College Ready

I have begun a change in life related to my career in education.  Upon retirement I felt like many and could not really stop working.  I concerned myself with education issues and worked as a substitute, did some post retirement work as a school librarian, attended conferences on the brain and learning, spent some time working for PBS Teacherline, taught an online University course, did some contracting at a charter school and started this blog.  I developed a belief that kindness and cooperation are the missing ingredients in education.  I read Nel Noddings' Happiness and Education and concluded that she is right, we have worried too much about the technical side of education and not enough about the social emotional growth of the young people in our country and the goal of education should be to learn how to be happy.

As I have been going through my various stages of retirement education reform has been proceeding full blast.  Predicated upon the perception that our children are not prepared for the future and worries that other countries beat our scores on standardized tests it seems as though my generation of educators have utterly failed.  This has been a constant moan since I began teaching.  The public schools are failing our children seems to be a consensus that has been building for a certain portion of the U.S. population.  They want to replace our community based local control of education with school choice.  Schools whose only responsibility are the students they are teaching.  This seems to me a narrow view of education and seems to undermine the value of learning cooperation, diversity and common societal values.  It feels to me that the basic premise of this movement is if you don't like it, go somewhere else.  I always thought the American spirit had something to do with working through problems by finding common ground.  My ideas of kindness, happiness and cooperation don't seem to be the thinking of the educational establishment nor society in general.

So, I have decided to become a participant in education as opposed to being a proponent for any particular pedagogy.  I hope to experience the same college education our recent graduates are getting.  Of course I can not afford to go to Harvard, but I did obtain a scholarship for Vietnam Veterans sponsored by the state of New Mexico and I have enrolled at the University of New Mexico  as an English major studying creative writing.  I am starting over and trying to develop a second career as a writer, an idea that began with this blog and blossomed when I self published Bombs Away Buckaroos.  These projects have made me realize I never had training as a creative writer and have much to learn.  So, I have a goal but along the way hope to share my observations of the capabilities of my classmates and the quality of my education.

It has been an interesting two weeks but my overall impression is positive.  If we failed these students, then we failed my generation.  The students who go to the classes I do are interested, mostly do their work, seem to be future oriented and introspective.  They are certainly young adults who have the same problems all young adults have had with the meanings and problems of life in our culture.  My creative writing class is full of young minds who understand what they are asked to do and seem capable of doing it.  My first impressions of their writing is that they are no better or no worse that the students I attended with in 1965.

We will see.  I hope to report my impressions and share some of the work I am assigned as I progress through the beginning of the final third of my life or hopefully the 3rd quarter.  It sort of depends on having a healthy body and engaged mind!