Why the Hell NOT?

"That's the nature of any human system -- the most important aspects of it are unstatable and unknowable."
-- Stephen Sniderman, "Unwritten Rules"

Last Tuesday afternoon I found myself in a chilly room at Seattle Center, listening to yet another presentation about how to become part of the recently-passed School Levy. I'd been to three of these damn workshops over the summer, each time thinking, "Well, surely our youth art program will fit into this eligible category -- "College Readiness," say, or "Summer Learning" -- and each time I'd come away somewhere on the wretched spectrum between discouraged and disconsolate, depending on my caffeine intake. (In fairness to the Office for Education, I should acknowledge that the PowerPoint-induced ennui inherent in attending these events is aggravated a thousandfold by my own peculiar psychological vulnerabilities and pedagogical passions.)

And then, weeks after I'd gratefully tucked my manila "LEVY" folder way in the back of the file drawer and breathed a sigh of relief that it would be seven years before I'd have to pull it out again -- up popped a whole new workshop on the schedule. This one, organized by the Mayor's Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, was aimed at arts organizations who were interested in Levy funding. Well, this one's got to apply to us, I thought. I guess I can make it through one more session. Especially if there's coffee.

There wasn't coffee.

Instead, there was Hal: the smart, jovial consultant hired by the City to help them develop a process for spending the Levy money. Hal started things out by walking us through the distinction between "funders" and "investors." "Funders" he began, "are people -- or government agencies or foundations -- who fund programs." Yes, we all nodded. We were familiar with (and grateful for) that phenomenon, upon which many of our livelihoods depend. "Investors," on the other hand, "are people or organizations who invest in results." 

He went on: "You all write proposals, right?" We nodded again. "You write these wonderful descriptions of your programs -- all the fabulous things you do." We nodded, warily this time; a hint of disdain had crept into his tone. "Well, let me tell you: nobody wants to read about your programs. That stuff puts everyone to sleep! What excites people is results!"

As an example he referred to the presentation we had just seen, about an organization that creates 4th grade curriculum linking academic concepts to concepts in the arts. The presenter had described these hands-on, integrated lessons that explore contrast, for example, in both literature and visual arts. Or pattern, a key element in both math and dance. We all found this idea intriguing, exciting -- inspiring, even. Then the presenter told us that at the schools using this curriculum, kids' math scores surpassed the district's average (by some small yet significant amount that I can't remember at the moment). At four of the five schools, kids felt more positive about school in general. And by the third year, teachers reported feeling more confident integrating art into their classrooms.

Well, I think those results are terrific -- seriously, nice work, guys. (I couldn't help wondering whether the students' ability to paint or dance had improved as a result of the program, but nobody seems to be measuring that.) I'd like to think there's room in the world -- if not in the Levy -- for a straight-up arts program that teaches kids art. But hey, it's awesome that someone has found such a marvelous way to weave the arts into math and reading instruction.

Hal, of course, urged the presenter to highlight those test scores -- "Lead with your results!" For some reason this really got to me. For heaven's sake, Hal -- can we really not see the value of this program independent of "the data"?

I thought about the movie I had watched with my YouthCAN students the week before. Man on Wire is a documentary about Philippe Petit, the Frenchman who, while sitting in a dentist's office at the age of 17, saw a magazine photo of the World Trade Center being built -- and decided then and there that he would one day walk a tightrope between the two towers. The story of how a small band of devoted friends and willing acquaintances helped him to achieve this lunatic feat is told in the movie through interviews, reenactments, and period footage: they practiced for years in a French pasture... built models of the buildings to test out their rigging... infiltrated the construction site disguised as workmen and architects... hid under tarps until the guards fell asleep... used a bow and arrow to shoot a fishing line from one tower to the other... then pulled successively thicker strings and ropes across until they had a 3/4 inch steel cable set across the gap. And then, at 7:15 on the morning of August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit stepped off the roof of the World Trade Center and onto the wire.

