Hear no Evil

My class yesterday got out a little early and as I was closing down the room a cacophonous cheer rose up from the Santa Barbara Bowl. Radiohead had just walked on stage. The reception was astounding. What impressed me even more, however, was the clarity with which the music drifted in through my window and washed over me as if they were not a hundred yards away.

I turned off the lights, locked and closed the door, and sat with my feet up just listening. Being married to an acoustical engineer, I am well aware of how important the sound mixer at a concert is. He actually complimented the sound board operator at the Muse concert because it was flawless. It was loud, but not abrasive; clean and vital. I imagine that the sound board operator from that night would have wept at how beautiful the mix was for this concert, for the music radiated from the Bowl with supreme clarity.

That is until a voice in the parking lot cut into my euphoria. A security guard from the bowl was shooing away the accumulating listeners. It turns out the the bowl is directly below the parking lot of the campus and that, apparently, they feel that they have the authority to tell people to stop listening. To stop appreciating.

My heart fell a little. When did we become so greedy that we need to control not only who can see the band, but who can hear them, experience them as they open their talent freely. Why is it so terrible that people who can't see the band can hear them? How does anyone have the right to tell you not to listen? Where does it go from here? I envision giant sound barriers, massive pulses of sound cancellation vibrations to prevent those who cannot pay from experiencing anything. What is wrong with us? Why must everything be controlled and someone always make a profit? Why should experience, the shared human experience, be limited and cut off? Haven't we blocked ourselves off from each other enough in this world?

I listened to a few more songs, but the oppression continued. The fluid lyrics were constantly interrupted with barked orders or the cackle of a two-way radio inquiring "what's happening up there?" Indeed.

I drove home and watched more Avatar on DVD before the flashlight was shined in my window and an angry voice directed at me. At least someone in this world has a positive viewpoint left. I would elect Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko to run the world. We need some leadership that is playful, intelligent, positive, and effective. They would provide solutions that no one has thought of yet, I can guarantee you that.

How Long Have We Been Slipping, and How Far Have We Fallen?

When did the bell curve shift? When did an A become Average. When did the process of evaluation start at the top and deduct from it rather than starting in the middle, at the true average, and adjusting based on competency, or lack there of, and excellence? Why have we decided to lower the bar to a place where we reward the lazy and incompetent and do not adequately reward the brilliant and exceptional?

This wasn't an overnight transition, people. We created this problem. We allowed it to happen. How on Earth can an 18 year old high school graduate not know what a verb is? How is that possible? How could we have failed our students so greatly that the basic understanding of our own language is missing? I remember people talking about lost knowledge back when I was in high school. People being concerned that students didn't know when the Declaration of Independence was signed, or being able to locate Austria on a map. When I was in college I remember hearing baffled scholars mocking how high school graduates didn't know who fought in the Civil War, or how to locate China on a map. Now we have to worry about students not knowing what part of speech "War" is and how to locate The United States on a map. What the hell is going on here?

How could we have shifted so far away from supporting our public school systems that one third of every Freshmen class at my institution doesn't have basic, fundamental English skills. They are tested for reading comprehension and writing proficiency, but they don't even know the different parts of speech, let alone how to apply them in a sentence, how to ensure they are used correctly, how to maintain tense or voice, or create proper subject/verb agreements. The disparity between the private school educated and the public school graduated is such a vast chasm that post secondary educational system is being forced to accept highly unprepared students into their ranks just to pay the bills. The system is forced to reward mediocrity with recognition and not allowed to foster true knowledge or discourse because the basics have to be covered again. New classes have to be introduced to bring those students up to speed. Even the grand Ivy League has seen a downturn in the quality of the student body. Everyone's scale has been lowered. The bulge of the bell curve now hovers over an A- rather than situating itself firmly over the C average. And it isn't because we have gotten better, it is because we got so much worse that the only way to address the frustration was to change how we graded.

And it doesn't stop there. This morning I was listening to Fareed Zakaria on a local radio station and was stunned to hear that in 2013, 75% of all PhDs awarded in this country will be awarded to foreign students. Seventy-five percent. To me this makes two comments. The first, we still have the educational system in place to provide a top-notch, globally beneficial education. The second, we just don't have American students willing to do the work.

What are we doing to ourselves? I know too many public school teachers to have complaint with them. It isn't the quality of instructor that is the problem. The problem is the infrastructure of the public educational system. We have fostered overcrowded classrooms, antiquated equipment, absent materials, standardized evaluation, and lack-luster results. The concept of "no child left behind" in reality is more like "every child left behind." Because when you can't instill the basics as early, you can't teach the more advanced later. Which means that even students who would be capable of it are being held to the lower standard because that is the majority standard. Rather than accepting some children will fail (which can be healthy for them, by the way) we are shifting the scale to emphasize pushing the scrapers through and shoving the truly talented into a pool of mediocrity.

Which is exactly why the private school educated students are going to run this country. And that is a horrendous thought from the perspective of the existing biases and disparities that allowed them to attend the private school in the first place. I know several middle class families where the parents work several jobs each to ensure that their kids can go to private school, because if they don't, they fear for their future. But our school system has the potential to be magnificent if we would focus on it. If we don't, we will not only lose our "Superpower" status as a nation, we will lose our integrity, our influence, and our potential. There is so much good that we could do as a nation that watching us squander our future is making me physically ill. If we don't change, and soon, we won't be able to recover.