Education is too important to “fold into” any other group of topics. Just about everyone I have heard in media and politics says we are in an education crisis. We face a situation where our children seem not to be learning, schools and teachers are struggling for funding and to make achievement goals. And the “product” of education (the child) seems unable to function as a viable person in society. And that viability includes employment, competition in the workplace, placement in society, health and welfare issues, ability to become economically competent and perhaps most important the ability to be able to learn and change throughout their lifetimes.

And solutions abound. We are told that we must force higher standards on schools, test more stringently to determine education “job performance,” strip any kind of “tenure” for teachers out of the picture, institute “supply-side” choice of schools with vouchers, set up entire charter school systems right beside the public schools and practice blaming everyone from politician to parents for the mess. Even such common sense methods as phonics become a “solution” instead of merely one plank in education’s structure.

We are tied up in contention, faultfinding and pointing fingers. Meanwhile our children, and I hate calling them “resources,” are left in limbo. Childhood, as I remember it, is a time of creating, exploring, learning, imitating, imagining, understanding, growing and nurturing. These are the God-given human capabilities that are intricate to the growing child. What I see of children today is a group of thirsting small humans, searching for something to capture and hone the nascent abilities they feel in themselves. Hours spent with video games and on the Internet are, to me, symptoms of the qualities of childhood trying to come to fruition with what they have at hand. With my generation that was often a simple stick, or a turned upside-down lawn chair, or a walk to the woods or wonder of wonders an actual toy. The fact we were “tool deprived” had its upside, we had to use all our imaginations to create the wonderful world of fantasy and creativity and learning which children do so well. And when our busy day of adventure and discovery was over, we came home to a warm house, both in surroundings and in love.

Childhood was magic. True magic. Nothing was beyond our reach. We could explore Pluto one day and drive cattle the next. And when we imagined something that piqued our interest, we went out searching for more information about what we had become interested in. Our education, long before we were in school, flowed from our childish curiosity.

Then came school. Sounds like a jail sentence doesn’t it? And for many it was. They squiggled in their desks, launched volleys of spit balls, refused every effort to channel their talents and even fell asleep. Exactly how I escaped that I don’t really know. I liked school, though I liked play better. And I learned, somewhat. Needless to say I didn’t learn enough or I’d be living far better than I am today, but at least the system of education didn’t chafe on my need to learn. And this is important, learning or education is a need. If one stops learning then one stops be-ing.

I see it in the challenged individuals I work with. Defined by society as “less able” than the rest of us, they are one of my greatest sources of learning today. I am amazed and humbled by their capacity to learn and grow. Many of them have come out of living in institutions that would send us into screaming nightmares if we had to exist there. Yet they have adjusted to living in independent housing, group homes and single living apartments. Many go to work every day of the workweek, take vacations, save up for desires and dreams and live and love just as their “advantaged” co-citizens. That they could come out of their early restrictive circumstances and learn and change as they do is a lesson for me and should be one for all of us.

And make no mistake, despite many persons who feel these challenged individuals are somehow “privileged” by their rights in our society, they are not. In fact in the last few years, money for their programs is being cut and even the Federal Government is reneging on the funding they are supposed to be dedicating to them. Except for their staff, many nonprofit organizations and relative-based support groups, these folks do not have any advocates. Yes, we passed the Disability Act, but budget and bureaucracy has stunted its application. Too often these days, I see the Act used as an excuse to neglect their needs rather than nurture them. In effect what I am seeing is the same plight as in the education system. A long time ago, it was said that humanity would be judged by what it does to the “least of these.” If that is true, and I believe it is, then I fear that judgment.

And if challenged individuals experience the same forces assaulting education in general, yet they also give hope. In the people I serve, I see the very basic and rawest of human ability. They show a stubbornness, a courage, a tenacity and a spirit, which can overcome most of the detriments of their situation. I think to myself, if they can do it so can we, for they have one more anchor on them, the disability which often they were born with or acquired through no fault of their own. And this case I make, that there is similarity between their predicament and ours, is also somewhat selfish. For I think, if we can overcome the problems education is facing, then perhaps we will turn those solutions upon the needs of those I work with. And we will truly practice what we have preached from platform and pulpit for so many years.

But first we must come to grips with our deficiencies. And that is a very real problem, because before we begin to find solutions, we must come to grips with one large and unstated roadblock. I believe that to be the “secret” no one will speak of, that education is not a real or coherent system. Education in America has always been an orphan. It has grown like topsy, veered in whatever direction theory took it, serves whatever purpose society momentarily values and ignores the most basic of human criteria in its earliest stages.

