Student Respect

The concept of respect is fundamental to Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy. For him, respect comprises the only proper stance of one human being to another. In his Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), he writes, “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or the person of any other, never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end.” Treating people respectfully, then, for Kant is to treat them as ends in themselves and therefore humanely as human beings. This is our most pressing moral obligation.

At Dartmoor, respect for the student informs our educational philosophy and teaching efforts. The foundation for our mentoring relationship of scholar and pupil derives from Platonic instruction and dialectic. Part of this respect assumes all students want to learn and can. Though intellectual snobbery inclines some individuals to be disrespectful of those who learn differently or more deliberately, as free, rational beings---that is, as people---all learners deserve our respect.

How does Dartmoor demonstrate respect for the student? We begin in enrollment meetings by letting students articulate for themselves what their frustrations are. This is the first step for a student to take over ownership of her education. The next step is to place students at their instructional level rather than in a chronologically driven system of grade and age. There are obvious advantages to this and these are easily illustrated.

Imagine you wanted to learn how to ski and went to your first lesson full of enthusiasm to learn. As the class put on their skis, however, you began to fear that maybe you were in the wrong class as everyone else spoke familiarly of various experiences in Park City, Vail, Switzerland, France, Austria, Italy. Soon you find yourself on a chairlift with your class heading slowly to the top of a formidable advanced run, the anxiety increasing with every second, every gain in altitude. At the end of the lift, your classmates hop off and zip expertly down the mountain...imagine the terror of looking down that mountain; imagine this experience duplicated incessantly for a dozen or so years and you can imagine how students with learning differences feel in a traditional classroom.

On the other hand, it is just as easy to understand the frustration of a gifted student when you imagine yourself as an expert skier resigned to a course of bunny hills, while fresh, powdery peaks loom gigantically above you, with a sign draped in front of the closed ski lifts: off limits.

ADD & SCHOOLS OF THE FUTURE

For many students with ADD, the relational aspect of education conditions behavior and performance. A student who feels respected responds with effort and enthusiasm, but this same individual languishes when faced with an environment of indifference or, worse, contempt. These remarks might appear platitudinous, but unfortunately for students with ADD (and students in general) education has long since eschewed these foundational truths.

An anecdote serves to illustrate this point. A group of researchers from post-industrial societies presented their findings to a panel including the Dalai Lama. The group sought to demonstrate the importance of a respectful school environment to student performance. After a presentation supported by the entire dazzling apparatus of precise and exhaustive modern scholarship, the

Dalai Lama jovially asked why the educators had felt the need to research this topic in the first place? Was this not self-evident?

Perhaps it was not self-evident due to the fundamental disconnect between individuals and the education superimposed upon them.

Today’s system relies on an industrial platform valuing conformity and regularity: all students shall defines its credo. This is akin to a land where, regardless of build, all of the inhabitants must wear a unisex medium-sized robe. The state allocates many resources to ensure the individual fits the garment, but in the end the non-medium men and women present awkwardly and for this are ostracized. A traveler visiting such a land for the first time would be struck immediately by the ludicrousness and distastefulness of such a universal outfit, but no doubt would also empathize with those individuals who, not being of medium build themselves, must bear the shame and ridicule of their anomalousness. Such is an education grounded upon abstractions rather than individuals.

In times past the master mentored the apprentice and during this mentorship the apprentice invented himself, so to speak. At the same time, the apprentice shared in the tradition of his craft, of its achievement and lore. The master taught at the apprentice’s instructional level and built skill upon skill. Think here of the methodology of Plato’s writings in which Socrates acts as the midwife to knowledge by confronting individuals and societal assumptions. Through dialectic Socrates’ interlocutors grow intellectually to transcend their accidental selves and societies. In an ideal scenario, the master and apprentice collaborate like sculptors increasingly sensitive to a specific piece of marble and its potential, the apprentice---a sort of Pygmalion-artist---simultaneously emerging from the marble and fashioning himself.

This mutually informing relationship typifies the best of human learning. Experience and wisdom passes its venerable mantle to the shoulders of energy and youthful enthusiasm. This was the education of the academies of Athens and Florence and the Florentine workshops, and of great individuals such as Plato, Leonardo, and Jefferson. Over the last few centuries, however, mentoring has suffered tragic losses to mass production.