Sitting in the Levy workshop I remembered the scene where Petit has finally made his outrageous lifelong dream come true, leaving thousands of onlookers (and all of us watching the movie) with our hearts in our wide-open mouths, forever changed by the sight of a young man in black bell-bottoms walking -- dancing, really -- back and forth across the sky, a quarter mile above the pavement.  After forty-five minutes (and eight crossings), Petit is escorted from the roof by police officers, one of whom tells reporters, "Everybody was spellbound in the watching of him... I personally figured that I was watching something that somebody else would never see again in the world." When Petit emerges onto the sidewalk, a thousand reporters are waiting, thrusting their microphones into his face.  "Why?" “Why did you do it?” "Why?" "Why?"

"'Why? Why?'" he repeats, recalling his confusion in that moment. "I did something magnificent and mysterious, and I got a practical 'Why?' And the beauty of it is that I didn't have any why."  We see young Petit in the police station, being asked again, "Why did you do it?" He shrugs: "There is no why." By which I assume he meant something like, Hello? Did you not see what I just did? I did it because it was fucking awesome.

Knowing I'd regret it, yet unable to stop myself, I slowly raised my hand. "It sounds like this Levy money will be used to target academic achievement, which is totally appropriate and fine with me. But I feel like I need to say -- I mean, I’m probably not the only person in this room who’s kind of horrified by the idea that someone would fall asleep reading about the awesome stuff my students are doing, and then perk up and get all excited about whether their MAP scores went up by six points or eight. I want to reaffirm for all of us: even if we haven’t documented a direct connection between our programs and and a statistically significant rise in standardized test scores, it doesn't mean we’re not achieving anything valuable. Our results may be unquantifiable, mysterious, ineffable; they may not show up for years in our students' lives. But they can be life-changing."

It was a mistake, of course. Hal told me politely that it didn't sound like this Levy funding was a good match for my program -- which I had kind of gathered, thanks. A few other people made comments similar to mine, but mostly it felt like our existential posturing was just getting in the way of other people's practical questions about application deadlines and so on. Feeling vaguely humiliated but still somehow defiant, I slowly packed up my papers and let my colleague lead me out of the room, down the stairs, and straight to the nearest Starbucks.

Again, I want to be clear that I'm not opposed to the Office for Education's decision to focus on academic achievement and demonstrable results (putting aside my issues with this narrow definition of academic progress for the moment). What I'm bothered by is the way this kind of "bottom line" business model gets applied to everything in our lives, from city governance to school attendance. So often I see people pushing eagerly on those bottom line numbers, seemingly oblivious to the things that really matter (or at least, the things that matter to me). Sure, you can reduce the number of middle schoolers who miss more than ten days of school a year by dangling "incentives" in front of them, like bicycle raffles and pizza parties; I'd be the first to admit that behaviorism works. But that doesn't mean you've addressed the deeper questions -- like why it might be hard for some kids to make it to class every day, and whether it's worth their time when they get there.

In my experience "measurable outcomes" are hard to define in many important endeavors. Even if you can articulate them, they're certainly not the compelling force that drives you to do this crazy thing you're doing: bringing up children, say -- or creating something meaningful on a canvas or a stage. Same with fighting injustice, working for peace, or saving the planet. You may well have a clear vision in your head of what "success" would look like, and yes, you'd like to have a sense that your efforts are "making a difference" as they say. But often you have to accept that your progress toward that goal may not be quantifiable, documentable, or visible in your lifetime.

In a situation like that, there has to be something inside you that won't let you give up. Call it passion or faith or sheer, blind determination -- it's the force that pushes you over your doubts and past your failures. This is the rope you hang onto -- eyes closed, knuckles whitening -- through temper tantrums at the grocery store and all-night vigils in the sickroom, through rejection letters and election-night defeats, through long hours crouched under a tarp on the 104th floor of an unfinished skyscraper.

