J40 - Last Considerations

Beginning this last journal is difficult for me. I did not accomplish all that I had hoped to do this year; I didn’t even manage to write the 50 journals I had initially asked my students to write. I didn’t do many Self-Designed Assignments. I did manage to finish writing my lectures on being human (although the material I had to share only ended up filling about 6 lecture hours), but I hardly started my education piece (although its essential elements are now represented not only in my previous work but also in the final pieces from all four of my most direct students). To be honest, this is not completely surprising. I tried to dedicate at least 20 hours each week to E=mc2, but so much of that time was spent reading Alex’s journals or watching comedy with Noah or writing up plans for Bott, leaving little time for my own work. The pace of this work-for-others has only increased as the end of the year quite literally bears down upon us. And in this last semester of law school, many of my classes concluded with a research paper rather than a final exam, which took more time and effort than I am used to. So, I’m not ashamed that I got so little done, even if I am disappointed. As I said to Feb earlier this year, “At the conclusion of every project, we always feel like there's more to do. And it's true. Luckily, the project that is our own self-development and serving others need not conclude.”

Much of what I would normally include in this journal has been written already in my final paper (found on my Assignments page). Despite entering this class as the relative expert on the goals of the class, I believe that I learned far more than any of the students (which, since the goal of the class is to help students learn, might not actually be that surprising). I won’t repeat any of the discussions about things I learned that are included in my final paper. Two things which I learned but did not discuss there are how much I love naps, and how much I overestimate people. But I’d actually like to spend the rest of the journal wrapping up my project for this year and talking about myself and the gift that was E=mc2.

I was never happy in school. Ever. My first posting to this site describes the experience which began my antagonistic relationship with the school system; it occurred in Kindergarten. 

It’s interesting, I think, that economists equate the term “happy” with the term “satisfied.” My understanding of definitions and etymology, always a passion of mine, has changed slightly in light of my extensive study into the nature of the human mind this year, but I nevertheless think that this equivalence is hugely significant. To be unhappy means that we are somehow unsatisfied, that we don’t have enough of something. After doing all the research I did this year, I now know that human beings are defined by their sense of purpose, by their imagination, and by their capacity to create. Man’s ultimate end, that which he is always pursuing, is happiness. But this statement is rather tautological in light of the equivalence described above: man is always seeking the satisfaction of the ends he seeks to attain. The question is what brings man happiness, and I think that the answer is just to be more fully human. We can never reach full satisfaction. If, indeed, all of our ends could somehow be satisfied instantly, then we could no longer engage in human action (the striving after the attainment of ends), and we would therefore cease to be human. The human condition is one of struggle, a struggle defined by purpose. Greater happiness, therefore, comes from acting to attain greater ends, to live with greater purpose. To be happy is to live with purpose. And this is what I was missing in school. It is what so many students are missing, as modern schooling seems hell-bent on dehumanizing the students trapped within it. 

E=mc2 finally gave me purpose. 

I’m not just talking about my own project, obviously, although it somehow provided enough motivation for me to write over 100,000 words during the course of the year, in addition to all my other writing for law school. I’m also not just talking about my work for Bott, which I enjoyed because it allowed me to really flex my abilities for perhaps the first time ever. To be asked to produce a document or idea, and then to produce it more quickly and of a better quality than requested, again and again, brings with it its own satisfaction. To feel useful: that’s all I can ever ask of a job. But what really drove me this year was my kids, and the work I did with them. To be in a position where I could offer them something (besides just arcane knowledge of economic theory), to know that I could help them accomplish some of their goals, that got me out of bed every morning. I spent hundreds of one-on-one hours with Alex, Noah, Jonah, and Feb, but I also offered a few critically important comments on all the other projects, and being in the high school regularly gave me opportunities to form relationships with and positively influence the thinking of many students outside of the E=mc2 program. Mikayla, Llewellyn, Silma, Colin, Jason, Layla . . . they all mean something to me. I’ve taught classes before (Intro to Micro, Intro to Macro, History of Economic Thought), and I remember many of my hundreds of students from those classes, too: Shane, Mitchell, Liam, Maya, Courtney, Max. But those classes were nothing like E=mc2, built on individual relationships as it is. In E=mc2 I could be myself, and that was enough to be of value to some people. People wanted my opinion, my ideas, my feedback. I engaged in interesting conversations on many different topics with many different people, and I truly hope that each participant left with something new to think about and grow from. Discussing philosophy with Alex for literally hours after school in the library, watching stand-up comedy with Noah in one of the lecture halls at the law school, visiting Feb in the lab and trying to talk her down from various metaphorical ledges, and seeing them all learn so much and grow so much  . . . it has been a tremendous privilege, and the best time of my life. This past semester there was one class which I did not attend even once. When questioned, I pretended to be a typical college student and complained that the class began at the ungodly hour of 8:30am. Somehow I never had any trouble being at the high school before 7:00am. 

