I believe very strongly that things are (generally) getting worse
throughout the world, with old problems exacerbating and new ones emerging! If
we continue on this path, I believe we are in deep trouble!
I further believe that we may
have the potential to halt and then reverse this direction, but that this cannot happen without a total turnaround, a
complete transformation of how we think (or don’t think) and operate throughout
the world. This transformation will
not come easily, and will not come at all unless the global public can get a
true sense of what is really happening throughout the world; including how
severe the situation is at the moment, and how our own inadequacies are a major
part of the problem. You cannot
fix something if you aren’t seeing that it’s broken.
The
United States is arguably the most influential nation in the world. I believe that
we in the USA could be the catalyst for this transformation. But it won’t be our so-called leaders who do
this. Most of our high level
political figures have little interest in the common good; and are much more
interested in party loyalty, getting re-elected, and getting perks for their
family and friends. Not to mention
that they don’t know how to communicate and collaborate. Their idea of communication is standing
up and telling the other side what’s wrong with them, or telling the public
what’s wrong with the other side.
Sadly, they have little interest in sincere listening, trying to see
things from the other person’s viewpoint, and then working together to find common
ground.
Likewise, most of our large corporation leaders are more concerned with
profits than with the common good.
And since our mainstream media outlets are run by these large
corporations who have a huge stake in keeping the status quo, we the people are
subject to a constant barrage of biased reporting of the news. It was Mark Twain who said, “If you
don’t read the newspapers you are uninformed, if you do read them you are
misinformed.”
As I see it our mainstream schools have been doing pretty much the same
thing; i.e. under-informing or in fact misinforming most of our students…as
well as undermining their critical thinking and communication skills,
problem-solving abilities, creativity, self-esteem; and also boring them half
to death. (to cite a partial
list).
Ironically, though, whatever optimism I do have about the fate of our
world is fueled by the thought of what our schools potentially could become! As I said earlier, real change will not
come from those whom we think of as our ‘leaders.’ Rather, it will come from
the grassroots, and especially by a group which has heretofore been hugely
underestimated – by both themselves and others. A group which has tremendous leadership potential but is
only just beginning to realize it – our youth!
Easier said than done, eh? That’s surely true if our thinking
stays stuck inside the narrow box that most of us are currently confined to; but
young people in particular are much more capable of thinking outside the box,
so there is hope.
So here, finally, is my question
to myself: “What can I do that will most effectively help facilitate a
transformation in public (mainstream) education into a system which fosters
community in all schools; which honors the voices of all staff members,
parents, and definitely students; which allows for a meaningful and relevant
curriculum; is committed to meeting the needs and (usually) the wants of every
student; which helps our young people grow holistically, not just academically:
and which will be a great resource to help us find answers to all the problems
that are plaguing our individual selves, our families and communities, our nation, and our world?”
… The most important points about my own education through high
school were that: (1) I graduated as a so-called outstanding student and yet
had no real self-confidence, little sense of resourcefulness, and I
underestimated my capabilities; and (2) I had been sheltered from truth, about
myself and who I was and what kind of potential I had; and also about the world
I was living in. In some ways
truth had been omitted; in some ways it had been altered.
These realities, along with my strong sense of justice and fairness, are
the real ‘further back’ story for me.
The ‘not as far back’ stories are related to my college experience, my
experience ‘in between’ college, and my experience after college, including especially
what I learned when I became a teacher.
In college I saw hypocrisy.
I also saw the futility of reading ‘the great books’ when I didn’t have
enough life experience to be able to truly appreciate them. The hypocrisy showed itself when I
realized that most of my classmates had more interest in the grades they were
getting than in pure learning.
Here I was at Columbia, one of the most prestigious universities in the
world and supposedly a great place of learning, and most of my peers were
primarily motivated by their GPA’s.
This was disillusioning and very disappointing to me. And then, while reading the books of
authors who obviously had a lot of life experience, it became fully apparent to
me how little I knew about life.
So
in the middle of my sophomore year I quit school. I took $90 for a 90 day excursion, and hitchhiked up and
down the East Coast. I learned so
much more on that trip than I ever had in school – life-changing stuff. I’ll tell you about the most profound
one, because this learning has informed the basis of much of my life’s work. When I left college and began my
hitchhiking jaunt I was very confused and angry. I was so open-minded that I was close-minded; if you didn’t
agree with me you were stupid or bad.
I was especially angry about racism, and I usually didn’t stay quiet
when somebody said something ‘wrong.’
So one night I’m hitchhiking in Georgia, heading further South. It’s late, and I’m tired, and I cannot
afford to get into another argument and have to ask somebody to pull over and
let me out of his ‘@#$%^*#’ car.
