A Lesson in Civil Disobedience

An article in the Huffington Post, on Januaray 22, 2011 reminds us that the controversy regarding the issue of standardized testing in our country's schools is far from over. In fact, a huge number of our nation's children have been, and are being, left behind by the current "No Child Left Behind" legislation. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michele-somerville/10-million-for-children-l_b_810970.html)

In honor of this fact, I've decide to post something I wrote in 2004 when my son, Sam, was in the fourth grade and decided to boycott the NY State English Language Arts exam. It made me take a good look at parenting, acts of conscience, and our nation's efforts to provide quality education to all of its children.

A Lesson in Civil Disobedience

            An interesting lesson in civil disobedience has been unfolding in our home these last few weeks, and curiously our teacher has been a nine-year-old boy. My husband and I are educators and, not surprisingly, we frequently debate issues relating to education. Our children are privy to many of our conversations as these often occur while we cook together, or pick up around the house, or fold the socks.  The kids, of course, wander in and out, interrupting with questions about play-dates and searches for lost band folders, occasionally joining in the subject under debate.  They add a child’s-eye view of things, enriching our talks by asking the kinds of simple and practical – or sometimes grand and metaphysical – questions that we adults have forgotten to consider.

Such was the case two months ago.  My husband and I were in the kitchen chopping onions for lentil soup and discussing alternatives to the standardized, high-stakes testing used in both the public schools and at the university level where we teach.  The federal government’s No Child Left Behind mandate for testing all children yearly in grades 3-8 (scheduled to be phased in by 2005-2006) concerns us because we fear this directive will contribute to standardized tests driving curriculum, and that many teachers will be forced to abandon excellent pedagogy in favor of teaching to a test.

Our son was in the kitchen with us that evening practicing his tap steps as we talked (I comfort myself with the idea that even Bobby McFerrin’s mother must have told him to “keep it down” sometimes) when suddenly he stopped “grooving” and asked us a simple question: “If these tests are such a bad idea, then why am I taking them?”  Why indeed? The query stopped me short. And I wondered, “Is there an option?”  He had asked a simple question, but it went directly to the heart of a national debate over the role of the schools in our society and of the teachers in our classrooms; over the role of federal politicians in Washington vs. the role of the local school board; over parent’s rights, and children’s rights, and best practices in education; over the what and who and how of setting our educational curricula in order to ensure that our schools are really places of high level learning where children become skillful thinkers and doers and feelers, ready to move into the adult world with the competencies they need in order to succeed in life and  enrich our nation.  In essence, my son had opened a can of worms, and I needed some time to think.

We try not to let our children’s honest questions go by without an honest response. Thus we felt compelled to really ask ourselves why we were allowing our son to be tested when we both felt certain that these tests are an unnecessary and perhaps harmful burden to our schools. What were our options?  We decided to find out.  Soon we were traveling a path we had not anticipated that November evening in our kitchen:  No, there are no opt-out waivers in New York state, though 20 states do allow parents to opt their children out of some standardized exams (in Pennsylvania a recent change in the law now limits this right to objections on religious grounds).  No, we could not keep him out during the test hours only; make-ups would be given whenever they could snag the child.  If we kept him home all day on test days, a total of nine days would be missed making his absences a truancy issue (not to mention the lost learning on those days, and the lost earnings/sick days as my husband and I juggled our schedules in order to be home with our son.)  So what to do?