In the frontier towns of the 1800s the schoolhouse was often the last built public building. The teacher often had simple “book learning” and little training. Later, as structure and industry became prominent, we abandoned the one-room school (just as we were beginning to develop it as a good multi-grade tool) and switched to a graded school. In this school, we put students in desks, just about equivalent to the production space they would later have at work, had them changing subject and class by bell and buzzer, similar to what they would later experience in their workday. Then came satellite launches, and we loaded the classes with tech paraphernalia and extra math and science courses. Now we have media centers and computer quarrels in the present education environment.

And while that was going on, we searched for the pedagogic theory necessary to validate our choices. From the idea of natural learning, to tabla rasa, to cognitive trainability, to social units, to cybernetic responsiveness, to cognitive networks, we explained what we had already chosen.

And at the same time on the financial end, we had the lean years of early voluntary backing, the years of “sufficient” funding for work force development, the largesse of “space age” cold war survival economics, and finally the weakening monetary stream of the last uncertain decades.

It is a wonder to me that anyone would want to become a teacher. Taught one way in school, they would enter the education world just as that particular view was falling out of favor and a new paradigm was replacing it. And I, at least, have never heard of any education class that taught our future teachers how to handle salary negotiation, supply administration and the basics of the economics of the school districts, or universities, they would serve in. Meanwhile, forces that used to be outside education, have started giving them guidelines on how to teach, what to teach, tests and how to educate for taking tests and a constant sniping and criticism of whatever they were doing.

Now a disclaimer. What I am about to humbly suggest is made by a novice. Although I have personally investigated these suggestions, I have not become expert in any of them. It is a curse of being an amateur historian. Although such avocation may take one down many roads, some of which few others may have traveled, yet it causes me to sometimes linger on a fruitless path longer than I should. It also helped create a tendency in me to study things until I was convinced of their advocacy, but short of becoming master of them. So keep that in mind as I babble on about where I think the roots of the problem lie.

And of course, as I have said in other essays, I like to start from a place of natural growth. I think, if one can nurture what is already in existence, that it is easier to develop potential and branch out into new areas. And humans, from everything I can glean, have several talents and abilities that set us apart in the animal world. We are creative in the extreme, building dreams, castles and rockets with almost equal ease. We also use tools as extensions of ourselves, whether the hammer, the voltmeter or the calculus. We have memory capabilities which allow us to store and recall immense amounts of information, and part of that memory lies in the body itself, recalled by positional actuation and even emotional state. We have an ability to use symbols, from a schematic, to a formula, to a written language, we can convey information to others, even if we are long gone. We use languages, telling others about our memories, experiences and tools, and allowing them to understand how to duplicate what we have learned. And such language ability extends even to manipulative language, as in Sign and Braille, allowing even impaired persons to share in the world of knowledge. We seem to have a natural math talent, and some studies have indicated the “human calculators,” who seem to be the exception, should perhaps be the rule. We also share a basic paradigm of the reality of this world, a socialized template which gives us basic understanding that allows us to communicate with each other. And we have a belief system, in fact a number of them, which allow us in the most basic sense to experience humility and to know that there are forces beyond those we can see and touch.

Besides these talents or abilities, we also all share five senses. We also share a range of emotions and socializing capabilities. We have four limbs, usually, and use them for moving and manipulating environment. We develop habit patterns, tendencies and aversions. We can be, generally, extrovert or introvert and move towards results or away from consequences. We can all be social or antisocial, societal or solitary and tend toward judging by sameness or judging by difference. And we can question anything and everything.

And that should be enough to get us started. I have dealt with the basic and the common. It is from there I think we can start the pattern of education. And looking at the past, we find that through most of history there have been some fairly stable ideas of what education is about. Socrates would have said inquiry, both of others and of ourselves. Aristotle might have promoted consistency, a logical construct that builds brick by syllogistic brick. Cato might have begun with memory, a memory so vast that it held each citizen of Rome in it. Pythagoras would have based it on number, with all the attendant mathematics that went with it. Marching through the ages, we would have seen those learning from music and melody, poetry, recitation, rote, repetition, trained imagination, reverie and intuition. Then again, most of the founders of education systems were not the average, were often genius, and were subjects of their own beliefs. We cannot depend on our students to be any of those.
So let us begin with one of the most basic of needs and thankfully one of the earliest of displayed abilities, memory. We are born with it, use it immediately and continue its use throughout life. Yet seldom are we trained in its use. Whatever common or exceptional memory we are born with or stumble upon, that is our assigned lot. And it does not have to be that way. Memory, at least certain types, is trainable, yet I can think of no preschool or kindergarten that has it in its curriculum. Several systems of mnemonics exist and can be used to help children learn and hold information. And when so much of education is “learning” (substitute memory), it should be one of the first things we train. And that is the beauty of it, we need only train it, for it is already part and parcel of the student. Like a gift, it is a given, and it can be developed into a key the child can use to open the door to learning in all areas. Alphabet, reading, formulas, schematics and languages all fall to the trained memory. Like the winged Hope left in Pandora’s Box, memory opens up the possibility of education to incredible levels.

