When you look at a Russian nesting doll, you can describe it perfectly. Then the outer doll is removed, and with it, your prior accuracy.
When you hold the kaleidoscope to your eye, you can easily describe what you see. Then you twist the cylinder and the picture is totally different even as the material contents are unchanged.
Social scientists are continually faced with an analytical dilemma: is the issue being discussed happening more or less often, or is it that data gathering techniques have been improved, or maybe the unequivocal truth was always there and had simply been ignored.
So I ask myself: am I seeing “things” differently or have the “things” changed.
It seems like the world is screwed up: peaceful disagreement is nowhere to be found, but does not a reading of history suggest that horrible stuff is more the norm than the exception.
It appears that this country is completely messed up, but people are working, inflation is low, residents from everywhere want our currency, immigrants (still) want to live here, and the stock market is at record highs.
In the area of education reform that is near and dear to the writer, high achieving schools of choice are reaching more students than ever, but rancor within the reform community has risen and the vitriol from the unionized opposition is uglier than ever.
Bringing it even closer to home, the WKBJ Foundation has had a quarter century of great success but this past year has seen more students stopping out of school (hopefully to return sometime) and more difficult/emotional conversations and decisions than in any prior period.
One factor is that heretofore, in the structure of WKBJ’s various programs, I ignored the multi-level failures of the local high school. More recently the results of these shortcomings are young people in my office who have never been given a whit of guidance, on either college or the existence of perfectly valid non-college paths to successful lives.
Simultaneously, as WKBJ approaches its 2020 expiration date, I might be a bit cranky. For sure, I am less likely to look the other way at completely nonsensical actions (or non-actions), predominantly by adults who should be more aware of the total picture of education, but also including some students.
In any case, WKBJ can no longer take on new students. Meeting young people and being with them for many, many years of their lives has been the heart of my activities, and it has been hugely rewarding, and, equally important, fun!
Meanwhile, I interact regularly with a delightful eight year-old girl. She is energetic, verbal, healthy, strong, happy, fearless, curious, creative, funny, compassionate, a reader, a writer — and I find myself valuing these traits more than various shortcomings in her academic results.
What does that mean, I wonder, about the way I look at education overall. Good question!
Overall, if I am in a funk, is it a function of different specific situations, i.e., something which might be labeled “reality,” or the result of my viewing angles being different, i.e., “perception.”
Oh yes … and what shall I do about my funk?