So I told myself, “When someone pulls over, get into the car and keep your
‘effing’ mouth shut. You need a
ride, not an argument.” So this
middle-aged white man picks me up, and within the first couple minutes he uses
the N-word. But I kept quiet. I drove with that man for about six
hours, down to around Daytona Beach, and we had an incredible conversation. He turned out to be a good-hearted and
very fine person. When we got to
his exit he said, “This is where I get off. I’ll leave you here if you want, but it may be hard for you
to get a ride at this hour (4:30 a.m.).
If you want to you can spend the night at my house, and I’ll bring you
back to the road tomorrow.” I
accepted. His wife got up next
morning and, before my new friend drove me back to the interstate, she cooked
me probably the best breakfast I have ever had! I’ll never forget that breakfast, nor the fact that she had
a dentist’s appointment to go to and had to get up extra early to cook for
me.
I learned from that experience that people are largely products of their
upbringing, and that you can’t hate people and ‘write them off’ just because
they have different opinions than your own. You have to give them – and yourself - a chance to learn new
things, and hopefully many, including myself, will be able to change when
they/I get new information or have new experiences. What I learned on that trip freed me to hate racism without hating
racists, hate crime without hating criminals, and hate police brutality without
hating the police. Etc.
I decided to finish college but also decided to do so
non-traditionally. I was a very different
person now, after my year and a half of college and living in New York, and my
trip, and a half year of reflecting and analyzing. My idealized view of what college is, and why people go to
college, had been shattered. I
went back to college for purely pragmatic reasons. I did just enough to get by academically, and I spent most
of my time living life and traveling all over New York City. I’d flip a coin onto the subway map and
then go hang out wherever the coin landed. I’d talk to people and observe, and try to figure out what
made people who they are, and what made neighborhoods or communities what they
were.
I loved Harlem. Somewhat surprisingly, because all I
had ever heard about it was poverty, crime, violence; yet I saw more love there
than I had ever seen in any community.
After college, in fact, I worked there fulltime, very fulltime, as a streetworker
(sort-of a roving social worker/counselor) with the New York Urban League’s
Street Academy Program. Geez, what
a powerful time in my life! My
first day there set the stage.
I met Teddy White, a nineteen year old high school dropout and Heroin
addict. Teddy and I ‘conversated’
for four hours; he explained that he was able to do this because he had just
gotten his fix and would thus be OK for a while. We talked about how the United States was paralleling the
Roman Empire and would ultimately destroy itself from within. (I should explain that this
conversation was mostly one-sided; it was mostly the teenage ‘dropout’
schooling the twenty four year old Ivy League guy.) I knew enough about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire to
know that Teddy knew what he was talking about. BTW, I never saw him again. That day I happened to be in a part of Harlem that I didn’t
frequent, and whenever I was back in that area I never did run into him. As I got older and realized how much he
had impacted me, I would wonder whatever became of him. I still do. It probably wasn’t good, because hardly anybody ever gets
off Heroin. He probably ended up
spending his life in prison or dying early. It is so tragic; he was a very bright and very sensitive
young man – I saw that clearly; and in a healthy society he may very well have
been a happy guy who lived a long and meaningful life.
In
Harlem I saw and experienced love, spontaneity, community, creativity, joy,
laughter, humor, resourcefulness, wisdom, and support in abundance; mixed in
with immense pain and suffering.
I
had come to believe that most of Harlem’s problems, most of ‘the Black Man’s’
problems, stemmed from white racism, and especially white institutional racism. When, early in 1968, the acutely
anticipated (by some) Kerner Commission Report came out and said virtually the
same thing, I really began to rethink what I was doing. Most of you reading this, by the way,
will know little if anything about the Kerner Commission; and
that is both tragic and telling. It should have been mandatory reading in every Social Studies class in the country! Instead it disappeared! Here’s something about it.
I decided to go back home to my
almost completely white community to try to enlighten folks about all that I
had discovered. It didn’t take
long for me to realize that I couldn’t do it via working in schools - I was
quickly banned in three largely white school districts, including my own.
I also founded SIHR, the Street
Institute of Human Relations, and began to bring high school kids from the
‘white schools’ and ‘Black schools’ together to get to know each other,
challenge stereotypes, and talk about how to make the world a better
place. It was a pretty darn good
program; kids’ perspectives were changed for the better. I think a few lives were significantly
changed.
To support my work, my mom let me stay at home rent free. Still, I needed to make money, so I
worked as a substitute teacher in those districts (the largely Black ones)
where my viewpoints weren’t so threatening. In two of those districts I was asked to facilitate crisis
programs with high school students.
Firstly, at Malverne High School, I spent a week with a group of
fourteen both Black and White students who had been involved in racially-based
arguments and fights. At Hempstead
High School I was asked to lead a three month pilot off-campus alternative
program with ten students who were consistently disruptive and failing fifty
two of the fifty seven courses they were taking. Unfortunately I didn’t document much at Malverne, but in Hempstead we compiled a report. In both places I
ran democratic and extremely respectful programs, which honored the viewpoints
of and celebrated the uniqueness and worthiness of every student. Since both programs were very
successful, my belief in democratic education and collaborative learning were
strongly affirmed!
