Book Talk

     Earlier this week I visited a third grade classroom at Ocean Park School.  I was there to do a very short “book talk” and to tell the kids a little bit about the writing process.
     “Is it fun to be a writer?” a bespectacled youngster asked me.
     “Mostly, it’s hard work,” I replied.  “You have to check and double-check to see if your spelling and your punctuation are correct.  And lots of times you have start all over again.”  Heads bobbed in agreement.  Third graders know all about that.
     “But,” I assured them, “there are fun parts, too.  The most fun of all is when your work is published and then you get to go around and talk about it – just like I’m talking to you today.”  More bobbing heads.
     I just love third graders.  They are still so shiny bright and eager to learn and amazingly competent when it comes to reading and writing.  But as the years go by, something happens.  The eagerness disappears and competency does not keep pace with the increased demands of advancing grades.  Any junior high school teacher can tell you so.
     Yesterday I was visiting with a friend who, with two other college instructors, has designed an online course for an Oregon university’s MBA program.  “But none of them can write!” she lamented.  “This is a graduate course for heaven’s sake, and they can’t write a simple essay, much less execute a written business plan which is one of the course requirements. And they are insulted when they get a C- on a paper.  They are used to As.  How did they get through college?  How did they get through high school, for that matter?”
     How indeed!  In two words I told her my simplistic answer to the problems facing public education these days:  “Kindergarten Graduation!” 
     Think about it.  Traditionally, graduation was considered a rite of passage marking a student’s entrance into society in a new role as an adult.  The first Baccalaureate Ceremony goes back to 1492 at Oxford University.  We have now dumbed down the ceremony (as well as the academic expectations) until we have graduations for Kindergartners or maybe even for pre-schoolers, for all I know.
    The way I see it, that first ‘graduation’ blurs the line that once separated adulthood from childhood.  With it we begin giving children a sense of entitlement and we begin the abdication of our own adult responsibilities.  We give M&Ms for meeting simple expectations like staying on task, and there are few meaningful consequences for unacceptable behavior.  It’s not long before children are making their own decisions about all manner of things that were once in the realm called “parenting” and they become privy to a world that accepts Viagra commercials as part of prime time family entertainment.
     Yeah, yeah, yeah…  I said in the first place that Kindergarten Graduation is the simplistic answer to the ills of present-day education in America.  But looking at the implications of those two words leads  to a whole series of thoughts worth pondering.