The Parent Trap

On Saturday I went to use the Therapy Pool at our community aquatic center. The 90 degree Fahrenheit water lets me exercise my recovering leg for much longer than I can possibly do on "dry land," and this is a crucial part of the healing process.

The Therapy Pool has a separate "Special Needs" Locker (Changing) Room. A unisex space with private changing areas with showers, benches, lots of grab bars. For the most part people move in and out of these spaces as quickly and efficiently as their various limitations allow.

However, the Special Needs Locker Room is also utilized by another group, parents with children who choose not to use the large general Men's and Women's changing rooms. I can understand this - considering the generally unhealthy American attitudes toward nudity - most of these users are parents with children not of their gender: Dads with girls, Moms with boys - and they are afraid to either, let the children out of their site long enough to put on a bathing suit, or to allow them to glimpse naked adults. I'm not judging here. Americans are taught to be afraid of many things, and these are two of those things.

But there is something I will judge. If parents are choosing to use a facility supposedly reserved for people other than themselves, they ought to be demonstrating respect for others to their children.

So, on Saturday, as I witnessed mother after mother hustling their kiddies in to the private changing spaces as people with crutches and canes and walkers waited, I wondered what these parents were teaching. As I watched 8, 10, 12-year-old, perfectly healthy girls tie up the one accessible locker room toilet, I wondered what these parents were teaching. As I saw mother after mother smile as their children ran through a narrow corridor mostly used by injured senior citizens, I wondered what these parents were teaching.

This was not a case of class-based lack of social education on the part of the parents - at least not in my observation. Lower income community children tend to come unaccompanied, or have no problem with shared changing facilities. The parents I was watching all appeared middle and upper middle class. All were white. All, probably, as educated as it gets here, in "the second happiest place in America."

Then, finished, I crutched my way outside, where I noticed that a brand new Volkswagen Passat was parked blocking the curb cut in a "no parking" area. It had been there when I entered. I paused, crutches are still very difficult, and as I paused, a mother and her teenage son came out, carrying packages from a party (there are "party rooms" in the facility), to the Passat. "We probably shouldn't have left it here the whole time," the boy said. "It's a loading zone," the mother told him, "and nobody knows how long we've been loading or unloading." One more mom, one more lesson.

At a CIES2010 session last week in Chicago the Inclusive Education Special Interest Group met and listened to four presentations. One was about attempts to improve teacher training for inclusion in Northern Ireland. Another was about changing social attitudes on inclusion in Namibia. The third, about encouraging the study of inclusion in Germany. And the fourth on inclusion and society in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. They were great presentations.

Yet, if there was a common thread in these, it was not attitudes toward "disability," but rather the ways in which parents limit the opportunities for, and growth of, their children.

In Northern Ireland the progress being made on societal unification of all the children of that "place" (any other political descriptor is fraught with challenges for one "side" or the other), is constantly threatened by parental attitudes when the children go home after school. Parents, 90% of them, choose segregated schools for their children - in a possible glimpse of the American future if the Duncan/Obama charter school push succeeds - and parents resist, strongly, changes in the education system.

In Namibia a parent of a "disabled" child, who is also a teacher, won't send her child to school, or even take him to the store, for fear of social embarrassment.

In Germany, long held beliefs in separate education for those with "special needs" have parents of those students resisting inclusion.

In certain Middle Eastern societies parents will not "invest" in "disabled" children who seem unlikely to become potential supporters of the family, and so will not bring them to school.

The problem with allowing parents to make choices

Despite having been a charter school parent, and a very happy charter school parent, I have a problem with the concept of charter schools in the United States. And my problem is this - charters offer parents school choice, but they rob children of school choice.

The theory of parental choice is based in the very old notion that "parents know what is best for their children" - which sounds benign, but is actually an extension of the idea that children "belong" to their parents, that children are property. Americans basically view children this way (in everything but the abortion debate - only there do a sizable portion of Americans see offspring as independent entities, but only until birth). Americans will argue that parents must be in control of discipline, of what media children are exposed to, of whether children should be vaccinated, or should receive medical care. The view - even if we take the benign reading of this - is that parental judgment almost always trumps the judgment of society, or surely, of professionals.

