Problems in American Education - Part 15: Education: Art or Science?

I think that I once lost out on an assistant principalship because of this question. The superintendent was on the interviewing panel and he asked me whether I thought administration was an art or a science. I could tell that he had an orientation in mind, but he disguised his preference well in asking the question. That didn’t matter anyway, if I could boast a little here, because I never was the kind of interviewee who tried to shape answers to fit what I thought the panel wanted to hear. I’m kind of big on being yourself and letting the chips fall where they may. That way you don’t have to live up to a false image later on.

The one thing you always wanted to do though in an interview was to at least sound decisive in your answers. It was a tough question and I knew that my answer was going to sound “wishy-washy” if I went with my instincts in responding to the question. Well, I was right. I told them what I thought and it did sound “wishy-washy.” Needless to say, I did not get the job; and, for some reason, that question stood out in my mind as a turning point in the decision-making process.

As you may have guessed by now, the truth, in my opinion, for both teachers and administrators, is somewhere in the middle. That is obviously not a bold statement to make, but it seems pretty clear to me that you need both the left brain and the right brain to work well with children in today’s schools. I list this as one of my “problems in American education” because I think that we sometimes forget how clear it is and because we can also let loose of the need to balance the two sides of the equation if we are not careful in the sometimes overwhelming environment in education today.

Edgar Allen Poe had much to say on this subject - not directly of course - but as a recurring theme in his writing. Poe’s characters in his poetry, his horror stories, and also in his ratiocinative mystery stories often found themselves in trouble when they moved away from that balance between heart and head. In the case of Roderick Usher in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” insanity was the ultimate result. In “The Purloined Letter,” Poe’s wondertully spun mystery tale about the location of a hidden letter, the mastermind detective who solved the case was able to do so by understanding both the logic and emotion of his adversary. His balanced approach provided the insight necessary to move to the core of what was reality.

It’s the “ying” and “yang” of human life; so, quite naturally, it is also a key understanding that needs to be applied when working with the youngest of all humans, our children.

When I think of science in our endeavors in education, I think of logic and, most of all, organization. As I believe I have established in my earlier essays, working as a teacher or administrator today is no simple task. You need to answer to many masters and numerous skills, from interpersonal to record keeping to grade computation to scheduling to computer, are required. If that superintendent who interviewed me was thinking that administration was more of an art, I think he was missing something. You can’t survive today in this field if you are disorganized.

Later in this series I will address computer assisted instruction, but here I will only indicate that computer literacy is also very important, actually essential, for educators today. I would no sooner hire a computer illiterate educator than I would hire an educator who had reading, writing, or computation problems. We are well past the day when computer literacy was an option or a decision based on the personal style of the educator. As a minimum, today’s educator must show a mastery of word processing, spreadsheets, some computer graphics, and definitely the Internet. Database, presentation software like Powerpoint, and publishing software use are also somewhat important and helpful. In other words, today’s educator needs to be able to manipulate, process, and produce data quickly and efficiently, and the computer is the only way to do it in an environment that is becoming more and more competitive. You just can’t keep up with all you need to do and all you need to know to be a good teacher or administrator if you do not have these skills.

Having said that, I also believe that the right brain is at least as important in balancing the equation in today’s schools. This gets back to what I wrote in an earlier essay about teacher evaluation. When the “back to basics” movement started those many decades ago, it was part of response to the Sputnik generation, an attempt to simplify what we were doing under a “less is better” mentality that implied that we could do better promoting the American cause by teaching children foundation skills and teaching those skills with great intensity and repetition. The softer disciplines (social studies, literature, the arts, etc.) were thought to be overdone at the time and more conservative elements wanted to see more rigor and challenge with an emphasis on math, science, and the “three R’s.”

Underlying this argument were some hidden prejudices against the teachers who were believed to be promoting the soft and less challenging curriculum. Not coincidentally, this was about the same time that teachers were just starting to make more money and putting more pressure on the tax base in doing so. Some resentment among the taxpayers was bubbling up in response to that change, and there were those who wanted to find a way to make the teachers pay a price for their increased benefits and salaries.

Taxpayers, and, particularly, parents wanted accountability from educators in return for their tax dollars and they started to attack the perceived suspicious and abstract processes that they did not understand. This created a new plan to prepare teachers and keep them under control. So called “teacher proof” materials and methods were promoted, a movement that insulted teachers by implying that they needed recipes to do what society wanted them to do and what society wanted to require if they were to make the kind of money professionals were supposed to make. Artistic interpretation, creation, and application were frowned upon and many teachers came to feel that, while they were now paid like professionals, they were not trusted to make professional decisions on their own.

The major mistake in all of this is that it unknowingly attempted to take the art out of the equation. Again, as noted earlier, I have found that some of the best teachers I have ever observed and evaluated fell far short when measured against some kind of prescribed textbook recipe for what a teacher was supposed to do. What separated them, however, was that they had the ability to inspire children to learn. You can call it charisma or you can say that it had to do with some kind of “Gestalt” that they were able to create in their classroom; but it was as real as could be when you watched the effect on the children. Some people just seem to have that knack of working with children. About the only way I can explain it in terms of a common denominator is to observe that all those I saw who had it, in its many forms, seemed to have a deep and abiding affection for children. Somehow this affection was perceived as sincere by the children and their appreciation for it normally translated into attention and hard work. Read those two words as definitive prerequisites for learning.

That is why art is so important in education. Yes, you can teach an educator valuable skills, but something also needs to exist in the heart if you are to approach excellence in instruction. This is not something that is discussed enough in educational circles. I think that is because most of us are naturally somewhat envious about the kind of raw talent we see in those very special educators. I know that I was. I had some of that spark, especially as a young teacher; but it was somewhat fleeting, and I have to admit that most of my career I met with success through old fashioned hard work more than through charismatic artistry.

I particularly remember one man I worked with for a good number of years. If you matched him against the teacher methodology textbook, he was terrible. He did most things “the wrong way;” but that man could teach. The kids loved him and chose to ignore his idiosyncrasies because they knew that, despite some of his odd approaches, he had their best interests at heart and that reality came through. Other teachers were envious of him and critical of his methods; but I think they knew in their hearts that he was reaching children who they were unable to reach.

It may have been an extreme position, but one department head once told me when I was a young teacher that she did not care what I was teaching as long as I was teaching. The idiosyncratic teacher mentioned above was always teaching and the medium became the message. It made him special, and, quite frankly, kids related to that more than they related to mechanical or pedantic process.

So, what’s the moral of this story? I think it is that Poe was absolutely right. A good educator, whether he or she be a teacher or an administrator, needs to be a balanced person. Organization and skills are key elements, but so are heart and emotions. Educators must always remember to put themselves in the children’s seats and imagine what those children are perceiving. Subject matter is important, but I believe that children learn more from their teachers as they perceive them as role models. Subject matter tends to be digested and internalized, but children more directly remember who taught them and whether or not that person was a complete human being. To whatever extent we can, educators need to consciously remember that when they plan for their presentations to those children. It does not go unnoticed.