I'm not trying to argue that this sort of activity is necessarily the best use of tax-payer dollars -- though it can have tremendous public benefit under certain circumstances. I am trying to suggest (in my own roundabout way) that anyone who wants to improve a complex human system such as public education needs to recognize that, as Stephen Sniderman says, "the most important aspects of it are unstatable and unknowable." 

The morning after my encounter with Hal, I arrived at work to find the museum swarming with school district administrators, politicians, education advocates, and reporters, all gathered to hear the Interim Superintendent deliver her annual State of the District Report. Levy people were there, basking in the voters' two-two-one approval of the measure (Thanks, voters!). Mayor McGinn was there, touting his incentive-based attendance campaign (Sigh). City Councilman Tim Burgess was there, sharing stories about teachers who made a difference in his life (and suggesting that perhaps recent efforts by some reform advocates to vilify the whole profession might be misguided). There were cameras and microphones and dignitaries: in short, it was quite a scene. I joined a small group of museum staff huddled in the side hall, watching the proceedings through an open door.

Finally Susan Enfield stepped up to the podium to deliver her presentation. The State of the District was, alas, pretty grim: "We've made some progress. But it's not enough." Dr. Enfield's slides focused gamely on the good news: graduation rates are up, and a few schools have made impressive gains in test scores in the last year. SPS students continue to outperform their peers across the state. (I have decided not to try to pin down precisely what all this relative success means in absolute terms.)

The bad news did not appear in graphic form, but the picture was clear enough. The achievement gap has not budged. The idea that “a child's zip code should not determine the quality of his or her education” kept coming up -- but in a plaintive, painful way that made it clear it still does. The district has made progress on 18 of the 23 academic measures laid out in its strategic plan, but they are only on track to meet their goals for 2013 in three of those areas. “Those goals were laid out in better times,” Dr. Enfield pointed out. Now that the economic picture is so much worse, "we will be revisiting them, and revising them." More budget cuts are on the way -- the state's finances have crumpled under the weight of the current recession. The administration has worked hard in previous years to keep cuts as far away from the classroom as possible; this time, Dr. Enfield warned, “there are no good decisions.”

There were a few applause lines: like when she graciously thanked the district's community partners, or saluted the voters for passing the School Levy. And again, when she wound things up with some very sweet photographs of smiling children: "I want us to all remember why this work is so important."

As I stood there listening to that incongruous clapping, my heart sank. I thought of the many PTA meetings I've attended over the years, where a weary principal presented a school budget, pointing out the clever ways he or she had found to shield our children from the effects of the latest cuts. It was something of a tradition for someone (often me, but not always) to kick off the ensuing discussion by pointing out that this budget was completely ridiculous, that the level of funding provided by the state was totally inadequate, and that the minutes should reflect that we as a PTA found the situation utterly unacceptable. Then we would we proceed with the agenda -- asking questions and offering feedback, figuring out how to make do with the numbers in front of us (while acknowledging that other schools faced far worse struggles than ours). I'm sure this little ritual had zero effect on the legislature, whose members are probably not in the habit of reading Orca's PTA minutes. But it was a way of keeping ourselves from getting adjusted to the crooked, sinkhole-ridden playing field our country has laid out for its schoolchildren.

I had a brief, bitter urge to shove all those dignitaries aside and leap up onto a table, screaming something pithy about kids' futures and the state's paramount duty and the emperor's empty wardrobe. As I struggled with this wave of rage, it dissolved into something more like sorrow. (Looking back now, I think my intense reaction to the State of the District grew out of a helpless realization that I no longer have time to work on this stuff I care about so deeply. That and the fact that I'd left my second cup of coffee cooling on the kitchen counter that morning.) I took a ragged breath, ducked into the bathroom, splashed cold water on my face, and headed back to my desk.

Which is maybe where I belong, honestly -- working up a post-Petit lesson plan for my YouthCAN students, who were coming in that afternoon. Or developing activities for their visit to "Luminous: The Art of Asia" at SAM. Or writing text for the video game art show that's opening in February. It's probably best to leave the State of the District to someone like Susan Enfield -- who had, after all, managed to lay out my basic concerns about widening inequality and shrinking resources quite clearly, without being reduced to a seething, sputtering blob of bile.  



