The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [151]
At first glance, that finding doesn’t make sense. Aren’t schools supposed to enlighten students by teaching various manners of thought, problem-solving, and expression? They’re not, students say. Junior Beth Anne Katz wrote in a column for the Intelligencer Journal in Pennsylvania, “Elementary school taught us that variety is what makes the world beautiful. In high school, variety is weird and conformity is survival.”
Schools are so focused on conformity that administrators panic over students who stray even slightly outside of the box. Across the country, for example, schools have squelched efforts to display cultural pride at commencement ceremonies. For American Indians, eagle feathers, imbued with deep spiritual meaning, are sacred, traditional gifts that honor accomplishments or sacrifice. In Oregon, a tribe member arrived at her high school graduation with eagle feathers sewn into her cap, feathers she had carried since age five. School officials plucked them off. An Idaho school removed a boy from his graduation procession because he wore an eagle feather. A Maryland school withheld a Cherokee student’s diploma to punish him for wearing a bolo tie—symbolic Native American formalwear—instead of a necktie. Schools are also punishing gender nonconformity. Examples abound of administrators suspending crossdressers, with an Atlanta school going so far as to tell a student that he had two choices: dress more “manly” or stay home.
But the issue of conformity in schools concerns much more than appearances. The overemphasis of standardized tests forces teachers to teach the same restricted, uninventive curriculum. Longtime educator Brent Evans has said that today’s schools are organized as assembly lines, “(running at a set speed) and with each worker (teacher) at designated places (grade levels) on the assembly line performing predetermined actions on products (students) considered to be somewhat generic (one-size-fits-all) and passive (waiting to be filled or formed to the desired shape).”
That this assembly-line metaphor is used frequently makes it no less apt. Marketing expert Seth Godin told Psychology Today, “The school system was invented by industrialists, and its only function was to train people to work in factories. When you slap on top of it standardized testing and No Child Left Behind, what you are left with is a system optimized for compliance—the opposite of what we need. What we need to teach is how to solve interesting problems.”
As schools whitewash their populations into a sterile sameness, creativity fades. Schools impose a hierarchy on subjects, with unequal credit requirements for arts, sciences, humanities, physical education, languages, and mathematics. Rather than using interdisciplinary curricula designed to encourage learning related to students’ interests, skills, and learning styles, many schools overlook the fact that not all students learn best the same way.
Schools’ prioritization of conformity over creativity is a global problem. In 2009, two schools in Ireland were sanctioned for discriminating against boys by suspending them for coming to school with hair that fell past their collars. One of the schools hired a barber to measure; one boy violated the dress code by only an inch. The school refused to lift the suspension. The Toronto Star reported on a Canadian school system that “values conformity and control” and in which “many get suspended simply for opposing authority.” (A professor who works with at-risk youth said, “That’s sort of like saying, ‘Okay, we’re suspending you because you’re fifteen.’ ”)
A Scottish health services report cited a study illustrating that children’s “capacity for divergent