Arne's Legacy Will Be Found in the Word Race

A Farewell To Arne
Sarah Puglisi

This simple "code" is violated everyday now,in early childhood education, and I can't really understand why. It feels like a pressure cooker. Perhaps it's just me, my lens of perception, but I see K teachers  I read on-line for IDEAS saying kids have letters and sounds by this month in school, the first one, so they are blending and writing sentences, having them use the twenty five sight words they "know," and I think to myself my own kids COULD read well entering K, my girls, and they'd have gotten nervous in what I see. It's not only moving fast, it's moving fast under pressure to teach 1st in K. Yes, my kids,  they would have done it, but how much they loved the pretend play, the kitchen, the social learning done with friends. This is not something I understand about now. 

I read-in fact I'm on my FIFTH Early Childhood text-ones considered the best we have, some quite new, some older and more masterful-volumes-nowhere do I see them having kids write like this by the end of the first month of K. Nowhere do I see a call for a race. They seem to call for this rich, purposeful, discovery-almost hard to hold in a sentence environment. A creation of involvement with number, letter, sound, meanings-themes, relational, literacy rich. It seems to me the joy helps children feel safe to come at it from where they are. It is very rare for us humans to fully appreciate in learning where we are.

I keep trying to understand.

I try to "see" the 21st Century.My husband uses the term at least twenty times a day.

He feels a race is a great metaphor for learning.

On this we are often silent.

I see this new century facing war on scales I find utterly terrifying, climate crisis, the loss of nature, division of wealth-I cannot unsee the reality of earth broken through our foolish demand and use and I am sorry, I'm trying to unsee this. It is hard to become unaware once aware. I see it as having little art, practically none taught in an entire 12 years of American education ON PURPOSE, and a great new faith-science. I try very hard to imagine 2085.

Our Secretary of Education is quitting at the end of the year to spend time with his family. 

He will enjoy seeing his children in a system COMPLETELY unlike that he imposed nationally because he can afford it and verbally defend it. The Chicago Lab Schools would be glad, I'm sure when he pulls up to volunteer.

He promoted learning as a Race. I never had any great sense he had a particularly good mind, the tools to clarify his ideas. I'm interested in education Secretaries good minds, capacity, invention, cultural knowledge, vision and community commitment. I never sensed in him what the nation needed-and indeed much of what he says sounds like he is aware he wasn't quite up to the job of a massively important leadership role. I read so many commenting on-line they are glad he's going. Was he effective as a Secretary of Education? By the year 2015 do we have some notion of what that great Ed. Secretary leadership might be? He saw educational funding as something to be used in a Race. To coerce states into national standards and schemes. He saw denying funding to some children in naughty states as fine. His sense of fair-play was off. How can you EVER justify leaving some in the nation unfunded by "rewarding" what you demand? I'll never see this as acceptable practice. I certainly do not employ that teaching. I was also lost with the notion that we would continue to promote and put on steroids the "business" of school. No one can miss he will quit to go make 500K or more a year in a system that thinks the national consultancy is the greatest gift to  ed leadership with promotion of ed corp. development ever designed. To lead now in education is to acquire wealth. Of course Arne will. He must. 

The man who always wanted to teach will be offering a course in how to land public funds.

Now I always saw this as a very strange word they chose. "Race" in Race to the Top. I saw it as something that had to be significant in that race permeates issues we have yet to fully address in our nation. There he was choosing that term and using it in a different meaning-yet we see too much in our nation that some of our children in the great race are consistently not being well served in our ed. policy. It is very tough using testing and teaching to testing, a pathology model, as a way to describe and proscribe all childhood learning. Yet it is a way we can race. But it isn't a particularly easy thing to ask of a four year old. They do balk. They live today, in zen. They have yet to acquire the understanding tomorrow. They wish to enjoy today, they do not yield easily to delaying gratification for the big payoff in the college and career ready sky.

My father, who really is not given to ANY form of molly-coddling- believed in childhood. He often said to me-you get to be young ONCE. He insisted I not push the kids into too many classes, activities, too much technology. Perhaps Dad should have expected a bit more of me academically early in, but he seemed happy that I was in a kindergarten painting-he'd guess what I painted. I can remember him taking me to dance class. I recall him taking me for drives EVERY Sunday. I remember the fun of planting in his garden, learning the names of the forest flowers-plants. I remember the specificity he introduced. He taught the scientific method through observation, trial and error naturally connected to our life on this earth-outside. And he abhorred waste, destruction of nature-he never even hunted because as he said-no one wants to take a life if you can avoid it-and he could grow his garden and get what little we needed at the store. I never felt he felt we needed to race. He expected me to try to do my best in school. Dad had his emotional issues, but he did not miss these lessons. Wisdom.

I really feel the addictions now. To media, to devices, money my friends, to over consumption, to having while another suffers, to alcohol, food, pleasure, entertainment, celebrity, to the next thing. I have some, I am told to be mindful.

I feel it in the very young.

It is time we deal with race and racing to the top. And it is my generation that needs to start to lift us into better, safer, more healthy relationships so our kids can follow and heal this earth we are consuming.

Meet kids where they are, help them move forward. It takes an arch of time, and a joy of doing it together.