The Permanent Kindergarten - The Feel Good Esteem And Dumbing Down Of American Education

'Good job!', said Mrs. Blanding, Bobbie Harkins' kindergarten teacher, looking over her drawing of a princess - or the intention of one, scrambled as it was in a mess of wild, colored flourishes. 

Mrs. Blanding was firmly against the 'color within the lines' school of early childhood development.  In her view and that of her administration, children needed to express themselves, find their own talents, and develop into remarkable individual human beings. It really didn't matter that little Bobbie couldn't even draw stick figures - i.e. some semblance of representative art that suggested she saw the world as it was - it was only important that whatever creative urge produced the scribbles, they be encouraged, supported, and praised. 

 

'It's a princess', said Bobbie holding up her finished portrait. 

'And a very lovely one indeed', replied Mrs. Blanding as she pinned the drawing on the bulletin board.  'One of the very best'. 

Mrs. Faber, the first grade teacher, was excited to begin the serious business of education, to move on beyond the feel-good, friendly, colorful spirit of kindergarten to reading, writing, and arithmetic.  She unlike her colleague felt that coloring within the lines was instrumental - a labor of discipline, cognition, and serious intent - and it became a metaphor for her pedagogical approach.  No child was to be praised for scratches and scribbles and only for progress seeing and translating the world. 

Of course there were no coloring books in Mrs. Faber's first grade, so Bobbie felt dazed and confused.  She had been led to believe that she was a talented little girl who could do anything her heart desired. When she was asked to make sense of text, she thought the writing was just some weird code meant to accompany the pictures. She paid attention only to the images of children swinging in the park or playing with their puppies and kittens; and when it came to numbers she was lost in the weeds.

In tears after the first week, she sobbed to her mother about that mean Mrs. Faber and refused to go to school the next day.  Her mother, a doting and fondling a parent if there ever was one and a woman committed to a progressive, esteem-based education, couldn't restrain herself.  She had heard stories about the Faber woman, her harsh educational conservatism, and her social inflexibility, but sending her daughter home in tears was another thing altogether.  This has to be nipped in the bud, she thought, and planned a visit to the school the very next day. 

Everyone but little Bobbie’s mother knew that she was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and despite her mother's solicitude and the emotional correctness of last year's kindergarten teacher, there was no way that the girl was headed for anything more challenging than beautician school.  Of course there is no foolproof way to predict any child's trajectory; but Mrs. Faber had been around long enough to know dumb from smart.

Now, because of such rigor, Mrs. Faber had come under the lens of the school administrators, all of whom had been steeped in cooperative learning, esteem-building, multiple intelligences, and learning diversity.  In their view, the goal of primary school was not to begin the process of citizenry and social capability, but to encourage a sense of identity.  To do so, the curriculum had been configured to recognize difference and to celebrate it; and if this meant some indifference to intellectual competence, so be it. 

 

Word of Bobbie's mother's harangue and her dressing down of Mrs. Faber quickly reached the school principal who called Faber in for a conference in which he made it abundantly clear that such reversion to antiquated modes of instruction would not be tolerated; and that if he heard any more complaints from parents, Faber would be censured. 

Faber, knowing that the girl in question would indeed end up as a beautician and was not worth the aggravation of trying to teach her anything, and certainly not worth the risk of demotion, left her to her own devices, swallowed her gall when it came to praising her for good intentions like when she tried to add 8+5, watching her stumble through 12, 14, and 'I don't know, Mrs. Faber' until she finally stumbled on the right answer. 

From second grade onwards, Bobbie sailed along, learning little but feeling increasingly good about being a girl who was polite and considerate of her classmates.  'Social intelligence' in the new educational algorithm was the jewel in the crown of multiple intelligences.  'Book larnin' as the old-timers called it, was worth little if a person did not have the finely-tuned sensitivity of inclusive compassion.

And so it was that Bobbie graduated from one grade to another still as dumb as a stone, having no idea whatsoever about her intellectual failings, but as happy as a clam - as was her mother who saw that her dunning of Mrs. Faber, long since dismissed from the school for 'antipathetic' behavior had led the way to a uniformly progressive curriculum. 

High school had been no different, for it too had subscribed to the same educational philosophy as that of earlier grades; and Bobbie cruised along, peppering away at simple arithmetic until she could finally make sense of double-digits and finally managing to read My History, a book about diversity with enough illustrations to ensure that even the slowest readers got the picture.  If students graduated with a solid, well-honed sense of respect, tolerance, and admiration for people of color, the administration felt it had done its job. 

 

Most students of even modest ability bailed out of the public school system and enrolled in the city's many private schools.  There, although some residual infection remained - e.g. schools were sure to have a black student inaugurate every important event and did their best to assure that their grades were the same or better than white and Asian students - most pulled no punches and competed aggressively for the most Harvard acceptances. 

 

Bobbie's mother, despite the plaudits and kudos received by her friends' children at Sidwell, St. Albans, and Cathedral, was angered at their abandonment of the progressive ethic, choosing the limited, elitist path of intellectual excellence over the more salient, rounded, and important focus on being.  

This was a good cover for the intellectual vacuum of her daughter, and although her mother had hoped for a bit more than beautician school, and chafed at the irony of the fulfilled prophecy of Mrs. Faber those many years ago, she was happy that her daughter would be providing a good service to the community. 

Would Bobbie have done better than weaves and hair coloring if she had been pushed more and tolerated less?  Perhaps not much.  There's only so much you can play with the cards dealt to you - nature always trumps nurture - but there is wiggle room in the genes, and rather than looking blankly at instructions for anything more complicated than trimming bangs she might have become, ironically, a teacher.

 

Bobbie's mother worked around the beautician bit, and told friends that she was a fashion stylist, a service industry entrepreneur, or a private consultant; but everyone knew that Bobbie did hair in the Potomac Hair Salon in Gaithersburg, and so the mother had to eat crow. 

The public school system finally got the picture, and having followed the post-graduation career of its students, realized that they had all become beauticians.  Graduation had been a celebration of diversity, and one student after another spoke a few garbled words at the podium to applause and cheers, and stumbled off never to be heard from again; and administrators decided it was about time that there be a true valedictorian who made at least some sense and went on to college. 

Hammered and slammed by progressive academics at the Department of Education for its refuge into the old, discredited, patriarchal ways of the past, the school board trimmed its sails and introduced academic reforms only slowly - slowly enough not to offend or discourage the less advantaged.  As a result the first valedictorian was no great shakes and disappeared into the woodwork, but 'at least we tried', said one school official.