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Liberal Arts: The High School Curriculum for Our Future

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A college liberal arts education is a dinosaur, a creature of the past.  Because the cost of college today means an earned degree must pay for itself quickly after graduation, college is not about learning for life but for a livelihood.  Our last best chance to assure future adults acquire the broad knowledge needed for life and lifelong learning is a high school curriculum designed as a liberal arts education.

High tuition costs and the prospect of lengthy debt payments is the number one cause for current declines in college and university enrollments.  The value of a college education is not what it used to be; no longer is college the gateway to the American Dream.  Marketability is more important than a major.  Thus died the liberal college education, a broad and balanced course of study.  Because a major now begins in the college freshman year, high school curriculum is the foundation and last bastion of a liberal arts education.

School boards need to pay attention for this essential reason: the last instruction our future adults will receive in US history, US government, world history, the general sciences, non-technical mathematics, non-technical writing and speaking, literature, the arts, and so-called soft skills will be in your high school classes.  A high school education, more than ever before, will be the common denominator for Americans to understand America and what it means to be an American.

What do we know?

Our Founding Fathers valued an educated and informed population.  Thomas Jefferson emphasized the need for a literate and informed voter if the United States experiment in democracy and representative government were to succeed.  Correspondingly, America’s first colleges and universities, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Virginia, emphasized a liberal and rounded education.

“The liberal arts college model took root in the United States in the 19th century, as institutions spread and followed the model of early schools like Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth.  The model proliferated in the 19th century; some 212 small liberal arts colleges were established between 1850 and 1899.  As of 1987, there about 540 liberal arts colleges in the United States.”

“Such colleges aim to impart a broad general knowledge and develop intellectual capacities, in contrast to a professional or vocational curriculum.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_college#:~:text=The%20liberal%20arts%20college%20model,as%20liberal%20arts%20colleges%20today

For many years, Wisconsin had one of the finest public-university systems in the country.  It was built on the Wisconsin Idea: that the university’s influence should not end at the campus’s borders, that professors and the students they taught should ‘search for truth’ to help state legislators write laws, aid the community in technical skills, and generally improve the quality of life across the state.

But the backbone of the idea almost went away in 2015, when Governor Scott Walker released his administration’s budget proposal, which included a change to the university’s mission.  The Wisconsin Idea would be tweaked.  The ‘search for truth’ would be cut in favor of a charge to ‘meet the state’s workforce needs’”.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/12/the-liberal-arts-may-not-survive-the-21st-century/577876/

“As faculties and administrators become more and more uncertain about the value of knowledge for its own sake and about what a curriculum should include, the colleges’ dependence on the whims of their late teenager clientele is not only increased, but the very reason for the continued existence of the liberal arts college is being whittled away.”  “In the decades since, fears about the demise of liberal arts education have been routinely reiterated, particularly in the wake of the Great Recession, as college applicants grew increasingly concerned about the number of job opportunities yielded by their degree.  Advances in technology have also spurred predictions about the decline or death of the liberal arts — ChatGPT being the latest.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherrim/2023/01/11/the-problem-facing-liberal-arts-education-is-not-subject-matter-its-application/

At a micro level, “Kovach (a student considering an English major as a preparation for a career in theater and the arts) will graduate with some thirty thousand dollars in debt, a burden that influenced his choice of a degree. For decades now, the cost of education has increased over all and ahead of inflation. One theory has been that this pressure, plus the growing precariousness of the middle class, has played a role in driving students like him toward hard-skill majors. (English majors, on average, carry less debt than students in other fields, but they take longer to pay it down.)”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/06/the-end-of-the-english-major

The problem of indebtedness after graduation and a new concept as to the purpose of a collegiate education radically changed the perception of and interest in a liberal arts education.

What is a liberal arts education?

“The goal (of the liberal arts) is to become broadly educated, well-rounded members of society that can understand lots of different domains of knowledge, learn how to learn, and have a specialization of sorts,” says Mark Montgomery, founder and CEO of Great College Advice, a college admissions consultancy with offices across the U.S.

Most liberal arts colleges do not offer separate professional education programs, such as business and engineering schools, which are designed to give students specialized training for specific professional practice.”

A liberal curriculum includes many academic disciplines, especially the skills of communications, writing proficiency, analytical thinking, and leadership skills.  Often, a second or third language and courses in the humanities are included.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2018-12-07/what-a-liberal-arts-college-is-and-what-students-should-know

In the 1950s and 60s when ex-servicemen enrolled in college under the GI Bill and growing numbers of women found opportunities for a college education, a liberal arts education was a popular course of study.  Graduates were proud of their BA with a major in the liberal arts.  English majors provided insurance that company communiques were correctly written.  History and political science majors provided insight into community and state leadership.  The liberal arts also were a foundation and springboard for graduate studies.