The second suggestion caters to the mathematics we must endure in schools. It is perhaps the least liked of subjects, next to American history. And for a technique to drain it of its loathsomeness, I suggest we study the system developed by a man while in a Nazi prison camp. He developed it to help him stay sane, and as result carried a boon out of that deadly place that can aid every child. Trachtenberg was a mathematician who was arrested by the Nazis, while in the camp, from which he eventually escaped, he used our base-10 system of math as intellectual sustenance. In the process, he came up with a set of a few rules, which would allow anyone to correctly add, subtract, multiply, divide and even do pre-calculus, on numbers of any length. No multiplication tables (though a child might learn them for math theory later), no shrinking pencil stubs working on columns of numbers and no uncertainty you have the right answer. Memorize the rules, perhaps using one of the above memory systems, and you do correct calculations no matter how long the number, how many the lines and how many operations are in the equation. It may sound too good to be true, yet it exists. I worked with it years ago, enough to test its correctness, and was amazed how easy it was. Just imagine the complete eradication of math anxiety from the children. What wonders could they perform if math becomes simply something they can play with like a video game? And if it were taught, so to speak, on mommy’s lap, or at least in preschool, then they would enter the grades with competence equivalent to the present high school graduate. Revolutionary is too weak a word for it. It would take our math ability a quantum leap ahead of anything we have imagined.
The next system also has that ability, though there might be more variation in capability than in the math system. And this system was developed out of some persons noticing certain innate capabilities while doing tests for reading and comprehension. It is called whole brain reading and the term “speed reading” doesn’t come close to its potential. The system uses eye motion, but with far greater “chunks” of text and at far greater speeds than anything before it. It also uses some preparation that utilizes a “hidden” purpose for the present way our reading text is written.
We generally think that the way we write just “is.” That there is no other way to organize or set down words to paper. Only if we look back at the writing before the printing, do we realize text has not always been written like this. In fact there didn’t used to be glossaries, indexes and chapters either. Nor did paragraph structure look anything like our modern writing. Just after printing became prevalent, there was pressure to organize writing to help in memorizing it. The use of punctuation, chapters, paragraphs, indexes, etc., were developed to form an “easier” way to remember information. Sentence structures of subject, action, conclusion form came into existence. Paragraphs were designed to hold a defining statement, supporting statements and conclusion, which led to another idea in the next paragraph. It was a complicated structure to make remembering easy, most of the time. Well, the whole brain system uses that and the index and chapters to “preview” the reading. Then it uses the chunking method of speed-reading to zip through the previewed book. More difficult than Trachtenberg, yes, but well worth it. Masters of the system can read over 50,000 words per minute (that’s not a mistake - - 50,000). And they do it with upwards of 90% comprehension and retention. I have seen one demo of it on a show on one of the learning channels. They were reading off computer screens, the pages flipping by, it reminded me of the archaic TVs when the picture would start rolling because of malfunctioning vertical hold.

This too, is a gift we can give our children. Imagine reading all your course texts in one evening, retaining them through the semester, and with a quick review, “freezing” the info in your memory for the rest of your life. It also seems the more this is done, other mind capabilities begin to come to the fore, allowing incredible utilization of brain connectivity. Again, it takes the stress out of learning, allows greater range and choice. Makes one of our most prevalent learning aids, reading, a more useful and less onerous tool, and frees up both time and ability.

The next suggestion is not so much applied to teaching as observation of the student. Each of us learns best in one mode. Some are visual learners, some auditory and some kinesthetic. So some of us learn by seeing, some by hearing and some by “feeling,” but in the internal and movement definition of feeling, not the emotional. I am sure some even learn by tasting, but I will leave that to those who study synesthesia. And, unless the education courses have changed since I, briefly, was enrolled in them, they do not take that into account. In other words, you could lecture to a visual learner all day, yet most of it would be lost because it is not the preferred mode. Same with showing the auditory learner pictures. And the kinesthetic learner would be immune to either of those approaches.

So teachers must be taught how to discover the pupil’s major learning mode and then teach to that strength. Once that mode is found there is at least a good chance learning can take place, if not then there is little chance teaching will cause anything but frustration. And, perhaps most importantly of all, it should be possible, once the learning mode is discovered, to teach the child to be able to adapt and learn from the other modes. In other words, to cross-train the child in visual, auditory and kinesthetic methods. That eventual result will create greater range in the child’s learning and help with specific areas where only one mode can be used to teach a subject. An instance would be appreciation of paintings, a subject you would have to use visual means to teach. If an auditory or kinesthetic person knew how to “translate” their mode of learning from the visual, there would be much greater chance for them to master the subject.

