by David Bryan, Head of School

Over the next several months, you will begin to hear about some of the things ‘on deck’ for the coming year.  In particular, we recently announced that next year would bring several new educational initiatives in the areas of curriculum and pedagogy.  All involve different approaches to education, and all take advantage of tools that simply did not exist when those of us with a wrinkle or two were students.

Tablets, Tablets, Tablets…. With the help of a  very generous New Roads family we will be creating a  one to one Android Tablet  Program at Malibu Middle School.  Each student and faculty member will be given a powerful Android tablet fully loaded with all the applications required to do (or, in the case of faculty, to present) his or her academic work. Teachers and campus director and master teacher, Evan Beachy, already are hard at work designing an academic program that takes full advantage of the technology and the most current innovations in teaching and learning.  What we are likely to see is a view into  one future of education.  Books, educational videos, online communication, projects, music and art … all available on the screen in front of them.  Not learning at a distance, not learning from  teacher at some remote location, but learning that will maximize the possibilities offered by technology with teachers and classmates engaged in face to face collaboration.

Curriculum not Classes … “We know what they are supposed to learn, so why does it matter where they learn it?”  Of course we are all used to thinking of school in terms of grade levels.  Tenth graders are not eleventh graders.  Second graders are not fourth graders.  Certainly there are some developmental realities that make this true;young people’s emotional worlds emerge and develop is complex ways.  There are good reasons for terms like “the terrible twos;” every parent of teenagers know that you can practically ‘set your clock’ by eighth grade.

But so often in our schools, classes and subject matter divisions have historical roots that are more a matter of convenience and the structure of the universities from which teachers come than wise lines drawn to enhance our children’s progress.  In the coming year, our Santa Monica sixth graders will reap the rewards of that simple insight and more.  Under the leadership of Joe Wise, the Director of our Center For Effective Learning, and  Middle School Director, Dan Weslow, and in conjunction with partners from GameDesk and SMALLab Learning[i],our sixth grade faculty and curriculum will be freed  - both literally and figuratively – from some of the walls  that often stand in the way of student learning.  Immersed in curriculum and enhanced by software  they will help design, students will learn by creating  projects and grappling with questions and ‘puzzles’ that they formulate, guided by teachers who know what our students  need to master to succeed in later years.   Students’ daily experiences – their learning – will be kinetic, lively, challenging, and fun, taking full advantage of games and gaming technology.

Entrepreneurs and Interactive Media … So often young people develop passions for or fascinations with one or another activity or idea.  Surely you see it at your house.  At mine it was skateboarding.  Young people seem to be willing to spend endless amounts of time reading about,  thinking and speaking about,  learning about, practicing and creating things that relate to their passions.  They have ‘tigers by the tail.’

How sad that so often what school requires of them stands in the way of those passions; how sad that their passions fall outside of the school’s curriculum.  But do they have to?  One of the rooms we are hoping to create in the new building at the Santa Monica campus is something we have been calling our “E- Room.”  E for entrepreneurial; E for enterprise; E for electronic.  Borrowing from models around the country – Stanford’s Institute of Design’s  d.school being perhaps the most widely known – we will be beginning our Interactive Media Program next year.  Beginning  with an app-creation class and growing from there, and with our E-Room as its anchor, high school students will be invited to allow school  to enhance their passions rather than be at odds with it.  Students will produce the content of their education rather than simply consume it.  Facilitated by faculty and student collaborators, students will be encouraged to create  – perhaps an invention, perhaps a product, perhaps a design, perhaps a business, perhaps a campaign – propelled by their imagination, congruent with their goals.

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Okay, I don’t know about you, but when I hear anything that sounds like almost every commercial for “new, bold  and exciting  yada yada yada,” I get a little skeptical … okay… more than a little.   “Yeah right!  Another ‘new, bold and  exciting’ basketball shoe.  Another ‘new, bold and  exciting’ video game.  Another ‘new, bold and  exciting’ soft drink.”  Face it…  ’new, bold and  exciting’ does not come along very often!  But in this case … in the case of the above,  I think our initiatives will bring some very interesting – dare I say new, bold and exciting – approaches to our children’s education.

