2004-03-02

[Editor: This editorial is a reprise of one of mine that appeared in the Harvard (MA) Post

on December 7, 1973. With one minor change, adding "and MCAS" to the statement below that refers to SAT scores, it still seems relevant. "The more things change, the more they remain the same."]

Perspectives . . . on Education

What some have frequently called a revolt against authority on the part of young people in our society in the past decade or so is seen by others as an assertion of individuality, a striving for self-identity in a world that has moved so fast that it has left the stable, identity-producing social institutions lagging sadly behind. Those who still conform to the old norms have identity-of-self; those who do not conform have troubles.

Clearly, many young people - and some older ones, too - would like to live in a society in which they could do their own thing, not the things dictated by outmoded social institutions, institutions manned, for the most part, by tired adults for whom progress is the pursuit of values they esteemed in their own youth and which gave them identity.

In an ideal society, everyone would recognize and respect their own virtues and limitations and the virtues and limitations of others. One guiding principle might be self-maximization, that is, doing one's thing to the best of one's given and acquired abilities and being accepted for what one is rather than for what one does.

One of the greatest barriers in the way of a large proportion of our youth doing their own thing . . . and doing it interestingly and well . . . is our unfortunate emphasis on academic potential and academic achievement. Because college admissions people select on the basis of grades and academic potential as measured by such things as verbal and math SAT scores, emphasis on these factors in high school is virtually preordained. The system is geared toward academic achievers. Emphasis is directed primarily to course content and the majority of individuals, including the academic achievers, emerge into reality not knowing, and frequently not caring very much about who they are and where they fit in the complex, seemingly uncaring world about them.

The material world in which we live is both a product of and a contributor toward our stultified and stultifying educational system. Success is measured by one's position or by how much one earns, rather than by how much satisfaction one gets from work . . . or play. Individuals differing greatly in their genetic potentialities and sensitivities all get forced through the same educational sieve with only some emerging as a puree of potentially "successful" engineers, chemists, businessmen or women, etc., position and dollars being the criteria of success. What remains in the sieve is frequently the best part of what went in, but it is dumped, as dregs, into an unwelcoming world.

This insidious cycle must be broken or our society will self-destruct from the sheer overbearing burden of potential material success. Somehow success must be transformed from an external, material, concrete status to internal, more abstract conditions. It has to become a personal, intimate thing, judged for itself rather than in comparison with other things, as the artist judges a painting or the photographer a sunset.

An obvious place to start is with children, with an emphasis on self-enhancement and self-fulfillment, on understanding and awareness of self and others. But who is to do this? The teachers themselves, for the most part, are products of the very system that must be changed. There are no easy solutions. The first step is the recognition that there is a problem.

Harvard Post, December 7, 1973