But maybe that is not true. Almost ten percent of American parents, for example, risk their children's health because they believe fairy tales about vaccines causing Autism. More than that cripple their children's intellectual development by blocking their access to real science education. More still risk their children's sexual health by blocking access to information critical to any human who reaches puberty.

Hundreds of thousands of American parents overstress their children in bizarre pursuits of stuff like university athletic scholarships, or force them into "college application building" schedules so frantic kids become suicidal, less they have to receive a "less than Ivy" education.

And then, on perhaps a low-priority but still essential level, are the mothers I met Saturday.

Disastrous parental behaviors cross every socio-economic divide. They hurt kids of every type, from every neighborhood.

OK, wait...

Before this goes any further... I know there are lots of great parents out there, and - for the record - I am not proposing kibbutz-like societal child-rearing, though that seems to have been fairly successful. I just want to question the "parent-centric" arguments of a certain type of charter school advocate.

I have met three types of charter school advocates. The first, and the ones whose side I am on (to be honest in regards to my motivations), are educational theorists who wish to test out new ideas not yet in the educational mainstream. My child went to charters created by educators like this. On Twitter, @COCharterXaminr falls into this category - these people are creating significant alternate models. They oppose for profit charters, they are not "anti-public school," and rarely do they sound, "anti-teacher."

The second group are the free market pirates. As with everything else society ("government") does together for mutual benefit, they oppose public education because they are not sufficiently profiting from it (you'd think textbook markups would be enough, but...). So they plan to destroy public education so that they can charge everyone for it more effectively, and create new profit centers. They mouth the nonsensical mantras of "competition" (New York City used to have competing fire departments, it doesn't always work well in public services) and "choice" ("I choose the bad hospital!") and hustle 2006 Wall Street solutions, like merit pay based on illusory short term results ('test scores"). These are the same folks who sell your kids $30 Abercrombie T-shirts. And because they do that, they have the money to buy many politicians.

The third group is more difficult to discuss, and I don't want to dismiss or demean, but I think of them as "the colonized." These are people from traditionally out-of-power groups who have decided to fully "play the game" of their oppressors. They tend to wear the charter school ideology around their necks the way certain Nigerians and Indians and other "citizens of the Empire" in the early 20th Century donned British powdered wigs and joined the colonial governments.

It is tough to argue with much of what they say: They are looking to "save kids now." To open "real opportunities." To build "within the realities we have." And to argue with this is to engage in that oldest of battles among the colonized - do we achieve freedom and power on "their" terms, or "ours." Do we want our children to grow up as -and this will depend on the argument you are making - Brits and citizens of the world/Second-class Brits or to grow up as Nigerians, Indians, South Africans, Irish, Israelis/poor separatists in a global economy.

As with most great issues, the answers are not clear cut, not "black and white," as they say. We want our identities, we want freedom and possibility based in our culture, and yet, yes, we also live and work in a world designed and controlled by the powerful.

So when people like @dropoutnation argue for charters and vouchers as their "answer," it is not just a matter of being co-opted. They have convinced themselves that this is the only logical solution in the world they see now. And I can argue for greater faith in the future, for greater faith in diverse communities, but altering someone's fundamental world view is tough.

Social Reproduction

Thus, I will say this - even if you believe that "choice" is the way to go, you are giving choice to the wrong people.

The common characteristics that I find in what I describe as "the best schools" (see primary and secondary), that is, schools which "work" for the broadest range of students, is student choice. These are schools which help students discover their path, not their parents' path. These are schools which are willing to help students find success even if their parents are incapable, or destructive, or just uninterested.