… Yes.. and you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that they all seem to rely heavily on technology.  And if there is one thing we all know about emerging technology … FAST!  FASTER!! FASTEST!!!

So is that it?  Is the future of New Roads all about technology? … all about speed?

At this  time of year, I often feel the weight of time, the rush of time.  I suppose it’s difficult not to.  We are surrounded by it, saturated by it!  Zero to 60 in _______ seconds.  My printer prints 30 pages per minute.  Our copiers make 65 copies per minute.  People in the office are excited because soon we’ll have an even faster one … and it is networked so we don’t have to “waste all that time” walking to the printer.  Email.  Email pushed to my phone!  “Can I get a notification whenever a message is sent to my email?”  And how about those new, bold and exciting Google Glasses.[ii]  I can be speaking to you AND surfing the web at the same time!!

At school, parents want their children in Algebra in 8^th grade.  “How else can they get to Calculus before they apply to college?”   Students want to get ahead. Honors this, Advanced that … “How many AP’s does the school offer?”  Over the next weeks, teachers will be rushing to ‘get those final assignments in’ … it is, after all, the end of the year.  “I need to make sure I cover _______ by the time the semester ends, or next year they won’t be able to  _______.”   Students scramble to complete whatever remains incomplete.  “Can I still make up the work I owe you from February?”    … teachers get crazy, kids get crazy, parents get crazy!

It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that education is not really supposed to be all about speed, about quick answers, about solving problems quickly using cool gadgets.  All of that is fine, but that’s not what it is about!

What if we took this seriously.  What if we took a step back before we added yet another this or that to an already overbooked, overscheduled, over-goaled, overcrowded educational plate.  Is there another possibility?  Another way?  After all who can argue with the value of the quick and facile mind.

In fact, although we do not think much about it, there is another consideration, another world.  There are  kinds of knowledge other than the sorts we so often associate with school.    There is so much more to learn.  And I want to ASSURE YOU, we have not and will not lose sight of that!

Wendell Berry – essayist, poet, novelist, farmer – speaks of this when he writes about the need to teach and learn things that can only be learned slowly, things that we simply cannot learn quickly, that we cannot learn with the speed we have come to expect from excellent students doing excellent work in excellent classrooms in excellent schools.  David Orr, professor of Environmental Design at Oberlin College, refers to slow knowledge.  For many of us, it has become difficult even to imagine what these two gentlemen might mean.

In his book The Clock of The Long Now, Stewart Brand tells a story of the Swedish Forestry Department reporting in 1980 to the Navy that the 20,000 oak trees they had ordered were  ready for delivery.   The trees were ordered in 1829.  “Absurd!!  Wait 150 years for an order to be ready!?!  No one would do that.  It makes no sense!!”    But ask any carpenter over the age of forty-five, and s\he will tell you that “lumber is just not the same as it used to be.”  Although we have been able to breed trees that grow taller, straighter and faster, mature wood – wood from trees that have grown slowly – is very different.  It’s stronger.  It shrinks less.  It is … well … it is just better.   You just can’t grow that sort of wood quickly.  I do not know whether the story is true, but I want it to be.

It is all but impossible to really have this conversation with most educators – New Roads faculty and staff to the contrary.  Speed is all but synonymous with human progress, with being ‘smart.’  Knowing the answers quickly gets you higher SAT scores, higher AP scores, and in so many places, gets you into Honors classes.  Surely it is good to be able to find the area of this and the perimeter of that … very quickly.   To solve the chemistry or physics problem very quickly.  To know when the Treaty of Versaille was signed,  who signed it, and why… very quickly.  We applaud those who can code quickly, who can write quickly, who can gain acceptance to college early … those who can quickly recite all the states and their capitals, the Presidents and their Vice Presidents?  Their wives?  Their home states? ?