 We told our son what we’d found.  And his reply?:  “I understand that I can’t miss that much school, but maybe I should just go and not take them – they have to give them to me, but that doesn’t mean I have to take them, does it?”  Does it?  Again, a simple, direct question demanding a response.  I was suddenly reminded of a thin Indian gentleman in a dhoti and round spectacles leading his people to the sea to make salt; of a tired, middle-aged black woman who refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white youth; and of every miner and factory worker who walked out of a job risking the family’s next meal in order to unionize, so that he (or she) might no longer “owe his soul to the company store.” Thus, I began to think in earnest, what is the lesson here? Is this, then, to be a lesson in civil disobedience?  Is this a lesson for our family in non-violent non-cooperation, in a “just say no” that has efficacy not because it is a slogan, but because a simple “no” can find a wealth of power by wedding conscience with action? 
 I realized that my young son had already intuited this himself, and he was waiting my reply.  “No,” I answered him, “they can’t make you take it.”  “Then I’m not going to,” he said, and left the room.  My husband and I stood and looked at each other, wondering what would be the repercussions of this action, and could we allow it?  Yet could we, in good conscience, not allow it, when it was our child’s developing conscience that was compelling him to question, to think for himself, to simply say, “I’d prefer not to because I don’t believe in it.” That is the kind of thinking – and the kind of internal strength – that, especially these days, one wants to nurture in one’s child.

     
     Through meetings at the school and with district officials we soon realized what a hot-button issue this was. We were naïve: We never tried to hide our criticism of these federally mandated tests; we never tried to hide our willingness to support our son’s desire to not be tested. Yet we also never strove to call attention to ourselves.  This, we supposed, was an act of individual conscience. A family decision.  A private matter.  Yes, we were naïve, for what began as “our decision,” or “our son’s decision,” became within hours a public matter, a state matter. It seemed something so small—a nine-year-old’s attempt to do the right thing. Yet it was significant enough to the world at large that in days it blossomed into rumors about the school, the teacher, our family, our son, and a letter from the superintendent hand delivered by the principal reminding us that this was a federal mandate.

The night before the state tests my son and I talked together, snuggled in his twin bed, staring up at his ceiling where hand-made mobiles twirled slowly in the light of an orange lava lamp.  I rested my head on his old teddy bear and asked him what he’d decided to do.  “I’m not going to take it, Mom.  I know my teacher probably isn’t happy about it, and I think she’s nervous.  But she’s always told us to do what we think is right.  And if the tests are wrong and I take them, then it only makes one more wrong, doesn’t it?” 

Doesn’t it?  Yes. Usually. Sometimes. Mostly? . . . We live in a world of moral ambiguity.  But I was aware, as the seconds passed and I considered my answer, that perhaps in each moment it is simpler than that.  For it seems, after all, that there are only two real options: fear or love.  Fear means no change, ever.  No chances taken, nothing gained, the status-quo maintained.  Fear seems safe, but really it is an absolute: the certainty of dead-ends.  Now love? Love is risky, too.  And messy.  But to hope is to love. And hope is the kind of love that believes in possibility.  It believes, for example, in the possibility of freedom, the possibility that each of us has the freedom – the right – to choose from our own heart and head what we believe is true, and moral, and just.

 So I answered my son, “Two wrong things don’t do anybody any good.  Still, if you decide take the test, it doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong.”  As he considered this, I watched his sweet face, and I thought, “I don’t know you, do I ?  You are you, and I am me, and this is your decision.”

 “I’m going to write a letter,” he finally said, “instead of the test. I’ll tell about why they don’t make sense.  How they won’t let us do any of the things our teachers tell us, like use a dictionary, and take your time, and be creative, and have someone else read it.  I’ll write how you can’t think when you’re nervous, and you get nervous even if it’s the teacher they’re testing.  I’ll write about how we don’t have enough time to do a good job.”  I said that was a fine idea, and that he’d obviously learned a lot of important things about good writing in his class, and that I was proud of him. Then I kissed him, and hugged him hard, and closed the door.

            I was up all night wondering, were we doing the right thing allowing our son to choose?  Was this too much for a boy not quite ten?  Could I hold onto my own disquietude and allow him his peace?  I compared the good scared girl I was at his age with the good brave boy I was raising.  I admired his courage and clear thinking. I knew that the mud might fly, and I wondered how well I could keep it off him, and his teacher, and his school.

            We love his school. Our son and daughter have been happy there.  We love our son’s teacher, a wonderful, warm, bright, nurturing, innovative woman -- A respectful woman--who allows the children in her room a voice, and choices, and a hand in their own learning.  I worried about how one little boy’s moral journey might impact her. 

