Teaching and Learning

April 2, 2019 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

KPI – Part VIII: European Roots of American Higher Education

This illustration is the photograph of a colored lithograph by J. Wolf. The photograph is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Image courtesy of J. Wolf and Wikimedia Commons.

Higher education has been around in some form for over two millennia. American higher education is not quite 400 years old. Why does American higher education get all of the hype and publicity instead of our older European, Middle Eastern, and Asian brothers and sisters? How did the younger sibling grow up to be the 800-pound gorilla?

First aside: Q – “Where does an 800-pound gorilla sit?” A – “Anywhere he wants.” The problem with this joke is that most gorillas are less than 6 feet tall and weigh less than 600 pounds. Phil, an Eastern Lowland Gorilla raised in the St. Louis Zoo, is the only recorded gorilla in captivity weighing in at more than 800 pounds.

The courtyard and fountain of the Qarawiyyin Mosque and Fountain. The photograph was taken by Mike Prince and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Image courtesy of Mike Prince and Wikimedia Commons.

Second Aside: I must apologize for a mistake I made in my previous post KPI – Part VII: Historical Development of Higher Education, Condensed View. I fell into a trap I was attempting to battle: the myopic view of the world centered on Western Civilization. My error was listing the University of Bologna, founded in 1088, as the oldest, continuous existing, degree-granting university in the world. That title rightly belongs to the University of Al-Karaouine, also written as al-Quaraouiyine and al-Qarawiyyin (in Arabic: جامعة القرويين), located in the Moroccan city of Fes el-Bali. It was founded in 859 by the young Arab heiress, Fatima al-Fihri, to honor the city of her birth and to serve and educate the community that welcomed her and her family as emigrants.

Aside three: Surprise! Surprise! As I wrote this post, I found that I couldn’t condense the history of American higher education into 1,000 words. Thus I will deal only with its European foundations in this post. I will use my next post to pick up the story on American shores with the founding of the “Colonial Colleges.” That story will start with Harvard College in 1636. I may be able to use that post to get us to the 19th Century. From there I will need at least one more subsequent post to carry us to the higher education scene in America today.

One of the drumbeats of proponents of modern American higher education is the constant encouragement for students to attend a university to obtain a broader vision of the whole world. Students are bombarded with advertisements urging them to spend a semester or year abroad to break down the insular barriers isolating them from other cultures.

View over Trinity College, Gonville and Caius and Clare College towards King’s College Chapel, seen from St Johns College Chapel, Cambridge (UK). On the left, just in front of King’s College Chapel, is the Cambridge University Senate House. Photo by Bob Tubbs, 1997, the copyright holder of this work. Tubbs has released this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide. Image courtesy of Bob Tubbs and Wikimedia Commons.

It may be ironic that American institutions of higher learning trace their education model and form of organization to a single archetype. In doing this, they are ignoring the traditions of most of the world that they are commending to their students.

The sole archetype is a system epitomized by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and the European form embodied by the University of Bologna and the Sorbonne (or University of Paris). In this system, faculty with similar interests gather themselves into colleges in order to stimulate each other to create new knowledge, organize existing knowledge into understandable formats, and disseminate that knowledge as widely as possible.

These colleges recruit and admit students to their ranks based upon students’ identity with the interests of the faculty. The colleges provide academic facilities for the faculty, such as classrooms and offices. They are also responsible for providing housing and boarding facilities for the students, and some faculty.

In their earliest years, the British colleges required students to commit themselves fully to their education. This meant that students had to “live” in the residence halls and be available on a 24/7 basis. Everyone, students and faculty, ate formal meals together. This permitted extended academic discussions to take place over the course of the meals. Many faculty lived on campus which meant that education could occur around the clock.

Photo of Keble, College Dining Hall, Oxford University. The Hall was built in 1878 to resemble the dining halls of the 13th Century. Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0. Image courtesy of David Iliff and Wikimedia Commons.