Schools try so hard to stay current, to stay up with the times.  Schools are often criticized for not having the “latest this,” the “newest that,” the “most recent just-came-out-with-it.”  State of the art computers, projection units, the newest science equipment, the latest math-manipulables, the most recent language learning software, information access, communication equipment ….   Cutting edge technology.  Cutting edge methods.  Cutting edge … whatever.  One year it’s speed reading.  The next it is Kumon math.  Community Service.  No … Service Learning.  No … Community Action. No … Community … blah blah blah.

But why?  Why do we want to insist that our schools ignore the slow, the enduring, that which has taken lifetimes to learn, centuries to learn, civilizations to learn?  Why should our schools ignore wisdom, driven instead by media, markets or elections?

How much more important is it to learn how to evaluate evidence, to recognize patterns when direct observation reveals nothing?  What are the qualities of character?  Of beauty?  How does one bring about justice?  What does a careful and thoughtful evaluation reveal about our ethical landscape?  What does it take to sustain a community?  To be kind and compassionate?  How do we listen to the whispers of the world?   The whispers heard by animals before an earthquake?  The whispers heard by farmers before a rain or a particularly hard winter ahead?

Years ago I wrote this.

“There are so many ways in which our lives are better than they have ever been before.  Our food is safer and more plentiful, we have warm homes, public libraries and freedoms to explore and express the likes of which were never before contemplated.  But the problems we face today are many.  And our children are afraid that during their lifetimes they will see the end of what matters.  Indeed this may be true, if … well … if the wrong things matter.  Our children are living at that time we began hearing about when we were their ages.  A time when the earth would warm because of our industry.  A time when heavy reliance on oil and other fossil fuels would have an end in site.  A time when clean water and clean air would no longer be guaranteed.  Problems … big problems.  But cultures have confronted big problems before, the solutions to which were neither obvious nor inevitable when they came.  The difference now, the difference and difficulty for our children, is that our collective memories are short.  We look to quick fixes, to fast knowledge for hope. But the belief that tomorrow can be better does not come from the last gadget, the last innovation, the last faster-better-best fix.  Our hope comes from our collective memory of the past.  The glue that holds community together, the glue that invites the soul, the glue that holds all of us together are those things that seep in slowly.” 

And so  next year, at New Roads, you can count on all of this.  Yes indeed our technology will be enhanced, our programs will be slicker and more engaging.  But I assure you that next year- as has been true every year since I have been here – the  NEW, BOLD and EXCITING will also be SLOW!

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[i] Educational researchers and creators of games that enhance student learning.

by David Bryan

Kaleidoscope, New Roads School’s annual community celebration and fundraiser, is almost upon us.  We hope you have made plans to join us.  If not, you still have time.  Please purchase tickets…invite a friend.  I know we all are busy…we all have things to do…we get invited to this and that event all year long… But hold the phone! Kaleidoscope is different; and Kaleidoscope enables New Roads to be different in ways that matter to your children — while they are part of the New Roads community and throughout their lives as they create “community” for themselves.

Why is it called “Kaleidoscope?”  That’s easy.  Right from the start New Roads has been a community of a different color than most … certainly different from other independent school communities.  Although many things differentiate New Roads’ approach to education – a curriculum informed by social justice and ecological sanity, a vigorous effort to make our teaching reflect the most salient and powerful insights about how young people learn most effectively – none is more significant than the rich diversity of our community and the ongoing commitment by all participants in our community to preserving that unique educational resource.   Diversity of race, ethnicity, cultural background, socioeconomic status and learning style; a community that accurately reflects and appreciates the kaleidoscope of cultures and communities that is Los Angeles, that is the world…We have believed from the beginning that this matters in fundamental ways; we have chosen it, and continue to choose it over the latest toys, or the greatest gadgets (although we have nothing against those either!)