In past US Census reports most people reporting a college education were graduates of liberal arts colleges or liberal arts programs in state universities.  A broad college education, their last formal education, gave them a basis for understanding America and the world.

Instead of a liberal arts education.

Today the trend is changing.  “According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, US colleges and universities awarded two million bachelor’s degrees in 2018-19.  More than half of these degrees were concentrated in just six fields of study.  Plentiful job opportunities and high entry-level salaries make certain fields more attractive.  For example, business and health degrees account for nearly one-third of all undergraduate degrees.”

The 10 Most Popular College Majors

What is general information?

There is no consensus on what constitutes the basic information of an education.  Every discipline of study has its own answer.  Given this lack of clarity, we can build an understanding of the information a 4K-12 education must generate from the purpose of education and examples of what a lack of correct information looks like.

E. D. Hirsch, Jr. wrote in Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, “Only by piling up specific, communally shared information can children learn to participate in complex, cooperative activities with other members of their community.”  “Americans are different from Germans, who are in turn different from Japanese, because each group possesses specifically different cultural knowledge.  The basic goal of education in a human community is accumulation, the transmission to children of the specific information shared by the adults of the group or polis”.

A public education should, among other goals, educate children to understand the history, culture, and working mechanisms of their country, state, and local community.  If not, children are aliens in their own land.

The following are examples of what a lack of or misunderstanding of general information looks like.

• More Americans could identify Michael Jackson as the composer of “Beat It” and “Billie Jean” than could identify the Bill of Rights as a body of amendments to the Constitution. 

• More than 50 percent of respondents attributed the quote “From each according to his ability to each according to his needs” to either Thomas Paine, George Washington, or President Obama. The quote is from Karl Marx, author of “The Communist Manifesto.” 

• More than a third did not know the century in which the American Revolution took place, and half of respondents believed that either the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, or the War of 1812 occurred before the American Revolution. 

• With a political movement now claiming the mantle of the Revolutionary-era Tea Party, more than half of respondents misidentified the outcome of the 18th-century agitation as a repeal of taxes, rather than as a key mobilization of popular resistance to British colonial rule. 

• A third mistakenly believed that the Bill of Rights does not guarantee a right to a trial by jury, while 40 percent mistakenly thought that it did secure the right to vote. 

• More than half misidentified the system of government established in the Constitution as a direct democracy, rather than a republic – a question that must be answered correctly by immigrants qualifying for U.S. citizenship.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/06/americans-vs-basic-historical-knowledge/340761/

Some may consider general information to be trivia or clues on TV’s Jeopardy show.  But accurate and complete understanding clears up so many misinterpretations and misstatements that populate everyday conversation.  For example, children cannot speak about global warming without background of the earth’s atmosphere, the world’s geography, and how nature replenishes oxygen and cleans carbon dioxide from the air we breathe.  They cannot engage in conversation about global warming without analytical thinking and problem-solving skills, filters for fact and non-facts, and civil conversation and communication skills.  These are part and parcel to what Hirsch considers our cultural literacy and abilities to use knowledge in engaging with our world.

Drive the point with this fact.  Just 39 percent of American adults can pass a multiple-choice test required for US citizenship.  The passing score is 60 correct out of 100 questions.

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2018-10-12/2-of-3-americans-wouldnt-pass-us-citizenship-test#:~:text=Just%2039%20percent%20of%20Americans,a%20passing%20score%20of%2060.

The big Duh!

Rousseau wrote that children learn best in a natural environment where, as they encounter the need to know, they engage and begin to understand.  Our world is not that natural environment and our children do not exist in Rousseau’s theoretical garden.  Responsible adults must create a public education that prepares all children for adult life and that preparation includes a firm foundation of the knowledge and skills that are within the liberal arts. 

High school is the last opportunity for all children to gain a Jeffersonian education for an informed citizenry.  High school graduation requirements are the last stipulation for ensuring all children have a broad yet appropriately deep knowledge and use of skill sets in literature, history, the sciences, mathematics, the arts, second languages, and the soft skills of reading, writing, analytical thinking, reasoning, and argumentation.  These four years set the foundation for what a graduate will say “I was taught …” for the next 80+ years of life.  Almost all graduates will engage in training and professional development related to their chosen occupations and avocations.  Equally, almost none will re-engage in the curriculum of 4K-12 education.  That door closed.  We must ensure that when a high school graduate closes her 4K-12 door, she possesses a liberal arts foundation that will serve for the rest of her life.

We are what we appear to value.  Reading Proficiency and Censorship.

