Proceed with Passion

Conclusion I. The Engagement Process

167 CONCLUSION I The Engagement Process Education is not the filling of a pail, but the Lighting of a fire. — Willam Butler Yeats It is possible to engage students in their own education; to do so requires involving them in activity and subject matter that they find meaningful. Engagement and meaning are the twin pillars of a successful individual education and of a nation’s school systems. Moreover, we have the knowledge of how to do this; we have resources and funds to make it happen. We lack the will, the consciousness and/or the leadership to take us down that fork in the educational road. This book is a sort of blueprint, laying plans to revitalize our schools and enliven our students. Here is a brief summary of this blueprint. First, we need to attract teachers to the profession who have a passion for their subject matter and an ability to relate to their students. Furthermore, their salaries must be consistent with our rhetoric of the importance of teaching to our national well-being. We must also reassess the current obsessions with testing and accountability. An absorbed student will become self-accountable by virtue of involvement with the subject at hand, which no amount of testing can dictate. To achieve passionate engagement we must select books carefully and draw students into meaningful action and community-service projects. The curricular topics for study should be relevant to the students’ lives and interests via multi-sensory and multi-intelligence learning modalities. The arts require a central position in the core curriculum. We must also treat education in a creative and playful manner. What we teach is equally as important as how we teach. Social studies could be far more captivating if we were to balance and compare studying societies of the past with social issues found in our students’ own neighborhoods. Juvenile delinquency — its causes and possible . . . Redeem The time. Reedem The unread vision in the higher dream . . . —T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday Proceed with Passion 168 cures — will capture the interest of almost all teenagers with far greater intensity then the causes of the French Revolution or the social structure of the Aztecs. Studying social conditions of a local skid row, enhanced by a field trip to meet leaders of social agencies in lower income areas, will involve young students almost immediately. Another subject of immediate concern to most students is a focus on the health of the planet itself. This study can begin on the campus of each school in America: what we do to harm or to benefit the environment of our schools. When students discover that the Earth is “our home,” learning becomes more exciting. Consciousness not only precedes action, it engenders active learning and social action. Action itself is the way in which learning is solidified and made real. Thus, we begin with the school campus itself and proceed to local, national, and international issues of soil, water, animal life, air, food, species preservation and the like. When students realize that these issues affect everyone deeply, engagement is almost guaranteed. Issues or problems of social justice combined with environmental crises inevitably lead to the political dimension. In an attempt to appear neutral and unbiased, schools typically avoid politics.This rarely works. Avoidance is a tacit vote for the status-quo, and of course, the status-quo is undoing the planet and its peoples. When schools find the courage to confront these issues, students will respond and become awake, aware, and involved. They know when their adult mentors, teachers, administrators, parents, are avoiding, and when they are dealing with, reality. Students respect adults who “walk the talk.” A static, conformist education bores them, disheartens them, and leads many to drop out. Consequently, educational leadership must examine more closely the issues of growing inequities of wealth, of degraded inner city conditions , of democracy versus plutocracy and oligarchy, of campaign financing, of placing business interests over environmental concerns, of media homogeneity and the neglect of dissent. Beyond these issues, we need to look at not just Paul Revere’s ride or George Washington at the Potomac, sunny versions of national folklore, but also at the shadow side of American history. Students come alive when they sense that their teachers and school officials are not serving only bromides and approved versions of history, but are looking as well at the darkness that exists in all humans and in all institutions. [18.221.187.121] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 18...