“How do you do it?” We are asked all the time.  “How do you offer financial assistance to more than 55% of your families?”  “How do you devote more than 40% of your tuition budget to need-based aid?”  “How do you create a coherent community from people whose cultural and

community experiences are so different from one another?”  Easy!  We work hard at it.  We work hard at empathy, inclusion, and understanding.  We watch our pennies, and we raise funds. Kaleidoscope is key to this endeavor since it is our only community event dedicated entirely to generating financial aid dollars.  I repeat:  100% of the funds raised at Kaleidoscope support our uniquely generous financial aid program; and this has been true every year since 1995 when we first began.

A community becomes and remains a community because it shares its stories, it celebrates its successes and it honors those whose actions represent its aspirations.  Kaleidoscope is our annual effort to do all of this.  This year, we will have the pleasure of recognizing several people in our community:  Rick Rappaport, alumni parent, Trustee, and Chair-elect of the New Roads Board of Trustees will receive our Founders Award; Kathy and George Hicker, current parents and ardent supporters, will receive the Inspired Education Award; and dear friend and faculty member Mario Johonson will receive the Jonny Eliga Spirit of New Roads Award.  Join us at Kaleidoscope to hear their stories, to thank them, and to contribute to the constantly evolving story that is New Roads.

The truth: so much of school is still about those three R’s.  Every student who graduates from high school today needs to be able to (1) read and understand an appropriately complex piece of writing and have something interesting to say about it, (2) write a finished piece of work, and (3) ‘do the math.’

And everyone who teaches knows how extraordinarily difficult it is to ensure that all students live up to these basic requirements.  But there is a danger in this effort: a push toward … well, toward boredom.  No, of course we don’t call it that.  We use terms like competencies, we work to have our students achieve mastery of a learning objective, we insist on accountability and standards.  A perusal of educational magazines, websites, conferences, and even the popular press supports this reality.  In fact, it is clear that the increased (and clearly misplaced) emphasis on high stakes standardized testing is, at least in part, generated by this concern.

I certainly do not wish to sound arrogant here, nor to diminish the importance of students being able to read and write well or do the math. The R’s are important, and at New Roads, we do our best to assure that every students leaves with the ability to do all of them well. But we are human beings, and we all (and certainly our children) like to be dazzled!  We long to be dazzled!  In fact we likely are born with an urge to be dazzled!!

Yes, indeed it is important to know that sentences have subjects and predicates, that thoughts are grouped in paragraphs, that ideas need to be supported, and that commas go here. In fact, to illustrate the importance of mechanics, compare: That that is is that that is not is not is that not it it is with, That that is, is.  That that is not, is not. Is that not it? It is.  But what better way to draw us to the importance of grammar and the mechanics of writing than to present us with writing that brings us to our feet to cheer, and then to present us with words that do not?    Yes, indeed it is important to be able to solve for x, to carry 1 from the 10′s column, and to learn basic math. But what better way to evoke the desire to learn our multiplication tables than to take our breath away with the appearance and reappearance of Golden Ratio, and the Fibonacci Sequence?  Studying the life sciences requires understanding dizzyingly complex terminology.  How better to generate the desire to do so than to quicken our hearts with the mysterious simplicities of animal behavior?

Educators need not only ensure that students know and can do what is asked of them.  They need not only to offer student opportunities to extend their understanding beyond what is presented.  Perhaps more than anything else, schools need to be in the business of inspiring, of energizing, of engaging and celebrating how extraordinary this world is.  If we as educators forget that, we will – inevitably and perhaps properly – be dismissed, replaced by a screen, a song, a picture or an activity that does not.

And lest you think this is a message to teachers alone, let me be clear…  it is not. Students need to be as open as their teachers are active. Being dazzled requires a willingness to be dazzled: to search for and be willing to see wonder. Passivity, lethargy, cynicism and other postures or learned “school-ish behaviors” is as much engagement-killers as Feris Bueller’s economics teacher.   Students and teachers must approach learning with the same exuberance as MIT Professor Walter Lewin.   ”Knowledge does not narrow. Knowledge only expands. And without knowledge many experiences in life remain very narrow and very shallow.”

We pledge to work hard to make 2012 a dazzling year!

