Monday, September 3, 2001
This Week's Column:
When Will We Learn?
This country's high schools are in serious condition. The patient is dreadfully ill. I propose experimental surgery...
For many, the high school years can be simply brutal: a tempest of hostility, alienation, confusion, desperation and even utter despair. It almost makes sense that kids in high school so often turn to drugs, crime, gangs, hatred...and, occasionally, automatic weapons or suicide.
They say you never get anywhere without being bold. You have to have a vision. Well I have a vision, and I think it's pretty bold. I'd like to share it with you now.
I think we should do away with high school.
Did I just hear the sound of jaws dropping? Obviously, you're all shocked. Eliminate high school? Ridiculous! Utterly impossible!
That may be true. Getting rid of high school might be an impossible task as this point in our society's history. But that doesn't mean it's not a good idea.
You must understand, I'm not proposing that education end after seventh or eighth grade. I just think that high school as we currently know it doesn't work.
This idea has been brewing in my head for a long time, since back when I was in college. During my third stint in college, that is--when I was in my mid-twenties. It took two abortive enrollments and several years for me to undo the damage done by high school and turn myself into a functional student.
Back in those days, around the age of twenty-five, I could look back on my high school years and think, "All that stuff I needed to do in high school, which I couldn't do then, looks so easy now. Why couldn't I be doing that stuff now?"
Why indeed? The person I was at twenty-five could have breezed through high school, if given the chance. Even the twenty-year-old me probably could have held his own. But for the seventeen-year-old me, it was torture.
And, unfortunately, it was and still is influential torture. Your high school days set the tone for your entire future. Performing well in class, participating in extracurricular activities, getting into a "good" school--all can have a major impact on the future course of your life.
But all of these life-determining tasks are assigned to midrange teenagers--quite possibly the least capable people on the planet when it comes to doing things right. With all the pains in the ass that come with being a teenager (most self-inflicted, I might add), it's hard even to function at a satisfactory level, let alone to excel.
The truth is, it's those pains in the ass that dominate teenagers' lives. Getting an "education" in the scholarly sense is way down the list. In fact, today's high schools are more social institutions than educational institutions. The gist of four years of high school is not about learning algebra, doing chemistry experiments or reading Steinbeck; it's about getting thrown into the mix, being put into the whirl of the social blender and trying to stay in one piece.
A few fourteen-to-sixteen-year-olds are lucky enough to be equipped--mentally, physically, emotionally, economically, however--to handle that situation and come out on top. But most are not. For many, the high school years can be simply brutal: a tempest of hostility, alienation, confusion, desperation and even utter despair. It almost makes sense that kids in high school so often turn to drugs, crime, gangs, hatred...and, occasionally, automatic weapons or suicide.
In such a place, at such a time of your life, can you really give a shit about writing a book report?
So I say, let's get rid of it. To hell with high school. It's doing precious little good and way too much harm.
As I said above, I'm not advocating that we just release every thirteen-year-old out onto the streets forever, to live an illiterate, innumerate and probably pointless life. I'm just saying let them have a breather during their tumultuous adolescence. Once kids gets out of elementary school, let them take a few years to work out the kinks in their personalities. From (roughly) ages thirteen through fifteen, inclusive, kids can be off the hook as far as the "educational" system goes. Once kids reach the age of sixteen, when a tiny bit more maturity and responsibility have arrived in their lives, then they can take a year or two of secondary education to learn the basics before heading off to college or the job market. (That is, if they so desire--there's no sense in forcing the dropouts-in-waiting to take up space in a high school class).
Furthermore, such an educational set up would not even be unprecedented. Remember, what we consider today to be the standard structure of a young person's educational life is not much more than a century old. Earlier in history, most kids did not receive any formal, institutionalized schooling after a few years in a one-room schoolhouse. Many youngsters were done with education completely by the age of thirteen, or even younger. And many of those who went on to attend a college began doing so in their early twenties or even later, long after what we have somewhat arbitrarily decided is the time a person "graduates" to a higher scholarly level.
And what will kids do with all their newfound free time? Whatever the family feels is appropriate. Let them help around the home. Get jobs. Go to camps. Take long holidays at the family's ski chalet (rich kid division only, of course). They can even just sit around reading, if they like (egghead division only). Whatever. The point is, keep them out of the beast pit that is high school until they have matured just that little bit, just enough so that when they are confronted by the hordes of their peers, they won't flip out, go nuts, start bullying, stomp on each other, hump like rabbits, snort a whole garage of chemicals, down gallon jugs of Everclear...in short, so they won't do all that stuff while they are ostensibly trying to become educated.
