible to everyone.

This discussion got me thinking about one of the most commonly uttered phrases in educational circles: we believe that every child can learn. Perhaps because I was tired enough to be feeling obstinate, perhaps because I was just bored enough to let my mind wander, I started thinking of this tenet in a whole new light. Yes, as teachers, we must believe that every child can learn. But can every child learn everything? I think not.

At its surface, this statement seems self-evident. Not every student excels at integral calculus; not every student will understand the character development of Hamlet. Often, those who do one task well will struggle with the other. Students who write excellent short stories aren’t automatically assumed to be able to identify silicate minerals and vice versa. But if we accept the premise that it might not be possible for a student to excel in all subjects at once, do we not open the door to the disturbing conclusion that some students just might not perform to par in our particular class, regardless of what our efforts may entail?

This idea flies in the face of everything we’re taught to expect as teachers. We’re supposed to be the magic makers, turning failing students around and making bright students perform at ever-higher levels. Simply put, this is unrealistic. Countless hours of teaching experience shows that not every student will learn everything, even if lessons are differentiated, multiple intelligences are acknowledged, extra resources are brought to bear, and all the weapons in our educational arsenal are utilized.

I personally know of some people who went through years of acting school at one of the more prestigious universities in North America and yet couldn’t act their way out of a paper bag. Did their eminently qualified and talented acting professors fail in some way or are there just some people who aren’t cut out to be actors, regardless of the excellence of the instruction they receive. Not everyone can be a rocket scientist. Not everyone can be a master sculptor. Is it rational to believe that everyone can pass high school Earth Science? (And I mean everyone. Public schools aren’t in the business of turning students away.)

Perhaps I’ve been beating you, the humble reader, over the head with my point, but I feel I have to explain myself only because my opinion runs so far counter to what policymakers, administrators and the general public feel is the norm for education in America. Our eventual success is taken for granted, it’s simply a matter of rolling up our sleeves, keeping our nose to the grindstone, and following other pithy metaphors for hard work and dedication. Don’t worry, student-who-failed-every-math-class-in-the-last-four-years, just a little more effort on your part and a hefty dose of good ol’fashioned know-how from your teacher and you’ll be passing in no time. Everyone can do it! Everyone can use a circular saw correctly! Everyone’s great at water polo! Everyone plays chess!

We need to stop deluding ourselves and our children with the naïve notion that we can all excel at everything. We all have our failings in life. We all experience the thing we can’t understand (Quantum mechanics) or the accomplishment that we’ll never master, no matter how much we may be dedicated to the task (Running a 16:00 5K). And is it that so bad a fate, to recognize that we’ll never be the astronaut (or paleontologist) that we grew up hoping we could be? It’s only when someone is honest enough to tell us that we’ll never make a passable plumber, pianist, or physicist that we get the opportunity to explore what our future might feasibly entail.

Going through the motions in a job that doesn’t suit you must have a place in a certain circle of hell. The whole point of your professional life is to find what you do well and do it as well as you can. Who can be burdened with the shortcomings life may contain when you know in your heart that one thing you’re meant to do?

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.

-Martin Luther King

We will always need streetsweepers. But they won't have to know a thing about Earth Science.