The girl on Church Hill

As I was walking down Church Hill today the potential of our nation torpedoed toward and then past me in the form of a vigorous 8 year-old girl. Her feet pounded the pavement, her wide golden eyes locked with mine, and then she was gone.

“Who knows?” I thought. “Maybe that girl will do humankind a great service someday - find the cure for cancer, or broker peace in the Middle East.” The girl’s intensity was startling.

The schools she attends will do much to either squelch that vigor or harness it in the service of the finest work of which she is capable.

Education systems around the world are striving to learn how to bring out the best in all their children in the hopes that they can solve the immense global problems we all face together.

The United States is not currently a leader in primary and secondary education. While we still boast many excellent colleges, a smaller percentage of our students graduate from them than is true in many other countries, including Australia, Japan, Switzerland, and Canada.

The culture of a school is apparent when a visitor passes through its entrance doors. Schools vary enormously in this country. Some nurture the kind of energy alive in the child on Church Hill; others repulse it.

Vigorous 8 year olds will mature into brilliant scientists, artists, inventors, peace negotiators – if we provide them with an education designed to do so. Such an education centers on topics that matter in the world, such as climate change, alternative sources of energy, war and peace, the creation of beauty, languages, intercultural communication.

All too often when I enter schools I do not feel the robust energy of children. The air is silent. Children’s eyes avoid those of adults. Youthful bodies are still – or trying to be.

The puzzle of how to contain many young bodies in a building for hours on end while nurturing vigor of intellect is really not an easy one to solve. No country on earth would claim it has figured out the perfect model of education.

What separates the United States from these other countries is our insularity and our complacency. We don’t have study groups traveling the world, seeking ideas to emulate, in the manner of Singapore and India. Most school districts have only a vague interest in looking outward at how other districts – let alone nations – are tackling the question of schooling. Our teachers question why we need to teach languages and create a global curriculum. Our classrooms have changed little in the past four decades since I was in school.

The vigorous 8 year-olds in New Zealand and the other top education nations stand a better chance of growing up fulfilled than do those of the United States. This is both a personal loss for the children in question, and a national loss.

We need to free ourselves from complacency and join the world in the quest to raise children able to meet the international challenges we all face together. Tweaking the current system with mandates like the Common Core will not do it. We need serious transformation of our schools if we are to benefit from the gifts of children like the one I passed today on Church Hill.