I can already hear the hue and cry my proposal will raise. People will say:
"Kids without high school will just get into massive amounts of trouble." What? Haven't you been paying attention? They're already getting into trouble. Tons of it. And I think that being in school with each other during the most volatile time of life is what's stirring up that witch's brew. Without dumping all those kids together in high school during those criminally formative years, some of them might actually keep their noses clean.
"Poor kids will be hurt by this more than rich kids." Hey, folks, I've got a flash for you: EVERYTHING hurts poor folks more than it does rich folks. Yes, as noted above (the ski chalet reference), those born into wealth will probably have a pretty good time of it during those break years. But they have a good time of it anyway; that's part of being rich. Conversely, the poor kids won't be kiting off to the Bahamas during their hiatus, but at least they will get away from their schools. It is a long-established fact that high schools in poor neighborhoods have about the same quality and character as your average federal prison. The thugs in the inner city schools can be a much scarier proposition than what confronts the rich kids on the green fields of suburbia. The bullies at your typical suburban high school will dump you in a trash can; the goons at an inner city school will put a few air holes in your chest with a six-inch blade. I think a lot of poor kids would be thankful to get away from that for a couple of years; they might still be in the ghetto, but at least they can hole up at home and try to avoid the carnage. And when they reach sixteen or seventeen and go back to school, they'll have matured enough--physically as well as mentally--for them not to be easy targets for the worst of the worst (who probably won't even bother going back to school after their interim).
"It will be more difficult for kids to integrate socially without high school." Actually, that's kind of the crux of the argument: lack of social integration. American high schools may be the most rigidly structured societies on earth. The social stratification in U.S. high schools, through cliques established on the basis of wealth, looks, athletic ability, style, taste in music, drug use, etc., is intensely strict. Crossing those lines can be nearly impossible for your average kid. And what's worse, because all of that takes place in school, it gives that structure a veneer of institutional sanction. Yes, people will always segregate themselves into their preferred groups. But doing that within an institutional context solidifies the barriers that much more. That's an ill prospect for society as a whole.
"You'd be punishing the kids who want to learn just because of the dolts who don't." Hey, I've got more news for you: those kids who want to learn? The brainiacs who get straight A's even as things stand now? They're going to be learning anyway, in school or out. Smart kids are like sponges: they soak up knowledge wherever they are. You can't stop them. They'll still go to the libraries. They'll still read books. Some of them will even take classes; there's nothing in my proposal that says kids must avoid education. If there are classes for which they can sign up through youth organizations or churches or libraries or whatever, then fine, let them at it. In a way, that would even make the point more clearly: those who want to learn will, those who don't won't. Keeping "those who don't" away from "those who do" will help the latter and satisfy the former.
And that brings us around to a crucial point: what exactly would the kids be missing if they didn't go to high school for a few years? Frankly, not much. As noted above, education takes a back seat to socializing in high school. The conclusion, drawn from both personal experience and interaction with young adults, is clear: these days, you don't really learn that much in grades 9 through 12.
Think I'm full of shit? Then check out the first year curriculum at your local college. What's the first thing they expect incoming freshmen to do? Take high school all over again, of course. And I'm not just talking junior college, either. Even at the state university level (I went to Cal State Hayward, for the record), the bulk of the incoming class will be taking introductory level classes to meet core requirements--and, in some cases, remedial level classes. Only at the heavy duty academic institutions do they expect their students to have truly learned something over the preceding four years. Given such a circumstance, along with the impression given by news reports--with low test scores consistently making headlines--and you will be forgiven for thinking that just about everyone graduating from this country's high schools is walking away completely ignorant.
So why swim upstream? Why not take the path of least resistance? If high school as we currently know it is not properly educating our kids, let's dump it. It will require a certain amount of adjustment on the part of families, communities and colleges, but what form of positive social change doesn't? And think about the advantages. Our newfangled high schools--with older, willing, more focused students brought in and the dead weight weeded out--will give communities far more value for their school-spent tax dollars. Fewer kids will spend fewer days in the pressure cooker that is high school; they won't have time to develop the rage required to make their school look like the set of a Schwarzenegger movie. And, just as the kids in our new secondary schools will be a little older and more mature, consequently the college kids they'll become will be that much older and wiser; there won't be any seventeen-year-olds on college campuses, away from home for the first time and going bonkers from the freedom...to the point of drinking themselves to death. (That's not hyperbole--it happens a couple of times every Autumn. Pay close attention to the news the next few weeks.)
The bottom line is, with my plan for revamped secondary education, most kids in those dangerous years can be kept a little closer to home, under watchful and guiding eyes, instead of spending their days in classrooms with other hyper and hormonal fourteen-year-olds, planning crimes and debaucheries that would make Caligula blush. As every passing day tells us, something needs to be done, or all of the same problems will continue to plague our society.
And therein lies the very essence of education: learn the lesson and act upon the knowledge, before it is too late.