How No Child Left Behind Leaves Children Behind

In the New York Times and in his blog yesterday Daniel Goleman wrote an excellent description of performance and stress in the face of testing. It was a message to those considering the No Child Left Behind Act soon to be up for Congressional debate. I made the following comment:

No Child Left Behind is a last ditch Industrial Age attempt at a simplistic, socialistic-style solution to a complex problem. It goes along with the Bush administration’s focus on prisons over education and war over human development.We are a culture in rapid transition, where none of the old industrial systems are working all that well. School is one of them.

My book Men Are Easy describes the evolving system of marriage and how to live in it creatively and mindfully. The same advice applies to work, school, and all other continually evolving systems.

The best thing parents can do is to practice mindfulness and then teach mindfulness to their children through example and practice. This world demands the ability to respond thoughtfully to one’s own reactions, to open up and calm down in the face of threat and failure, to think clearly in emotionally-charged situations, and to learn to trust one’s self to do the right thing in spite of surrounding craziness. Often we have to design our own systems of support on the run, as we go, and that requires skills that are not taught in our expensive universities.

The good news is that out of the breakdown and chaos much more interesting and creative educational systems will emerge. Our digital age children are going to show us how to do it.