The separate colleges established a collective, called a university. Whereas colleges set their own curriculum and courses, the university set some minimal standards for degrees and conferred those degrees. Students could take courses in other colleges to complete their education. Most likely, only one college within the university offered music courses and programs. It was also likely that religion and philosophy courses were consolidated within one college. The disciplines of science, mathematics, humanities, literature, social sciences, law, and medicine would have had their own specialty colleges.

The interior of Christ Church Cathedral, on the campus of Christ Church College of Oxford University. Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0. Image courtesy of David Iliff and Wikimedia Commons.

Right from their earliest days, religion was an integral part of Oxford and Cambridge Universities. All faculty had to be communicant members of the Catholic Church. Students were required to attend religious services and receive instruction in religious matters.

Somewhat surprisingly in their formative years, the continental universities were not tied formally to the church. They also did not have housing for students. Students lived in the community, which resulted in many conflicts with the “townies.”

In both the British and European universities the faculty were the formal masters of the organizations. Every major decision was decided either by consensual agreement or a vote of the faculty. From this arrangement, American higher education derived its ideal of faculty governance.

A photograph of the 14th Century fresco by Spinello Arefino of Frederick I Barbarossa submitting to Pope Alexander III. The fresno is displayed at Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. The photograph was transferred to Wikimedia Commons by Naudefj. Image courtesy of Naudefj and Wikimedia Commons.

When the University of Bologna was founded, it was established as a school that was free from ecclesiastic control. In 1158, Frederick I Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor, issued a writ which became known as the Privilegium Scholasticum. Among its provisions, this law declared that every school should be a group of students overseen by a master (dominus). This master teacher was to be paid through monies collected from the students. These payments were the first tuition charges.

The submission of Frederick I Barbarossa, protector of the University of Bologna, to the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, in order to secure his position as the Holy Roman Emperor, began two centuries of political wrangling among the faculty of the University of Bologna. It only subsided with the establishment of the School of Theology in 1358. For the next five centuries, Roman Catholicism was an integral part and a significant player in the life of the University.

Another provision of the Privilegium protected faculty and students in their pursuit of knowledge from the intrusion of all political authorities. This was a fundamental event in the history of the European university. The University has legally declared a place where research and new knowledge could develop independently from any other power. This was the beginning of the concept of academic freedom.

Finishing off this post, I will take leave of the palaces, halls, cathedrals, colleges, and universities of Europe and migrate to shores of the New World in North America. In my next post, scheduled to be published on Friday, April 5, I will look at the early development of American higher education

March 30, 2019 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

KPI – Part VII: Historical Development of Higher Education, Condensed View

So many books; so little time. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

There have been many books written about the historical development of American higher education, particularly its colleges and universities. Much less has been written about higher education in the rest of the world, especially prior to the fourteenth century. This brief 1,000-word synopsis can’t touch on everything. It is meant only to highlight what I believe to be the most pertinent phases in the evolutionary process which has given us today’s higher education enterprise in America and our modern universities and colleges.

I begin with a definition of education: Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, habits, and culture. From that starting point, what are the various levels of education? In particular, what is higher education?

Throughout most of today’s world, education is associated with schools and the process of schooling. Since 1945 the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has attempted to standardize the definitions of educational levels in order to collect, organize, and analyze education statistics on a worldwide basis.

In pursuit of this goal, UNESCO issued its first classification system in 1970 and has revised it several times. The most recent revision of the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) was published in 2011.

In the United States the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), a subdivision of the Institute of Education Science (IES), is charged by the federal Department of Education with keeping tabs on educational statistics in the United States and reporting that data to UNESCO.

NCES uses a slightly different format for reporting U.S. data than ISCED recommends. However, the two formats can be reconciled using the following crosswalk equivalencies:

ISCED/IES Educational Level Crosswalk Table of Equivalencies. Information gathered from the ISCED and IES websites by the author of this website.