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Simultaneously the Wisconsin legislature is considering a bill to improve reading instruction for all children and a bill to limit what schools can provide for children to read.  Two bills each with its own perspective on how the state should fulfill its commitment to educating children.  One bill attempts to apply the best practices of the science of reading to ensure all children can be proficient readers.  One bill tells schools to limit what they provide for children to read and see.  Each bill uses the power of the state to transform how schools impact children.  Each bill is an expression of what we value.

What do we know?

Our WI constitution says the state is responsible for establishing and supervising public education.  State statute 118.01(2) outlines the state’s educational goals.  These include instruction in 118.01(2)(a) the basic skills of reading, arithmetic, listening, writing, and speaking, analytical skills to think rationally and solve problems, a body of knowledge in literature, fine arts, and the natural sciences, skills and attitudes for lifelong intellectual activity, and knowledge in computer science including the social impact of computers.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/118

What is being proposed?

Representative Joel Kitchens is spearheading Assembly Bill 321 to improve child literacy by creating an Office of Literacy, focusing teacher prep programs on science-based reading instruction, establishing and funding literacy coaching, and standardizing early literacy screening through grade 3 assessments.  Equally important to the use of phonics-based reading is the ban on schools from using three cueing strategies in teaching children to read.  Every child in 4K-grade 3 will be taught how to decode words and encode sounds – to read and write independently.  Each child will be taught the mechanics of literacy and strategies for building vocabulary.  A child’s ability will no longer be determined by her school’s reading program preferences but by best practice. 

The bill institutes change in teacher education and professional development to ensure that teachers know how to teach phonics-based reading.  Today most teachers do not teach phonics as it was not part of their baccalaureate preparation or their school district’s PD.  Most teachers learned to teach whole language or blended reading strategies dominated reading instruction.  Teachers will learn to teach and be accountable for teaching all children to read using the science of reading concepts and skills.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2023/related/proposals/ab321

State Senators Andre Jacque, Romaine Quinn, and Cory Tomczyk presented a bill that would cause schools to remove books and material that are “deemed harmful or offensive to minors from public schools and libraries” and “enact policies that ensure minors do not view harmful materials on public computers”.

Under the guise of parent rights to supervise what their children learn, the bill requires schools to publish their curricular materials so that parents may object to what they deem harmful and/or remove their child from that class instruction. 

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2023/proposals/sb10

One bill supports our educational goals and the other subverts those goals.

I fully agree with Joel Kitchens when he says “Students will succeed by returning to the way most of us learned to read.  I truly consider this to be the most important thing that I ever worked on in the legislature”.  AB 321 advances the educational goals of our state by improving how we teach all children to read. 

Senate Bill 10 contradicts our educational goals to provide all children with opportunities to consider, think, and become intellectual problem solvers.  It ignores or does not trust the authority of school districts to supervise the materials they provide for children to read and see and experience in school.  Instead, this bill creates a new right for a parent to make that decision not just for that parent’s child but for all children.

SB10 is Wisconsin’s effort to keep up with other conservative-dominated state legislatures with book banning.  If successful, the bill ensures that schoolbooks and materials can be censored by a single parent or small group of parents.  It also places school boards in the bullseye of the issue to ban or not ban books.

https://www.wortfm.org/following-national-trend-wisconsin-lawmakers-introduce-book-ban/

Where is our educational high ground?

As a former school superintendent and school board president, I applaud Assembly Bill 321 and shun Senate Bill 10.  The high ground of public education is to teach children how to think and to resolve issues.  It is low ground to tell children what to think and to insulate them from issues they should, with appropriate instructional support, be able to consider. 

Our state constitution explains the educational goals of a public education in Chapter 118, section 118.01.  118.01(d) says “Each school board shall provide an instructional program designed to give pupils: (8) Knowledge of effective means by which pupils may recognize, avoid, prevent and halt physically or psychologically intrusive or abusive situations which may be harmful to pupils including child abuse and child enticement.  Instruction shall be designed to help pupils develop positive psychological, emotional, and problem-solving responses to such situations and avoid relying on negative, fearful, and solely reactive methods of dealing with such situations.  Instruction shall include information on available school and community prevention and intervention assistance or services and shall be provided to pupils in elementary schools.”

The high ground for our state is to implement the goals of its statutes.  Schools must constantly improve how we teach children while we constantly are vigilant regarding the educational materials we use for that education.  The state constitution gives schools the authority and responsibility to do these, and the role of legislation is to enhance not impede schools.  The constitution commends parents to work with local school boards to understand and advocate for the education of all children.

The high ground for local school boards is to constantly supervise the materials and experiences used to educate its students.   When a challenge arises the board can engage in an appropriate conversation with the conviction that the district has and is meeting its responsibilities for the entirety of our state’s educational goals.  We teach all children to become proficient in basic skills and to consider, think, problem solve and make decisions regarding their school experiences.  We do not teach them what to think or how to value their experiences.

