***"Schoolhouse Locked" is three-part series examining the links between the COVID-19 crisis, education, and their outcomes for the Homelander Generation. Part One focuses on employment outcomes for the Homelanders in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. Stay tuned for Part Three coming soon.***
In Part One of this series, I explained the link between the today's Homelander Generation and yesterday's Silent Generation, as part of the ARTIST generational archetype. While Part One focused on employment outcomes for the Homelanders in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, Part Two: "All the Feels" will focus on social outcomes for the Homelanders (born 2005 to the present) who are quietly entering the public consciousness.
In Strauss & Howe's work, we learn that an ARTIST generation typically receives special emphasis on being quiet, orderly, and helpful during a Crisis Era. Children aren't celebrated as special per se; instead they viewed as valuable and in need of protection. This is in direct contrast to the childhood of a HERO generation, where each little boy and girl is encouraged to challenge authority, work in teams, and achieve great things. Most of all, it's this focus on outcomes versus awareness that creates a divide between Millennials and Homelanders when it comes to education.
SIMPLY THE BEST
As I discussed in "Take That Hill! : The Militant Mindset of Millennials", there is a certain urge to "do something" in the collective will of the Millennial Generation. This feeling, nurtured from childhood, is evident in the educational policies that took root during their days in school.
First came the push for achievement. In 1983, the Ronald Regan administration received the report A Nation at Risk, the infamous tome that claimed, "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." Since Terrell Bell, Regan's Secretary of Education, was actually opposed to Regan's plans to de-escalate the federal Department of Education*, Bell's cleverly crafted report was an atomic bomb that yielded the opposite effect. It solidified the prejudice against Generation X as worthless and unteachable**, and catalyzed efforts to reverse this supposed tide of "mediocrity". The result? A wave of reforms, and eventually, an escalation of federal involvement with programs such as "No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top."
Second came the emphasis on excellence. A Nation at Risk put it like this: "Our goal must be to develop the talents of all to their fullest." This mission meant increased attention to standards and accountability-- figuring out what the "fullest" was and measuring it. The standards, such as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) education and Common Core, were gradually implemented in school curriculums, and the tools of measurement were that lightning rod of controversy, standardized tests***.
Third came the focus on effectiveness-- in the form of leadership and teamwork (for Millennials, leadership is motivating small teams), technological skills, and college success. The Millennial Generation was now fully equipped to not just "do something," but do the right thing and do it well, with the right person in the right job with the right support team behind them.
The outcomes were ensured. But was it enough?
ABOUT FACE
As discussed in Part One, the Silent Generation was expected to simply "fine tune" the G.I. Machine. The outcome was ensured, and yet, there was a collective sense that something was lacking. Everything was just a little too clean, too orderly, and too "general issue" (the term from which the G.I. acronym is formed). Too many problems were being swept under the rug, and eventually, a new generation gave voice to those problems-- and offered to be part of the solution as well.
Though we're still currently in the Crisis Era of the Millennial Saeculum today, public education reform has already begun taking steps to shape Homelanders into helpful problem solvers for these issues.
First is the awareness of social ills. Bullying, human trafficking, and school shootings now have direct interventions in schools. Groups like Stand for the Silent (founded in 2010) hold assemblies in thousands of schools to highlight the problem of bullying with personal narratives and offer strategies to combat it with the power of empathy. The Department of Education has had a guide about combating human trafficking for schools since 2015. With greater awareness of school shootings and mental health issues, some states are beginning to require mental health education in schools as of 2018. These initiatives make students not only aware of their own actions, but also aware of the pain of others trapped in the wake of these social ills.
Second is the awareness of difference. Intersectionality (the framework by which one analyzes differences of race, class, gender, sexual preference, and ability) is a lens now commonly applied to all aspects of education. The social justice movement (sometimes conflated with "wokeness") has been gathering strength for the last decade and now permeates all prominent news of education. One of its relatives, Critical Race Theory, has become a recent focus (see here, here, and here), and both the theory and its backlash represent a fierce debate about representation and value of the individual. These awarenesses, which reflect the increasing divisions in America, stand in stark contrast to uniformity and togetherness. It's not teamwork when a student is asked to stand up alone in class and denounce himself as an oppressor.
Third is the equipping of problem solvers. Kids who are aware of these social ills and differences aren't inclined to to simply sit back and do nothing about them-- not when they've been encouraged to care. Social Emotional Learning ("SEL") is the latest iteration in this kind of curriculum, and EdWeek says it's popular too, citing "universal demand from parents, teachers, and students for a holistic approach to education and opportunities to link learning to life...." Of course, in the Information Age, no approach is complete without technology. With the combination of online self-assessments and gamified goal setting, students (purportedly) become the drivers of their own personal development. From this, to public educational television teaching preschoolers how to interact successfully with the differently-abled (see here and here), Homelanders are becoming a generation who want to and can bridge the gap between difference and acceptance.
THE FROG EFFECT
So what does it look like to have a generation of Homelanders at work, even though they're very young?
Consider Operation Frog Effect, a middle-grade novel written by school social worker Sarah Scheerger which landed on several states' young reader lists. In the book, a group fifth-graders gets into a little trouble when their teacher's unconventional methods and their own enthusiasm for change-making lead several of them to attempt being homeless for a night (they only make it a few hours before their parents find them). The teacher, unaware of this experiment, is put on administrative leave. The kids, now troubled by the outcome of their extreme attempt at empathy, try to figure out how to get their beloved teacher reinstated in the classroom.
So, do they host student walkout at the school? Create a viral video shaming their administrators to "do better"? Protest and demand outside the school district office?
Nope.
The students, already from diverse social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds, look for ways to heal their bonds with each other. They start a sock donation box for the homeless they encountered during their experiment. They use their talents to speak, write, and petition those in charge in ways that are personally meaningful as well. Finally, they get the school board to allow two students to join the board, and run for those seats. Using the power of process, they vote on a motion to re-instate their teacher, and then settle in for the remaining year of bureaucratic work.
The Silent Generation was known as mediators, compromisers, and bureaucrats. Maybe that's not the most heroic reputation, but listening, talking (instead of shouting), and patiently working through due process sounds a little refreshing amid the current chaos of our Crisis Era. COVID-19 has now exposed the inside of school classrooms to parents via the virtual learning portals that so many school districts and unions have insisted upon. While some parents debate school boards over the direction of their childrens' education, others have chosen alternatives such as private school or homeschool. This great churn-up in education will have some unexpected results, but we have reason to hope that somehow, it will all work out in the end.
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*The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession by Dana Goldstein, p. 164-165.
**The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy by William Strauss and Neil Howe, p. 139.
***The Test: Why Our Schools Are Obsessed With Standardized Testing-- But You Don't Have To Be by Anya Kamentz.