Young: Bringing outside world to school

WACO, Texas — A former associate of mine has a particular school-time memory stuck in his brain. For him, like a wonderful picture, it says volumes about what a public school ought to be: An old man out in the country had caught a beaver in a live trap. Walking into town with his keep, boots still damp, he went right to the old schoolhouse. He asked the principal if the students would like to see a live beaver. The principal said yes.

A hit with the kids? Well, all those years later, the kid who would become that veteran journalist would remember it whenever he interviewed an authority figure in public schools. The question: Let's say someone caught a live beaver (or marmot, or grey fox) and wanted to show it to your students. Would today's schools allow it?

He was mining for the sense of community too often lost in modern society.

That now-retired journalist surely grinned last week if he saw the WacoTribune-Herald photo package of two baby goats being wheeled in a wagon through a local elementary school. But, then, who wouldn't grin?

This is what education is about: life. Yeah, yeah, it's about digits and diphthongs, too. And have we emphasized them sufficiently? (Notice, I emphasized that word.)

Actually, numbers and phonics are only the instruments of education. They allow students to master important concepts about their world. But you don't shut the world out and have education. Too often we do just that.

Reacting to the goat photo, I observed that the visit came after the completion of state standardized testing for the year. I asked an educator: Would goats on campus be verboten in the weeks and months before TAKS?

The question elicited too long of a pause. That would bring a frown to the old journalist I know. We can only hope that amid all the hype and incessant drumroll about one test, our schools find time to let the world shine in. And I'm not just talking about parts of the world depicted on geography software purchased for every school because it will be on the test.

The school that admitted the goats, Mountainview, will be admitting the world in a new way next fall. It will be a magnet campus for the Primary Years Programme of the Princeton Review.

Students won't just be learning reading, math and science. They will be applying the concepts to different spots of the globe in an integrated curriculum. The program will include foreign language — Spanish — for every student.

We can all root for its success and its spread. Of course, you don't need anything grandiose- sounding to do things in the classroom that have impact and staying power. Sometimes you just need to let teachers exercise their intuition, and give them breathing room to teach.

"To teach" is quite different than "to train." Unfortunately, too many policymakers cannot, or will not, differentiate between the two. Education is elevation. You can train a baby goat to do a rudimentary task. You can't train a baby goat to write a sonnet.

Within the context of true education, interesting field trips, lively arts and a visit from the man with the live beaver aren't distractions. They are what will stick for lifetimes. They are fascination for living. They are the reason to use the numbers, letters and other instruments of learning that will be on the test.

John Young writes for the Waco Tribune-Herald.