Conceptual display of ancient family unit in Hong Kong Museum. The photograph was by Musestress and posted on Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Image courtesy of Musestress and Wikimedia Commons.

From the above chart, it is obvious that education is clearly being tied to organized schools and the formal process of schooling. This has not always been the case. From historical legends, archeological records and anthropological observations of primitive peoples and tribes, it is believed that the earliest education of young children was the responsibility of family units as illustrated in the picture to the left. This education consisted primarily of simple survival skills. Young children were also taught the rudimentary communication skills of gesturing and the oral language of the parents.

The next phase of education coincided with the coalescence of families into communities and tribes. As families joined together with other family units, education evolved into a communal activity involving the whole community. In addition to more intricate survival and communication skills, social integration skills on how to live in groups were necessarily included in the education of the young.

These additions brought about the need for more specialized instruction which was satisfied by the appearance of master teachers. These master teachers were excellent communicators who could help the uninitiated acquire new knowledge, skills, beliefs, and values. They developed reputations and became much in demand.

A photograph of the Rosetta Stone, which contained the same passage in three forms of writing. The top script is Egyptian hieroglyphs, 2nd is Demotic Egyptian commercial script, and the 3rd is Greek. Photograph is from the Christian Theological Image Library. All of such works are in the public domain. They were scanned from out of copyright books, or photographs by individuals who offer their work to the public.

About this time in history, communications took on a new twist. The oral transmission of knowledge and culture was susceptible to transmission errors. Mankind began to transform oral language and gestures into symbols which were carved or pressed into stone or clay tablets. These symbols morphed into a written language which was inscribed on animal skins, tablets, or papyrus scrolls. The teachings of the best of the master teachers were transcribed and preserved for posterity.

The most well-known master teachers became legends: Confucius (China); Buddha (India); Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Archimedes, Pythagoras, and Thales (Greece); Muhammad, Hillel, and Gamaliel (Middle East). Potential disciples traveled many miles to sit at their feet and listen to them in order to soak in their wisdom. Their teachings were recorded by these disciples and are still studied today. This was the higher education of the ancient world.

Jesus teaching His disciples while traveling through Judea. Photograph of original 19th century art work in Brooklyn Museum. Image courtesy of James Tissot, photographer, and Wikimedia Commons

The master teacher who really changed the world lived in the Middle East and taught for only three years. Jesus began His ministry by selecting 12 unlikely individuals as his disciples. He spent three years traveling around Judea, healing the sick, raising the dead, doing other miracles, and teaching his disciples and many other followers. His death and resurrection formed the basis of Christianity. Eleven of His original disciples, along with a later convert, Saul of Taurus (also known as the Apostle Paul), spent 60 years after Christ’s ascension into heaven evangelizing the known world. The effects of their labors, some twenty centuries later, are still being felt.

For the first millennium after Jesus, it almost seemed that higher education went into hiding. Master teachers were harder to find. Those, who lived and taught, have been mostly forgotten in the passage of time. The period of time from the Fall of Rome to the Renaissance evidenced an apparent absence of serious intellectual activity in the Western World. This may be the reason that this era is known as the Dark Ages.

In Western Civilization, higher education was on life support during the Dark Ages. It was kept alive by nobles, the elites, and the wealthy, who hired tutors to teach their prodigies sufficient knowledge and culture so that they could maintain their family place in the ruling scheme of things.

An 1890 sepia depiction of the Library at Alexandria. This photograph is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

In the remainder of the world, higher education was kept alive by the noble families, organized religion, and a few cities or states. Judaism had its yeshivas. Islam had its madaris. Hinduism had its mathas. Buddism had its schools for monks. In general, Eastern Civilization was more amenable to an open system of higher education than the West. A number of cities had schools which made education available to all worthy and deserving individuals, not just the wealthy, elite or connected few.

