Before we begin at The Beginning, I have moved up a personal piece of mine which I want to make more immediately accessible to readers. I think my experience may well have relevance for today's students in whatever schools they are in, so I've put it at the beginning of my blog to make it easy to find.
I have decided to vent a little as to how I feel the educational system at the Associated Hebrew Day Schools of Toronto let me down in such a way as to abandon me to a life of economic and personal failure, and the distress that goes along with that. Strong words, no? Well, read this story. I've been putting off writing it for quite some time, but ... File this under the "Etc" of the overall title of this blog. As American philospher George Santayana said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Here, therefore, is a contribution to the collective memory so that at some distant time when there is the risk of this happening to someone else, perhaps, now, it won't.
Scene I
Here is a tale of two men who we find, one winter night, in the Emergency Department of a major hospital in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). One is a patient, sent to hospital by his family physician to get intravenous antibiotics for a pesky cellulitis infection which, if left unchecked, could kill him. The other, the doctor in charge of the Emerg that night.
As the doctor comes in to see the patient, both of their faces light up in mutual recognition. They had both attended the same campus of the Associated Hebrew Day Schools. At times, they had even been in the same class.
"How are you?" they ask each other, shaking hands, each pleasantly surprised to see a friendly face. Some routine catching up ensues. Finally, the doctor asks the patient, "I can't remember; did you graduate from CHAT (Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto, the High School of the Associated Hebrew Day Schools of Toronto)?"
"Nope," says the patient. "I had to drop out."
"That's too bad," replies the doctor. "What have you been doing all these years?"
"I've been a file clerk for the past twenty-five years," the patient answers, with a tinge of resignation in his voice. "Many of our former classmates seem to have done well, though. You're a doctor, as are many of the others, some are lawyers, some are professors, some are successful writers. It was a good class."
"Yes, it was" agreed the doctor [Note: I know I just changed tense here. It works for me.] "It's too bad you didn't graduate."
"Well," said the patient, "I had no choice. I was always a dreamy kid who had trouble focusing, all through school. Early on, I was able to get by but it caught up with me in Grades 8, 9, and 10. I started floundering academically."
"In my final year at the Associated, Grade 10," he went on, "I got 38% in my first term Science course, which was Botany, a subject I just could not get my head around. To add insult to injury, my mark was read out to the class, to a chorus of whistles and cat-calls. That term, I also got 48% in Geography."
"I was lucky to escape the year with a 63% average," said the patient. "There was no way I could stay. The writing was on the wall. I would have flunked the next year, so I bailed, and went to a public High School where, with the lighter course load, i.e. no Hebrew curriculum, I did better. It was just easier. A lot of kids like me had to drop out of the Associated."
"I know," said the doctor. "I was almost one of them myself. In Grade 11, I was flunking out. My poorest subject was English."
This caught the interest of the patient, who, to that point, had endured a lifetime of low status, low paying employment. How did one become a successful doctor, starting from the same bad school situation?
"I had help," said the doctor. "A teacher took me aside, and worked with me until I managed to turn things around. Actually, I ended up as valedictorian for English studies!"
End of scene.
I don't think I need to explain that, in the above scene, which actually happened, I was the patient. Now let's read "the rest of the story ..."
Having fled the Associated in total confusion, self-hatred, self-doubt, and disarray, I arrived for my first guidance counselling session at Downsview Secondary School, my new academic home for the next three years. Downsview was a good school; also, my neighbourhood friends went there. Of course, though, I was nervous.
"Welcome," said Mr. Vanstone, a pleasant, sincere man who also taught Geography (uh-oh). After we both settled in, Mr. Vanstone asked the question he must have asked a thousand times during his career at Downsview. "Well, Gord, what would you like to be?"
It's hard to describe the state of my mind at the time. Let's just say I was so crushed by my failure at the Associated, and so apprehensive of repeating it at Downsview, that I literally did not think I could be anything. Surely, Mr. Vanstone knew this. Why was he asking? Just to make sure, I explained it to him.
