Education's Lights are Blinking Red

What are we learning in Public Schools?

The first thing I should say is that public school has been a good experience for my daughters. I often tell people that we won the public school lottery. They are in nice buildings with strong administrators. They’ve liked the vast majority of their teachers. They make demonstrable progress in reading and math each year.

Is that good enough?

The most honest answer I have is “I don’t know” because it’s becoming painfully obvious that we all have different visions about what public school is supposed to do. Those different visions get combined and blurred and remixed so that the answer becomes “everything and nothing, at the same time, and do it all on a compressed timeline, with high stakes, in a way designed to maximize everyone’s burnout!”

Today, we’re talking about what we see and experience as parents, what we hear from our friends who teach every day, what we desire as community members, and what we need from policy makers. There are no right answers here. It just seems to us that it’s wrong to keep demanding so much and so little at the same time. -Beth

Topics Discussed

• A Slow-Moving Crisis in America’s Education System

• Outside of Politics: Teaching Teenagers to Drive

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Episode Resources

Pantsuit Politics Resources

• Reimagining Citizenship from Pantsuit Politics

A Slow-Moving Crisis in America’s Education System

• American Children’s Reading Skills Reach New Lows (The New York Times)

• More States Are Creating a 'Portrait of a Graduate.' Here's Why (Education Week)

• Site-Based Decisionmaking: State-level Policies (ECS State Notes)

• Welcome to the Leader in Me Curriculum

• Opinion | ‘We Have to Really Rethink the Purpose of Education’ (The Ezra Klein Show)

• Louise Bates Ames parenting books: why they’re still so popular today. (Slate)

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

Our show is listener-supported. The community of paid subscribers here on Substack makes everything we do possible. Special thanks to our Executive Producers, some of whose names you hear at the end of each show. To join our community of supporters, become a paid subscriber here on Substack.

To search past episodes of the main show or our premium content, check out our content archive.

This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:11] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics and today we're going to talk about education. We have felt for a while like all the lights were blinking red and that was before artificial intelligence entered the chat. So we want to spend some time at the end of this school year. I know some of you still have some time left. I see you. I honor you people who go to school through June. But as most of us wrap up the school year, we wanted to take a minute and talk about that. And then Outside of Politics, we're going to talk about a very different type of teaching. Teaching someone to drive.

Beth [00:00:46] I dread it. Not the conversation, the teaching.

Sarah [00:00:49] You should. Spoiler alert.

Beth [00:00:52] But first, it is not too late to become a Pantsuit Politics premium subscriber and join us for 30 days of Re-imagining Citizenship. We're proud of this series. We've worked hard on it. And we think counting down to July 4th by taking a few minutes every day to just reflect on our role as citizens is going to leave us with some energy and some inspiration to face whatever comes next. So we would love for you to hop over to Substack using the link in the notes here to join us for that series.

Sarah [00:01:22] We're not just planning special things on Substack. We have a special series this summer. You may have heard us mention this once or twice, but we are celebrating 10 years of Pantsuit Politics. And one way we have been marking this milestone is by relistening, ouch, to many of our old episodes.

Beth [00:01:45] This was my idea and I hate it. It was a bad idea. I'm sorry.

Sarah [00:01:49] And what we've been doing is we've going year by year and then we're recording special flashback episodes for every year we've made Pantsuit Politics. So beginning in June, every Friday, we're going to talk about a year of Pantsuit Politics, beginning with, of course, 2015. We're going talk about conversations on the show. We're going to talk about the big headlines from that year, what we got right, what we missed. Cultural moments, pop cultural moments, things that we're still thinking about all these years later. So we're really excited to share the series with you. Everything we have planned for the Spice Cabinet is also going to make the summer very, very special and fun, and we're ready, we hope you are too. Okay, up next, let's talk about public education. Beth, do you know how in every Indiana Jones movie or every adventure movie, there comes a point where the hero is running and the road is collapsing behind them in some way shape or form?

Beth [00:03:08] Yes, I can visualize a giant boulder rolling behind the hero.

Sarah [00:03:15] Yeah. Or sometimes there's no boulder. Sometimes they're like one step ahead of the road collapsing behind them. That is how I feel as the mother of a 10-year-old in the public education system.

Beth [00:03:29] You're the runner?

Sarah [00:03:30] I'm the running and the education is the road collapsing just as I'm like a few steps ahead.

Beth [00:03:38] Can you say more about that? I'm interested in the specifics of that.

Sarah [00:03:44] It just feels like we're barely putting out the fire. We know there's a bigger issue and what we're really doing is just like whack-a-mole. Like, oh, we'll get this, oh, we get this, oh we'll get this. Meanwhile, the machine itself is breaking down. Like I hear constantly about teacher shortages. I see and experience a sort of degradation in the educational standards, while also hearing constantly that no one's meeting the educational standard. No one's getting back to where they were pre-COVID, which I'm not even sure I was super happy with. There's the constant struggle with cell phones in school, constant struggle with screens in school. The ed tech, all of which I pretty much hate. And then you're hearing like kids are getting to college and they can't read a book. And they can't write a paper, and 90% of them are using artificial intelligence. My kid's telling me they're in groups where people are trying to use AI to do the work for them. And so it's just all this incoming that feels like the road is crumbling.