Dropping Educator Prep For Superintendents Is A Bad Idea

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There are answers that resolve the difficult issues of a problem and there are answers that avoid the issues.  School districts in Wisconsin face problems that a recent legislative proposal avoids.  School superintendents are resigning and retiring at a faster rate than new superintendent candidates are being prepared for the job market.  A proposed legislative fix is to eliminate the requirement that superintendents must be trained as educators and licensed by the DPI.  Making the job available to a wider pool of non-educator candidates does not address the problems that cause a shortage of trained superintendents.  This is a bad answer – superintendents are educators first and foremost.  Address the issues that cause superintendents to resign or retire early; do not lessen the training that connects a superintendent with the instruction of children.  Superintendents need to be educators.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel accurately reported the problem and the legislative proposal.  “Over the past few years, the number district administrators leaving the job has nearly doubled. At the start of the 2022-23 school year, 107 of 421 Wisconsin public school districts had a different superintendent from the previous school year, with 65 of them in their first year, according to Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators executive director Jon Bales. This is in comparison to 66 changes in superintendents at the start of the 2021-22 school year.

Under current law, all school district administrators in Wisconsin, with the exception of Milwaukee Public Schools, are required to hold a license issued by the Department of Public Instruction. The proposed legislation by Stroebel and Wittke would create a similar exemption for the other 420 public school districts in the state.

‘(The bill) is just an attempt to help provide school districts the option of taking qualified people from candidate pools that they have available to them,’ said Wittke, a member of the Racine Unified School District Board from 2016-19.

‘We just look at it as trying to do things that bring more talent into the K-12 education system and allow talented people to realize the full extent of the expertise that they have,’ Wittke said. ‘(We want to) open up the talent pool and help districts out so they can choose the right person to run the district rather than someone who has a specific license.’”

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2023/05/17/schools-superintendent-turnover-not-unusual-for-wisconsin/70196216007/

The “heat in the kitchen”.

President Harry Truman gave us his direction for dealing with heated problems.  “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”  In a manner of speaking, that is what an increasing number of school superintendents are doing.  After successfully preparing themselves for school district leadership, they abandon their job and/or career.  While President Truman proclaimed himself to be heat resilient, he did not help us understand the issue of heat.  Neither does the Stroebel/Wittke proposal.

The heat is not what it used to be.

Historic heat and current heat are not the same.  In past decades the annual budget or a school referendum or the losing record of the high school football coach were hot school board items.  Parents and residents physically attended a school board meeting, rose to speak to the board, heard each other, and awaited a board decision.  Addressing the board was part of a process and the protocols for speaking with the board were honored.   Heated arguments were made, and some excessive words were used but at the end of the process civility was honored.

In the era of new heat, we add vitriol.  As crass indicators, the new heat can be measured by the decibels of yelling and the amount of spittle that is expelled.  Old heat retained civility and new heat has little regard for self-regulation.  Growing numbers of parents and residents attend physically or Zoom into board meetings and ignore the agenda and parliamentary process.   In many instances, they grab the floor and do not relinquish it until the board gives them the decision they demand, or the meeting is abandoned in chaos.  They leave the lectern to get into the faces of board members.  They over shout those who disagree with their demands.  The new heat is all about forcing board decisions to favor the demands made by the most vocal. 

Superintendents are the school board’s lightening rod.  The district administrator is the board’s executive officer and responsible for implementing the board’s policies.  As the board’s executive, the superintendent also makes recommendations for board consideration.  The superintendent is the point person on all issues thus is the lightening rod that attracts all the storm and fury when there is public disagreement with policy implementation or recommendations of new policies.

Within this tense environment, a recent study found that nearly 40 percent of superintendents reported being threatened or feeling threatened on the job.  And 63 percent of superintendents reported feeling endangered about their mental health and well-being over the past two years.

But while superintendents are feeling the heat, policymakers are unable to accurately determine the impact of pressure on superintendents’ well-being, performance and willingness to stay on the job.’”

https://www.governing.com/education/why-are-so-many-school-superintendents-leaving-their-job

I served as a school superintendent for 15 years and was a school board president during the pandemic and write from experience. 

New hot issues are about parenting and politics not schooling.

“Contributing to this tension are politically divisive issues that many school superintendents have had to navigate over the last three years, including the teaching of race, book bans and providing access to athletics and bathrooms for students who identify as transgender.” 

https://www.governing.com/education/why-are-so-many-school-superintendents-leaving-their-job

The school board is legally authorized to govern local public education and nothing else.  Too many parents and community residents today want the school board to resolve newly heated social and political topics that are not school issues.  Unable to invoke policy at the national or state or municipal level, they turn to the grass roots government of school boards.  Their purpose is to make local policies impose their perspective on everyone in the school district.