The Seal of the University of Bologna. Since the seal is hundreds of years old, it is not copyrighted. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

With the Rennaissance came the rebirth of higher education in the Western World and the founding of universities. The University of Bologna, founded in 1088, is the oldest university in continuous operation. Unfortunately, I have reached my self-imposed 1,000-word limit, so I will pick up the story of American higher education this coming Tuesday. Until then, class dismissed.

February 14, 2019 By B. Baylis 1 Comment

Key Performance Indicators – Part I, Introduction

With each new attempt to open up the topic of Key Performance Indicators, I hit a brick wall. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

In my post Getting Back in the Saddle from Tuesday, January 21, I indicated that my next post would be about a proposal for the introduction of the Admissions Multiplier Effect, a new Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for higher education. On multiple attempts to compose such a post, I found myself running into a brick wall.

The brick wall was more like a series of hurdles I kept tripping over. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

However, on closer examination, the brick wall turned out to be more like a series of hurdles over which I kept tripping.

The Baylis problem-solving methodology focuses on three questions. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

As a mathematician by training, during my college days I developed my own approach to problem-solving. My approach was centered around three questions. These three questions formed a basic methodological approach which I used in every mathematics, statistics, or science class I ever taught. My three questions were the contextual foundation in each of the three statistics textbooks I coauthored.

Baylis Problem-Solving Methodology involving three questions. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

The first question and beginning point is “What do I know?” Once that has been established, the second question is “What do I want to know?”

Map out the best path from Point A to Point B. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

If I know where I am and where I want to go, I can then plot out a course that answers the third question “How do I get from what I know to my destination of what I want to know?”

Most of the blood, sweat, and tears are shed during the hours of training. Once you’ve done the heavy lifting, it becomes easier to do it a second time. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

Faced with any problem, if you can answer these three questions, you have reached the crux of this problem. You have completed the most difficult task in solving this problem. You’re done with the majority of the heavy lifting. You are generally finished with the shedding of the blood, sweat, and tears. The hard work is almost complete. The only thing left to do is to follow the path that you laid out.

I have used this methodology to solve problems not only in all aspects of my personal life, but I have also used this approach in every mathematics, statistics or science course I ever taught. I included these questions in each course syllabi I distributed to students. I encouraged my students to test the effectiveness of the method in their encounters with problems.

In addition, these questions formed the contextual foundation of the three statistical textbooks I coauthored. I view statistics as a problem-solving tool. We included these questions in the opening paragraphs of the Preface of each textbook. Throughout the textbook, the three questions were the outline we used to present our version of a standard “Statistical Method” of problem-solving. We continued to reemphasize them as we introduced each statistical tests. The statistical tools such as ANOVA, chi-square, correlation, F-test, MANOVA, path analysis, Pearson-r, regression, Spearman-rho, t-test, and z-test, become parts of the path to be taken from what one knows to what one wants to know.

Returning to the original problem proposed by this post the introduction of a new KPI for higher education raises a number of other

questions, such as:

How do we know if a college is meeting its operational and strategic goals? Image courtesy of Presenter Media

What is a performance indicator (PI)?
What is a key performance indicator (KPI)?
What are the standard KPIs for higher education?
Many in higher education reject the idea that higher education is a business. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

Why do so many in higher education believe that higher education is not a business?
Why do so many academicians shun the use of performance indicators in higher education?
Why do I strongly believe the enterprise of higher education should be managed as if it were a business?
What are the admission and retention processes used by colleges? How can we tell if a college is meeting its admissions, retention and graduation goals successfully? Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

What are the primary aspects of the admission and retention processes in higher education?
What are some of the KPIs that are related to the admission and retention processes in higher education?
What is my definition of the Admission Multiplier Effect (AME)?
Why do we need to introduce the AME?
How should we introduce and use the AME?

The figurative brick wall I hit in the first paragraph of this post was the magnitude of work necessary to provide reasonable and intelligible answers to the three questions of the Baylis Problem-Solving Method.