I was happy this year. Happier than I’ve ever been. E=mc2 finally gave me work that required the full extent of my skills, stimulated my intellect and my passions, and entrusted me with great responsibility (the education of such special students). No one understood why I agreed to work so many hours at a made-up job, for free. My father continuously reminded me to keep my priorities straight, repeatedly told me that I should stop volunteering at the school. But E=mc2 and the kids in it were my highest priority, and, for the first time ever, going to school was the bright part of my life. When some of my friends came home for winter break, they noticed the difference in me. They noticed my quiet peace, they noticed that I was quicker to smile and laugh, they noticed that I didn’t cling to them like I had in the past. I told them that I was living the life that I wanted to be living.  There were some challenges this year, and some devastating moments that came out of nowhere and threatened to ruin everything. But I overcame them, survived them, learned from them. And now, at the end of an extraordinary year, I am a better, wiser, happier human being. This is the gift that E=mc2 has given me.

The purpose that E=mc2 has given me will continue to drive me after this year officially comes to a close, because E=mc2 has taught me what I actually care about and shown me how to live a good life around it. I will serve as a coordinator again next year. But, more than that, living with purpose has encouraged me to take on more responsibility in my pursuit of improving the lives and learning of children. I ran for a seat on the Guilderland Board of Education this year, and won it. Over at least the next two years I will be working towards improving the educational experience of far more students than just the ones in E=mc2. But the students in the class who are leaving will themselves continue to drive me. Getting to know them, seeing what they’re capable of, observing what school does to them, and understanding how their lives might have been better, will continue to drive me for the rest of my life, no matter what my job title ends up being. I have become more and more convinced this year that education is the hill that I must die on. In the past, I would have been content to leave the hell that is public school far behind me, burning in its own destructive fires. I, after all, had barely managed to survive intact. But, for the sake of my kids, and all the kids that will come after them, I turn now to reenter the flames and fight for the other kids’ survival, too. 

The goal of this class was always to change lives. I am proof that it can.

Symposium Opening

*I am not delivering the opening remarks, but if I were, this is what I would say.*

Good evening, Everyone!

Welcome to the third annual E=mc2 Symposium! We’re all very excited that you’re here.

My name is Ben Goes. This year I have had the great privilege of working with 11 amazing students on their incredible research projects, with topics ranging from stand-up comedy to glial cell morphology in nematode worms. Through their projects, students struggled continuously with big, difficult, profound questions. Tonight you will have the opportunity to hear from each one of these students as they describe the questions they faced, the conclusions they came to, and the growth they experienced in the process. 

Tonight marks the end of an entire year of research and production for these students. Many of them will be graduating shortly. But, with the lessons these students learned during their time in E=mc2, I am confident that tonight is most definitely not the end of their learning. Education doesn’t just happen in school, and the goal of this class has always been to empower students to seek knowledge on their own initiative and use it to improve their world. This class, and the student work you will see tonight, stands for the propositions that information need not come from an authority figure in the front of a classroom, that learning does not need to be structured by a planned curriculum, and that one can be a student and yet still contribute something new to our most important fields of knowledge.

The speeches you will hear tonight are not book reports. They are not about the students, or their tangible work this year, but, rather, are presentations of ideas that the students have developed through their work this year. We invite you to not just listen, but to think along with them and consider the deeper lessons that they have learned.

Enjoy!

Free to Not Learn

On Saturday, April 14, several of the E=mc2 students put on an event at the Guilderland Public Library. They each had an exhibit of sorts where they could talk about their work thus far this year, and they all participated in a discussion panel where they talked about the E=mc2 program itself. The event was called “Free to Learn: GHS Students Present a Year of Open Inquiry.” Being there, seeing how excited these kids were about what they had done and to hear about how much they appreciated the program that allowed them to do such work, was one of the greatest moments of my life. The work I’ve done for E=mc2 is, undoubtedly, the most important work that I’ve done, and to see some of its fruit was incredibly gratifying. My favorite part was, of course, the panel discussion, where students talked about the program and explained what it had done for them and what lessons it had taught them. Statements that had first appeared in emails between Bott and myself many years ago were now coming from the mouths of our students; the clearest sign of our success. After all, the E=mc2 program is not about projects; it’s about students. It’s not important what the topic of a student’s research is because the real lessons are not related to subject matter. The goal of the program is to help students think, and to give them a space where they can think, and a by-product of this is the learning of some deeper lessons about learning itself. The casual discussion of how traditional schooling oppresses students in front of an audience containing a school board member, two superintendents, and half a dozen teachers is a sure sign that some of those lessons have been learned. It made me very happy to sit in that audience and listen to the students talk about such things.

And yet, there was something that the students were missing. One lesson that has, unsurprisingly, not been quite absorbed. It’s a lesson that has taken even me over half a decade to learn and understand fully. It is a difficult lesson, because it is so subtle, and because it challenges the very foundation of education itself. The lesson is this: Freedom is an end, not a means. 