"Well, I don't know," I said. "Last year, at my previous school, I got 38% in Science, and 48% in Geography in the first term, and I just managed to scrape by with a 63% overall average for the year."
"I know," said Mr. Vanstone, "but I think you can be anything you want to be."
"Excuse me?," I said, despairing of his ever understanding me.
"Well, Gord," he said. "We have IQ test results for you which show you can do just about anything you want (in fact they all would have qualified me for Mensa, the Grade 11 result being the minimum age required -- not that that means all that much, after all, since Mensa comprises the top two per cent IQ, which is two out of every hundred, and there are a lot of groups of a hundred in the population. Mensa is not such an exclusive club, and I was/am certainly no Einstein -- but then again, Einstein was no Gord Lindsay!).
In my confused emotional state, I asked "Which tests?"
"Well," replied Mr. Vanstone calmly, "we have the test you took here, earlier in the year, and there are two tests from your former school, the Associated Hebrew Day Schools. You actually scored a little higher on those than on the one you took here. They're all high results, though, and I'm wondering if you'd like to join an extracurricular group of gifted students."
Despair and exhilaration fought each other to a tense standoff inside of me.
On the one hand, not having been privy to my I.Q. scores before, it was quite a happy shock for me to hear I was bright; on the other hand, why didn't I feel it? Why didn't I know it? Did I know it, deep down? Or did I merely suspect it, without daring to believe it? Hey, not only was I confused, I was an adolescent.
"No," my self-doubt won the day. "I wouldn't feel comfortable in a group of gifted students. I'd feel like a fake."
End of scene -- and a singular opportunity.
I shouldn't have to point out -- though I will -- that the dissonance I was feeling inside of me mirrored the peculiar paradox of my IQ versus my grades which went on at the Associated Hebrew Day Schools. Did they not see this discrepancy? Were they perhaps too understaffed to actually read the IQ test results? Were they as screwed up and confused as I was? It certainly seemed that way.
The lack of intervention at the Associated baffled me, and contributed to my suspicion that maybe the IQ test results had gotten mixed up -- no, the Downsview test result was similar -- but hearing that I had a high IQ actually contributed to my confusion. Why had the Associated not told me? Why, at a time when an adolescent is in the tender stages of forming a self-image that will last him the rest of his life, were there no encouraging words? All I knew, throughout this formative time, was that I was a 38 and 48 percenter. No one told me differently, certainly not at the Associated, and that stigma went deep into my soul, notwithstanding that also deep down, I must have known I was bright. Way to help a guy who's having trouble, to overcome his problems, and to believe in himself -- not.
The Associated's indifference, letting a young student who they knew had a lot of potential simply lie, hopeless and afraid, face down on the floor without ever offering him (me) a hand up continued to puzzle me for years.
And, as stated above in Scene I, I was not alone. "Sink or swim" was the apparent policy of the school at the time. One can only hope the current leadership has a different outlook but when I was there, hundreds of students fell off the truck of the Associated Hebrew Day Schools educational program.
Many fell off that truck because the Big Lie ruled in those days, a lie which, in my opinion, the school used to exempt itself from fulfilling its fiduciary responsibility to educate which, in the pure sense of the term, means "to lead [someone] out."
Here's how it worked. "Johnny's not doing well here at the Associated because of the double course load of English studies and Hebrew studies," a teacher would say. "He'll do better at a public school where the course load is lighter."
And, to make what I call the Big Lie seem like the truth, many of the Johnnies, myself included, actually did get better grades in the public school system.
Why, then, do I call it The Big Lie?
Think back to Scene I above. There were two people in that Emergency Room. Both had gotten decent grades in their respective High Schools. Both had decent -- or high -- IQs. How is it one went on to become a doctor, marry, raise a family, and live a good life while the other one languished in the $20K salary range all his working life, never married ($20Ks? Next!), suffered low self-esteem, seemed unable to ever apply himself, and ended up declaring personal bankruptcy not because of wanton spending but because his credit cards overtook his all too modest salary, and, generally, was what you would call "an underachiever?"
