A Revolutionary Read
Educator says schools are failing our democracy
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Daniel Heller, principal of the 60-student, grade K-8 Halifax School in southeastern Vermont, is author of the new book "Curriculum on the Edge of Survival: How Schools Fail to Prepare Students for Membership in a Democracy." Albert J. Marro / Rutland Herald |
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By KEVIN O'CONNOR Staff Writer - Published: January 13, 2008
Halifax Principal Daniel Heller likens his students to glass jars. Many outsiders want to fill them with facts — the food pyramid, names of capitals, D = R x T — as seemingly countless as grains of desert sand. But if you flood children's minds with the small stuff, how do you fit in the bedrock skills they'll need to succeed as adults?
"If we continue responding to the crisis in education with the typical, competitive attitude that more and bigger are better, we then simply build a curriculum that overwhelms the system," Heller says.
To ease this crisis of conscience, he has written a book: "Curriculum on the Edge of Survival: How Schools Fail to Prepare Students for Membership in a Democracy." It tells parents, politicians and taxpayers who view schools as a springboard to college and careers that education needs to focus on something more fundamental: building community.
"The overarching goal of the public school," he writes, "is the preparation of our students to take their rightful places in a democratic society."
Sound revolutionary? Heller's book doesn't focus on reading, writing or arithmetic but instead calls for four new cornerstones: Thinking that's more than simple test-taking. Problem solving that's more than simple math. Communications that are more than simple English. And his most radical proposal: teaching more simple kindness.
"We need to move dialogue from my position, your position, end of conversation — that doesn't lead anywhere other than to divisiveness," the educator says in an interview. "Can we have an exchange of ideas that leads to further ideas, a discussion that leads to a better concept than either individual had in the first place? To me, that's what is supposed to be happening in a place like Congress."
And state and local government, he adds.
Heller may head a 60-student, grade K-8 school in a tiny southeastern Vermont town of 821, but his publisher, Rowman & Littlefield Education, believes in his 144-page book enough to release it nationwide. That said, the small, specialized printer lacks a big publicity budget, so the author has paid out of his own pocket to give 50 copies to people including Vermont's congressional delegation and state education leaders.
U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., responded with a letter of thanks. ("Quite an accomplishment and I admire your leadership," the congressman wrote.) State Education Commissioner Richard Cate picked up the phone and requested a meeting.
The author is ready to talk.
"It's great to have a book published, but if nobody reads it, what good is it? I'm trying to make a difference."
Troubled by tests
Heller, 54, isn't new to education. The Middlebury College graduate has earned master's degrees in curriculum and instruction and English literature and also studied administration, all while working as a teacher or principal at several New England schools since 1977.
He also has experience writing. In 2004, the international Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development not only printed his first book, "Teachers Wanted: Attracting and Retaining Good Teachers," but also sent the paperback free to almost 100,000 member educators worldwide.
Heller didn't set out to compose a sequel. Instead, the principal and curriculum coordinator for the Windham Southwest Supervisory Union just wanted to pen a magazine article on how the concept of "educating the whole child" is challenged by the federal No Child Left Behind Act's reliance on standardized tests.
"What has been happening is by no means all bad," he writes in what became the introduction to his new book. "Holding the educational system accountable for its work is a reasonable thing to do."
But he's concerned about how to do that. The federal act not only requires schools to test students on specific standards but also threatens communities with financial penalties if children don't pass. Because specialized essays take too much time and money to correct, exams — and, as a result, educators — increasingly focus on multiple-choice questions about basic reading and math.
"We're really restricting and narrowing the curriculum to meet the new requirements," Heller says. "Where's the social studies? Where are the arts? We are talking about educating the whole child while, at the same time, the demands being put on us are seemingly paradoxical."
Heller also questions the push for schools to produce future workers.
"Linking the purpose of education to economic success and competitiveness in the world market has reached levels of obsession and even absurdity," he writes. "Children are reduced from human beings bursting with all sorts of potential to objects … Have we come to a point where we see the purpose of education as manufacturing cogs for an economic machine?"
Heller instead sees children as the next generation of a larger community. He believes they need to know not only the names of government capitals but also what to do there.
"Education is at the very core of an ideal democracy," he continues. "Without people who can ask the questions, make the decisions and understand the answers, it doesn't work."
'To gain control'
Exams test whether students can string letters and numbers into words and sum totals. But Heller says they don't measure whether children can tie such knowledge to the real world.
"Imagine a citizen reading the daily newspaper, understanding every word of an article on pollutants in the atmosphere," he writes in his book. "Now imagine that he is incapable of forming an opinion based on the information, generating a hypothesis, writing a response, or discussing the issue. He can read. Or can he?"
And so he proposes his first cornerstone: Schools must teach students how to apply. Analyze. Reason. Reflect. Study. Synthesize. Simply put, how to think.
"Learning information is only part of education," he says. "Students must also know how to use that information to create, discover and find their way to new and more complex intellectual places."
Heller says too many people now debate issues based on feelings rather than facts.
"There was a time when people used to teach rhetoric and logic, but when was the last time you've seen a debate club in high school?" he says. "We need to give students a lot more practice in examining their own thinking. To understand how one's thinking works is to begin to gain control of it."
Heller doesn't want students simply to memorize history, science, math and art but instead to learn to think like historians, scientists, mathematicians and artists. He doesn't want future voters simply to know how to calculate a tax hike but also to be able to discuss and decide which is needed more: hillside trees to hold back erosion or forestry jobs in an impoverished community.
