SQUARE PEGS: Education’s Canaries in the Coal Mine, Part 1

Solidly we are in the era of school uniformity where accountability law, state and federal, requires all children in public schools to essentially achieve the same results at the same time to the same degree. Here in New York City we have a uniform curriculum with a largely uniform way of instruction and accountability testing standardized throughout the public system. Even in the new small public schools and Charter schools created over the last decade the foundations of teaching and learning, the assumptions of the need for children to move along a set path at a certain speed from grade to grade, and the testing to assure the conformity of student outcomes, are just as much the force in the these schools as in their regular cousins. The private system of schooling here pretty much follows the public in curriculum, instruction and testing. All this leads to uniformity across educational institutions within the City, with The Rockaways no exception.

There are children who are just fine with this standardization. But we can see there are costs to others in having to comply with uniformity, being forced by school and family to submit to the denial of their basic biological differences which are the hallmark of being human. I mean, we adults take for granted we are different one to another, different in talents, capabilities, motivations. I can very easily find my way around a thick, dense book on some obscure Far Eastern philosophy but can’t figure out how to repair my car when it breaks down. I can replace a burnt-out light bulb but in no way could I do the electric upgrade our house needed a couple of years ago. Even in academics, all Media Studies comes as easily as breathing but with higher math like Trigonometry or Calculus, man, I’m lost forever. Yet, we stubbornly hold in the belief our children ought to be able to do every little academic thing equally well and be as capable in achieving success to the same level at the same time as all other children.

We can see the problem with forced uniformity in the square pegs, children who cannot fit into the round hole of the uniform school. Indeed, the force of uniformity for all too many of our children makes them into square pegs. There are square pegs who are charming rascals full of life, energy and mischief protesting in so many “cute” ways. You have to love these youngsters for they have not a mean spirited bone in them. But these young folks have not yet been made mad, mentally ill. They in time might as these protests are in reality what are called mal-adaptive coping behaviors, pathologies which can lead to quite serious self-destruction as are the circumstances of the square pegs already made mad. These square pegs are education’s canaries in the coal mine warning us of the eminent dangers of uniformity and showing us the need to make changes to schooling systems.

In this space in forthcoming weeks we will be looking at some of these square pegs, the mad and the not yet mad, to learn from them what changes are needed to the round holes, public and private, so all square pegs can find their rightful schooling space, and be allowed the opportunity to learn in their own way and in their own time for a full and healthy life.