It’s Not About You

                This is the point in the school year that the first round of parent/teacher conferences are just about wrapping up.  Parents all over the country are trudging into classrooms to hear how their child is progressing.  Most of the conversation will center around test scores and other evaluations that tell whether or not the student is on the right ‘level,’  A lot of nervous smiles and tense exchanges over those numbers will leave both the parents and teachers wondering what it’s all for.  The individual focus in education is a misguided activity.  It promotes a faulty idea of what intelligence is, and it normalizes a forced hierarchy of achievement.  The ‘data’ passed back and forth in the conferences says nothing about how intelligent or creative a child is, all it does is promote an undemocratic and inaccurate picture of what learning is and why we do it.

                Intelligence is not an individual property.  A person can only be considered ‘intelligent’ within a specific cultural context.  Being good in one context is no guarantee that you will be good in another.  Besides, the issue is not how a random individual is doing, but how the group or society is doing.  There are lots of really ‘smart’ people in America, but we still elected Donald Trump.  Over 98% of climate scientists agree that global warming is man-made, but we still live in an economy driven by petro-dollars.  A democratic society is not the invention of a few elite intellects.  It is the relationships and values of a collective.  Nothing in our current educational system promotes collective intelligence.  Instead, we pit students against each other in rankings, which are often based on statistically insignificant differences created while performing unrealistic and unimportant activities.  Life is not a test, and doing well on a test does not prepare you for life. 

                We are fixated on individual genius, but it is collective intelligence that creates and sustains the world.  There is nothing that one smart person can do about creating a just social order or an ecologically sustainable future.  It’s not that smart people aren’t valuable; they are, but only if the cultural context supports and responds to them.  Humans are diverse because their diversity adds to the possible solutions and adaptations available.  Whenever only one idea or one type of thought is allowed, the adaptability and sustainability of the group declines.  It’s good to have tall people for some things, but squeezing into small places requires a different physique.  We have chased the folly of individual greatness or brilliance to the point of diminishing returns.  We need an educational project that turns toward a collective sense of responsibility and participation.

                The politics of the moment couldn’t make this any clearer.  When almost half of the country is willing to support a narcissistic liar, it doesn’t matter what the rest of us think.  We have no common standpoint to work from.  There is nothing that we can point to even start building a shared vision or description of events.  Some of these people probably had high test scores and good grades.  What good did it do them, or us?  An educational system that fails to create a common basis for engagement is a failure, no matter what the ‘data’ say.  As long as we perpetuate the myth that only the elite from the elite institutions need a good education, we will fail as a democracy.  Setting aside the ridiculous notion that only really smart people get into ‘good’ schools, there is no elite institution capable of producing a democratic and civil intelligence.  In fact, they are almost guaranteed to produce the opposite.

                It’s too bad that all those parent/teacher conferences aren’t community events.  It’s too bad that parents go in alone to hear about just their child instead of seeing them in a collaborative setting.  Instead of some reified test scores, maybe the teacher should show off something they all did together.  Sure, some kids will have done more than others, but that doesn’t matter as long as they all contributed what they could.  If we can’t do it together, we can’t do it at all.  It’s not about you.