Such basic but not rigorous “classification” of the child early on, means education could play to the strengths of the individual from day one. And it could help that person widen their resources for the future. An added “plus” would be, I believe, the added social understanding that might go with such education. After all, we have all known people who act only out of their “physicality,” the kinesthetic in other words. Sports, physical competition and perhaps fighting are all they seem to know. Now imagine this person realizing there were other modes to interact in. And, at the same time, his classmates understand him better, and hold other “keys” or modes which they can help him learn with. This may even be the finger pointing at the internal dynamics of classroom dissension that put school authorities at loggerheads as to how to handle disruption. I think this could be a worthy addition to education basics.
Perhaps we should pause a second, before I present my other suggestions, and consider the children taught with these basics. My heavens, what wonderful, whole beings they would be. Unhindered by learning fears, understanding their most effective learning style, undeterred by length of material or numbers of equations and most importantly freed from repetition and forgetfulness. They would literally soar through our present curriculum. They could master the course material, then go off on jaunts of desire, plowing through reams of material that piqued their interest.

And the teachers. Imagine the teachers in such classes. The drudgery of rehashing material would be almost gone. Time would be in abundance, to plot creative lesson plans, to cater to the desire of their students to learn more, and most importantly time to help those less able than the majority. Teachers would become true gatekeepers of learning, initiating the children into the joys of lifelong self-education, and helpers in the development of each student’s personal inclinations. They could teach more context, reasoning and research. They could take their classes on more real world excursions, without fear they are neglecting needed lessons. It would redefine their profession. Almost fifty years ago, a genius tried in another way to redefine that profession.

Perhaps if we add his ideas to the above techniques, we could start to redefine the whole concept of what school and education really is. That genius was Buckminster Fuller. He was an archetect and engineer, who researched, applied and intuited into just about every scientific and technical area we have discovered. He held multiple honorary degrees, from sciences which admired the insights he had given them, and honorariums from professions he had aided with his revolutionary ideas. Creator of the dymaxion-home, the tensegrity mast and the geodesic dome, he extended his tensional-integrity style of thinking into every area of human knowledge, even creating a system of mathematics based on a sixty-degree dimensional lattice.

His thinking on education, according to one account, came about as he was flying into Rio de Janeiro. He noticed, as his plane flew over the city, that the poor of Brazil literally encircled the main city in a vast shanty town in the surrounding hills. Yet, almost each and every hovel had a TV antennae on it. People so poor they used cardboard or tin for their houses, yet technology had reached out to put its latest creation, at least at that time, in their hands. It struck him that here might be a way to also put education in the hands of those same masses. So he came up with a concept of home schooling in the 1950s unlike anything anyone had thought about.

Now, with the advent of computers and Internet, that idea might need some fine-tuning, but the basics seem to me to be sound. Simply put, we give each and every home its own “learning center.” Computer and media based, the center, a specific module that would be in each home, only to be used for education, would be “given” to each and every family. It would be the conduit-school, connected to interactive “classes” and resource sites, as well as having a library of CDs and DVDs in the module itself. And that module would be there, no matter how rich or poor the home. Whether the family owned yachts or couldn’t pay their rent. And it would be a standard package. The wealthy would have no more nor less education material than the poorest.

And that is just the beginning. There would be the capability, through computer or telephone or even satellite, to have one on one contact with teachers, tutors and special mentors, at any time of day or night. School could now be “done” at any time convenient or necessary for the family and its circumstances. So, if Mom had to work all day, and the oldest child had to baby-sit brothers and sisters, then school could be in the evenings or at night. It could even be done as a “cram session” on the weekends. It could also “be” there whenever the child had an overriding need for it or just an insatiable thirst for something they wanted to learn.

And the module could only be used for education, no random web surfing, game playing or porno searching. Plus, the education stipulation would not just be for the kids but for the family. So Mom or Dad could use it for creating a resume, learning a typing course, or any of a myriad of learning opportunities. Even how to cook a special dinner. It would be a true multipurpose servant introduced into every home in America.

Experimentation with this sort of education system could be cheap and blindingly fast. If you have a new “way” to teach or method to use, you simply ask for volunteers and reprogram their modules. If you need anything, like census data, and with the consent of the home, you could have it instantly. And obviously, we would have to put very strong protections and strictures on this system, so merchants, politicians and pollsters would not use it to exclusion of all its other functions.