To answer all these questions in one post on which I have imposed a 1000-word limit is an impossibility. In fact, I am not sure how many posts it will take me to answer all these questions. The best thing that I can do is to dive into the pool and start writing.

Since I am fast approaching that self-imposed limit of 1000 words for each post, I will close out this post. In my next post, I will address the question of “What are performance indicators?” Since I haven’t written the upcoming posts yet, at the end of each upcoming post, I will indicate the topic of the next post. Since I am also still trying to address some health issues related to a chronic-fatigue condition, I can’t guarantee my continued ability to maintain the substantial writing schedule that I have laid out for myself. For this reason, I have asked some friends and colleagues to step in and publish a guest post now and then. If any of my readers would be interested in taking a shot at writing such a post, please contact me and we’ll talk.

October 9, 2018 By B. Baylis 2 Comments

Repurpose or Build Anew

How should we improve or fix a broken structure? All images in this post are courtesy of Presenter Media.

This is the initial post in my Point versus Counterpoint thread. The proposal that I wish to address is the following: “When faced with the profound challenge of making significant changes to an existing program, facility or policy, what is the best approach for an institution to take?” Should the organization remodel the existing structure, or tear it down and completely rebuild a new structure from the ground up?

What happens when the pieces don’t fit together just right? You get a lot of pushing back and forth.

I have seen battles over this question severely divide more than one campus. Many times within education, these battles degenerate into classic clashes between traditionalists and disrupters, between evolutionists and innovators, or between the old guard and the young Turks.

In the quintessential debate approach of Point versus Counterpoint, it would be incumbent upon me to select a side on the “Repurpose or Build Anew” question. During my 50 years in the academy, I have been known as a traditionalist who studied and revered the best aspects of education’s rich history.

During 35+ years as a college administrator, I also had a reputation as being an approachable leader who listened carefully and made thoughtful decisions based upon all the evidence. These two characteristics might suggest that I should assume a role as a supporter of the “repurpose” side.

However, throughout my career, I have been acknowledged as an educational entrepreneur. I have been recognized for my ability to think outside the box while still accommodating those inside the box. Often I championed new and different approaches to problem-solving when the old methods were not working. I have been known for pushing for innovation and change when change is needed.

On the Rogers Adoption/Innovation Curve most of my former colleagues would place me in the Innovator or Early Adopter segments. I have always been known as someone who was eager to find new solutions to long-standing problems and pushed the limits on how the technology could help. These characteristics would suggest that I should assume the role of a supporter of the “build anew” side.

Even though I have had a 60+ year love affair with education, I am deeply concerned about its future. Given my recent work on the financial models of education and my research into the demise of more than 1600 American colleges or campuses since 1950, I see so much that is broken in American higher education that I often wondered where it is heading.

Since this is my blog, I will take an owner’s prerogative and assume the compromise position of favoring “Building Anew, Except in Very Limited Cases, When Repurposing Is Appropriate and the Most Feasible Approach.”

Why do I believe that “building anew” is the best choice for American higher education? Let me count the ways that I believe American higher education is in trouble.

American higher education has lost its lodestar. Where is the inspirational, values-based, principled leadership that developed the most advanced, highest quality system of higher education in the world?
The three segments of American higher education (public, non-profit private, and proprietary) treat each other as enemies and competitors rather than allies.
The basic financial model of American higher education is broken. How can a system survive that relies on billions of dollars annually from endowment and donors, and complains when those donors ask for something in return? How can a system take billions of dollars from public coffers and then balk at questions of accountability? How can a principled-system saddle its consumers (students) with more than $1.3 Trillion in debt load?
The internal structure of most institutions of higher education in American consists of isolated silos which have little to no communication with each other. Within most colleges, the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing.
American higher education has seemingly pushed the individuals who should be the most important persons in the system, the students, to the periphery. Investors are only interested in their Return on Investment (ROI). Administrators and faculty bicker constantly, bitterly accusing each other of sabotaging the enterprise and only looking out for their own self-interests. Students and parents complain incessantly that no one is listening to them.
Many students, parents, and politicians act as if education is an entitlement rather than a labor-intensive, responsibility. Debates on whether students should be given the rewards of education without the expending the hard work to earn them are waged privately across campuses and publicly in the media.
American education has fallen into the trap of the “Procrustean Bed” thinking one form of education fits all students and one measuring stick is sufficient for all institutions.
Society rallies around the banner of American higher education raised as the clarion call for social mobility. Community leaders then throw their hands up in despair when the data show it is not working. They conveniently forget that history suggests and the data show that education institutions tend to be excellent reflections of our society and not particularly effective change agents. Yes, there are individual victories. However, there have been too few to change our society as a whole.