            Strange, that I could even worry about such a thing.  But these are lock and key exams, brought up from a safe at the proscribed hour and doled out with #2 pencils.  Posters on the classroom walls are covered lest they leak their advantage.  No dictionaries are allowed, books away, no scrap paper (so much for your letter, my son), and creativity will not be considered in the test score unless all other criteria have already been met.  Serious business.  High stakes business.  A climate of fear.

             Of course, there is money involved: Government funding and government grants and photo opportunities for politicians.  Money for schools -- and in some places for teachers, and even children -- that make a good showing on these tests. And big, big money for the test-making companies and the text-book manufacturers who act in league. Each time a text is adopted by a school district -- in order to standardize instruction, in order to teach to a standardized test so that our schools and teachers can show that they have met the rising standards -- the corporations that increasingly govern our educational system make money.  Each time the books and tests are revised, making last year’s version obsolete, these companies make further profits, while our cash-strapped schools struggle for funding, sometimes dropping good programs for lack of money.  In the end, what is the result of this legislation of standards?  I have to ask myself if it isn’t just fatter wallets for corporations, politicians with more power, and standardized kids with standardized childhoods receiving sub-standard educations. 

 I find myself afraid. Afraid of where our nation is headed, afraid for our minds. That is, I am afraid that our basic right to a mind that’s free is threatened.  For when the minds of our children become not their own, but are shaped and constrained by corporations and politicians, unable to expand in unique ways--non-standard ways, god-given, unalienable, and marvelous ways – the richness of all of our lives is diluted.  This kind of standardization may make us good workers and good consumers, but it won’t make us good thinkers or good citizens of the world.

Perhaps my fear is unjustified.  I hope so.  But in our house, we’ve seen this constraining power at work.  My son came home today, afraid he’d injured his teacher, afraid he might have done something really wrong:

             “They say it’s going against the school if we take a zero, but I didn’t really do anything; I just told the truth.  Am I doing the right thing?”

            “Hard things,” I said, “are still sometimes right.”

            “This is a hard thing,” he said.

And so we talked some more -- about choices, freedom and control.  He’s learning fast.  He’s bright.  I only hope he learns the “right” things: that it is sometimes good to risk, and that it can be painful, but if you follow your heart and your own good mind, you won’t have to ever feel ashamed.  And as I heard myself tell him this, I was a little surprised, for I realized that I’ve gained this certainty from him. I’ve learned something else as well: that sometimes you just have to say no. If enough of us did this when we saw a constriction of our liberties – saw the places where a damaged system is using whatever machinery of oppression and conformity is expedient to its ends (in this case the very schools of our nation) and then refused to comply-- the constrictions could not hold us. The machinery would simply grind to a halt with nothing to work upon. 

Do I advocate my son’s choice – our family’s choice – for others?  I don’t know.  Some things probably are too hard for a child; this has certainly been difficult for his parents. I do know, however, that we must collectively engage – and soon – in an honest, educated, impassioned debate about the future of our schools, and of our nation.  We need to do this consciously, openly and without fear--not in snatches and fragments behind closed doors. For this is a conversation that requires all of us: parents and teachers; children and administrators; citizens and elected representatives. Every voice is needed, every mind, every heart.  Our son’s voice -- his one small choice -- has already led to a more open conversation in our local community.  I am amazed, and I am proud of him.  I am also hopeful.

And, if we fail in our efforts to build consensus?  Well then, each of us will have to look within, wedding thought with action, and do what we think is right.  I comfort myself with the certainty that if we have tried to talk and still find that we must “just say no,” at least we will be sure that we mean it and know why we are drawing a line.

            Now when I think of civil disobedience, I’ll have to include the image of a nine-year-old boy in a classroom in America who wouldn’t lift his pencil.  I’ll have to include a child who has exercised his God-given freedom of conscience and has chosen to think for himself.