But
I could no longer afford to do SIHR on a pro bono level, and herein came
another important aspect of my back story to education transformation. I needed to get the program
funded. But I didn’t believe in
myself and my perspective was too narrow and too negative; I looked more at the
reasons why it wouldn’t work than why it probably would work. I allowed myself to let it go to the
backburner and operate as only a part-time program while I went out and found a
‘real job’, with a steady salary and benefits. (Now this was before I had kids, or even a wife, so there
was no real need for me to be operating out of this negativity and fear.)
To
give this (as a fulltime program) up without even trying to get funded and make
it work was a big mistake, probably a HUGE mistake! This was a very effective program that our society
desperately needed; and it was simple, inexpensive, and easily replicated. Who knows how far it may have spread,
how many people may have been positively impacted, how many lives may have been
saved if S.I.H.R. had operated on a fulltime basis these past forty plus years!?
As I realized many years later, my lack of
resourcefulness and confidence, my willingness to push a great idea into the
background without even trying to get it funded, was (not entirely but) in
large part due to what I learned and didn’t learn in thirteen years of
traditional public schooling.
What I should have learned in school was
something like this: ‘Do what you love; do what you believe
in. Go for what moves you. Be persistent. Don’t give up. If you believe in something be
relentless in making it happen.
Find people to complement your weak areas. When it comes to funding, you don’t need for society at
large to agree with you; you only need one or a few ‘well-off’ people to
believe in your program. You are
good enough; you are qualified! Your vision, commitment, and passion
will attract other like-minded people, resources will emerge, and you almost
surely will be able to make it work.
At least give it a try. It
can’t work if you don’t even try.
If it doesn’t succeed it doesn’t mean that you are a failure; in the
attempt alone there is success.
‘Failing’ is nothing to be ashamed of; part of being human is being
imperfect; sometimes things work in your favor and sometimes they don’t. If it doesn’t work then you
congratulate yourself for trying, you learn your lessons; and you move on, a
smarter and wiser person!’
Look, I am not
shirking my responsibility here. I fully acknowledge that this was mostly on
me; I was the one who made the decision.
But I do believe, in looking at this from all angles, that a more
positive and holistic schooling experience may very well have helped me develop
into the kind of confident, resourceful person who would have gone full force
with SIHR and made it work. Maybe
my schooling would have helped me become better organized and more disciplined;
but if not, I would have known to go out and find someone/s who was skilled in my areas of weakness, who was in fact
organized and disciplined, and who shared my passion for this program; and I would
have partnered with him or her or them!
So on a
part-time basis I have continued to run SIHR (which morphed into It Is Time in
1997) for more than four decades.
It has had a positive effect! But had it operated as a funded and
fulltime program all these years, many more
lives would have been impacted!
The best fit as a ‘real job’ for me was in education, though it couldn’t
be in a mostly white school because I was too radical for them. (At least that’s how they saw or would
see it. My take would be that I
was too interested in introducing students to a wide range of perspectives
about life and learning. Then
again, I guess those are not contradictory perspectives; looking at life and
learning from a wide spectrum of angles was then and still is a radical notion
for American society.)
Anyway, the final piece of my back story is in what I have seen in four
decades of experience in schools: the damage that I have seen done to most
young people – and society - via traditional education; and the excitement,
enlightenment, and empowerment I have witnessed in the large majority of young
people who have participated in non-traditional schooling, especially democratic education.
Most democratically educated students become empowered, resourceful, confident;
they know how to communicate, collaborate, and problem-solve; and they know how
to live in harmony with others.
Isn’t that the kind of people we need in this world? Isn’t that the kind of person parents want
their kids to be?
In
democratic schools, because the voices of all are honored, the curriculum is
relevant and meaningful. Students
are free to play or study as they wish.
They are free to work on their own issues, and they are encouraged to
learn the truth about the world they are living in – what’s going on, how to deal
with today’s realities, and how to make tomorrow’s world a better one.
Ultimately,
I do believe our schools can be fixed, and I further believe that ‘If we fix
the schools we can fix the world!’
So back to my research action question:
“What can I do that will most effectively help facilitate a
transformation in public (mainstream) education into a system which fosters
community in all schools; which honors the voices of all staff members,
parents, and definitely students; which allows for a meaningful and relevant
curriculum; is committed to meeting the needs and (usually) the wants of every
student; which helps our young people grow holistically, not just academically:
and which will be a great resource to help us find answers to all the problems
that are plaguing our individual selves, our families and communities, our nation,
our world?”
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