Dear Everyone,

I’m writing this quick note to remind you – to remind us – that we need to do something about how we treat the planet … and soon.  No really!  We do!  I know we’ve been speaking about it for a while. Malthus let us know in 1798 that we need to think about how we are going to be able to feed all the coming mouths when food production and food consumption were on such different growth paths  (Essay on the Principles of Population).  The Industrial Revolution and the enormous growth in productivity may have discredited Malthus  some, but only some.  The particulars of what he was suggesting may have been off, but he was certainly pointing in the right direction.

I thought we were making some significant progress in 1969 and 1970 when John McConnell, U Thant, and Senator Gaylord Nelson, together and separately,  brought the idea of Earth Day into being.   I was a freshman in college in 1970, and I have to tell you, it was pretty festive back then.  We breathed a huge collective sigh of relief knowing that we would all begin to take  seriously the ways we were polluting our world.  Whew….

That was in 1970 when there were only about  3.7 billion of us.  I remember playing around with the idea of becoming a vegetarian.  I know, at first it was an idiotic,  5 dollar bet with someone who lived in my dorm.  But after I began to feel so much better, I  learned all sorts of things about how much good it would do the planet if people the world over would cut back their animal consumption, even 10%.  That meant giving up eating meat one out of every 10 days, and  ending up with enough extra grain to feed all those people on the planet suffering from malnutrition.  And that was before most of heard about the reduction  of greenhouse gasses, the preservation of topsoil and water, and the reduction of pollution caused by animal waste.   I know there was all that squabbling over the numbers, but a bunch of us were feeling pretty relieved.  After all… only one out of every ten days.  That would be a snap!    Whew….

But what happened?  We already had an Earth Day, and environmental movement, Greenpeace, Earth First, and all that … but each year the reports kept telling us things were getting worse.  Al Gore’s and David Guggenheim’s film  Inconvenient Truth did not take hold until 2006. Okay, there were now over 6.5 billion of us.  That meant 6.5 pairs of lungs to fill with oxygen and expel CO2; 6.5 billion stomachs to fill with food; 6.5 billion dreams of a life with beds and roofs and schools and washing machines and refrigerators and cars…. oh my!!

The message was clear. “We need a radical change!  And we need it now!!”  And the evidence is clear.  No denying it.  Yes, Fourier predicted it in 1824.  (Yeah, the French physicist and mathematician.  No, not Gore.  Not the Internet, not the Greenhouse Effect.)  But at least now, finally we were going to do something to reverse what seemed to be the irreversible trend:  awareness/alarm/inaction!  Yes of course, we would  have to convince the likes of George Bush – the then ‘leader’ of the ‘free’ world – or Rush Limbaugh – the then leader of the ignorant world.  But the evidence … the evidence!

I know I get  a little carried away, but you see things have become quite dire.  On October 31st, 2011, a little more than a week ago, Danica May arrived in the Phillipines.  They say she’s the 7,000,000,000th of us.  Yes, yes, of course there is doubt: was she really number 7 billion?  Maybe it was Trent?  Is the UN right or do we have to wait a few months?  But all that is beside the point. Let’s not forget the point, right?!?  This is not the same as trying to figure out whether or not the neutrinos arrived about 60 nanoseconds too quickly!  Danica  or Trent… hell, ALL OF US, have got a much bigger problem here!

Robert Engelman of Worldwatch Institute puts it well.

“The 21st century is not yet a dozen years old, and there are already 1 billion more people than in October 1999 — with the outlook for future energy and food supplies looking bleaker than it has for decades. It took humanity until the early 19th century to gain its first billion people; then another 1.5 billion followed over the next century and a half. In just the last 60 years the world’s population has gained yet another 4.5 billion. Never before have so many animals of one species anything like our size inhabited the planet.”

What can be done?  What can I do?  Two different questions I think.  Me?  My wife and I are committed to reducing our thoughtless consumption.  And although there is less of it than there was 10 years ago, I really can walk to the gym, to the grocery store, maybe sometimes bus to work.  Do we need two cars?  Do we really need two cars?  Maybe.  But which cars?  A new car?  Can’t we look at used cars?  Number 7 billion has renewed my commitment to moving more fully and personally in the right direction.