Do you have a piece of the puzzle that I have missed. Please let me know what it is.

Readers, it is now your turn to engage in this conversation. Are there problem areas that I have missed? Please let me know now. In future posts, I intend to individually address each of the above areas. Readers, if you have a different take on those areas, you will an opportunity to weigh in on those areas at that time.

My next post, scheduled for Tuesday, October 16, will begin to address the issue of the lost lodestar of American higher education. Thank you for joining this journey. Enjoy your coffee and the conversation.

September 6, 2018 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

ATTENTION! BY’S MUSINGS IS BACK!

After an eight-month absence, By’s Musings has returned. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

Did that headline grab your attention? I certainly hope so. It’s not that I love attention. It’s just that I felt I needed to do something unusual to reach out to a new audience, along with my former audience.

Announcing the Grand Reopening of By’s Musings! Image courtesy of Presenter Media

After having been offline now for more than eight months, I definitely needed something to draw in that new audience and alert my former audience that By’s Musings is back in the game.

What in the worlds is By’s Musings? Image courtesy of Presenter Media

You don’t remember “By’s Musings“. You have no clue as to what it is. “By’s Musings” is my personal blog which also serves as an entry to my website Higher Ed By Baylis LLC.

Excuse me, but I have one question for you: If you didn’t know anything about By’s Musings, how did you get here? What made you read this Grand Reopening post from By’s blog?

Check By’s Musings on Monday, September 10, for an important message. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

My next post will be published on Monday, September 10. You’re all invited to check out that post. It will provide you with a brief description of the extensive damage that shut down both the blog and website for the better part of a year.

Please pardon our dust while our website and blog are under construction. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

In subsequent posts, I will provide a more complete account of the new features of the website and the new threads which will be the focus of future blog posts.

As a quick introduction to the coming changes, suffice it to say that I will be consolidating my efforts in both my blog and website to three specific areas. I will be using an approach that resembles more of a rifle than a shotgun to target the areas of education, organizational theory/operations, and faith/religion.

I will be making a number of other changes. The first change will be an increased emphasis on the use of social media for pre- and post-publication dissemination of information and announcements. I will be using social media as a vehicle to help drive readers to my blog and website.

The second change will be a greater stress on and push for audience participation in both my blog and website. I want to engender more discussion and conversation. In a true learning environment, everyone has something of value to bring to the table. Hopefully, we can enrich each other, by learning and teaching together.

In the third change, I will be using shorter blog posts to introduce topics and proposals for discussion. I will reserve the longer pieces for the website where they will be offered as resources to individuals and organizations via occasional whitepapers and ebooks. As the site develops more fully and becomes more operational, please check in at your convenience and browse through its contents.

“I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it.” Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

Borrowing a phrase from the Pointer Sisters, “I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it!” Please join me on an adventurous journey to both new and familiar places. Hopefully, all of us will learn much about ourselves and the world along the way. Bon voyage!

June 7, 2017 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

Education’s Big Lie, Part V: Every Student Is Important! No Student Should Be Forgotten!

