A Well Rounded Student...Not With Contemporary Schooling

It was in an early scene from The Hunt for Red October, as I recall, when during an instant preparation for a rushed meeting with the Vice President and the assembled national security team, Jack Ryan's superior, friend and mentor, Admiral James Greer, asks him to: “Tell them [the national security team] what you think.” During that and other Jack Ryan narratives, Tom Clancy draws a distinction between “what you think” and “what you know.” “What you think” calls for an informed evaluation, interpretation and conclusion of the available material under consideration which is based on the analyst’s three “higher level” cognitive functions of analysis, synthesis and generalization as well as on the mastery of concisely and cogently conveying the result of the active blending of them through speech, writing or other symbolic form to an audience, whether it be an audience of one or many. “What you know” essentially calls on the analyst to ready recall memorized data points to be quickly imparted through whatever symbolic form to one or many. Competently responding to these questions relies on individuals being that well-rounded human American schooling has for hundreds of years said was its greatest purpose. 

 

Indeed, the cognitive aspect of the “well rounded student”, I'd argue, is defined by the continued cultivation in both what you think and what you know. In fact, it is the application of a select blending of highly developing analysis, synthesis, generalization and ready recall memorization to any question under consideration and, simultaneously, of precisely conveying the resultant meanings in a symbolic form appropriate to situation. Notice, the definition of the cognitive aspect in being well rounded has nothing at all to do with the demonstration of academic subject or general knowledge content. Rather it has all to do with what is commonly referred to as Critical Thinking and Communication.

But notice, also, that the developed cognitive aspect is only one part of what it means to be well rounded. I submit that the maturing emotional and social aspects of a person compose the other necessary characteristics on which formal education work. Thus, being a well rounded student, being a well-rounded human, ought to mean as well the development of a well adjusted psycho-dynamic and the cultivation of social competency.

As a professor of undergraduates, I have had to engage the consequences of the shaping affects of Kindergarten through Twelfth grade schooling and I have also been witness to the cognitive, emotional and social effects of undergraduate education. And I have seen how not so well rounded undergraduates are, even those on the precipice of graduation. My participation in the undergraduate exercise has brought me to say that: 1) schooling exercises all three aspects of personality but in a way molding youngsters' psyches and consequent behaviors to as easily as possible enter, move through and out of school organizations; 2) by elevating people movement in-through-and-out as the key function of schooling, the cognitive, emotional and social growth goals of well-roundedness are selectively modified to the demands of transportation through organizational systems; 3) all youngsters falling outside of the parameters enabling ease of movement through education systems are deemed to have learning disabilities; 4) the highest functioning movers through the system are rewarded with high status school graduation with its concomitant monetary class awards, the others, especially those with learning disabilities, are punished with low school status and its concomitant monetary class penalties; 5) when, especially, the highest functioning movers are expected to demonstrate openness to cognitive, emotional and social growth toward well-roundedness, a dissonance is created in them which all too often is resolved in the direction of prior socialization with a concomitant emotional resistance and rebellion;  6) when the lower functioning movers are expected to demonstrate openness to cognitive, emotional and social growth toward well-roundedness, an equal dissonance is created in them which like their high functioning counterparts is resolved in the direction of prior socialization with a concomitant emotional resistance and rebellion; and 7) student social-emotional support and intervention is always meant to bring those having trouble adjusting from their native other than easy transportation acuities to align with those well suited to easy movement through and out of the schooling system.

In other words, contemporary schooling may in the end produce well adapted organizational people, but it does not, it cannot, yield the well-roundedness in the sense argued here. Further, I'd argue, the greater the demand for the uniform subject content mastery-as is the case with the Common Core Curriculum for elementary and high schools and the Core/Elective course curriculum in college-rather then on optimal growth of the individuals' cognitive processes themselves, the greater the emotional demands schooling makes to adhere to formal rules and informal culture of obedience to school authority instead of normed appropriate situational behavior and the greater the pressure on youngsters to maintain a perfect symmetry of interpersonal behavior to create absolute order in the school building and classroom instead of actualizing the rambunctiousness from the clashes of evolutionary energized youth, the greater the distance there is between the organizational human and the well-rounded one. And for those like myself, who truly believe in the ultimate goal of a well-rounded human as a consequence of formal education, well, we are forced to either go along as good organizational folks do or leave to the margins of the education business. And as I appear to resolve the dissonance by adhering to my own form of socialization, I accept going to the margins. But, the margins hold no wages, and thus, I keep on finding myself further and further “between appointments.”

But, you know, during the 1980's I witnessed young adults willing to move in the direction of being well-rounded, the way I mean it.