But I am only a drop in the bucket.  Danica’s (or Trent’s or whomever’s) arrival makes clear that  Women’s rights is not only a human rights issue, but a ecological one as well. One statistic says that no fewer than two in five pregnancies are unintended!  And half of these result in births that add to population growth.   Women must have real and unencumbered access to safe birth control.   Likewise, we must move fully and quickly AWAY from energy sources that deplete resources and toward those that are clean and sustainable.  They are there.  We all know it.

Oh…  but you see, here I go again.  I catch myself heading down that path.  There are certainly no shortage of ‘solutions.’  And we can all easily find them. We can start almost anywhere.   What’s yours? What will YOU do?

Sincerely,

David   #2,614,934,394

It’s difficult not to recall that Tuesday. It was on the early side of our normal carpool drop-off time, a beautiful morning. My assistant came into my office to tell me that parents were asking whether or not there was school.

“Why wouldn’t we have school?” She said something about a plane going into the World Trade Center. “We’re going to close school because a plane crashed into a building? Of course there’s school!”

As was often the case, I made my way out to the front of the building to greet people as they dropped their children at school. New Roads parent, Paul Irving, was dropping off his son, Ben. “Are there a lot of students here? I suspect quite a few parents will want to keep their children close to home.”
“Why?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
“They’re saying we may be under attack!”

The phones started ringing like crazy. Many families were staying home, fearful about what all this meant. Then reports of a second plane, another into the Pentagon…. We gathered all the kids and let them know that everything was okay; that they were welcome to stay, but ,if they felt like they needed to call home or get picked up, that would be just fine. Over the next 30 minutes or so, it was clear that there would not be enough kids or teachers to run regular classes. We all gathered in the art room, Lin, glued to the TV. It all felt surreal.
The phone calls continued to come in throughout the day… some simply wanting to know if we would have school the next day; some appreciative that we were being flexible and understanding if a family wanted to keep children home until we all knew more; some irate because if we did not require that school continue normally, then the ‘terrorists were succeeding.’

We all know what has happened since. Iraq: Invasion and occupation because of “links to Al-Qaeda.” (not true) …”because of weapons of mass destruction” (not true). Afghanistan: Invasion and occupation, “the right war.” (Can war ever be ‘right?’)

Ten years later, and how do we commemorate the tragedy and all those tragedies that have followed? Ten years later. Occupation continues, fighting continues, dying continues. The casualties of 9/11 were devastating. The casualties since, horrific. Tens of thousands killed. Even more, badly injured. Millions displaced. Has anyone not been affected?

I am not a pacifist. As horrible as war is, I believe there are times when it is better to fight back, when humanity is better served by a war than the alternative. But I hope our memories of the tragedies of 9/11 move us not toward more death, more destruction, more mistrust and hatred. I hope for a step closer to a world where our children learn that differences can be resolved peacefully; where our children learn that differences need not require revenge, but instead can move us closer to those who are ‘other.’

By David Bryan

Whenever I discover that someone I know “is on”  Twitter, it brings me back to middle and high school days when girls told me, “You are boring.”  They didn’t quite say it like that. It was more like, “You’re such a nice guy.”  Naïve as I was, I thought that was a good thing.  But it was a while before I realized that I was no longer on planet Earth, but instead, on  planet Puberty, where so much of what people say is translated from the original BIZARRO-speak.  ‘This’ never means ‘this.’ In fact it rarely even means ‘that.’  Turns out  being “a nice guy” meant we would not be dating, because… well, because “You are boring.”

And that’s exactly how I feel when people tell me they are ‘tweeting.’  Really?!  They have something to ‘tweet’ about?!  I don’t!  My life is just … well … just too boring.  [DbryanTweet#: "I'm just about to leave the hardware store."  ENTER.]  Wow!  Thanks for the update.