The students all seem to understand that the goal of the E=mc2 program is to give them freedom to explore on their own and do what they want. But that’s the goal. That’s it. I certainly hope that the students will use this freedom to learn a lot and do great things. And, indeed, we have some absolutely stellar students who do. Some projects this year have been staggeringly impressive. However, some other projects have been remarkably disappointing. And you know what? That’s okay. Because we aren’t giving students freedom because it will yield more impressive results than a more structured curriculum. We don’t advocate for open inquiry because it will help kids learn more, faster. The idea behind E=mc2 is not that there is a better method of learning. The real idea behind E=mc2 is that students should be free. And this means that students should be free to not learn, if they so choose. 

The disconnect here, between appreciating freedom in education and understanding it, became apparent to me while working with some students on campaign speeches for the board of education election. In one speech, about the purpose of school, I was suggesting that school should strive to serve students and make sure that they’re happy. One of my students suggested that this might be unwise, because most people think that schools need to train students and that students can’t be trusted to oversee their own educations. She suggested that I explain that students aren’t stupid before I advocate yielding control to them. In another speech, about respecting students (the central pillar of my educational philosophy and school board campaign), I was explaining that we should be celebrating each student’s individuality rather than trying to make them all conform to a central vision. A different student said that individuality isn’t necessarily a good thing. He suggested that I should try to convince people about that before trying to convince them that schools should be fostering it. Both of them seem to be saying (and, of course, I haven’t done the conversations justice here) that I need to justify my ideas by showing how they will lead to better outcomes. 

I do believe that children can be trusted with more control over their own lives. I don’t think they’re as dumb as they are often thought to be. I do think that freedom in education will lead to better outcomes. But that is not why I think that students should be entitled to more respect from their schools. Respect is not a pedagogical device that motivates students to perform better. It's not about getting more out of them. Treating students nicely in order to get them to do what you want is not respect at all. Respect is not some new plan for teaching; it’s just treating students like human beings. I, of course, want students to learn and grow in E=mc2 and in school generally. But I can’t make them learn and grow. All I can do, all anyone should do, is offer support and an environment where kids can gain an education, if they want one. But for them to truly be free to learn, students must be free to not learn. This is what respect and freedom mean. If students are not free to not learn, then they are not free, and they are not respected. 

We tend to treat children like products, like objects in development. The purpose of school, the goal of education, seems to be to mold them into what they should be: productive workers, wise citizens, kind friends. It is widely recognized that there are flaws in this system, and many reform efforts are underway, trying new methods of helping children perform better and succeed at the tasks before them. But none of these reform movements recognize that the real flaw in our education system is that we treat children like products. The real problem is that even in conversations about implementing open inquiry across the curriculum, the implicit reason for doing so is because it will produce better results. No reform with that goal at its base can ever be genuine. The issue in education is not what the central plan looks like, but the fact that there is a central plan.

Of course, freedom and respect and open inquiry do lead to better outcomes. Freedom allows students to embrace and foster their individual talents and interests and thus build themselves into what they want to be. Respect teaches students what it means to be human, and gives them the agency to develop as a human being in all of its creative glory. Open inquiry allows students’ minds to develop naturally and more comprehensively, by teaching them to question and argue and make connections. All of this leads to the development of an individual who is unique and capable of great things. On the other hand, treating children like products denies them all of these things and also has other impacts on their psyche. For example, schools implicitly teach students that there’s one right way to be. And then grade students on their progress towards being that way. And this creates a fear in children, an urgency to be perfect. Fear of failure, when all learning involves some degree of failure (as we revise our previous ideas about the world), is devastating to a person’s ability to learn and grow and change. Students start feeling bad about being different. They feel like failures when they fall short of perfection. They start to see the world in black and white, good or bad, and all based on a standard outside of themselves. It becomes increasingly difficult for them to be their own person, to be an individual, at least openly.

And, as we’ve learned through my project this year, it is human imagination and action which makes this world a better place. This doesn’t mean that we need a bunch of people designed a certain way to produce a certain amount for society to grow. Because that’s not how society grows. Civilization and all of its fruit springs from the spaces between people, from the utilization of their differences and their interactions as equals. Society is a spontaneous order; it was not designed, and it cannot be designed. The future cannot be planned. Neither can children. The sooner we stop trying, the better.

To review, the reason for respecting students and giving them more freedom is not because it will turn them into the type of people we want them to be. Such a notion is horribly confused. It’s like suggesting that we get rid of standardized testing because then there could be more real learning and students would hypothetically do better on such standardized tests. No, the real reason to get rid of testing is because students are not things to be tested. Similarly, the real reason that students should be respected and free to learn is because that is how people should be treated in our society. 

This is a difficult concept to grasp, that respecting students is for them, not for us. But if this particular reform is to really be different, we must relentlessly check our own internal tendency towards social engineering and always keep the focus on the students. Educators, schools, cannot really give students an education. They cannot force children to learn. All they can do is offer an education and give students the freedom to get it. We need to focus on what we can do, not on what we want to do. And we need to focus on doing what is right. E=mc2, and school generally, should not just be a place where students are free to learn. It must also be a place where students are free to not learn.