Parent choice - the concept of charters and vouchers - is socially reproductive from the start. Charter schools really object if they are criticized for "cherry picking" students, but the fact is, the only students who attend those schools are those with parents who are capable and informed enough to make the choice, interested enough to make the choice, and, in most places, economically and physically able to make the choice (due to transportation issues, etc).  This means that even if charters are not "cherry picking" students (though most "for profits" are doing just that), they are, by their very nature, "cherry picking" parents.

Which means they are abandoning the neediest children. Which means, to me, that those in that "third group" of charter advocates are selling out huge parts of their constituencies in exchange for success of their elites.

This was common enough in the British Empire that the American Corporate Empire seeks to re-create. There were Irish who converted to Anglicanism, and Indians who joined the British Army, and, of course, many colonials who dressed their children like proper little English boys and sent them off to schools which seemed replicas of those outside of central London - parental choice.

But even without that sell-out, parental choice often works against child best interests. Parents pick schools based on status, on homogeneity, on sports, on reputation. The quite broken school systems of Northern Ireland are the result of "parental choice," as are the highly segregated schools of Scotland, as are the nightmares of our school literature - think Dead Poets Society.

All of this leads me to believe in great public schools. And great public schools have student choice. No two classes in the same grade or subject should be anything alike. No common reading lists or classroom management. No common grading system. No common organization. Ideally, even schedules should vary. Only with that kind of choice can students find what they need, not what even the most well-meaning adults find for them.

And great public schools are being made impossible by "choice" advocates, who pull a certain segment of students out of the mix, reducing workable choices for those left behind.

I'm a parent, and I like parents. But I've also known all kinds of parents, and I value children too much to leave all the decisions in parental hands.

- Ira Socol

Social Reproduction

Schools do not really "prepare our children for the future." Schools, by their very nature, tend to help society reproduce itself - passing the structures, morals, habits, customs, preferences, and even manners of one generation on to the next, or at least strongly attempting to do that.

Much of what we do in schools is designed to further the mission of "social reproduction" - one generation effectively reproducing itself in the next. We create "grade level expectations" based on the performance of children of the past and hold contemporary students to that - holding them back or trying to rush them forward - but holding them. We enforce our own technological preferences, frustrating and limiting the possible success of students most pulled toward future possibilities. We enforce a system of manners created by and for a power structure which existed two generations ago (back when administrators and legislators went to school). We grade homework which guarantees that those children with the most successful parents will do better in school. We evaluate learning using test forms and test content most familiar to the children of the ruling class. And, of course, teachers and administrators - typically among the "best" students of the previous two generations - recreate the classroom and school environments in which they succeeded. From the "old school tie" to "no baseball caps" to reading A Separate Peace, to memorizing times tables, to creating proper footnotes.

In other words - as expected - we prepare our children for our own adulthood. An adulthood in which society - with its present "winners" and "losers" - is essentially unchanged.

If that was not frustrating enough for those of us who might imagine a future of equal opportunity and equitable treatment, many of the "reforms" currently being championed in education are designed to maximize social reproduction, not reduce it.

Charter Schools, for example, whatever their positive impacts, further the divide between those with "motivated" parents and those without. If you agree that Charters provide new opportunities you must also admit that sending a child to a charter requires active parental decision-making, and often significant parental commitments in terms of transportation and costs (there are costs to getting a child to an 'out-of-district' school, both direct and collateral - time lost for working, etc). So charters, if they succeed, continue the American pattern of offering better educations to students based on the student's parents behavior - thus continuing to doom children on the basis of the accidents of their birth. You can't get more socially reproductive than that.

Standards-based Accountability, as another example. When standards are "raised" and "enforced" these are the standards of the previous generations, and the standards of those in power. As are our methods of measuring children against these standards. Our tests do not measure contemporary search or communication skills. They do not measure creativity. They do not measure social skills. Rather, they measure a stunningly narrow selection of skills and content which school leaders are good at and school leaders know. It is as if we have determined that the standard for success in our society are the test question writers at the College Board. That means that we are measuring our students based not on the skills and knowledge they will need during their lives, but rather measuring them on their personality proximity to those born to attend private schools and Ivy League colleges and born ready for good jobs in their daddy's company.