Beth [00:05:08] The metaphor that I think about when I think about school is, you know how when you watch a talk show or a game show or almost any semi-live TV production, it feels like there's never enough time. We're constantly running out of time. We've got 30 seconds and we've got to get to the commercial break. That is how the school day felt to me when I was substituting after during the COVID crisis. It is how my daughters talk about the school day. It's how their schedules look, 11:02 we got to be in line for lunch. And then the day feels really chopped up because so much belongs in it. And because in those segments of time, you got so many people to manage. And so that sense of scarcity kind of defines the feeling that I have on a gut level about school and as a parent. And then you add on top of that, AI is in both of my daughter's hands every day now at school. They are using class companion in both my daughter's fourth grade classroom, and as my daughter is in eighth grade primarily for her science classes. I got a lot of conflicting feelings about that. My daughter in eighth-grade was just telling me this morning about how the school has had to severely restrict when eighth grade boys can use the restroom. Because they have had so many issues of vandalism and disgusting use of those facilities. I won't even describe it to you.

Sarah [00:06:41] They just smoke weed at my kid's high school. They're just in there vaping all the time. All the bathrooms, middle school, elementary school, and high school are an issue.

Beth [00:06:52] So you're right. Even as there are lots of victories every day, lots of kids getting encouraged and supported, kids getting fed, school being their safe space, so many wonderful, important things happening, the challenges feel endless and accelerating. And the speed and intensity of the challenges, at least to me, feel like they just show no sign of stopping.

Sarah [00:07:24] And we're not getting good diagnosis from either side of the political spectrum. On the right, it's just constant pursuit of ideological purity. We want book bans. We got to get rid of critical race theory. We got to get rid of DEI as if the reason children are not reaching pre-COVID standards is because we're talking about Rosa Parks. It's just that side and the parent freedom movement. And you know what, I'm going to give them [inaudible]. I'm going to give them the unschool people who are like a next level situation as far as I'm concerned. And then I'm going to put all that over there on that side, okay? They hate it all. It's a sort of tear it down. Let's pull the road up ourselves because they don't teach what we want them to teach. And then on the left, I feel like there is still so much protection of the status quo. We can't admit we've done anything wrong, even though we all know something went terribly wrong with school closures during COVID. And I still feel like there's an inability to take responsibility for that and an inability to look at the relationship between the Democratic Party and teacher’s unions.

[00:08:39] And an abandonment of some things that started on the left that had good results like charter schools. The right just wants to give everybody money and you can just go to private schools and let's just tear it down. But the left, even though we had found, I think, some interesting ideas and solutions around charter schools, has abandoned that and does not have any other ideas, as far as I can tell, or as far I've heard. And no one, to me, feels like they're asking the fundamental question, which is, is anyone learning? Is anyone actually learning? Like my school system is so obsessed with testing. They test every question. Like in Amos's middle school, they do five on Friday. They do five questions and they look at those. What did they not learn? I'm like, I don't know how you teach through all the time it takes to assess what they don't know. It's just constant testing, testing, testing, and testing.

Beth [00:09:50] And I think some of that comes from a desire to get to the learning question because there is this sense --and public policy has done this, right? There is a sense of like we only get results around what we measure and so we got to be measuring. But then we tie that measurement to all the support and the resources and the freedom schools can receive from state and federal regulation. And that means that the incentive is not to use testing as a measurement of what's being learned so that we can keep adapting, but to use testing to just keep the school functioning in a reasonable and somewhat autonomous way. And I think that's a real failure of public policy. And I it's a failure that in discussions around public policy, it's almost like we're just supposed to not focus on the learning because that is for the education professionals, and I totally respect the education professionals. But the public school system has to be accountable to the public and understandable by the public. And if we are to be partners in our kids learning, we have to understand what the learning goals are. What are they there to achieve? What should they? I like the efforts toward like portrait of a graduate that are happening everywhere; where the public school system says, "Here, community, this is what we're trying to achieve." I think we need to go a lot more granular than here community, we're trying to achieve kids who can collaborate and communicate.

Sarah [00:11:31] Look, I think it's weird we're talking about what we see in our minds when we were thinking about this problem. You know the Spider Man circle where everybody's part of the Spider Man?

Beth [00:11:44] Yeah.

Sarah [00:11:44] Because it feels like from the top down, and this has been my frustration with the public school system for a while, is that basically everyone blames each other until we end up with just it's the kid's fault. Because they're the ones that are really not present in the conversation a lot of times. So it's the federal government's fault. I agree to a certain extent. I think the top down common core standards have not been successful to a large extent. I think those TikTok videos where you'll find someone saying just something completely stupid-- I'm trying to use a very specific word here. It's stupid. It's uneducated. And somebody will stitch in and be like children were left behind. We said no child left behind, but children were left behind. Are hilarious because they feel so true. So I think that was a failure. I think depending on what state government you're talking about, there have been obviously a broad range of approaches. But I do think what I've always heard from my many, many family members in education and have seen play out a little bit as a parent, is as soon as they figure something out, they change it.

[00:13:01] As soon as the state decides on a strategy, even if it's working or not-- because it's like everybody has to prove they're worthwhile. Well, everything's cooking with gas. Like, well, what are you doing over at the State Department of Education? Better find something to do. Better find a new curriculum or a new standard. I was sitting in a meeting one time at the school and they were talking about like, well, curriculums take one to two years to-- it was like EdTech curriculum, which again, I have a lot of beefs with. Which means if you don't have a kid in the public school system, EdTech curriculums are basically where they sit them in front of a computer. They test to see what they know, and then they try to teach them through the computer. They try to them through games and gamifying and videos, and they try teach them math through this software. And they were saying, well, we're really happy with this curriculum, but it takes one to two years to really get it going. And I wanted to be like, what about the kids during those one to two years? Hello, anybody? So I think it's like federal government, state government, I think boards of education are worn down. What I see is an enormous amount of burnout, because we have some of the same leaders that took us through COVID, and they're just burned all the way out. And we just keep shoveling more stuff on the administration.

[00:14:13] I feel like, at least in my school system, the administration and the teachers are really not on the same team. The teachers feel blamed for everything, for the socio-emotional stuff, for the cultural stuff, and there's not a lot while we're talking about all the partners here of parents taking responsibility. We had a conversation about rethinking ADHD on our Substack. And I shared that a pediatrician friend of mine said, "Look, what I see over and over again is parents, understandably so, using screens as a babysitter, not policing screen time at all. The kid's attention is completely depleted and fracked. Then they're supposed to go into it a classroom and pay attention. And the teachers are like, are you kidding? They can't. You see these TikToks of teachers being like, "Unless I'm going to be a TikTok, they're not paying attention to me. They can't. They don't have the capacity.".

[00:15:11] And then the parents are frustrated. The teachers are frustrated. The kid is getting disciplined all the time. And so they go to the doctor and say, well, I guess he needs medication. So it's like everybody has a responsibility here. Everybody. Parents who treat the school system like Walmart, the customer's always right. But that's not true. This is too complex of a process. I guess what I'm saying is no one up and down this ladder is always right. There's something wrong here. It's not the kids; we can't blame them. So there's a lot of constituencies here between local administration, state, federal authorities, teachers, principals. We have SBDMs here, like there's a lot constituencies and it just feels like everybody's pointing at each other.

Beth [00:16:07] Yeah, and honestly, I think SBDMs, that's Site-Based Decision-Making Council, that was a feature of education reform in Kentucky, is one of the more successful aspects of education reform because it does at least put all those constituents around a table together in a local school to make decisions. So you have teachers, you have parents. My middle school, Jane, is on the Site-based Council, so they've folded in some students and administrators together in a really transparent way. Trying to make decisions for the school. I'm sure it works better in some schools than others because that is the nature of humanity.

Sarah [00:16:43] Kentucky just changed it. Used to they would hire the principal, which to me is like the biggest piece of the puzzle. And they took that power away from the SBDM and gave it to the superintendent. So now the superintendent hires all the principals.

Beth [00:16:54] And I will say, I think that was a mistake.

Sarah [00:16:55] I agree.

Beth [00:16:57] I think that was the mistake. I think, again, if you've got something that's kind of working, let it work. I feel so much for the schools right now because if I had to sit down and say, here's what I think are the essential skills that my kids need to emerge from the school system with, that would be a hard exercise. The world is changing so fast. And I think the expectation, the really unreasonable curriculum expectation that we keep voicing on the schools, is that our kids learn every single thing we learned pretty much exactly the way that we learned it, plus how to be in the new world. And that didn't work. We got to shrink. Something has to come off the school's plates. Probably lots of things need to come off the school's plate.

[00:17:46] And then I think about how if you ask me what kind of environment I want for my girls right now, I would say I want a tech-free environment. Because I think that the hardest thing to have in the future is going to be focus. And I think that that will distinguish their ability to, I don't know, feel good in their bodies and in the world and do complicated and interesting work. That is not how every parent feels. And there are definitely a lot of parents who think they need to be using AI right now because that's what the worker of the future is going to need. So we're in just a bunch of different places about what the hope and ask is. And I think that, of course, the road is crumbling when everybody looks at the road and says it has a different purpose.

Sarah [00:18:40] Let's talk about that. Let's talk about what we're trying to accomplish. If you were to ask me what I want, I think you're 100% correct, we are asking too much. We're asking too much of teachers. They need to be social workers and also psychologists and also security guards and also parents, basically, and also teachers and also tech support and also tech police. Because that's the thing, if your school doesn't have a policy that prohibits cell phones, think about how many times a teacher has to decide, like, am I going to get down with this kid for having their phone where they're not supposed to? Is it worth it? Because they're like addicts. This is what a teacher friend told me. She's like, yeah, if you decide to call them out, then you got to battle. You ever tried to take your kid's phone away? They get mad.

Beth [00:19:36] Well, look at adults in a meeting. Just look at the adults in a meeting. And we expect kids to do better?

Sarah [00:19:41] Yes, exactly.

Beth [00:19:42] Come on, it's not fair.

Sarah [00:19:43] So like all of that, we're asking them to do all of that and it's just too much. It's too much. I go back and we're doing this flashback series listening to our discussions around equity during COVID and I think, man, we got so focused on equity, we couldn't see the forest through the trees. We want all kids to have access to what? Is that just because the kids at the top of the socioeconomic ladder have it, does that mean it's good for everyone to have it? Not always. I don't know if I want a completely screen-free place. I do worry about almost like the ethics and the deep thinking about what are we doing with this tech? Because they're going to use it. I was listening to an education expert and she was like if we think we're going to like out-tech them and we're going to find protections or screening tools for whether they're using artificial intelligence, dream on. Dream on. Never going to happen. They're going be about five steps in front of us every time. So they don't need to be taught it. Like that much is clear. They find it, they figure it out.

Beth [00:20:57] Not to interrupt you, but that's worth hovering on for a second. Because the philosophy when we were in school was they need to learn how to use these computers. The computers are coming and they're not going to know how to use them. They don't have them at home.

Sarah [00:21:10] And that's still a philosophy out there now.

Beth [00:21:12] And that has changed. And I don't feel like we've all come around. We parents have all come around to how much that has changed. Understand that we are birthing digital natives now. It is their first language. So we don't need the school to teach them how to use the technology in terms of the mechanics of it. We need the schools to, as you're saying, think about when do we use this and why do we use it? And what does it represent to us when we use it?

Sarah [00:21:44] The other thing I'm trying to check myself before I get to what I really think is worthwhile is I think my expectations are too high. I do. I think that I can get in my head and I want what? My 13-year-old son in eighth grade to be, I don't know, reciting poetry and cracking software codes? I think there is a way in which I get in conversations with other parents of my socioeconomic background, where what we're describing is basically college. Do we really think high schoolers are capable and should be engaging in deep ethical and philosophical talks about the ethics of tech? I don't know, probably not. Because they're hormonal and overwhelmed. I'm just like, what is the goal here? I can get in my head and I'm painting a picture. Listen, I've done this as a parent since my kids were little. It's so easy to forget their knowledge gap. It's just so easy when you love them and you think they're fascinating and interesting to forget how much they don't know until, put a pin in this, you get in a car with them.

[00:23:14] You know what I mean? You just forget there's just a lot they don't know. And I can get in a place where they're already, basically like what, freshmen ready to be at a liberal arts university. I kind of feel like that's my standard in my head and I need to let that go. They're not going to maximize and become fully formed people. But I think that's what the instability of the economy and the high stakes of higher education and the high cost of higher education has forced us to do. Like we want to accelerate them down that path so they maximize it. It's that sort of undercurrent in all our conversations that tech has put us in which is like productivity and maximization. Well, is that really what we want from a middle schooler or an elementary school kid or even a 10th grader? I don't know. I have to really check myself.

Beth [00:24:12] I think "Are my expectations too high?" is always a good question. I have tried to deal with that question myself by often thinking about how frustration is part of the human experience and learning to deal with frustration in school is important. And so I have said to my daughters, you're supposed to have a bad teacher here and there. You're going to have a bad boss. It's probably not even a bad teacher, just somebody that doesn't work for you. And that's important. You need to have that experience. You need learn to respect someone who you don't really respect. You need to at least learn to treat with respect someone you don't really respect. You need do some things that feel like a waste of your time. You need be frustrated. You need to follow rules that you think are dumb rules sometimes. That's just part of being a person. I think about how my schools have done a great job, a stellar job, folding in this curriculum that has become controversial. I think the best thing that has happened in my daughter's learning is the social-emotional learning that is such a controversy because it gave them a sense of belonging in their schools.

[00:25:25] In elementary school, they did the leader-in-me curriculum. They have a common language. They have sense of a belonging. They have a framework for solving problems. Something goes crazy in the classroom, they stop and they go, wait a second, how do we think win-win about this? And as corporate and cliche as that can sound, I think it really does help them. And it's something that we can translate at home and that will stick with them and I think it’s been really good. And that contributes to the overall sense that I want. I don't need them having college level discussions yet. But I do want them to learn how to learn. And I think a lot of that time that other parents see as wasted because they're talking about feelings and strategies instead of the multiplication tables to me is teaching them how to learn. And so I feel really good about that. And then I feel terrible when I hear it discussed as like DEI/CRT, pick your acronym, waste. Because I think that foundation where they have been saying, like, what does it mean to be a curious person? What does it mean to be curious about my work? What is it mean to be about other people? Has been the best spent time they've had in school.

Sarah [00:26:46] Well, that's interesting because I have had a very opposite experience with The Leader in Me in my kid's school. I honestly don't know if this is like a gendered experience. My boys just roll their eyes. It doesn't feel true to them. It feels silly. It feels unearned. I think what I'm looking for is just engagement. They're not engaged. They're not hitting anything that is interesting, fascinating, sparks that curiosity. Because the thing is with curiosity, you can say it's important, but if you don't touch it, if you never engage it, who cares? And so I think for the socio-emotional learning, I think when girls in particular exist in more of an emotional world, just at baseline than boys do-- not that boys don't need that, but they have the house system at my son's middle school and they think it's so stupid. It works for some kids, but the rest of them they're just like, what is this? There's no authenticity and there's no, again, sort of trust built because you taught me this cool thing and I'm totally fascinated by it. So then I'll follow you on some other stuff. My kids are readers. So like Felix loves his reading teacher. He's read like the fourth Harry Potter book. I see that engagement with all three of my boys over the course of their education with reading, but often that's outside of school.

[00:28:21] And it just makes me sad. Griffin talks about school just like they're boxes to be checked. I have to do this. He was into his literature class. He was in to that. He was really enjoying that. And I think he got some engagement around some of the Shakespeare he's learned. And so that's what I worry about. Amos has completely checked out. Like there's nothing engaging to him about school. It's boring. He doesn't want to go. There's nothing that's sparking his curiosity, sparking his interest, that sort of engagement. Ezra Klein had an education expert, and she talked about if you can get them somewhere-- so some schools are doing like what she described as studios. So you build the project, you build standards, you do it. And once you get them engaged with something, they can find a path through other things. And that was definitely my educational journey. And that's the other thing I had to check myself on. I wasn't engaged in high school. Everything was so easy to me. So easy. There were some teachers I really liked and some good conversations that I sort of remember. I loved being on the newspaper staff, but otherwise, it's not like I was having my mind blown by like a chemistry class or anything. And so I want that engagement somewhere along the way. I'm not even super particular about where it is. If it's an extracurricular, if it's a an elective or whatever, but I'm just not seeing it. That's what I'm concerned about. I'm not seeing it.

Beth [00:29:56] I think that's really well said. And my experience has been that engagement for both me and my daughters come when there is a real relationship with a teacher. And that's where that scarcity of time comes into play. I don't know how a teacher is supposed to really engage with 30 10-year-olds. I don't know that that's possible. I think my girls have had teachers who are gifted at that. But the number of things that they're trying to do and the number obstacles to getting those things done, especially when we send our kids in with their attention having been fracked by technology, there's a lot getting in the way of that relationship. So that's kind of what I'm looking for and why-- I say screen free, I probably don't even mean that. But I do mean that I don't value the individualized instruction that the technology is supposed to be providing as much as I would value a smaller class that I know teachers want to. We're all in the same team about this. We just can't seem to figure it out. But the smaller class where those relationships are built because a relationship can make any curriculum more interesting and exciting because you're in it together, right? You're doing something together. I think all the technology that is supposed to gamify and make fun and personalize absolutely lends itself to that box checking that Griffin is describing.

Sarah [00:31:34] Well, let me play devil's advocate. Because the thing I can't stop thinking about is that Japan has much larger class sizes than we do and much better test results. That's a very different culture. Trust me, I've been there. But I do think there's another side of engagement where the pursuit of excellence can lend itself to confidence. And if I can't have curiosity, I'd prefer confidence. I'd love to have both. Would love to have both. My best friend Elizabeth's kids go to a Latin school. I'm constantly jealous of their education. They memorize these epic poems. They learn Latin. They read really difficult texts, classic literature, really difficult text. And I think it builds confidence. Her son went to University of Louisville and one of the professors he was meeting with said, "I'm not sure what I would teach you. It sounds like you know it already." Like, what would I give for a professor to say that to my child? There is a pursuit of just high standards, whether you're interested in the curriculum or not, whether you have this teacher you love or whether it sparks any kind of curiosity, no, this is what we expect from you. That the teacher friends in my life are really worried about.

[00:32:55] Professors, high school teachers, middle school teachers elementary school teachers, particularly middle and high school and higher ed, which I hear is we're told to lower the standards constantly. They can't meet them, so lower them. And what I've learned as a parent is-- and it's hard, but I remember reading Louis Bates Ames and she was talking about you cannot instill confidence through conversation. A kid gains confidence by trying, failing, and trying again harder the next time. But the stakes are so high, particularly with high school, we can't allow any failure. You have to get all this stuff right in order to get into college so what, you can get there and have Chad GPT write your papers and not read a whole book? What are we doing? There has to be pursuit of excellence, high standards that aren't just defined by the box checking of let's break down this multiple choice question you got wrong on the test exam for the state standards. That's not going to do it. I do see my kids were hyped up about testing. They wanted to do well. I think that confidence comes from trying and achieving and taking it with you. And I'm just not really sure they're taking much on those standardized tests with them. I sure as heck didn't. I got distinguished on all of them, but it's not like I'm an expert in chemistry.

Beth [00:34:25] What the specific education reforms that we experienced did for me was make me a good writer. We got to write a lot in school. We were the first kids to do portfolios where we're collecting our writing throughout the year and saying here's what I want to submit the best of my work for some kind of grade. And I do think that that was meaningful and impactful. It was much better than the kinds of tests we were taking before those reforms. So I think about Ellen using class companion right now. She writes something, she gives it to the AI for feedback. I have personally talked about how I use AI as a writing coach. Now, as I have been using it more and tried to be thinking about it more critically and educating myself on how it works, I've realized that probably I like it because it's so complimentary. And that makes it a lot less valuable to me. And when it gives me critical feedback, I often disagree with it because I'm a grown adult woman who's written a lot in my life. I think I'm really good writer and I think it's feedback would make my piece less interesting and more generic. Because again, that's how those models work. So on the one hand, I feel really hypocritical saying, I don't love that you're using AI as a writing coach. But on the other hand, she's a fourth grader. She's not a writer yet. She doesn't yet know. She hasn't developed, she hasn't read enough yet to know what makes writing really good and interesting. She's in the process of that.

Sarah [00:35:54] But how is she going to develop her voice if the AI is constantly impressing on her to be more generic?

Beth [00:36:00] Exactly. That's where I'm feeling that I would personally love for my kids-- and this is not the answer for everybody's kids, but I would personally love for my kid to have a lot less technology. Because like you said, they've got that. What I want is that Latin school sensibility where you're reading a lot and you're thinking and you are asking questions and you developing the confidence that I got from law school that I can read any text and understand it. That's what law school gave me. I didn't love being a lawyer because I'm not competitive a bit and I think it's a really tough road if you're not rewarded by winning in the law. But what I love about my law school education is that I am not intimidated by any set of facts or any set rules. I can approach it and figure it out and analyze it and get somewhere with it. And that is a big expectation. I came from law school, not from school school. But a lot of what I got from school, read, write, express yourself clearly, enabled me to do that. And I think there is a coding version of that and a scientific research version of it. And if that is a massive challenge to put in front of schools when they are just trying to get through the day without somebody peeing on the wall in the boy’s bathroom, it's tough. It's really, really tough.

Sarah [00:37:25] Yeah, I think the other part of this conversation is what do we want for them right now? Yes. The other part is what we want them in the future. And I think it's really hard when we don't know how the job landscape is going to change. I think what is coming with regards to AI is largely a shift in the same way we shifted away from manufacturing-- and it ain't coming back, I don't care what Donald Trump says. Because even if they come back, the robots are going to be working in the factories, you guys. So whatever. It's the type of job like the bureaucratic job. The job that is not about expertise, but is about paperwork. Like the office job, the people at banks and law firms and the Board of Education that gathers the documents and puts them together and makes sure people fill them out. Like those kinds of jobs, those are going to go quick. And I think that for a lot of people, getting their kids into college and into one of those like dependable jobs was the goal. Because they are a nice job because you come home and you're done. I think all the time about when I saw Justice Breyer speak and how he told his son, "If you work really hard and you do your homework, you'll get a job where you have homework every night.".

[00:38:56] I think that the version of education where we taught you to write so you could follow these steps and get one of those jobs that's done when you get home at the end of the day is probably coming to an end rapidly. But I think no matter what, I was really like pushing myself because I'm getting close to college for my son, not me. I wish I could go back. College is wasted on the young. But I would still send Griffin to a liberal arts university to learn writing, even if AI is going to be writing all the basic essays. Because writing is thinking. Reading is thinking. What both my college and law school education taught me was to be a critical thinker. And I want that for my kids. One of my best friends who I met in college, he's like a painter and a musician. But I know he wouldn't go back and not go to college because it made him who he is. It taught him how to think.

[00:40:04] It made him a critical thinking. He formed these relationships. He had to question things about how he was raised and who he wants to be. I think all of that is supremely important. And so as far as college is like a licensing situation, problematic. Especially with AI. But college as the pursuit of analysis and critical thinking, even if at the end you don't know what you're going to do, I know it's an expensive investment, but I would still make it. That's still really important to me. I still want that for my kids. As far as what kind of job I want them to have, for sure, I would love them to have a job. And I think they want that. I think this generation wants that more, a job where you're done. The job is over at five and so are you. But I'm not sure how many of those jobs are going to be left.

Beth [00:40:53] I think that so many things about what it even means to have a job are going to change by the time our kids are adults. It is impossible for me to layer onto it what my hopes are for them because I think it's just going to be really different. What I know, I think, sitting here today is that creativity and flexibility and adaptability and all those communication skills are going to be how they navigate this transitional period because that's the sucky thing for our kids. They're going to be in the transition in a major, major way. And so I hope that they are learning in the public school system to be curious and communicative and creative and flexible and resilient. That's another thing that I worry about. And this makes me sound very get off my lawn. I think that in our efforts to recognize the very real challenges that kids come to school with, things that are not unimaginable to me, but not within my life experience that kids come to school with, I think in those very real efforts to recognize that, instead of saying, I want you to come to school and be pushed and try and fail and try again and develop that confidence on the road to excellence, a lot of school has become that's probably not available to you.

[00:42:24] How do we build something that you can be excellent in? Not an objective excellence, but your excellence. And I think that there's a calibration needed on that. There's some space where we can say, what are your individual needs? But also, how can you thrive in an objectively excellent way? Because we believe in you and we believe that you can do the hard things and get there with everyone else, even with these challenges that you've walked in with. And I don't know the balance of that. That's not any one person's thing to solve. That's cultural. That is a thread running through all of our parenting. But I think we're working that out right now.

Sarah [00:43:11] Well, and you know what? I just want to say to all the teachers out there, I don't need you to teach my kids creativity and flexibility and communication. Because you guys know, and I know, and you know Beth, kids don't do what you tell them to do. They tell them what you show them. Do as I say, not as I do, does not ever work. And I think, look, I think the hard reality-- I'm not criticizing, I've heard this from teachers who are my friends and teachers in our audience. Excellence is not rewarded in teaching.

Beth [00:43:44] Yeah. It's punished in a lot of teachers.

Sarah [00:43:48] Innovation is not reward in teaching, it's ignored at best and punished at worst. So because we've thrown all these boxes to check on top of teachers and administrators, they spend a lot of their time checking boxes. And so what do the kids see? All right, we'll work the system, we we'll check the boxes. There's an organization I read about in this New York Times article called Knowledge Matters. And what they found is that test scores increase-- instead of using every software imaginable to assess the practice test questions to see which multiple choice they're getting wrong, throw me off a bridge, they've learned that actually reading and writing and math skills improve when you teach social studies and science because they're subject matters and history that are engaging to kids as opposed to reading those short form essays they have to read and then take tests on. No, thank you. Can you give me something halfway interesting to read? Like history or science? They don't have a baseline. Can you just teach them the facts? Can we start with just the facts instead of how to be a good person and communication skills and X, Y, Z and how to meet every kid's very specific trauma or need or challenge? Maybe, I don't know, we could just start with something interesting like the Revolutionary War. Or basic biology. I go back and read things and I'm like, I never learned this. No one taught me this. Where was I? What was going on?

