The secret to school success and school reform, I think...and a society committed to everyone's success, out of that...

This second time around at my Master's in Special Education has helped me see something really important, I think:):)...

You know what I think the secret to school success and school reform is, I think?...

Letting people fail...and not making a capital case out of it...just letting them fail and learn from their failures and adjust our expectations to support their success, rather than trying to coerce/force/harm them to try to make them succeed...

Any other way doesn't allow them to internalize the lessons of either failure...or success...

And both are two of the most important lessons for kids and adults to learn as they move into adulthood...

We are so intent on preventing failure and achieving success...that we will rationalize almost anything in its name, sadly...

And the saddest facet of this is that what we think is success often isn't...

And what we see as failure is often just lessons learned and opportunities opened up...

If we can open ourselves up to those possibilities...
And kids and adults, alike, need more opportunities to open up to those possibilities and to credit school as a place where they learned it...

Much of the ambivalence that many even very educated adults have towards school (Dick Cheney, a Ph.D. in Political Science, comes to mind, here) is around how they credit their successes in life despite their school failures and the ways they believe (correctly, often) that schools failed them...

My dad is one of those people...my step-mom is too, to some degree...

Many, many people are, is the truth...

And therein lies the complicated relationship that so many Americans and so many people have with school, education, and their successes and failures in life...

Schools can fix that...

But they have work to do to get there...

In the meantime...the current failures of school...are the exact ones that my very good graduate advisor, Tom Skrtic, identified in his now infamous 1991 Harvard Educational Review article, "The Special Education Paradox: Equity as the Way to Excellence"...

A commitment to equity is a more realistic and genuine commitment to the needs of all students, including top students, who get better, not worse, the more we account for the needs of all students, especially the students who struggle and fail...

Schools need to honestly recognize failure...

But they also need to make room for failure so that students can be ultimately successful without all of the obstacles to success that we create for them when they experience failure...including and especially the bitterness they often feel that they've been abandoned by people who promised to stand by them...

Whether adults want to acknowledge it or not...

It is not a few bad apples that are responsible for much of school failure...

It is the failure of all of us...students, parents, and teachers...
And in each case...our most important failure...is not having the courage the recognize that failure...our bigger failure around not maintaining a strong enough commitment to everyone's success...

That is true in schools and in the society, at large...
And it is our elitism, not our equity commitments...our harshness, not our decency and humanity...our toughness, not our thoughtfulness...

That makes all this so...

The truth is that we are all so goddamned mean to one another...and we just can't ever seem to take responsibility for that...and all the consequences it has on our lives, the lives of our neighbors, and, most importantly, the sorry-ass legacy that we leave our children, as a consequence...

The secret to a society that is committed to everyone's success, which is the only society worth having, is doing exactly what has created all of our progress over the course of human history...

To treat each other better...not worse...

We'll make progress on this one...just slowly...

And the biggest obstacle...is each of us having the courage to admit our failures to promote that progress:):)...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben