The Hammock Papers: Other.

22 May 2015

Other.

Restoring the balance between academic and vocational programs is not just about job creation: it’s about raising standards of achievement overall. I spoke recently at a meeting in Los Angeles of alternative education programs. These are programs for students who are doing least well in standardized education: the low achievers, the alienated, the ones with low self-esteem and little optimism for their own futures. They include programs based in technology, the arts, engineering, and business and vocational projects. They work on practical projects or in the community, or on artistic productions and performances. They work collaboratively in groups, with their regular teachers, and with people from other fields as mentors and role models: engineers, scientists, technologists, artists, musicians, business leaders, and so on.

Students who’ve been slumbering through school wake up. Those who thought they weren’t smart find that they are. Those who feared they couldn’t achieve anything discover they can. In the process, they build a stronger sense of purpose and self-respect. Kids who thought they had no chance of going to college find that they do. Those who don’t want to go to college find there are other routes in life that are just as rewarding.

These programs show vividly that these students are not incapable of learning or destined to fail. They were alienated by the system itself. What struck me is that these programs are called ‘alternative education.’ If all education had these results, there’d be no need for an alternative.

It seems that for some policy makers, ‘academic’ is a synonym for ‘intelligent’. It is not. It has a much more limited meaning and refers to intellectual work that is mainly theoretical or scholarly rather than practical or applied. This why it is commonly used to describe arguments that are purely theoretical and people who are thought to be impractical. Of course, academic work is important in schools but human intelligence embraces much more than academic ability. This marvelous variety is evident in the extraordinary range of human achievements in the arts, sports, technology, business, engineering, and the host of other vocations to which people may devote their time and lives. The vitality of our children, our communities — and our economies — all depend on cultivating these talents more fully. That’s what’s really involved in leaving no child behind.

CONNECT

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL