Heartache by Numbers, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

December 11, 2010 Martha Thomases 12 Comments

Is our children learning? Not enough. According to a recent news story, the United States continues to do a rotten job of education our children. We can argue about who to blame (teachers? parents? violdent video games?), but there is most likely no single cause, but rather a combination of factors.

We don’t like problems without simple answers. We avoid them. And maybe that’s why this problem won’t go away.

Over the weekend, I talked with an old friend, a retired New York city detective. He told me about a job he’d been given to research ways to improve security at the Newark public elementary schools. He said the kids there test way above average until fourth grade, when their scores plummet.

This, he told me, is typical of inner-city schools around the country. “Peer pressure” was his diagnosis.

If I understood him correctly, he was saying that, once kids hit the age of 10 or so, it isn’t cool to be smart. There is very little in this life more annoying than someone’s mom telling you that learning is cool, but, if we’re going to survive as a nation, somebody has to do it.

When I was that age, and nobody could tell me anything, I thought the coolest thing to be was a poet (preferably a tragic poet) or a beatnick, like Carolyn Jones in A Hole in the Head. After that, I wanted to be a crusading lawyer. As I got a bit older, I wanted to be funny and incisive like Dorothy Parker or Nora Ephron. To do these things, I needed to read – a lot – and that was fine, because I liked reading.

In other words, whatever glamor was attached to any of the adult lives to which I aspired, at the core was something that gave me pleasure. I got some immediate gratification to go with my ambitions.

Reading was not the only thing I enjoyed. I really liked math. I loved the feeling I got when, suddenly, a complicated theorem made sense and I could do the proof. I used to do quadratic equations for the buzz. I liked science, too, but was less good at it. I’m not great at memorization, and could not retain the periodic tables no matter how hard I tried. Still, the parts that were like math were big fun.

In college, I took a course in Chinese Literature in Translation, and got goosebumps listening to the professor read poems in the original Mandarin. Didn’t understand a word of it, but the rhythms were amazing.

We need school to show kids how learning can get them high. We need to encourage teachers to offer the first hits for free, so kids will beg to come back for more.

Teachers can’t do this on their own. We need the whole country to join in.

Ten years ago, I had a client who produced a line of dolls that were designed to inspire girls. Unlike Barbie, they were reasonably proportioned and could actually stand on their own feet. Each came with enough accessories so that girls could play at real professions, with instructions on how to make more, and back-story on real women who were successful in those fields. We even ran one for president.

Learning history and economics was fun.

Recently, Stephen Colbert showed how much fun contemporary art can be. In a segment on his show this week , he demonstrated several themes important to understanding the past 50 years of art history in a way that was insightful, complex – and hilarious.

We, as a nation, will have to agree that our children our worthy of our time and resources. We’d have to acknowledge that children – even other people’s children – have an effect on our lives and it is in our best interests to help them. We might have to think of them as people, and not just a market.

We might have to encourage them to have fun.

Media Goddess Martha Thomases is grateful for this week of no gift-giving holidays.