Such are the educations of the present and past: what of the schools of the future? There are currently several indicators that suggest new directions, but how might these affect students with ADD who need a personalized education?

There is, for example, a movement for a 21st century education that would prepare students for “global competitiveness” and “a skills-based economy”: mercantile phrases are not merely adventitious. This movement espouses a pragmatic education: teach students what they need to know to compete effectively and produce. Proponents desire more robust math and science standards accompanied by intensive training in technology, as well as problem-solving, communication, and critical thinking. In essence, this paradigm seeks to provide a cutting-edge vocational education targeting the skills of the 21st century for jobs of the 21st century. The “21st century” here does not indicate the present so much as an impending future. One complication is no one can say with certainty what skills these future jobs will require. Regardless, how would such a change affect ADD students? Depending on how it took shape, students might encounter even more hurdles in an already obstacle laden system: less room for creativity and individuality. (This is to say nothing of losing access to the remains of a liberal, classical education.)

Another initiative is the push toward national standards requiring certain core competencies for all students. This is the Holy Grail of standardizers who hope to create a common body of knowledge and skills, in their opinion, necessary to society. There is indeed a valid argument for cultural literacy and a shared heritage. The more immediate danger is that of Prussian enforcement introducing enhanced pressures of conformity: all students shall writ large. ADD students not only require nurturing and respect they crave opportunities to pursue legitimate intellectual interests that might fall outside the narrow realm of standards.

Perhaps the most intriguing chatter in educational circles revolves around the push for student centered education. Some of these discussions reference the classroom and techniques such as differentiated instruction, which offers students tailored access to content and thereby ameliorates some of the difficulties of large-scale instruction. The more persuasive iterations agitate for institutional reform in which the goal of individualization touches not only teaching but permeates the school entirely.

Some hail technology as the panacea for addressing learning differences, achievement gaps, and general underperformance. With computer-based interventions, for example, each student can work independently at her level. Teachers, the argument runs, could recenter education around each pupil via technology. Such programs can be extremely effective in helping students build

basic skills. The media-rich delivery presents information to multiple senses, and this makes software a formidable pedagogical tool. There is a caveat, however. A software program might effectively replace a textbook, but it does not replace the teacher. A computer does not teach children lessons of human value, does not nurture and shape individuals by teaching them how to self-realize: in short it cannot personalize education, unless in a trite colloquial sense. It lacks the human element necessary for an education in the noblest sense as a sculpting, a finishing of the individual. There are also the questions of meaningful versus glamorous technology, and how to approach the increasing prominence of computer compulsion and internet addiction.

Many elite private schools have established learning centers or tutoring services. Some of these schools have started to accept diverse learners, while others have found many students within their demographic require additional support. The increasing number of student support options available to students within traditional public and private schools is encouraging. Some of these student support centers, though, lack the precision of a diagnostic-prescriptive approach, and only function as stop-gaps to assist students with homework completion rather than mastery. This new prevalence also highlights the problematic nature of classroom learning in which students of varying levels study the same content and receive largely the same instruction. Private schools have the manifest advantage here in setting their own admissions policies, thus having the luxury to accept students of similar aptitudes and instructional levels. The public schools must educate on geography rather than student demography.

Beyond traditional schools, a number of non-traditional public and private options have emerged over the last few decades. There are now charter, internet, distance, small group, seminar-based, and one-to-one schools. Each of these possess advantages and complications. Charter schools provide public educators an unprecedented amount of innovation, self-determination, and institutional responsibility, and, when overseen properly, present an enticing, accessible alternative to mainstream public education. But they also face large-scale political opposition in heavily unionized areas. Internet schools have become a popular alternative as students can work at their own pace and without the social pressures and distractions of a traditional school. (These institutions also have the cardinal virtue of free or minimal tuition, as overhead is limited.) Such centers are really organs of independent study rather than schools as the students must navigate and digest material on their own, and this requires clerical and intellectual independence: something most struggling students, especially those with ADD, do not possess. More importantly, these centers lack the face to face human interaction that makes learning more than the bare acquisition of facts or skills. Socrates could have taught Plato many things from a distance (even as Plato’s Socrates continues to teach us via Plato’s dialogues), but the forming mind deeply craves personal not virtual interaction with mentors, even as the child craves its parent not an email, internet chat, or video conference.

