by Hans Hageman
I just spent two fascinating days at a wonderful private school in Southern California. The biggest concerns in this school community were around the emphasis on AP courses and some scheduling issues that affected the availability of rich offerings in academics, arts, and athletics. They have curricular offerings in Social Justice and an incredible Global Initiatives program. They are a true learning organization with teachers who are committed to excellence. I actually became a little verklempt as I thought about what it would mean if every child in America had these opportunities and this faculty.
I came back to a New York Times story and a television news piece about “closing the racial divide.” The stories talked about earnest efforts to raise test scores on state tests, data driven accountability, and the importance of metrics. I thought about how none of these things were mentioned at this Southern California school; none of it is mentioned at the fantastic private schools that my children attend. Forget the fact that the standardized tests mentioned in the New York stories have lowered the bar with easier tests and that they have created tests that are sensitive to even slight increases in performance by students at the lower end. Forget the results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) which show that very little progress has actually been made in national or international comparisons. The people in these stories who support charter efforts to close the racial gap are, for the most part, well-meaning but they would never look at the same metrics or data for the schools they would choose for their own children. This divide is built into the current system and justice will continue to be elusive as we seek top-down solutions and ignore the real issues around educational equity.
“What the wisest and best parent wants for their child, that must society want for all its children.” – Robert Maynard Hiutchins
In my case – JAI HO!!!
by Hans Hageman
I was going to write about the mysterious world of nonprofits but my specific post on this will have to wait for another week or so. The lesson has been reinforced for me over the past few months that timing is everything. So more on the often magical relationship between senior level management and boards of directors in a later post.
Today I’m writing about the disturbing New York Times story that said 75% of military age youth in the United States is ineligible for service because of their problems with the law, their inability to pass the military’s basic physical fitness test, or the lack of a high school diploma and/or inability to pass the entrance exam (ASVAB). The writer asked: “Is America’s youth was too dumb, dishonest and fat to defend this country?”
The children of the elite generally do not serve in our military but I believe they are plagued by the same problem as the mass of the population that is supposed to feed the military machine. The problem is the adult creation of “adolescence.” Joan of Arc, Jesus Christ, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln were fortunate to have escaped the period of adolescence. They had certain competencies and gifts and were given/took on responsibilities to match these.
This socio-historical construct has given teens a moratorium on the assumption of adult responsibilities. This moratorium has only existed for a little over one hundred years. We adults alternate between viewing teenagers as the hope of the nation or as the source of all cultural degeneration.
In my experience, teens will rise to the occasion when given a meaningful challenge and an opportunity to glimpse a purpose greater than their own material comfort. I don’t know if the answer is some form of national service but I, for one, am tired of the number of adults I run into who have also found a way to put off the passage into maturity and responsibility.
by Hans Hageman
“It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile. Be yourself, no matter what they say.” Englishman in New York – Sting
I’ll be saying more about the world of nonprofits in the next couple of weeks but I figured I should get a start in this post. Our current economic situation should give pause to anyone in the world of nonprofits. Relationships of the governing and the governed need to change. I have dozens of books on business management from “the experts”. Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, Jim Collins, Peter Drucker, and the book, Leadership on the Line, have proven helpful. A lot of the rest are written by people who had a hand in dropping the country’s financial ball. These authors and others still ask those of us in nonprofit leadership positions to continue to follow their sage business 
advice.
Nonprofit leaders work with human beings and not widgets. We have had to be creative and imaginative and have always had to do more with less. The Masters of the Universe have confused management with leadership – doing things right versus doing the right things. Some of us would even question their talent in the “doing things right” arena. Nonprofit leaders are the pig in the old Ham and Egg joke. A pig and chicken really wanted to help the local church raise money. The chicken said, “I know, we can put on a ham and egg breakfast!” The pig replied, “we’re going to have to talk about this. It’s an investment for you but it means total commitment for me!” To make this total commitment takes courage. As Winston Churchill correctly observed, “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities…because it is the quality which guarantees all others.”
So I guess you can take the advice from someone who used to work for a failed investment house or do a gut check and take a cue from Churchill. Happy Thanksgiving!!
by Hans Hageman
I had assumed that if I came up with an idea that would provide a better than 2,000% return on investment, that people would jump at the opportunity to participate. I’m not that great in math but some things don’t take a genius to understand! We have had some people jump at the investment opportunity and others who have actively tried to kill the opportunity for others.
My investment is a small independent high school. We currently educate a small number of high school students who have not been successful in public high school. They had either dropped out or were on the verge of dropping out. We have brought them back into school and we spend about $10,000 a year per student. We are in our fifth year and have fifteen graduates with another twelve expected this June. Our graduates are in community college, four-year colleges like Bard, Dickinson, and St. Augustine, and the US Marine Corps.
The number of high school dropouts is becoming a national epidemic. A study by NYU professor Henry Belfield showed that it costs society $236,000 per dropout in lost tax revenues and increased costs resulting from crime, bad health, and welfare expenditures. He does not even calculate the continuing downward generational spiral from these dropouts who will have more children than those higher up the economic ladder. More recent studies show societal costs going as high as $2-3 million if the dropout becomes involved in drugs and crime.
So while I appreciate discussions about “academic rigor” and SAT scores, there are some other things that I am much more concerned about. As I said, there are some people who feel my same sense of urgency and know that the students we work with are reminders of the commercial punch line:”you can pay me now, or you will pay me later.” Why the reluctance of some others to invest? The late educator, John Holt, may have provided some insight when he said: “Most adults actively distrust and dislike most children, even their own, and quite often especially their own…people whose lives are boring and meaningless will make others suffer if they can. People who feel themselves in chains, with no hope of ever getting them off, want to put chains on everyone else.” I guess it’s not always about the math.
by Hans Hageman
Time for a rant. I run an independent high school that works with students who have not been successful in public school. Anybody who visits realizes the significance of the work. We are getting kids lives back on track and we are making sure society doesn’t pay the costs in lost taxes, increased crime, health care costs, welfare payments, etc. We make sure that “the perfect does not become the enemy of the good.” I am amazed by the number of people who say: “why are you working with THOSE kinds of kids? They are too old to be helped!” These people have become self-proclaimed education experts in the new world we inhabit. Equity and fairness remain absent from the discussion.
There is irony in the fact that not only have these people not stepped foot in my high school but the only school they may have set foot in since their own high school days were the elite private schools that their children were able to attend. Their children have safety nets and entitlement – mine do not. The jobs that used to be handed to their progeny as a matter of right, no longer exist and that makes my kind of student even more dangerous. The only group of “leaders” who could have a more devastating effect on education would be politicians.
“Bullfight critics ranked in rows, crowd the enormous plaza full. But only one is there who knows and that is the one who fights the bull.”
For my critics, check the time stamp and check the Constitution.
by Hans Hageman
In the aftermath of the tragedy at Fort Hood there are a lot of questions that need answering. A dramatic example of the the material that once made this country great showed up in the person of the female police sergeant who ran towards the gunfire. “The Suicide of Reason” by Lee Harris talks about why these kinds of people will be increasingly hard to find in this country. Maybe with our country’s business model in ruins, we can reevaluate the factory/management model of education that have increasingly provided the inputs and developed “men without chests.”