The next day, Simon and I were speed-walking down the hall at Orca (I was trying to get him signed in at First Base before it was too late to take the train to work) when we were stopped in our tracks by a mesmerizing drawing framed in yellow butcher paper:

Two feet wide and crawling with detail, this remarkable creation had been taped up on the cinderblock wall as part of a display for Environmental Science Night:

I wished Hal could see this -- and not because this exercise in direct observation and detailed documentation probably had a beneficial (and possibly even measurable) effect on the future science scores of these six-year-olds. No, I thought of Hal because the Henry Miller quote that accompanied this array of squiggly yellow circles captured so beautifully the pedagogical approach I had tried to get across to him: "The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself." 

In my (limited) teaching experience, if you are able to to give close attention to the young people in front of you -- their faces and moods, their questions, their fears, their favorite bands, their drawings of sunflowers -- then, like blades of grass, each one opens up into a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world of his or her own. It's such an honor to get a glimpse of that world... to watch it unfold... to ask real questions and listen to the answers... until you begin to understand the universe this kid inhabits, maybe well enough to nudge open a new door inside it. There may be no measurable result to document -- no why to explain to curious reporters -- but you know deep down that what you're doing at that moment matters. I'm extraordinarily lucky to be working in a setting that values this kind of approach. That the folks at my kids' school seemed to embrace it too -- and to foster it in the students -- is far more heartening to me than the fact that our science scores were up last year.

I thought back to the applause that filled the Community Hall at the end of Dr. Enfield's presentation Wednesday morning. I would think most of those politicians, administrators, and advocates were just as discouraged as I was -- and yet there we all were, clapping away. It wasn't complacency, or politeness, either. Maybe they also share my perception that our schools are mostly filled with dedicated, hard-working teachers, principals, and support staff. They know these educators get overwhelmed at times, and sometimes they fail miserably, just like the rest of us. But many of them are doing amazing, inspiring, magnificent things -- things you and I could never pull off in a million years if someone put us in a room with 30 kids for six hours a day. Maybe the applause was simply about appreciating those teachers and principals -- honoring the passion, faith, and sheer, blind determination that keeps them going, day after day. 

Maybe the applause was about acknowledging how hard it must be for teachers to hang on to either magnificence or passion when they are juggling so many other responsibilities and pressures -- not to mention the many distractions and disasters that emerge in a classroom with too many needy kids and not enough grown-ups. Sometimes they are further distracted by the failings of the bureaucracy that is supposed to support them, or by enormous systemic disasters over which they have no control.

I have to hope that somewhere in that awkward ovation was a slender thread of steely resolve: something that could lead, like Petit’s fishing line, to a solidly anchored, unwavering commitment to fix those bureaucratic shortcomings and tackle those systemic disasters (starting with the state’s abject failure to fully fund basic education… or perhaps Tim Eyman’s unconstitutional crippling of the legislature’s power to raise the necessary cash). I want to say I heard a promise to teachers to provide the resources and support they need -- so they can focus wholeheartedly on the children in front of them, and get results we can all applaud with pride. I’d like to see significant, measurable progress toward that goal before Simon hits high school. That means all those applauding dignitaries are going to have to muster up some all-out, over-the-top, no-holds-barred passion and determination of their own.

While I’m in this ambitious goal-setting mode, let me throw out a couple more we could aim for. How about a school system where the idea of teaching (and funding) art for art’s sake isn’t seen as a crazy indulgence? How about if we recognize the creative disciplines as an integral part of human development, a central pillar of any decent education -- and an appropriate element of College Readiness and Summer Learning?

Yes, let’s give the next generation the academic skills they need to accomplish their goals -- of course. But let’s also make sure at least some of those goals are mysterious, unstatable, impossibly magnificent – fucking awesome, if you will. Let’s teach them about vision, leadership, teamwork, and sacrifice. Let’s show them what it takes to make an impossible dream come true.