560
GEORGE LEVINE
Finally, I had to make my peace with myself and acknowledge that
I had come to the point in my thinking where I agreed with our
ex-director's premise (as I understand it) about children in the
educational process, at least those children who have had four or
five years of public schooling to work out of their systems. Chil–
dren just aren't going to get involved with ideas or other peo–
ple's concerns or feelings until they have sorted out their own iden–
tities and egos well enough so that they can move into those other
areas without fear of losing themselves ... I'm very skeptical about
those enthusiastic young student teachers who "believe" in free
schools, and who come to us to discover our "secret." Maybe our
secret is that we haven't found any secret yet and probably never
will. Maybe our success is in precisely that area which gives us the
most difficulty: the uncertainty, the vagueness. Perhaps our chil–
dren grow into focus because the function of our school is so
ill–
defined and their role in it, too, is undefined.
There is a quality of heroism in this capacity to live without defini–
tion - a distinctly antiinstitutional heroism.
It
is particularly valuable in
its rejection of formulas and of the facile optimism of the kind that
it sometimes encouraged by writers represented in this volume.
Utopian thinking about school reform, without practical experience
of the effects of freedom on students unused to it, is inevitably un–
satisfying and unimpressive. Yet the main directions implied by most
of the essays
in
this volume are essential if American education is to
begin to respond to the needs of all students. Anne Long's educational
world evokes my admiration but makes me nervous. I have found by
rather bitter experience that Kozol and Kohl's successes cannot be
imitated, except, I assume, by teachers who have their rare personal
qualities; Goodman's vision is attractive, but it is difficult to imagine
how to implement it. But in the face of the current waste in American
education, no waste occasioned by radical, decentralizing experiments
can be worse or more destructive. We all have too much invested in
the immediate acquisition of facts or skills which have, traditionally,
been taken as the staple of education. We need to be made aware that
even in the most successful classes, a large proportion of the students
are not reached, or are reached only superficially so that what they
learn cannot possibly remain with them. We need, in particular, to
believe in the human reality of children and not to expect of them any
serious commitments or activity that we ourselves would find tedious,
meaningless or hypocritical. Our teachers need to acquire the nerve to
be what Anne Long sees herself as being: "I could simply say that
I am an adult whose job
it
is to help children with whatever tasks they
have taken upon themselves. I treat them as I would treat any other
person, with consideration and respect."
