Deficit or Capability
The following statement should not be controversial: School (as it is currently organized and administered) is not for everyone.
Two anecdotes to illustrate what I mean.
Back in the long-ago days of the late 20th Century, I worked with an athlete who was by every measure a coach’s dream: Talented. Disciplined. Determined. Competitive. All of that added up to this athlete being one of the best in the state and a high finish at the state track meet.
If anyone had asked, I would have, without hesitation or reservation, described this athlete as a great kid. I assumed, as a result of my experience with him on the track, that he would’ve also been a joy to have in the classroom. Imagine my surprise, then, when more than one of his teachers approached me to ask for help because he was very difficult in the classroom. Fidgety. Inattentive. Disruptive. Generally, a consistent pain in the rear for more than one of his teachers. This disconnect confused me at the time.
It no longer confuses me.
A few years later, my daughters became involved in high school and junior rodeo. Rodeo involves a lot of travel and frequent multi-day stays at the event location and a lot of interesting conversations with other parents. Whenever other parents discovered I was a teacher, the conversation would inevitably get around to the fact that this or that rodeo kid struggled in school. He could not control himself in class because he was inattentive, unfocused, and disruptive.
But the described behavior was contrary to what I’d noticed about these same kids in the context of caring for their animals and competing in rodeo. In that context, these kids (mostly - but not exclusively - boys) were almost always responsible and diligent, not to mention competent and competitive in a sport that requires an uncommon level of skill and focus.
So, I concluded that the problem of inattentive, disruptive, unfocused, and unmotivated students was and is not a kid issue but a school issue. If the school "system" can adjust its assumptions about how particular kids learn and in what context learning occurs most effectively, then more kids would be successful.
So…
The purpose of public education in the 21st Century: To prepare young people to succeed in the global economy.
Okay. No problem there.
Nick Freitas is a state senator in Virginia. He recently had the following to say on his YouTube channel:
“I am really starting to wonder if some of the things we call disorders are only disorders because we've pushed kids into a particular model of education and learning (that) does not work for them. But if you just adjust it, all of a sudden, that which is a disorder would become a capability.
Read the last line again. “That which is a disorder would become a capability.” Is the notion that what the school system recognizes as a disorder (maybe deficiency is a better word) is in the context of the non-school world, in fact, a useful capability?
Freitas concedes that “There are times when every student needs to be disciplined – sit down, be quiet, read, do your stuff… But if your kid is full of energy, and they work well when they’re able to get out there and learn kinetically, does it make sense to put them in a classroom for eight hours a day?”
I think teachers know this. I think that thoughtful educators recognize that the classroom-based system is shortchanging a significant number of (mostly male) students. But they are also constrained by a system that demands accountability in the form of data generated by testing protocols that diminish or disregard the very real strengths that certain kids bring to the table.
“I am almost horrified,” Freitas concludes, “to think that one day we’re going to find out that (the) kid didn’t have A.D.D. (attention deficit disorder), we just had that kid in a learning environment that was absolutely not created for him.”
I would go further and say that the learning environment was and is actively harmful to that kid.