Humanizing the Education Machine. Cahill Brian

      We convened six summits, between June 2014 and January 2016, around the country in order to study very innovative schools that achieved and maintained excellence (often against great odds). Many books document the failures of our public education system. Others provide a vision for twenty-first-century schools. But there are no road maps for transforming and rehumanizing local schools or districts. Our book gives a very compelling why and, more important, clear maps for the new and uncharted territory.

      Who Should Read This Book?

      In researching and writing this book, our team focus was always on parents, teachers, administrators, and community leaders. This book is for them. It is for those who do not have the time or resources to sift through the many books or conferences or websites in order to gather the knowledge essential to taking action. We wrote this for those who are not willing to wait for local, regional, or national regulations to trickle down or be parachuted in.

      That is also why we wrote a manifesto and not a typical market-driven volume. The tsunami is racing toward our shoreline. We are announcing a road to higher ground. In short, we want to save lives and join with others in building a safe future.

      How One Family Escaped the Great Machine

      It may help you to know the short story of one family who lived through the crumbling of the K–12 system and saw the seeding of new possibilities. That family is mine.

      Back in the 1990s we moved to one of the best school districts in the state, not because we were snobs, but because we cared. We wanted our three kids to have fine educational experiences, rolling right through K–12. All three of them are, well, exceptional. By that I mean that they are true individuals. Everyone who knows them would agree. They did not come from an assembly line or central casting. Lisa and I did not know it at the time, but in looking back, we can see that our kids were like canaries in the coal mines. Their experiences (and those of thousands of other students) exposed the toxins in K–12 education.

      And, I admit that our three children carried some surprising baggage.

      Part of what makes Emily, our 24-year-old bold and beautiful daughter, so exceptional is Asperger syndrome. Her challenges have always caused this lovely and brilliant woman to express very unique social skills, perspectives, and boundaries.

      I describe our second child, Daniel, as “a merry prankster.” He, the opposite of Emily when it came to social skills and boundaries, did extremely well in elementary school. But later he began to exhibit some discomfort with school rules and expectations. He was eventually diagnosed with ADHD.

      Right out of the chute, our third child, Caleb, loved school. But very quickly (and for a whole different set of reasons) he, too, began disengaging in middle school. He started coming home and giving Lisa a hard time.

      With all three of our children, we increasingly realized that we were not dealing with an organization of rational, knowledgeable, and empathetic teachers and administrators; we were coping with a machine. For a while, we tried to work with the Machine. We tried to change its speed, update its “software,” find a sense of compassion somewhere within its steel-toothed gears, help our kids to adapt to the Machine, help the Machine to adapt to them.. but in the long run, there we were, caught between our love for our children and our ingrained respect for the education process.

      In all three cases the Machine just kept moving our, and many other, students down the conveyor belt, delaying decisions, ordering tests, and pushing them into ill-fitting boxes. No one seemed to care. For example, none of Emily's teachers had training for working with students with Asperger's, or even had a working knowledge of the syndrome. Some of them did not believe she had it. After all, she had an outgoing personality and “looked normal.”

      One of Daniel's teachers did not believe in ADHD. As that teacher chewed gum and gazed out at us from his “bunker” (beneath his U.S. Marines buzz cut and over his folded arms), you could see that he had already diagnosed Daniel. He could see clearly that Daniel was a skateboarder and he knew that was “trouble in River City.” In fact, he once said (while Daniel was in the room), “Kids who skateboard are always trouble.”

      It Takes a Village

      According to an oft-quoted African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child.” In other words, all the people, values, institutions, and other cultural components of a village should cooperate harmoniously around the nurture, protection, and preparation of each child.

      But what happens when the village does not contribute to the safe and orderly maturation of a child? The 2015 “Best Picture” Academy Award went to Spotlight, a movie about the sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. After quoting “It takes a village to raise a child,” one of the main characters in the film observes that it also takes a village to abuse one.

      I agree.

      After the Machine damaged Emily, Lisa and I felt wounded, angry, and drained. Naturally, we wondered at what point we had missed an opportunity to support our child. We strained to see what we might have done differently. I thought, “Hell, if my background as an executive, my work as an author and futurist, my understanding of negotiating and championing causes can't budge the Machine for one little girl with a clear need and a clear right – does anyone have a chance?”

      In addition to all that, we hired doctors and experts to help them. In doing so, we reached out to “the village” as clearly and forcefully as we could. We pushed every button and pulled every lever we could find. I'm sure we made mistakes. But, here's the point: two educated, responsible, caring, and hard-working parents could not make the Machine care for, or even protect, those who were entrusted to it. We felt, whether accurately or not, that the village —our village– had participated in the abuse of our kids.

      When Caleb began to show similar reactions to the Machine, we moved more quickly and boldly. First, I gave him the new Gallup student assessment tool, “Strengths Explorer” (it was not available when Emily and Daniel were in school). It revealed that Caleb would do best in a small, safe learning environment that allowed him to explore his creativity. From our experiences with Emily and Daniel, we knew that would never happen in public school.

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