Success in professions and life in general is something that comes when a person reaches maturity, attends university, goes into a profession, starts a business, and does whatever it takes to make it in the real world, i.e. they know how to apply themselves.
The challenges presented by the real world far exceed those faced by High School students in schools with easier curricula. Even undergrad university students are considered babies by the faculty until they reach the postgraduate level where the real work gets done, so success in High School is by no means a guarantee of success in the real world. And, for many, "success" in High School by way of fairly good marks is no indicator of whether or not students have learned to apply themselves -- which is the real determinant of success in the real world.
Of course, it always looks good when Johnny gets higher grades but there's a significant difference between getting good High School grades where there is a double course load, -- and an accelerated program, like at the Associated -- and getting "good" grades at a regular public school with a regular course load. The numbers may be identical but their meaning in terms of achievement is totally different.
But it looks good, and that's where the Big Lie comes in.
There is a curious word in the Chinese language. It stands for both crisis, and opportunity because in that culture, these are one and the same.
Simply put, by its "sink or swim" policy of the time, the Associated was depriving its floundering students of the opportunity to overcome their crisis. Instead of giving these students, myself included, the tools to succeed as, by some fluke, these were given to my classmate, the doctor, the Associated let us flounder and drop out, making us back away from the crisis, often never to face it again because by going to an "easier" school, i.e., one without a double course load, things never came to a head, i.e. no crisis, no opportunity.
Why should easy be good? Why is it somehow preferable to send a student to a school with an easier curriculum? It's not easy to become a doctor. You don't get there by taking current events instead of going to medical school. And if you take current events, you won't distinguish yourself in that pursuit unless you know how to apply yourself. AND, if your course load is light enough for a person of your native abilities to slide through and to do well without ever really learning how to apply yourself, well, fuggedaboudit! Although, cosmetically, your marks may be higher in a public school than they were at the Associated, you may not be doing better at all. You may, in fact, merely be setting yourself up for a lifetime of failure and disappointment -- which is what happened -- and continues to happen -- to me.
It's too easy to be satisfied with "decent" marks in High School. The High School students who have learned how to properly prepare for success in the real world don't settle for "decent". They have learned how to really apply themselves, and strive to be the best they can be. They are achievers.
And that's the Big Lie. Johnny is not doing better just because his marks went up when he transferred schools. Unless he excels beyond expectations in his new school, he's probably just coasting, and will carry the same failure-oriented limitations into his life in the real world. Had his problem been addressed at the Associated, however, had he been taught to overcome, he would be carrying the tools of success into his post-secondary life, an educated young man.
The Big Lie is that by running away from a crisis, you are helping yourself. Not so. You only help yourself -- and grow -- by facing the crisis, and resolving it. The Big Lie implies that the student lacks the resources to do this. This is a heinous lie, in many -- if not most -- cases.
Had I been floundering at Downsview Secondary, would I have gotten help? You betcha. Had there been a huge discrepancy between my IQ and other aptitude tests, and my grades, they would have been on me like white on rice. The problem was, with the lighter course load, I never had the kind of low marks which would have raised the red flag needed to alert them to my problem, and so I carried my uncorrected deficiencies into my adult life, lamentably, much to my detriment.
And, if there are any educators out there who don't know how to get floundering students to apply themselves, here's some free advice which any good consultant would charge a lot of money for:
If a student is floundering, the fundamental thing you have to do to help them is:
Make them feel you care about them.
This is not puff, New Age, touchy-feely sophistry; it's the real deal.
To put it another way, in my opinion, it is axiomatic that students who don't know how to apply themselves, are not sure their self is worth applying.
Yes. Self-worth. You've got to give students a sense of self-worth before they'll even begin to think of helping themselves. And don't lay this on the parents. The kids are in school. If it's all the parents' fault, and the school washes its hands of the responsibility, then we might as well take the child out of the institution, and let them have home schooling. If they're not connecting in school, why be there?
