An Interview with Debra Meier

I have several reactions to Debra’s words. First, I appreciate and agree with all of her comparisons between large schools and small schools since I have worked in both. Second, as a parent, I agree with her idea that what parents look for most is a positive relationship between teachers and their kids, not abstract professional characteristics of the teachers as educators. However, the limit to this agreement is the situation in which my kid says she likes the teacher and the teacher likes her but she’s bored in the class and feels that she is not learning much. Teacher appreciation of my daughter is not a substitute for teacher competency in a particular area, but it is necessary for me as a parent that the appreciation be there. Third, I am skeptical of her description of the time commitment of teachers in a good school. The demands she describes almost seem to require that the teachers either be single or, if married, that they have no kids of their own. Also, the added demand of five hours a week or a month for teachers to meet for their own development often seems to result, at least at TAS, in teachers being unavailable to meet with students who need their help on current required projects. At TAS, many teachers seem to be greatly overloaded with duties and tasks that repeatedly take them away from their primary constituency–students. Fourth, the idea of teachers and students learning together strikes me as unworkable, unless the teachers are as undeveloped as their students. After five years of tutoring TAS students, I can say that, on average, they know very little about themselves either as individuals or as members of the human species, very little about the lives of human beings outside their own socioeconomic/ethnic/religious groups, and very little about the collective wisdom and knowledge of humanity. For myself, I cannot imagine what topic I would be able to learn together with students, even high school students. The disparity in our knowledge and experience would be so great that I would continually be catching them up to where I was many years ago. Of course, if, as part of a curriculum on living things, we decide to study an organism I have never studied, or, as part of a curriculum on small cultures, we decide to study a group of people I have never studied, etc., then I would be learning along with the students. But I don’t think this is the kind of format Debra had in mind. She seemed to be projecting a situation in which I, as a classroom teacher, would be pursuing my own intellectual interests with students who had the same interests. I find this a highly unlikely scenario. The idea of intellectual collaboration among teachers and students in K-12 schooling seems to need a lot more thought. That’s all I have for now.

I have one more reflection on Debra’s talk. She seems to accept uncritically the model of schools as mind factories. However, she wants to scale down the institutions and change some of the components that come out in the products. Her focus seems to be on discursive uses of mind, such as discussion, judgment and evidence. You’ve seen the statistics from glumberg on the percentage of high IQ kids in India and China, Brent. Does the world really need more brilliant civil engineers, philologists and biologists? I think the answer is, No. There needs to be a great increase in people who can do three things: care for themselves physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually; care for others physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually; and care for the natural world physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Without a great increase in this kind of person, there is no hope to alter the headlong dash of the human species into destruction of the biosphere. Debra seems to have the view of schools as preparations for polemical society, especially an American society in which difference frequently turns to disagreement and various kinds of violence. But that scope is too small. The competition, acquisition, achievement model of education has run its course; we need a new model whose center of gravity is caring, not consuming and producing.

These are two interesting interpretations of Debra’s talk. My brief interpretation of Debra’s talk and responses are below:
1. Schools need to be small personal places that help to develop the hearts and minds of students. Once the hearts and minds are developed in students, they can then venture into the world and become responsible global citizens. A citizen that will not automatically buy into the consumptive western interpretation of the world.
2. In order to do this, schools should be filled with committed and interesting individuals. If the teachers are either not committed or interesting then they really should not be in the job of educating children as this is a pretty important thing to be doing. I don’t believe this can only be done by single individuals or couples without children. It’s all about a shifting of priorities in schools and beginning to focus on what really matters. This means that you do some things really well and the less important things less well. If schools creatively adjust their schedules, priorities and teacher word-load, teachers will have more time for students not less.
3. Teachers and students need to be in the constant habit of self improvement. Constantly looking for ways to do things better. In this way they are learning together. However, in the type of school Debra describes, the teachers are carefully guiding the students both in and out of the classroom. Sometimes learning together, sometimes not. I don’t believe she is describing a school in which the teacher is pursuing their own interests but one in which the teacher creates environments in which they can guide students as they begin to learn about and explore their own passions. What she describes and advocates for is a truly differentiated classroom.
4. Schools need to help prepare students for adult life. Breaking down those barriers that lie between teachers and students. Only when this happens can real conversation begin to take place and children begin to open up and embrace the type of world view that will begin to help the world.
5. Lastly, I don’t agree that Debra accepts the model of schools as mind factories. This is exactly the mold that she is trying to break. She is advocating for a school that nurtures a student physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. If there was anyone on this planet with a stronger sense of vision for schools to be these types of places, it’s Debra Meier.

The changes described in this interview cannot happen in a traditional school. Many failed attempts have occurred because individuals have tried to inject progressives sytems into a model that wouldn’t support it. Debra and others are advocating for a completely different model for education and for the teachers roles with students.