Remember, measuring is only "fair" when two things are true: First, the starting line must be the same for all those being measured. And we all know that in a nation with gigantic disparities in wealth, resources, and power - such as the United States - that this is impossible in education. Second, what is being measured must be measurable by some universally understood "code of practice." As Danish novelist Peter Høeg says, "When you assess something, you are forced to assume that a linear scale of values can be applied to it. Otherwise no assessment is possible. Every person who says of something that it is good or bad or a bit better than yesterday is declaring that a points system exists; that you can, in a reasonably clear and obvious fashion, set some sort of a number against an achievement." Think about it: Is completing a test in 60 minutes provably superior to completing the same test in 72 minutes? Is knowing the narrative behind a bad John Knowles novel from the 1950s provably superior to knowing the narrative behind World of Warcraft? Is being able to use the Dewey Decimal System provably superior to being able to conduct efficient Google searches? Is typing on a keyboard using ten fingers provably superior to typing on a keypad with your thumbs?

If your "code of conduct" is solely based in personal - or even generational - preference, you are being unbearably socially reproductive.

Homework and Zero-Tolerance are a third example. Three students bring the same third grade (8-year-old) homework home from school. Student "A" come home to a college-educated parent, who sits down with the student and works through the assignment with him. Student "B" leaves school and walks her kindergarten brother home, then takes care of him until bedtime. Single mom comes home at 10 pm from her job at Walmart. Student "C" brings the homework back to a home where no one speaks or reads English. Whose homework is likely to look "better" to the teacher?

Many "reformers" argue for things like "more homework" and stricter behavior policies as a way of improving schools. These "increased standards" are somehow supposed to solve all the social and economic problems of the last generation which our schools and our societies have failed. Forcing parents with few skills, no resources, and no time, to become instantly "responsible" as the US President hopes (imagines?).

Student "A" comes from a loving, middle-class home where both parents have more than a month of vacation time per year. Student "B" has an alcoholic parent who beats him. Student "C" is part of a homeless family, sleeping in various shelters each cold night and in the car on warm nights. Which student is more likely to run afoul of school rules each day?
Back when he was mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani promoted a theory of policing called "One City" - an idea, which holds great appeal to many Americans, that everyone be treated "equally." But "equal" isn't always fair, or reasonable, or moral. As a previous - and far more moral -New York mayor once said, "Suppose I have two children, and one is very, very sick and the other is perfectly healthy, is it reasonable if I treat them as if there is no difference?" (I paraphrase the late John V. Lindsay here. Mr. Lindsay also promoted the classic phrase for improving our communal society, "Give a damn.")

"Equal" is not "equitable." "One standard" is not fair, neither is one set of requirements or assignments. Treating children "equally" guarantees that the results for this generation will pretty much match the results for the last generation.

This is political.

"School reformers" who find themselves allied with the American right-wing - whether Ted Kennedy who found common cause with George W. Bush on "No Child Left Behind" or economically left-wing minorities who jump on the Charter School, KIPP, and Michelle Rhee bandwagons - need to look around and wonder why these people are marching alongside them.

Because education is the most political of all issues, and if a person identifies themselves as a "conservative" - that is as someone who either does not want society to change or wants society to revert to a previous state of existence - then an inherent part of that is ensuring the current status of groups within that society - especially the poor (think America before the Great Society or before the New Deal), minorities (think America before the Civil Rights Act), and the "disabled" (think America before the ADA and Section 504). Let's face it - the past was only a sweet memory if you were white, middle-class or better, and typically-abled.

In order to change relative status within a society that society must actually change in significant ways. In order to change relative status within a society education must be the least socially reproductive that is possible. In order to change relative status within a society people must be treated according to their needs, not according to the pronouncements of those seeking to maintain their own power.

So consider this, in everything you do in education - are you measuring students and their learning, or are you measuring parents and their status. If you keep that question in mind at every decision-point, you will probably find that you need to change most of what you do.

Which, as you know, is my target.

- Ira Socol