Small groups and seminars often place at skill level, and permit more individualization than a large classroom. One-to-one schools provide even further personalization and mentoring without social distractions, and all instruction occurs at instructional level. Therefore students have the opportunity they need to build skills to mastery. The strongest opposition to small groups, seminars, or one-to-one is the significant resources required that make them less practical as a widespread public or private education model.

To take this objection in stride, one could argue a positive reform for students with ADD would be to dismantle the prevailing monolithic institutions and disperse their students into smaller schools collaborating to serve the various needs of the community in specific capacities. Members of this system of schools could specialize in a demographic (ADD, gifted, dyslexia, autism, etc.), and focus exclusively on personalizing the education experience for each of its students. They could alternatively maintain more traditionally diverse populations. One school might consist of a campus with a one-to-one center, small groups, seminars, and larger groups; another might only use one or two of these dynamics. The populations could be capped at a few hundred instead of a few thousand to allow for a more manageable environment. The investment would undoubtedly prove worthwhile in the longterm both in the happiness and success of ADD and non-ADD students, especially the growing number of English Language Learners and alternative learners who otherwise remain at high risk of dropping out and eventually entering the juvenile or penal system.

To a degree, the structure of these smaller schools is a minor consideration, and the above might smack too much of utopian conjecture for some readers. There is no doubt, however, that to improve education for ADD students (and all students) schools must embrace an ethos of student respect and personalization. These new academies should exchange the Carnegie unit and the construct of a chronologically-based system in which students progress as if on a conveyor belt for a mastery-based system in which students work to advance step by step along a continuum of skills in each subject. And, finally, student interest ought to balance the definite need in a society for shared identity and knowledge. Memory is identity and cultural memory is cultural identity, but this is not static and each generation has a mandate to expand and enhance their culture’s and, ultimately, humanity’s consciousness. An education respecting the student as a unique person and yet participating in the shared dignity of being human, a personalized education, constitutes progress toward this goal.

WHICH WAY IS FORWARD?

Should we raise expectations? Should we increase funding? Should we introduce vouchers or charters? Should we dissolve the unions? Should we have a national curriculum? Should we have more tracking and data? And what should we do about performance pay, state testing, teacher training, technology, 21^st century skills, ELLs, special needs, bullying, the opportunity and achievement gaps, class size, suspension, underperformance, drugs, anxiety, depression, suicide, ethics, civics, seniority, mathematics, and the humanities?

There is certainly a ferment of issues and opinions in the United States about how we ought to educate our children. While the number of problems and suggested reforms might appear mesmerizing, the amount of discussion no doubt is encouraging. But will the intense debate over schools turn into anything other than rhetoric?

The divide between pro and contra is dizzying, and the tendency for conversation to devolve into accusation and recrimination looms. Sometimes the various arguments remind me of two people talking over each other. At other times, we have too much soliloquizing and too little engagement, too much politicking and too little perspective on what matters: our children. Rather than concerning ourselves with the needs of our children, we have decided to wage our political wars and allow our own interests to overwhelm efforts at progress.

We need to survey education in the US and, looking beyond symptomatology, grasp the root of the problem. To do this, we need to draw on the wealth of perspectives from our richly diverse society, and extend the forum beyond the confines of professional educators. We need the experience and wisdom of people from all sectors because ultimately we all share the responsibility of educating our children. Moreover, having input from individuals who have not espoused a certain side or cause would bring freshness and insight to revitalize the debate.

Without societal change, education reform will only treat symptoms rather than deliver solutions. We ought to embrace the reality that education occurs within and without a school’s walls, and that each of us has a responsibility to provide the best possible education for each child. To provide such an education will take intense and multidisciplinary collaboration, which in turn would require us to rethink how we live our lives and restructure our priorities. In short, we need to re-humanize life in this dehumanized epoch and education provides the ideal path for progress. To my mind, actively taking on the social responsibility of education certainly would be a considerable step forward.