I began this series of posts on Education’s Big Lie more than three months ago with the post Education’s Big Lie, Part I – Introduction. In attempting to make my first point I highlighted Procrustian’s aphorism “one size fits all.”

Caricature from 19th century German satirical magazine “Berliner Wespen” (Berlin Wasps) – Title: Procrustes. Caption: Bismarck: As I see, Lady Liberty is somewhat too large – we want to change this immediately to her contention. (He chops away her legs.) – Inscription on the bed: Socialist Law. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; in Public Domain

To address the question of whether the American systems of elementary, secondary and higher education are forgetting or ignoring students, I turn now to Henry David Thoreau, Albert Einstein, and Lyndon Johnson. This extremely disparate group of individuals might seem to be an unusual choice of spokespersons.

Thoreau was a 19th-century American writer and transcendental thinker. He is probably most well-known for his book “Walden; or, Life in the Woods“, a treatise on the simple life and self-sufficiency. The key tenets of transcendentalism included the inherent goodness of nature and individuals. Followers of this world view believed that our culture, society and its institutions had corrupted the purity with which each of us was born. To return to our best, natural state, we should withdraw from society.

Henry David Thoreau, 19th-century American artist, writer and intellectual (1817 – 1862) This image is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1923.

Thoreau is reported to have made the following comment concerning a child’s potential:

Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything.

I picked Thoreau because he could see the future in the eyes of a child playing with a jar of paint. Most people only see the child making a mess. To Thoreau, that child was envisioning a masterpiece on the epic scale of the Sistine Chapel.

This photo of a baby playing with yellow paint by Dutch artist Peter Klashorst is entitled “Experimental”. Image courtesy of Peter Klashorst and Wikimedia Commons. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

In December 1999, Time Magazine named Albert Einstein the Person of the Century. The editors proclaimed him to be a “genius, political refugee, humanitarian, locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe.” They further explained their somewhat controversial choice by saying, “He was the pre-eminent scientist in a century dominated by science. The touchstones of the era–the Bomb, the Big Bang, quantum physics and electronics–all bear his imprint.”

Albert Einstein German-American scientist (1879 – 1955), lecturing in Vienna in 1921, the year he won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Photo by Ferdinand Schmutzer. Image in Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons”

Einstein often spoke of the importance and significance of the individual. The following quote is generally attributed to him: manner:

The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen before.

Solitary hiker on virgin snow. The photo was taken March 23, 2014, by Tapas Biswas near Sandakphu, West Bengal’s highest peak. The image is licensed by Biswas under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Image courtesy of Tapas Biswas and Wikimedia Commons.

I picked Einstein and this quote denigrating the process of following the masses because Einstein was a person who set out on his own most of his life. He separated himself from the crowd and concentrated his attention on what he saw, heard and thought. These were things that people who took the shoveled path never saw.

Lyndon Johnson was elected Vice President of the United States in 1960 when John Kennedy won the presidency over Richard Nixon. When Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Johnson became the 36th President of the United States. Under Johnson’s leadership, a series of domestic legislative programs called the Great Society and the War on Poverty were enacted. They included Medicare and Medicaid, and a significant increase in federal spending on education, the arts, urban and rural development, and public services. There was also a dramatic increase in governmental attention to the civil rights of individuals.

The signing ceremony on April 11, 1965, for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) at the Former Junction Elementary School in Johnson City, Texas. Lyndon B. Johnson is seated at a table with his childhood schoolteacher, Ms. Kate Deadrich Loney. The President took the opportunity to deliver prepared remarks about educating American youth. This image is the work of Frank Wolfe, White House photographer, an employee of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties. As a work of the U. S. federal government, the image is in the **public domain**. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

In President’s Johnson prepared remarks he said,

By passing this bill, we bridge the gap between helplessness and hope for more than five million educationally deprived children.

We put into the hands of our youth more than 30 million new books, and into many of our schools their first libraries.

We reduce the terrible time lag in bringing new teaching techniques into the nation’s classrooms.

