Clarifications

A student who recently attended a class on critical thinking with Dr. Richard Paul apparently had a revelation in class that went something like, “I didn’t want to take on critical thinking because I didn’t want something else on my plate.  But I realize that critical thinking is the plate!”

I couldn’t agree more.  Whatever else we do as educators, we must teach students how to ask good questions and find the answers.

This week I found out that our school–like every other school in the country–is trying to figure out what to do with the federal mandates related to RtI.  It seems like someone finally realized that public schools have to address a broader range of students than ever before and we ought to figure out what’s working and what isn’t.  I’ll address my perceptions of RtI in another post, but I think most teachers would agree that the ever more diverse needs of our students are getting harder and harder to fit under one roof.  No one even knows what a high school diploma is supposed to mean.  Does it mean the student is ready for work?  For school?  For wandering around trying to find herself?

But no matter what else I teach a student in high school, I know that everyone does better when they learn how to walk all around a problem (in math, art, or relationships) and think about it with intellectual honesty and humility.

It seems like everyone nowadays–at least across the short span from Thomas Friedman to  Daniel Pink–is looking for the future direction of our economy so that we can prepare for it.  Teachers like me are reading a lot of books to see what innovations should be integrated into our instruction.

But having read The World is Flat, and A Whole New Mind, I think it’s clear that the strongest performers in the future will be people with the same skills that made the strongest performers in the past.  I want a doctor (like Jack Eck M.D.) who cares about me as human beings and goes beyond a flowchart when diagnosing my illnesses.  I’ve always looked for that.  I know that someone who comes from poverty–in any culture–is often more driven to success than his middle-class counterparts.  That has always been true in basketball and business.  And yes, I need a teacher (like Pat Phelan) who sees his students as unique individuals with diverse needs and who really knows the content that he’s teaching.  People like that have always been the best teachers.

Those statements have always been true.  Perhaps what’s really happening is that there is now more room at the top.  To succeed as a teacher in America, I may have to get more students to that summit, but the same skills that made Clarence Darrow, Einstein, Da Vinci, Edison, Curie, and many other great men and women so great are those that we need to teach our students.  Imagination and knowledge.  Compassion and ambition.

Let’s not pretend we’re reinventing the wheel when we see that the plate we’ve piled so much on is the most important and basic skillset we should teach.  I don’t know what a high school diploma will mean in the future, but it should at least mean that a student knows how to think about what is in front of her.