"What good is a democracy whose citizens simply listen to their leaders but do not reflect on what they say and then ask hard questions?" he writes.
He extends that from town meeting to the ever-violent world stage.
"Diplomacy depends on thinking through situations, understanding, seeing connections and ultimately finding a path to peaceful solutions that provide the most benefit for the most people," he continues. "This applies as well on the playground as it does in the United Nations."
Steam and soundbites
When tests move on to problem solving, they usually ask about two trains in two cities traveling at two rates of speed. But Heller believes that's not getting students anywhere.
"Memorizing formulas and algorithms to then apply to problems is not really problem solving," he writes. "Of course, why you would want to know the answer to this problem is a mystery."
Heller hopes students can answer more practical questions ranging from how to balance a household budget to how to ameliorate an engineering design flaw in a rocket. His second cornerstone therefore calls on schools to transform problem solving from remote train questions to answers that hit home.
How in wood shop, he suggests, can you build a two-shelf cabinet that will hold the most weight and waste the least amount of materials? How in social studies can you study a school or community flashpoint and figure out ways to reduce friction?
"Use the vocabulary of problem solving when you want to work out the fight on the playground," he continues. "Get the sequence of events, the cause and effect, what are the options …"
Students also need better communication skills, Heller says in his third cornerstone. He's talking not only about English class but also the study of foreign language, mathematical and scientific equations, computer code, musical notation, maps — even facial expressions.
"We can define communications as reading and writing," he says, "or we can define communications as large as total world understanding on a social level."
Heller adds it's not just about how to send the right message but also how to receive it.
"Listening is as important as speaking, understanding as important as transmitting," he writes. "By the same token, those in government need to stop avoiding direct answers to questions, relying on sound bites, and playing on emotions. A well-educated electorate, prepared to be part of a democracy, would not allow leaders to communicate this way. Holding schools responsible for holding students responsible, in this sense, is vital."
Heads and hearts
Most people associate schools with educating heads and hands. But hearts? Perhaps Heller's most radical cornerstone is his call for teaching kindness.
Academic hardliners may see it as too soft, while touchy-feely types may question if it's an encroachment of church on state. But Heller says he's not talking about hugs or prayers, just a shared sense of care and respect. He notes government already requires schools to enforce laws against harassment and bullying, although "it does not necessarily change the way people feel about each other."
That, he says, is where kindness instruction comes in. In his book, he points to the proliferation of radio, television and Internet talking-head shows.
"People enter the discussion with minds made up and leave the discussion feeling the same as when they entered," he writes. "How can a democracy survive without meaningful debate?"
Likewise, he questions how students should be expected "to learn, to take risks, to try new things if they are in fear of embarrassment, bullying, or being different."
"We could spend a lot more time on those all-important academics if we first established an atmosphere in which we could avoid spending so much time dealing with emotional problems, discipline and social issues," he writes. "Simply demanding more can result in stress and worry. Forging the positive relationships necessary for students to respect a teacher and want to do their best are more likely to allow for high performance."
Kindness, as Heller defines it, "is just how do we all live together without prejudging each other and how do we all respect and learn from each other?" But he isn't looking to stop people from holding differing opinions. And any student who says a dog ate his homework won't necessarily receive best wishes and a bone.
"This does not mean that we cannot be tough with one another when we need to be. It does not mean failing to teach someone to stand on his own two feet or not to solve problems for oneself. Kids need to develop passion for their beliefs and be ready to defend what they believe is right. However, this can and should all take place in the context of support and caring."
Heller doesn't see this as an extra. With a 27-year-old son and 3-year-old grandson, he says it's essential.
"Learning to live together in peace may very well be the single most important concept we can teach our children."
'A way to be'
Vermont already has addressed several of Heller's suggestions through the state Education Department's Framework of Standards, whose "vital results" section is divided into the categories of "communication," "reasoning and problem solving," "personal development" and "civic/social responsibility."
"If you look at our standards, Vermont has tried to focus on skills rather than fill heads with facts and figures," Cate says in the education commissioner's office. "Tests are an important measure, but we focus on scores at our peril. I'm trying to talk to as many people as I can to find out how to blend the need for core knowledge with helping students learn how to learn."
Heller, for his part, doesn't want his four cornerstones to replace academic content. Instead, he considers them the foundation on which everything should be taught.
"This is not another thing to do," he says. "This is a way to be."
His book offers four real-life examples: A coach links athletic strategies with thinking. An art teacher uses a studio project for problem solving. A kindergarten teacher taps show and tell for communications. And a science teacher explains how brain scans prove the value of kindness: "When the environment is supportive, respectful, and nonthreatening, the brain works most effectively to take in and process new learning."
Heller knows that changing the federal No Child Left Behind Act won't be easy.
"If this law has caused so much controversy, I can only imagine the obstacles to moving in the direction I am suggesting."
His magazine article that critiqued the act — the one that led to his book — ultimately was rejected for journal publication. But the educator has enough hope and commitment to see the glass as half full — or, in his case, the jar as half empty and open to new ideas.
"We must put in the big rocks first," he writes. "If students understand kindness, thinking, problem solving, and communicating, do you not think that they then can learn whatever else they find necessary for a fulfilled and quality life? But without these four factors, we run the risk of developing walking encyclopedias out of our students; creating cogs for the workforce; and neglecting the spiritual, moral, and loving aspects of their natures."
Contact Kevin O'Connor at kevin.oconnor@rutlandherald.com.