We strengthen state and local agencies which bear the burden and the challenge of better education.

And we rekindle the revolution–the revolution of the spirit against the tyranny of ignorance.

As a son of a tenant farmer, I know that education is the only valid passport from poverty.

As a former teacher–and, I hope, a future one–I have great expectations of what this law will mean for all of our young people.

As President of the United States, I believe deeply no law I have signed or will ever sign means more to the future of America.

To each and everyone who contributed to this day, the nation is indebted.

What an awesome responsibility to place on one law:

Bridge the gap between helplessness and hope
Put new books and libraries in our nation’s schools
Reduce the time lag in bringing new teaching techniques into our classrooms
Rekindle the revolution against the tyranny of ignorance
Provide a valid passport from poverty
Give young people great expectations for their futures

In the half a century since ESEA was signed into law, there have been a few victories. One of the first to occur in the late 1960’s was the concept of magnet schools. These schools were introduced as an educational reform model of public school choice as a way to address educational inequity. Magnet schools are based on the premise that students do not learn in the same way or at the same rate; that if we find a unifying theme or a different organizational structure for students of similar interest, students will learn more in all areas. In other words, if a magnet school voluntarily attracts students and teachers, it will succeed because, more than for any other reason, those in attendance want to be there. They will have chosen that school. These schools usually have superior facilities and staff and offer a specialized curriculum designed to attract pupils from any school throughout a city or district. Magnet schools have been created centered around STEM fields, the arts, and the classics.

Students at Parkland Aero Technology Magnet School in Rockville, MD are shown using a device called a Sunspotter to track sunspots. Talking to the students is Research Scientist Daniel Mueller. He is explaining what they are seeing. Mueller from the European Space Agency is working with the Solar and Heliosphere Observatory (SOHO) of NASA. The photograph was taken in June 2016 by a NASA employee. *This image is in the **public domain** in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. Image courtesy of NASA and Wikimedia Commons.*

A number of school districts have been very successful at putting new books and new technologies into libraries and the hands of our students. For example, the Port Charlotte school district on the Gulf Coast of Florida, approximately half way between Sarasota and Fort Myers, has a new combination library and media center that rivals many college facilities in its equipment and attractiveness. Its mission reflects the goals of President Johnson and the EASA legislation.

The Mission of the Port Charlotte High School Media Center is to encourage our students to develop a love of reading, to appreciate the many kinds of literature available, and to ensure that students become effective users of ideas and information. We aim to provide a comprehensive program of service, print and non-print materials, equipment and technology that will help meet the students’ academic and leisure needs. Our resources and instruction support the educational goals of Port Charlotte High School.

Port Charlotte High School Media Center in Port Charlotte, Florida. This image was posted to Wikimedia Commons by its author, identified as PCHS-NJROTC, on May 12, 2010, It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Image courtesy of PCHS-NJROTC and Wikimedia Commons.

Before we get too excited and get the idea that most public school libraries look like this, we must take note that Port Charlotte is a wealthy suburban district where the median price of homes in mid-2017 is over $235,000. It was ranked as the 15th best public school district in Florida by NICHE, a small firm that is comprised of data scientists, engineers, and parents, who are passionate about helping people discover the schools and neighborhoods that are right for them and their children. The total 2016 fiscal year budget for the Port Charlotte School District was $247million, of which $30million was appropriated for capital improvement projects.

There are many other successful school districts across the United States. However, the failures have far outnumbered the successes. To find examples of these failures, all one has to do is read the daily or weekly news reports coming out of Washington and many other cities and towns around the United States. In my next post, I will highlight some of those failures. Having been a participant in and observer of education for more than 65 years, I have seen at least six types of students who have been and are being ignored by American public K-12 education as a system and by individual teachers within the system. In subsequent posts, I will highlight these types of students and make some suggestions concerning what I believe needs to be done to bring these students into the mainstream.