Of course quite a few people tell me I’ve been “tweeting” for years with the New Roads marquee in front of the school at 3131 Olympic.  From that perspective,140 characters seems luxurious! It’s not easy to be clever with five lines of six inch plastic letters.  (If you’d like to know how that got started, ask me sometime. I love telling that story… although you might end up thinking I’m a “nice guy” before it’s over.)

No, no Tweeting for me.  But this year I will be BLOGGING. And although the word always sounds to me like it ought to refer to a bad 1950′s horror flick, or perhaps something a pet does that makes it difficult to keep the carpets clean, I find the idea intriguing.   A place to think aloud about education, New Roads and …. So sometimes this will be a column on our website news page (www.newroads.org/news), sometimes a blog, and sometimes like this one, both.  So here goes.

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As we enter this school year, the thing on my mind most often: How, at a time such as this,  does one teach at a not-for-profit school – a 501(c)(3) school?  I think that seems like an odd question.  After all, why is this time so different from others?  Let me explain.

When I was a student, there were ‘parochial’ schools (“for religious people”,  I assumed) and public schools.  I know private schools existed, but I don’t think anyone in my neighborhood knew anything about them.  “Maybe they’re for kids whose parents travel a lot?”  “Maybe for kids with discipline troubles?” Even that never really made sense to me;  we had a bunch of kids with discipline problems in the large public schools I attended.  The guys  who guaranteed that every trip to the boys room resulted in public humiliation and a return to class that had you smelling like an ashtray.

But the educational terrain is different these days. These days we hear it all the time… and from the kids!  “What KIND of school do you go to?”  Charter? Public? Private? Magnet? Home School? Online? Online Charter?  Online priv…. The long-term short-sightedness of a public unwilling to support education at a level our young people truly deserve, has generated a world where … well … where here we all are.

Some people don’t like the term, “private school,”  opting instead for “independent.” Sounds more … mmmm  ‘democratic’ … or maybe less elitist.  Either way, I’ve recently discovered that quite a few people – students, parents and faculty – do not know that there is yet another meaningful distinction among private schools… one even more meaningful these days.

Quite a few private schools are privately owned.  These schools are organized like most businesses: if you bring more  money in than you put out, you make a profit.  Profit is either  reinvested into the business, or it can go to those who own the business. There are also, like New Roads,  private schools of a special sort – non-profit or not-for-profit organizations. Sometimes referred to as ’501(c)(3)s” – after the section of the US Tax Code that articulates the conditions and purposes to which a not-for-profit organization must adhere in order to receive tax deductible contributions and be exempt from paying state and federal income tax – these organizations are indeed businesses.  But unlike their ‘for profit’ counterparts, they are not in business to make a profit for people who own them.   Instead we serve a more ‘charitable’ purpose.  For most non-profits, the ‘not-for-profit’ status is their most valuable asset. Consequently, we follow all of those guidelines and restrictions that allow us to preserve that asset.

And that’s where this little piece really begins … and why  the question “How, at a time such as this,  does one teach at a not-for-profit school?  Because one of those restrictions – the one that has to do with political campaigns – that makes it tricky to teach in  not-for-profit school…at least THIS one.  From the IRS website:

Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity.  Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.

Although some of you may think otherwise, I have been very careful about this over the years.   Although not a fan of the former President, and certainly not a fan of McCain and Palin during the last Presidential election, neither I nor others here ever took a position as representatives of New Roads, favoring Obama and Gore.[1]  And now here we are again with a very long lead- up to the next presidential election, and we will again be so so careful not to step off the line and line and into the territory of making any “public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.”

But this time it’s different.  This time we are living in a political climate that no one  – at least no one on planet Earth – would have predicted.  This time, quite a few candidates seem to stand squarely against the very sorts of things that we value at New Roads.  This time, major political candidates represent positions that are aggressively anti-science, anti-intellectual, and perhaps even anti-thought. 

