Lots of people read the article in the Wall Street Journal about Amy Chua and her outlook on parenting, and a lot of people have responded. Or was it alot of people...
Regardless, it was an interesting article, one that stirred up lots of folks and apparently made Ms. Chua feel like she needed to retract or explain some of the things she wrote. She took the time to interview and try to re-work her image, but she must be excited about the buzz as it clearly helped sell a lot of books!
David Brooks took a slightly different tack and called her a wimp! He felt that the sleep overs and play dates her kids were missing were a lot more intellectually demanding than the thousands of math problems or hundreds of hours of piano practice.
Interestingly enough, the most recent edition of This American Life and the last piece of the story in particular suggest something similar.
The episode ends with a piece about the Brooklyn Free School which opened seven years ago and is modeled after the Sudbury Valley School with no classes, no set curriculum, no grouping based on age, no grades and an emphasis on democracy as students really do control and vote on everything that goes on in the school.
The story ends with a discussion of an all-school meeting called by a young woman upset at being called a "whore" by a couple of her school-mates. She felt it was important to discuss the issue as an entire school, that calling people ugly things was something that they needed to bring up in front of everyone.
In the end, there was no resolution, there was no proposal to be voted on for a new rule, in some ways it felt like a let down. But not to the young lady in question. She was so glad that she had the chance to call a meeting, that she had that authority and that respect and that she had a chance to discuss this with her peers and then be able to move on and feel good. She felt sorry for adults because they don't have that power in their daily lives.
But to navigate that environment, a world where students really do have control and authority and respect sounds to me to be a far more challenging and also far more rewarding environment than one in which everything is decided for you, whether it is by your mother or an autocratic school environment.
So maybe Amy Chua really is a wimp, but in a larger sense, perhaps many of us adults are as we'd rather know that our children are in an environment where adults decide what is best for them and provide control and structure and authority. Maybe we are all afraid of the Lord of the Flies rearing its ugly head and scaring the little ones.
I'm starting to think that Daniel Greenberg and others like him who've built the free school movement and suggested that kids really ought to be trusted with the opportunity to decide for themselves what is important are right. I wonder if we have the courage to try it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
As a founding parent and blogger from Brooklyn Free School, I am very happy to hear your response. This American Life may have been one of the first public articles about our school that did not look down its' nose at the school.
Responsibility and freedom are a challenge to possess. But this makes the children stronger and willing to dive into their interests in a deeper way. One which opens them to other dimensions of acquiring knowledge.
The TAL piece made clear the idea of self-governance. The adults though, are not invisible. They are there watching the process unfold. They are there to assist the children in their newly acquired responsibilities. And what you get, as you saw, are clear thinking, humane and creative individuals.
Regards
Bruce Zeines
Hello. I'm a fascinated teacher in California who is disgusted by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. Free schools could be thought of as the exact opposite of these punitive programs. And to be perfectly frank, after reading several articles on BFS, I think these schools are only a little bit better, though the proof will be in the success or failure of BFF's disadvantaged kids. It actually saddens me that the child who called the girl a whore wasn't disciplined for it. He or she does, truly, need that and the world truly does need to provide consequences to people who do bad things. And though it seems funny for me to say this, people do bad things a lot. Maybe someone from BFF will read this and respond to a question I have that I would love to have answered: What happens when students do bad things? My three sons need direction and discipline; they'd go haywire without it, just as, I'd bet, many students at BFF are feeling a bit rudderless.
I wish I were super rich and could start my own school (Are you reading this Mr. Gates?). I would incorporate free school ideas like Google's successful 20% plan: I would give students one day out of five to learn what they wanted to learn, on their own, with help from teachers. But here's the kicker: They wouldn't be able to simply do nothing. They would have to pick a learning goal and work toward it. This seems to me the sensible middle that education never seems to be able to find.
Post a Comment