No Child Left Behind and No One Gets Ahead

Character keeps popping up in educational and leadership news lately.  In this NY Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& the writer describes an elite New York private school where standardized tests are eschewed and character again made king.  It’s an odd anachronism in the post No Child Left Behind era.  George Bush’s sweeping educational law reauthorization ushered in a golden age of entitlement for learners.  “My kid gets the grade or else.”  As the NCLB vice grip has tightened and schools threatened with increasing sanctions for less than perfect student performance on standardized tests, the competitive frenzy of Obama’s Race to the Top has actually appeared to be an attractive alternative for beaten down and confused educational institutions.  Politicians have hit the motherlode:  as they perennially characterize schools as failures, their grand coming to the rescue remains a top of the charts hit.


The article quotes Riverdale School’s headmaster, Dominic Randolph.  “The idea of building grit and building self-control is that you get that through failure.  And in most highly academic environments in the United States, no one fails anything.”


What?  I thought everyone was failing everything.


Yesterday, as another mother rushed to complain about a teacher hurting her son’s feelings by rebuking him, I was again reminded of how things have changed.  The new generation of over protective parents and cloistered kids is upon us.  As a mother, I have that over-blown impulse too.  I want to throw my weight around when a teacher fails to recognize the special talents of my amazing boy and, even worse, dares to miss counting one of his assignments in the grade book, or unfairly scores his quiz.  Yep.  Guilty.


But who did that for me as a child?  No one.  At best Mom was un-involved, and at worst either sided with the teacher or engaged the teacher in an embarrassing argument.  Which incidentally was never about my specialness.  Dad was completely disengaged from my life at school;  his job was at Lockheed and mine was at school.  His work was classified – he could not have talked about it if he wanted to;  and mine at school might as well have been the same.  I rode my bike to my own softball practice, and when my catcher’s glove caught in the spokes, took a head-first spill, scraping my thigh and hip raw.  I got up, wiped away a tear or two, and continued on without ado.  Neither parent ever watched me play any sport. Nor did they peruse my homework.  The envelope with my report card could sit on the counter with the junk mail for a full week before anyone bothered to open it. 

Flash to now:  I’m on the sidelines of every soccer game,  yelling words of encouragement and unauthorized advice.  Email to teachers prevents the report card from bearing the slightest surprise.  I’m engaged.


Which of these approaches is more likely to build character?  We all know the answer, don’t we? 


Somehow the responsibility meter went haywire in my generation and we’ve all turned into insufferable bosses, unable to relinquish the slightest bit of control to the small extensions of our identity we so smotheringly love.


Enter the Great Recession.  Schools are threadbare, yet continue their sweatshop labor under the NCLB lash, pushing the standardized test scores higher, and yes, more students graduate.  The college entry stats inch upwards.  Everyone believes in himself and his dream, and nothing can stand in his way.  Not GPAs, not admissions policies, not tuition costs.  We push them through and they graduate, eyes shining and expensive degree in hand, only to land on the doorstep of the real world without the slightest inkling what to do next.  No jobs.  Housing market in the basement.  I guess one way or another, failure eventually comes. 


We built our grit and determination as eight year olds in the meandering reaches of the neighborhood, exploring on our own, and taking our licks where we got them.  Our children have been pulled indoors by the irresistible allure of bright screens, and protected by an out of whack parental instinct in  an increasingly scary world. They will make it to adulthood with children’s lessons yet to learn.


So what’s wrong with advocating for your child?  With supporting him in his endeavors and helping him feel good about himself?  Nothing.  It’s just that when these impulses take honesty hostage, the formula goes sour.  A good thing gone rotten.  Neglect is not a parenting strategy, no.  But healthy boundaries mean exhibiting the self-control to let your child struggle, to let him find his own path, to allow him to experience losses as well as wins, and yes, to allow him to fail.  We can empathize without rescuing.  We can console without going to war with the loss.  Loving your child means believing he can develop the character and grit to overcome obstacles, hone muscles, spark brain cells, and discover his own talents and joy. Loving your child means getting out of the way and letting him become someone.  It’s not so much that No Child be Left Behind, but rather that each child have authentic opportunity.  That each be allowed to discover his path, in his way and time.  Just like we did.