No quick fixes; just education.

Public education is public.  Our state Constitution tells us what this means.  Boards are publicly elected.  Schools operate on public tax dollars.  School enrollment is open to all in the public community.  School policies and rules are public documents.  All the business of the board except what the statutes allow to be confidential is a public record.  The doors of a public school may be newly secured, but they are open to the public.  Board meetings are open to public participation.  These attributes are strengths of public education and are part of the solution to emerging struggles.

New stressors that are raised by some in the public must be resolved with the tools of public education – teaching and learning.  This is why school superintendents must be trained and licensed educators.  While elected board members speak for their constituents and their children, superintendents speak for education and the education of all children.  At the board table in front of the public, the superintendent is a singular voice, and that voice must be informed by training and experience.

The superintendent uses teaching skills to prepare the board for the topics on its agenda.  While open meeting laws prevent board members from discussing agenda items prior to meetings, they rely on the superintendent to teach them the background of the topic, the compelling reasons for the topic appearing on this agenda, and the pros and cons of the topic necessary for the board to make an informed decision.  Few board members are trained educators.  They need to be taught by the superintendent to think as educators.

Board members can represent all the traits and characteristics of children in a classroom.  They are not often satisfied with the dictates of a CEO but want to know the why and what if of the topics they consider.  Board members are adult education personified.

Trained superintendents also understand from their school life experiences that successful learning takes time and patience.  Experience taught them that a difficult day for one lesson need not carry into the next day.  Training tells them how to modify their instructional approach to ensure successful board learning.

Trained and experienced superintendents also know that once they have completed their pre-agenda education and presentation, the responsibility for the outcome is up to the board.  It is out of the superintendent’s control.  They know how to release their responsibility to the board.

Beyond teaching board members, superintendents also teach their administrative team, district employees, the community, and children.

Administrative team.  The superintendent leads the central office staff, principals, directors, and department heads.  On a line and staff chart, the superintendent is the person responsible for implementing all district programs.  The faculty and school staff take their organizational direction from the admin team.  A strong superintendent instructs all school leaders in the district vision, mission, and annual goals.  His detailed explanation defines the exact performances required of team members for the district to meet its goals.  Like strong teachers, he models and practices what he teaches and holds himself to the same assessments as his team.

District employees.  An employee who knows the CEO of the organization knows the job he does, has observed the work he does, and understands how the job contributes to the organization feels connected to the organization.  Superintendents who were principals and who were teachers have this background knowledge.  They can speak directly with bus drivers, cleaners, cooks and servers, aides, and all faculty with understanding of the jobs they do.  Conversely, superintendents without school training must rely on the reports of others to indirectly understand an employee’s work.  Except for the largest urban school districts, superintendents who are educators have this essential in-school knowledge and it provides indispensable connections.

Community.  The school community is a set of concentric circles.  Faculty, staff, and children are in the core circle.  Parents of school children are the second circle.  The resident community is the third circle.  Superintendents connect with some of the resident community in the comings and goings of personal living.  Folks at the grocery and gas station see the superintendent frequently; most in the community do not.  Residents know about the schools only from what they hear and read.  For this reason alone, a superintendent must be a community educator who provides frequent, informative, and candid communications to all residents.  Human interest stories matter, especially when they demonstrate that the superintendent knows the people-side of school.  A superintendent forms public opinion about the schools by what he communicates.

Children.  When I was an elementary student I knew my principal, Mrs. Phillips, and my school superintendent, Dr. Salsbury.  I saw Mrs. Phillips almost every day, and I saw Dr. Salsbury’s name in letters to school parents.  Both were real people to me, not just names.  When they spoke, I listened. 

When I was a superintendent with an office in the school’s main hallway, I saw the children of our school every day, and they saw me.  I sat in their classrooms, ate in their cafeteria, and walked their halls.  I considered the school my classroom and just like a teacher I was purposeful in what I said to children.  It was my opportunity to learn from them to better shape their school experience.  Every superintendent needs to get a “kid fix” frequently to remain personally connected with the most important people in the school.

The Big Duh!

If our legislator’s intent is to fill jobs, then any person can be a superintendent.  If their intent is to ensure successful school leadership, then only trained school leaders are qualified to be a superintendent.  As with many things in life, we will get what our legislators settle for.  We hope they settle only for what is best for educating children.