In the past several weeks we’ve witnessed one candidate after another, each representing a major constituency, and so each potentially a future President of the United States, rushing to deny the received wisdom of thoughtful and responsible thinkers.  Okay, okay, I know science has not always been correct.  I’ve studied the history of science; I’ve read  Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions;  I remember that we went from Ptolemy to Copernicus, from Newton to Einstein, from nine planets to eight.[2]  But those were different.  It’s one thing to question thoughtfully, examining and resting weight on evidence that bears up under scrutiny, being honest about the source(s) of information upon which you rely, acknowledging the ‘soft spots’ in this or that position.  Well-meaning people of differing minds can come together in a spirit of collaboration, curiosity and concern to gain richer understandings.  It is quite another simply to declare the truth of one’s ‘ideas,’ regardless of evidence, and to denigrate those who do not agree.

In recent weeks we have heard that  ”evolution is just a theory that is out there,” and  that the idea that human activity contributes to troubling climate change is “all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight.”  In fact,  I believe one candidate growing rapidly in the polls has gone so far as to suggest  that “quite a  few climate scientists” have “manipulated data” to ensure that they continue to be funded.  That means the candidate is accusing scientists of lying, of falsifying data for personal and professional gain … simply because the point of view (and the evidence) is politically inconvenient. No evidence required!!

In each of these instances – historically distant or more proximate in time –  and in so many others having nothing to do with the hard sciences, the question is not who said this or that, or not even what position turns(ed) out to be the most correct, complete or accepted.  Teachers want their students to understand the careful thinking that goes into each position –  the care, the honesty, the thoughtfulness, the responsible and diligent examination and weighting of information, data, hunch, inspiration and consideration that allows human beings to puzzle out how best to take a next step for the wellbeing of themselves, their families, their communities, their planet.  Indeed it is not adhered to enough, but one of the best things about our culture is the value we have developed for entering conversations with care, with respect and compassion, knowing that perspectives are just that, perspectives.    We each have them and they are always incomplete, and the best and most responsible way to proceed is to approach a question with humility, with equanimity, with compassion and an understanding that another point of view may bring something different, may see something that you overlooked, may open your eyes and minds to something you missed.  Although we find instance after instance to the contrary – especially of late in Washington DC [3] – these are always the values we have sought to bring to our teaching, we have sought to bring to your children.

Your children, our students, are living at a time when people who ought to be exemplars of care, concern and earnest and thoughtful consideration more often than not value the opposite.  If I can get more votes, simply dismiss. If I can garner headlines, denigrate the careful and thoughtful work of others.  If it will get me elected, accuse them of fraud, tell them God is responsible, or gay people, or …  make up any damned thing I  want, state it with passion, authority and well coiffed hair, and … well… who knows, maybe I’ll be president.  What’s a teacher to do?

Of course if we were at a ‘for profit private school’ this would be easy.  A teacher might say that such folks are frauds or opportunists.  A teacher might say that people who approach the world in this way are unfit for positions of authority, certainly unfit for community leadership.  A teacher might say that such folks are terrifyingly reminiscent of the worst sorts of demagogues the world has ever seen.

But at  a 501(c)(3) school, a not-for-profit school, educators are a bit hamstrung.  We cannot say those things.  Instead we need to remind our students that we  – and by we, I mean New Roads, I mean the United States, I mean the human species – need to seek higher standards.  We need to consider carefully, to speak with compassion and fairness, to make sure our words and our intentions and our actions align with what we know to be honest, fair and for the benefit of the common good.  ……lest we begin to sound like the very sort of extremists – or ‘Martians’ – we see more and more often on the news.

No small order for a teacher!!  But we will do our best.  Welcome back!

[1] Incidentally, I suspect you’d be surprised to find out my political affiliation.

[2] Lest there be any confusion, I was only alive during the last of these.

[3] “In Washington the search for truth is a creative process.  First, you create a premise. Next, you create a statistic to back it up. Then you create an audience by repeating it over and over again, until the media pick it up. That’s when you know you’ve done it.”  “Done what?” “Created a fact!” (From a political cartoon of unknown origin.)