Any school can turn any student around. Work with them, give them that sense of self-worth, i.e. that the student is important enough to the school to merit concern and help, and students will start to apply themselves. Stick with them, and students will not only improve but will learn the important lesson of how to put the effort in to get the result, and, the most important lesson, to have enough faith in themselves to actually believe that this is possible for them.
When the Children of Israel were in the desert, G-d did a strange thing. He fed the people manna from Heaven, an open miracle, every day. Yet, with the exception of Friday, Erev Shabbat, He did not allow them to keep any over from day to day.
G-d, of course, could have given them a week's or a month's supply, and kept it fresh miraculously, as he did with the shirts on their backs. Instead, everyone had to hope and pray that G-d would remember to feed them each and every day for nearly forty years.
The Midrash tells us that this was G-d's way of training the heart in faith. He never disappointed -- but it took nearly forty years, six days a week to teach the heart to believe. Their eyes had seen the Sea of Reeds split, and they had intellectually -- and emotionally -- grasped G-d's power and believed in Him, yet that all went out the window at the first opportunity with the worship of the Golden Calf. The vagaries of the heart, G-d knew, required more than "seeing is believing." Repeated training and reassurance over time were Hashem's prescription for achieving a faith which would endure.
The hearts of underachieving students is where the battle lies for their attaining self-worth, and, consequently, academic improvement. The internalizing of self-worth may take many tutoring sessions to sink in, but when it finally does, the foundation for real progress will begin. The heart, after all, has years to learn and reinforce a negative self-image. It is not changed in a day.
One more scene:
The scene is the lobby of Mount Sinai Hospital where I worked for my 20Ks salary for twenty-five years, as a library clerk. There, on my break, I happen upon a former teacher of mine from the Associated Hebrew Day Schools. This was someone who was there from early days.
The teacher remembers me, and asks me if I graduated. I say I dropped out after Grade 10. "Aha!," the teacher says, always looking for the best in people, "you graduated from Junior High, and you work in a fine hospital like this. I'm proud of you!" I wince inwardly at the naivete regardless of whether it is real or just the result of politeness. Working in a fine hospital does not mean making a fine salary or having a fine position. I contribute to the hospital with my clerical work but I can't help but wonder what Mr. Vanstone would think of me, and all my unfulfilled potential.
"And you know," the teacher goes on, "we had an unwritten policy at the Associated, that if a student wasn't doing well, we wouldn't help them. That way, only the good students would graduate, and that would make the school look good."
And that, my friends, is the rest of the story, the missing, unbelievably cynical link, established by the founders of the Associated, and perpetuated likely unwittingly by subsequent generations of its teachers, which may explain it all.
Abandon the students having trouble. Let them flounder or coast somewhere else. They're not worth it.
Whaddayougonnado?
End of my rant. I hope youngsters in school who run into trouble like this may benefit from parents' and educators' application of the principles described above. Of course, students who run into trouble in High School could get lucky later, i.e. at university, by seeking help there, unless, like me, they are also able to get through university without hitting the wall. If they do hit the wall, then maybe the remedial work they needed as teenagers could be accomplished at university. Furthermore, perhaps lighter course loads give students who were having trouble a respite from their difficulties, a boost in self-worth, and, the magical ability to suddenly excel at their studies in a manner previously unknown to them. It's like the old joke: two drunks walk out of a bar ... Hey, it could happen ... But it didn't happen to me. Getting "better" marks never gave me the feeling I was getting any better. I remained unfocused, and the deficiencies that caused me to drop out of the Associated continue to impair me to this day. When I think of my doctor classmate who got help, I can only dream of what might have been ... And, to put a little perspective on this, I, of course, recognize that the Associated did not cause my difficulties, so I do not hold them exclusively responsible for my plight. I just feel they were my best hope for help, and they let me down when they should have helped. I also appreciate all I learned there, and I don't hate them because they thought they were doing what was best. I think they were very wrong in their approach but being wrong is a common feature of the human condition. Even I make the occasional mistake.