Beth [00:45:30] That's what I mean, though. I don't want them to have a sit down where they teach my kids to be creative and flexible. I want the environment to foster that. And I think that's what teachers want too. I think that's why you go into teaching because you want to create an environment that lends to that. And I there are just an endless sea of obstacles in the way of that. And that's why I think it's important for us to have this conversation. Every time we talk about education or healthcare, we get people coming back to us saying, "You really shouldn't do this unless you have a doctor on or unless you an education expert or at least a public school teacher on." And I think that there is certainly value in talking to experts and people with experience in these professions.

[00:46:12] And we do all the time. We're both friends with a lot of teachers, have a lot school volunteering in our lives. It's not that we are sitting way, way outside of these systems. But to me, speaking as parents and community members about education helps close this gap where we're all resentful and where it's adversarial to say, "We get that there are tremendous obstacles in your way. We get that your vision probably aligns more closely with our vision than it sounds like in public debate about this. How do we all work together to move the needle?" And that is a political process because so many of these obstacles are imposed by our public policy.

Sarah [00:47:00] Yeah, and they're imposed under the guise of standards. And I get it, but it's not working. Can we all just admit it's no working? Every kid is different and every school is different and this top-down imposition of black and white standards was a thoughtful idea, but it is not working. The testing is out of control. The pursuit of testing goals through EdTech is out of control. The EdTech in particular, what I see with my kids is they just get frustrated because it pushes them into stuff they don't know yet. And so they think they're dumb at math. That's what Felix thinks because he's always ahead of what they're teaching. What he feels coming from the Edtech is you're dumb. You don't understand this. Because they're simple creatures, these children, and they take messages in ways we don't always want them to take the messages. It's also overwhelming, and I feel like there's a real need to just get back to brass tacks.

[00:48:10] Can I give you an example of something that I would love to see? My children's handwriting is atrocious. It is so bad. And I think in a way that's one of the red blinking lights. If you'd asked me when Griffin started kindergarten, something I'd like him to leave elementary school with, I would have said good handwriting. I think most people would say you want a child's handwriting to be legible, but it's not. And so it's like that's a thing that I'm constantly frustrated about. And like you said, it builds resentment because it's like everybody wants more and more. And the pursuit of more feels right to you, but because there are so many competing constituencies, everybody's pursuit of more inside the public education system has left us with less. Beth, our audience is filled with people who have acted as mentors, parenting mentors to both of us. I think about the people who were like goodbye the price you pay for college. I was like, okay. The people who were like here's what you need to think about with high school graduation. Or they're talking about what it's like when they go to college. They've given us tips.

Beth [00:49:44] Enjoy your teenagers. Lots of really good enjoy your teenagers advice.

Sarah [00:49:49] I say all that to say this. These people owe me an apology. No one gave me any heads up at all about teaching a teenager to drive, which is truly a terrible task. And here is the mistake I made that I am speaking into existence so that I can hopefully protect some of you people out there from this situation. Griffin had driven to my mom's house at our neighborhood maybe twice when he got his permit. And that was not enough. Let me just put that out there. That was not enough. He needed more experience driving things. Both of my children got in the car and put both of their feet on each pedal. A foot on each pedal. And I was like, oh no. And every time is so stressful because he doesn't know what he's doing. He's so smart. You forget like so much they don't know. He doesn't know what he is doing. He doesn't know what he's doing. I'm like, hey, I need you to remember the right side of the car. He's almost hitting mailboxes every time. It's so stressful. It's so awful and so stressful. And where was the what to expect when you're expecting book? Like your child should turn 13 and there should be an equivalent teenage parenting book that everybody gets. They're like, here you go. There should be a whole chapter about get your kid in a parking lot so they have some experience with a car before they show up with a permit and try to start driving your car. It's awful.

Beth [00:51:24] I feel like we know people who would be great at writing this book. We should give them a call because it would be a best seller for sure. It's funny that you bring this up. I was just with one of our friends Ross and he has a new driver in his house and he was saying, "I wish that at least a year ago in the car when we're going places I had said, 'put your phone down and we're going to talk through what I'm doing.'"

Sarah [00:51:49] At the bare minimum.

Beth [00:51:50] I'm going to talk through the decisions. I'm going to talk through where we're going, what the signs mean, how we're getting from here to there to get this conversation started earlier. Because he was like you just never stop to consider how many decisions you're making and how much information you're processing when you're driving. And so I'm going to try to start doing that this summer with Jane. I'm just going to narrate the drive to see if that helps. But I think also we need to get her on the riding lawn mower. We need to get her in a golf cart. Just more experience steering and navigating and accelerating and braking in general.