Be Patient – Let Life Unfold

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What do you say to children who are in a hurry?  They want quick, short answers immediately and erupt when others in class ask “dumb” or time-wasting questions.  They are not alone.  The attention span of people in general, and children specifically, grows shorter and a need for instant gratification grows greater as the speed of life increases.  Yet we know that the development of enduring learning takes time.  Memory is a process that is strengthened with correct practice and timely repetitions.  When we couple a child’s petulance with cultural quickening, the concept of time needed for teaching and learning is severely challenged.  As an educator, sometimes the best reply to the need for speed is – be patient, let life unfold.

What do we know?

Teaching and learning are encapsulated in educational standards.  There is a set of standards for every subject and age of child from birth through graduation in our public education system.  National and professional organizations create documents of best practices for teacher preparation, daily instruction, and student learning outcomes.  Course guides provide teachers with a template to assure teaching and learning stays within the markers of relevant standards.  Standards are the curriculum. 

We also know that the pace of school life today is quick.  Our usual teaching model is to instruct, practice, assess and evaluate, re-instruct, if necessary, and move on to the next instruction.  Everything is forward leaning.  Hence, when we are faced with learning that requires time for consideration, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis, the time needed for learning can stretch the expected timetable.  Adding the needed time to ensure all children successfully learn causes conflicts with the expected routine of teach and test.  As a linear construct, teaching and learning are on a timetable.  And it is a fast timetable of September to June.

Patience is not a standard.

Besides academic standards we also teach so-called “soft standards”.  Soft standards, such as cooperation, collaboration, group processes, and role playing are stitched together with academic standards in our course guides.  Patience, however, is not a designated student learning outcome.  A search of curricular standards, the Common Core for example, will not disclose the learning goal of “patience”. 

What is patience?

Patience is the ability to wait with an internal calm.  Patience is a tolerance for waiting for uncertainty to be clarified.  Patience implies that, given time and opportunity, things will change, and understanding will be developed.  Our classic role model for a patient person is Job who tolerated multiple trials over time in the belief that God eventually would favor him and his lineage.  Job-like patience requires a person to believe that things will work out as they should in the end. 

Teachers are admonished to be patient with children.  We have hints and tips about how to be patient with students but no curriculum for teaching a child to be patient.  Patience is a soft skill that lies in the disposition of personal traits that we want all to have.  We treat patience as an innate personal trait that matures but is not a taught and learned skill.  Patience comes with patience!

The inverse of patience is impatience, and we more clearly understand patience by knowing what it is not.  Consider the last time you were impatient.  Impatience is stressful, causes anxiety, quickens the pulse, and raises blood pressure.  Impatience demands immediacy.  Impatience breeds anger.  Patience is being calm and waiting in a traffic jam for cars to start moving; impatience is road rage.

Persistence is linked with patience.  We often tell children “Try to do it again” in the belief that success comes with subsequent efforts.  Corrective teaching assists children to find success in second and third attempts.  We often use persistence to achieve learning outcomes without tying eventual success to learned patience.

Patience with what?

Patience always is within a context.  We can assist children with three kinds of patience. 

  • Patience with self.  Inherent in patience with self is the Greek maxim, “know thyself”.  To know oneself is to be aware of inner feelings, strengths, and weaknesses, and of personal goals.  Just as we adjust the thermostat in a room to regulate air temperature, acknowledging one’s inner self assists a person to regulate how they respond to situations in and not in their control.  Self-knowledge clarifies that a particular action is or is not in a person’s best interest. 

Patience with self assures that what a person does today is attuned with their immediate and future goals.  A patient person does not act in the immediacy just to act but acts with the assurance that action is justified and aligned with intentions.  Being patient and calm is an intellectual and emotional decision to be so.  It is not easy but takes self-regulation to remain around the norms of being patient and calm. 

  • Patience with others.  Patience with others also requires self-control.  School-age children are constantly tugged by what they want for themselves and what others want of and for them.  Self-control is the measure by which a child balances her own needs with needs impressed upon her by others.  Like impatience, we better understand self-control by its inverse of being controlled and manipulated by others.  It is impossible for a child who constantly reacts and responds to the needs and demands of others to be patient and calm with herself. 

A patient child says, “Let’s wait and see” more frequently than “Giddy up; let’s go!”. 

Personal relationships are critical for a child’s healthy development.  Relationships start with family members and quickly include peers at school.  The balance a child achieves in valuing daily interactions with parents and siblings and with school peers is essential for a calm and patient child.  Minding and respecting parents is innate for young children.  Getting along with siblings is a strong second in family life. 

A child’s relationships with peers can be a jungle.  Too often children create anxiety and stress over the words and actions of their peers.  A child who overvalues peer relations struggles with self-control because self-worth is measured by peer acceptance.  It is impossible for a child who is constantly measuring self-worth by their peers to be calm and patient.  Impatience multiplies with the use of social media’s potential for instant response and constant engagement, but peers play the game of ghosting.  Jungle may be too kind a metaphor.

