As with everything it is refocused as a money question: it isn’t so simple.
Go into our schools and you will see remarkably stimulating environments, and kids facing in every direction, some are focused on the topic, others are not. Go to study hall an you will see people studying and you will see kids who are more interested in their friend’s new shoes, texting or clock-watching.Some teachers are doing their best, some teachers have stopped trying.
Okay, so it is a big economy and we need people to pick up garbage. That is, frankly, part of the answer.
Another part of the answer is that we, as a nation, promote individualism, the John Wayne, Daniel Boone, Zebulion Pike variety. And, might we add Mother George, Edith Hamilton and Joan Uebelhoer type. The entrepreneurial spirit. Leadership, the path least followed, the one-man-can-change-the-world philosophy. Make that one woman, as well.
Years ago I had the opportunity to monitor classes in Germany. A few years later the same in Ukraine. Big difference between here and there. The Germans, god bless them, move together more as a group. Certainly, individualism is acceptably, but it is not a part of the ethos as it is here. Same in Ukraine, there is more of a group mentality, you might give it the “team-concept” spin and compare it to America where, instead, teachers are involved in, to use the hackneyed, but apt description, hearding cats. Here, everyone is encouraged to be an individual, which implies seeking one’s own level, finding one’s own path, doing one’s own thing. It suggests that some kids will rise to be bankers and others will choose less lucrative, perhaps equally fulfilling paths, including sanitary engineer. Some will chose to fail English, history, math and study hall. Some will excel, the list of Nobel Laureates which is overwhelmingly American so suggests that individualism has its benefits. But, we also need garbage collectors.
So, we are faced with a society where great achievement is encouraged, but great failure is natural, and, often encouraged. We conjure up programs like “No Child Left Behind,” but invariably, as long as we prefer the star over the team we will have many, many children left behind. It is inevitable.
In Russia there is a saying that the first sunflower to raise its head above the others…gets it chopped off. Every Tsar and the Gulag reinforced that. Here basketball stars who can barely read their contracts, let alone the driver’s exam, are paid millions. Their only alternative would be changing light bulbs in street lights, so they had better maximize their roundball income.
The system in Germany works well. They need to work as a team and have achieved significant greatness beyond their numbers working in that way. The system, despite the gnashing of teeth, also works well here. We are no longer the factory to the world, we have become the creative genius to the world and will remain so as long as we invest in innovation and look toward the future, embrace change and encourage constant reform. There is just too much competition out there as a nation to sleep in study hall. After all, there is money in garbage.
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Jim,
I have never heard it put so….perfectly. You have defined the difference between the national psyche of the United States and the rest of the world (at least most of it.) I thank God I live in a country that allows me to fail miserably (which I have) and get back up, rethink my “plan” and try again (which I do).
Our education system gets criticized for its failures, and many times it deserves the criticism; however, the same education system has helped produce some of the most ingenious, creative individuals in our society. Yes indeed we need sanitation engineers, but the beauty of America is that I can become a sanitation engineer today and still have the opportunity to become the next Bill Gates tomorrow. I only truly fail when I stop trying to be better.
Jon, I am truly honored to receive a cmpliment from you, and I should add that I admired your stands all those years you toiled on the school board. Thank you.
Well, not if you accept Obama. He said community interests are more important than are individual interests. America separated from the rest of the world because people accepted individual self-interests as more important and progress was the result, which is why we have 5% of the people and use 25% of the world’s wealth, soon to change with the levelling tactics of Obama.
Mr. Sack, as always, has prompted me to think. I would agree to a certain extent with his thoughts, and, knowing him as an honest man, trust his observations abroad. What I think we need to keep in mind is that in today’s generation, children are told they are “special” when they are not; told they are beautiful and attractive, when, many times they are not; and are told they are smarter, which as we all can tell, they are not. What we are seeing is a generation of children being lied to by their parents and, to a certain extent, their instructors. Rather than fighting to learn, and to progress, these kids being taught that they are somehow entitled to be worshiped and adored. Hence, they become individuals, not because of a drive to excel, but, because they are told they are exceptional, for no other reason than they exist. When they join the real world, they are shocked to find out that “things aren’t fair”.
Please now, forward you slings and arrows. I may be full of bovine excrement on this one, after all, I am a product of Public Education.