Sarah [00:52:34] It's so stressful and it's so terrifying. We got to a left-hand turn lane at the mall, four lanes of traffic, he was like, "So what am I doing?" I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, "So what is my next move?" I'm like, "Well, let me give you a tip. If you're in a situation where you're not sure what happens next, just follow the car in front of you. They're going to turn left. Follow them if you're not exactly sure where the lanes are." Which apparently he isn't! And then one day I was like, okay, you've got your permit now. You've practiced with my mom in the parking lot just a little, you can drive home from church. This is like a straight shot. You go straight, there's a right turn, a left turn, a right turn, and you're in our neighborhood. He drove up on the curve into the parking lot twice. We never got out of the parking lot.

Beth [00:53:27] We just recorded this whole segment about how we ask our schools to do too much. I would say, I would like the schools to teach them to drive. I feel like driving is a public function regulated by the government and I would like the government to teach our kids to drive because I am very nervous about this time. I remember the tension in the car with my dad as he was teaching me to drive. I am positive it was terrifying with me as the driver. I had no experience; I had no clue. I still struggle like with distance perception. If somebody says, "Come back about five feet," I'm like, "What is five feet? I don't know. What are you talking about?" So I think this should be a standardized training program is what I'm saying.

Sarah [00:54:12] But we have like a private company who does driving lessons, but you're supposed to do that at like the end right before they take their road test. It's like an ACT prep. They're not really teaching on the stuff. They're trying to teach them how to pass the test.

Beth [00:54:27] No, I want the learning. Like we've been talking about, I want the learning.

Sarah [00:54:30] For six months I have to be in a car with him and he doesn't know what he's doing. And this morning I was like, "Take him to school. Let him drive to school." Well, he let him get halfway there and he's like, then we switched. I just don't think he's up for the car entrance line to the middle school. I'm like, he's just going to have to be up for it. Like we have to get this party started. We are behind the curve. And let me tell you, I'm making this mistake again. My best friend Elizabeth was like, oh yeah, we realized this with David and we didn't make the mistake with Kathleen and Jack. And I'm, like, why didn't you tell me? There was time for me.

Beth [00:55:01] But walk me through what not making the mistake looks like. That's what I want to know. Okay, I get the narrating in the car, the golf carts, the things, but like what else?

Sarah [00:55:11] I'm taking Amos to a parking lot. I ain't starting at zero the second he gets his permit. He's going to go to the parking lot. He's going to be in the car with us while we're teaching Griffin how to drive. He's going to go to parking lot and he's going practice on a real car way before-- well, it's not even way before because they just moved up the dang test. He's about to turn 14. He can take the test at 15. But I cannot start him at zero like I have started Griffin at zero. It is too hard and it's too stressful and all of you people who let me walk into this trap owe me an apology. That is all I'm saying.

Beth [00:55:40] It's almost like driving is a language of its own that you just need to be immersed in early. I think that might be it. Now, I don't personally know how to translate that into action here.

Sarah [00:55:52] Well, one day after we ran up the curve on the church parking lot twice, I said, okay. So he got in the car, I drove home and I had him put his hand on dash in between us. I had to put it at an elevation like a gas pedal, and I pressed his hand while I was pressing the gas pedal. I'm like, I want you to understand how far and how not far I'm in fact pressing this gas and brake. And he was like, okay, that's helpful. So I was trying to give him a sense of like how hard I'm pressing it. So I did that and I'm trying to narrate. But also, you know why it's so intuitive to us? It's just muscle memory. Some of it is just they got to do it. And now I feel like I really should just be spending a lot of time with him probably in a parking lot, but I feel all this pressure that he needs to get like on the actual road. It's terrible. This is a terrible part of parenting that people are not honest enough about.

Beth [00:56:52] We had a conversation a couple of years ago, I think with friends of ours, about how maybe we should switch and teach each other's kids to drive. And take at least some of the emotion out of it. Make a little bit of we're being careful with each other might help.

Sarah [00:57:07] Well, my mom usually teaches my kids everything. She taught all three of my kids how to ride their bikes because I would get so frustrated and upset. And so she's been taking Griffin-- she's taken him like one time to the parking lot. She's like, he's a really good driver. I'm like, yeah, in the parking lot. Why don't you go somewhere else with him, Lisa? Like, it's stressful out there. It's so stressful.

Beth [00:57:24] Would Lisa like to come help us with this task? That'd be awesome.

Sarah [00:57:27] Sure. she probably would if you asked her.

Beth [00:57:29] Yeah. I got nice questions for Lisa.

Sarah [00:57:30] Just listen to me, people. Do not put this off. I know high school's intense and middle school's intense and life is busy and then all of a sudden they're 16. I get it. But listen to me, do not put it off until they have a permit. Go to some parking lots ASAP.

Beth [00:57:49] Good advice. Okay, I'm inspired. We're going to do it.

Sarah [00:57:53] Well, thank you for joining us for today. Again, not too late. If you want to participate in the 30 days of Re-imagining Citizenship, that's what we try to do here today. We try to re-imagine public school. I think we did a pretty good job. We are really, really proud of this series. I've like cried through not an unsubstantial amount of these meditations. I'm just telling you that right now. Just heads up. It gets emotional.

Beth [00:58:15] You probably need to go back and listen to the meditations just to comment [crosstalk] driving situation.

Sarah [00:58:20] I do, that's what I should do. That's a good idea. So it's not too late to join us as we count on to July 4th. We're really excited for the Flashback Series, so get ready for that this summer. We'll be back in your ears on Friday. Until then, keep it nuanced y'all.