Patience with others can be contagious but most often is met with impatience from others.  A patient and self-regulating child understands.

  • Patience with the world.  Children chronically want to grow up faster than their years allow.  They want not only a drivers license but a sporty car.  They want to be on winning teams that do not spend a lot of time practicing.  They want good grades with a minimum of studying.  They see themselves as older than they are.  Each of these statements illustrates a child’s relationship with the world.  Childhood is impatient. 

While children study and gain knowledge of geologic and pre-historic times, they do not conceive of the passage of time in months, years, decades, and centuries.  Anything that happened before their birth was “long ago”. 

Patience with the world requires a child to see the constant passage of time like watching a chemical reaction in a test tube.  Some reactions are instantaneous, and others are very slow and take time.  A patient child knows the difference and is comfortable knowing that change requires its own timetable.

Patience is not ambivalence.

Don’t wait for the sake of waiting.  Being patient is not foregoing or losing track of personal goals.  It is easy for the overly patient to be considered ambivalent.  A healthy disposition contains a tension between patience and steady progress in goal attainment.  Thomas Edison taught us that success is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.  Success takes a consistent work effort and patient work keeps a child’s focus on the desired goals.  Edison found that his patient, steady efforts produced his creativity.

Let life unfold.

Notwithstanding predestination and evolutionary theories, Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 tells us there is a time and a season for everything under the heavens.  Patience and goal attainment let the world and life unfold before us.  Unfolding is not an accident.  Unfolding is not passive.  It is shaped by doing what is within one’s control while waiting for what is not in one’s control to happen.  Unfolding requires trust that reasonable goals will be attained.   But unfolding takes time and comfort with time is patience.

The Big Duh!

Teaching patience per se is difficult.  Modeling patience is easier.   Teaching the cognitive skills required as steppingstones for goal achievement sneakily teaches children the value of patience and endurance.  We can use class time to inspect and consider, to analyze and evaluate, and to synthesize what is known into personal understanding.  When we act patiently and allow learning to unfold we demonstrate what it means to be patient – let life unfold. 

Saying No to What Is Not Right Is Always Right

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We mocked it and made it into a gag line, but we still remember what Nancy Reagan asked us to do forty years ago.  “Just say no”.  It was the 1980s and there was a national war on drugs.  A personal statement of “No, not me” was her encouragement to the youth of that time to abstain from using illegal drugs.  A simple, clear, and non-argumentative statement is powerful in declaring where a person stands on an issue.  Public education today is confronted with numerous hot button issues.  As educators we are required to be agnostic in our instruction of children; we inform but do not proselytize.  Yet there are essential issues today that require a “Just say no”.  Saying no to what is not right is always the right thing to do.

Say no to bullying of all types.  We have been properly sensitized over time to recognize bullying and harassment in school.  We have policies and procedures to correct those who bully and harass the vulnerable.  We know how to deal with classic bullies and harassers.  Recently we are confronted with non-physical and non-verbal behaviors, like ghosting, that damage a vulnerable child as much as a punch from the meanest playground bully.  When children are active in social media, it is easy for a bully to lead gullible groupies in ghosting or raising digital innuendo about a targeted child.  We see children at school who clearly are victimized although we see and hear no typical bullying behavior.  This is silent bullying.  Vulnerable children are targets for more sophisticated bullying and we need to say no to these machinations.

Say no to book banning.  This is quite simple.  Books and media portray and represent ideas and information that have value for intellectually informing student minds.  Just as a collection of books presents a range of readability levels, so ideas and information in books and media are available for the different intellectual and personal maturity levels of children.  As soon as a parent says that a book or item of media is not appropriate for their child, I say, “Great!  Tell your child not to read or look at it.  Be the parent your child needs”.  Parents and other adults who demand that library collections conform to their personal values need to hear a simple and non-argumentative “no”.  A parent can direct her child on what materials are appropriate for her child; she is not the parent of all children in the school.  Sadly, the issue of access to materials is more about parenting and power demonstrations than about library collections.

Say no to making any children second class or ignored students.  Purposefully not educating children is not new organizational behavior in our schools.  Historically, the majority or those in positions of power denigrated groups of people based on race and ethnicity. 

From the beginning, there was no consideration of educating American Indian children until decisions were made within the last century to create Indian schools for the purpose of “teaching out” any semblance of Indian culture in their children.  This was bad practice based on political motivation.

