There can be no doubt that we are experiencing a crisis in American education today. Budgets are being slashed, class sizes are exploding, standards are not being met, and too many of our children are just plain failing to thrive. As would be expected, fingers are pointing at all the usual suspects — incompetent teachers, self-serving teacher unions, disengaged parents, inadequate funding, etc.
While not minimizing the problems in these and other areas, could it be that the real source of our education crisis lies elsewhere? Could it be that the crisis we are facing in American education is not a crisis of schooling at all, but a crisis of agency? By agency, I mean the power and capacity to make real decisions and take meaningful action. Agency becomes a crisis when it is concentrated in the wrong hands.
So who holds the agency in American education today? Is it our superintendents? Our principals? Our teachers? Our parents? Surely not our students, right?
In fact, very little agency is held by any of these stakeholders who are most intimately affected by the day-to-day operations of our schools. Instead, agency is concentrated in the state and federal mandates that tie local hands by prescribing curriculum, requiring high-stakes assessments, and administering draconian punishments for failure to comply. All of this serves to narrow the curriculum, disempower teachers, principals, parents, and students, and diminish the possibility of creating vibrant, growth-producing learning communities.
Education renewal advocate John Goodlad writes that, “We are not going to get the large supply of good teachers we need until they get the necessary autonomy of agency that good teaching requires. Thinking has been taken out of the schoolhouse just as it has been taken out of the workplace beyond.”
State and federal governments do have a vital role in public education, but that role should focus primarily on promoting the public purpose of our schools, protecting the rights of learners and ensuring equitable access. The particulars of education need to be hammered out by those most directly involved in making our schools work — the learning communities themselves.
In his book “Reinventing the Sacred,” scientist and professor Stuart Kauffman points out that “Meaning derives from agency… there can be no meaning without agency.” Could this explain the lack of meaning that too often characterizes education today? By denying our schools agency, we deprive them of meaning. And without meaning, American education is surely lost.
Jim Strickland lives in Everett and teaches at Marysville-Pilchuck High School.
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