Jefferson on Education

“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

That’s as may be, but the issue of who gets educated where remains unresolved 200 years after Jefferson wrote about our fledgling democracy.

It is not news that those from enriched environments are more likely to get a jump on the prospect of superior venues and results. Kids who grow up with a bath of language have an advantage over those whose baby sitters are glowing rectangles.

One of my colleagues at a competitive day school was my student years ago. She doesn’t give me insider information based on our long-standing relationship. Nor does she give preference to students whom I counsel. She does speak to me plainly without the euphemisms and edu-babble that characterize much of the communication between admissions offices and the broader culture.

“If a child from an enriched background doesn’t score in the 90^thpercentile on norm referenced tests, we are hard pressed to offer him a place in the sixth grade class,” Nicole has told me over the decades. “We just have too many kids with high scores. We have to make some guesses about who is going to perform.”

The disconnect for me is that the headmaster of Nicole’s school brags incessantly about the results of their students. “Of the one hundred seniors at Barrister and Thistledown last year, 94 of them took at least one advanced placement course and 52 of them took three of more AP tests. The number of students who earned a passing score (a 3 or above on a scale of 5) numbered over 80%.”

The headmaster pauses as if revealing the winning lotto numbers from the drawing next week: “Last year thirty percent of B & T graduates were admitted to ivy league schools” he says, his voice a throaty whisper.

Perhaps the following simple analogy will make my exasperation apparent: Imagine two hospitals, both of which admitted a thousand patients this month. At Hospital A, 179 of those patients died. At Hospital B, 23 people died.

Which is the better hospital?

For those of you who said Hospital A because 179 is a bigger number than 23, I have two questions, only one of which is snarky and rude:

1) Do you think I have so little respect for my gentle readers to ask a questions with such a simple, obvious answer? This is my 295^th newsletter for goodness sake. I am honored to have thousands of good folks graciously consider my musings each week. Did I attract such a large following by wasting the time of the good folks who are kind enough to consider my thoughts?

Certainly not!

2) What if Hospital A works with victims of violence, gun shot wounds, construction accidents, and car crashes while Hospital B does tummy tucks, Botox injections, and boob jobs? Wouldn’t you expect a higher mortality rate at the hospital working with the desperately injured, half-dead? If you took those unfortunates with the severed limbs to Hospital B, you can bet more than just 179 of them would die. Without trauma surgeons, reserves of blood products, and the Jaws of Life, those poor folks wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance.

Hospital A is the better hospital. Unless you have terminal wrinkles on your forehead.

Similarly, bragging about college placement statistics is misleading. Given the best of the best among sixth grade applicants, it is no surprise that those kiddos end up with good scores and admissions to top schools six years later. Of course those kids do well. Why wouldn’t they?

“Of the boys thus sent in any one year, trial is to be made at the grammar schools one or two years, and the best genius of the whole selected, and continued six years, and the residue dismissed. By this means twenty of the best geniusses (sic) will be raked from the rubbish annually…”

Thomas Jefferson, the father of democracy, considered picking the number of kids who fit in one classroom today from a population of hundreds of kids. The rest were to be “dismissed.” The question today revolves around what to do with those who have been dismissed. Pretending that the “top” schools produce top kids is as absurd as suggesting that Hospital A kills patients. What to do with the vast majority of kids who aren’t in the top ten percent remains a question.

If it turns out that your kid is not one of the selected few attending Barrister and Thistledown, then accepting and loving her for who she is rather than beating her up for not being someone else would be a great first step.