Enslaved children were prevented from learning to read or write.  In the post-emancipation era segregated schools for black children were the rule in southern and border states.  While desegregation was national policy in the post-civil rights era, today we observe re-segregation based upon parent choice.  In southern states and affluent northern urban communities choice policies allow parents to create publicly-funded charter schools for selected student membership.  By law, any parent may apply for enrollment, but charter school policies allow these elite schools to expel children without cause or redress.  The result is a resegregated school.

Today we observe state governors and legislatures discriminating against LGBTQ+ children with laws that refuse to accept any gender identity or role other than that of biological birth.  Like Indian and enslaved children, LGBTQ+ are being discriminated against with politically motivated policy. 

Say no to all behaviors that segregate or discriminate against children for any reason.  The quality of our national character often is inadequate to prevent us from doing organizational harm to selected groups of children.  Every instance of organizational discrimination that is ignored creates an opportunity for more discriminatory behavior.   No one can make discrimination a right thing to do.  Say no to all discriminatory practices in public education.

Say “no not me” when someone says, “everyone agrees that we should…” and you are not everyone.  The herd mentality lives on today.  I observe parents at board meetings who are passive when a parent speaker says, “everyone here agrees with me that we should…”.  Passive parents who do not agree give apparent weight to false representations. 

Herd behavior also lives in faculty and staff meetings.  When a colleague says, “I speak for our faculty (or department or grade level) and you do not agree with what the colleague represents as your position on an issue, just say “no, this does not represent what I think”.  Every time you remain silent in your disagreement, someone thinks you agree.  Say “no, not me”.

In our hotter political climate, those who break from the herd may be reproached by herd leaders.  However, it is right to say “I don’t agree” when you do not agree with the herd. 

Just as saying no to things that are not right, we must say yes to things that are right.

Say yes to programs that provide security for all children.  Say yes to all issues like food security that impact the health and safety of children.  The post-pandemic economy stretches the distance between families with ample resources and those without.  Food safety networks that gave every child a cost-free school lunch everyday are gone.  Subsidized networks that provide winter coats, hats, and boots are closing as subsidies expire.  Extended Internet capacities that were essential for distance learning are withdrawing free service and calling in pandemic-provided hardware.  

Children who suffer food insecurity, insufficient seasonal clothing, and lack of home technologies begin every school day behind their more fortunate classmates.  Once behind, it is ever more difficult to catch up.  Say yes to programs that are networks for needy and insecure children.

Say yes to evidence-based instruction that ensures all children are proficient readers.  And say yes to evidence-based instruction in all school curricula.  The erupting support for Science of Reading instruction ended several decades of disorientation in our reading programs.  I observed too many children being taught a reading curriculum that the teacher “liked”.  We need to eradicate “like” as a criterion for selecting any instructional program.  Say no to programs based upon “I like this one” and yes to evidence-based programs.

Arguments against phonics-based reading instruction abounded during the decades-long reading wars.  Whole language and blended programming was “liked” because they were popular, provided abundant class materials, and did not require teachers to understand phonics.  Popularity ignored the fact that non-intuitive readers did not learn to read, develop powerful vocabularies, or understand language structures.  Popularity also ignored the fact that teachers beginning classroom careers in the 90s and early 2000s did not know phonics.  They were not taught to read using phonics and their teacher preparation programs did not teach to use phonics in reading instruction for children.  Today we have decisive evidence that phonics-based reading instruction is the best practice for all children.  When the evidence is clear, say yes.

Say yes to an inclusive, four A education for all children.  A Four A education provides all children with opportunities to learn and grow in their school’s academic, activity, arts, and athletics programs.  Independently these A letter programs appeal to the individual child’s natural tendencies and interests.  Some children thrive in school because they are driven by academic learning.  They climb the curricular ladder into AP-leave courses and rigorous electives because learning success begets more learning success.  Other children thrive due to their involvement in the activity and club life of their school.  In our local schools large numbers of children engage in Destination Imagination, forensics, Mock Trial, and DECA.  They thrive in challenging problem-solving and performance-based activities.  Other children are driven by the arts.  Vocalists, instrumentalists, painters, potters, jewelers, and doodlers find their passion in school rehearsal halls and studios.  Athletics appeals to almost all children at one time or another and intramural and interscholastic sports give children opportunities to develop and display their talents.

Inclusive four A programs ensure a balanced school life for children.  Inclusive ensures that one A does not dominate a school to the detriment of other A’s.  And being a four A school assures intentional practices that grow with the changing student population.

Say yes to planning and funding and supporting these programs that grow student success knowing that success now begets future successes.

It is easy to be moot in the world of public education.  The life and times of a school are constantly changing.  Because of this, it is all the important to say no to things that are not right and to say yes to things that are right.  Speaking up and taking a stand on key issues where saying no or yes matters is how we assure the best education for our children today and tomorrow.