Pendulum (1978)

in the process of getting Where We Are Tonight a great many of us have lost our sense of proportion we have wrapped our eles in self-righteousness have let our voices become shrill and loud and have let passions overcome our reason one sizable group of responsible individuals has demanded the resignation of John M because of what they consider his bad judgment and deficiencies in administrative ability another sizable group of responsible individuals has demanded that John Newton not res sign because they believe his leadership has resulted in in an unusually good high school in terms of its preparation of students for life in a highly complicated and competitive modern [Music] civilization pass the salt please you have a cream and sugar please Pete do you have basketball practice tonight uh yeah it'll be late from 7: to 9:00 you'll have to wait till the school board meeting is over and come home with me I told Jan and Margie that we were going to pick them up around 7:00 this morning on our way to school [Music] oh uh we've had a lot of support here tonight for John Newton and I also think there an awful lot of people out there that are dissatisfied with the administration the way things are going and it would be very hard for John Newton to continue if this unrest continues I just don't think it would be a workable Community what do you feel about Leeland and gray I'm very favorably impressed with what's going on at Leland and gray I know what some of your problems are with respect to Administration but I'm very sympathetic to your Headmaster your principal because I know that it is one thing to enunciate the philosophy of education and another thing to make it a reality in the actual process of [Music] teaching [Music] morning morning [Music] morning [Music] I think a lot of people are worried that we're going to expose their children to experiences that are foreign to the parents and the parents feel that somehow they probably wouldn't approve or they might not approve and they respond to that by by saying we don't want any change we don't we don't want want we want we want it the old way we want it the way it was when we were in school because they survived that and they feel that it must be okay for one thing I feel it's important that the basics should be you should have them every day and these other things like drama art Etc music they're the frosting on the cake see uh they're the carrot in front of the donkey you know that keeps him going and gives him a little interest Spurs him on uh much much today education is not the Slate pencil in the Slate today education is a far broader uh experience than just the three Rs there is a conflict of two ideologies uh you have the people who set a great deal of value by the basics and in education uh and then you have the people who are uh seeking always something new new methods and so forth and these new methods uh sad to say haven't always proved to be very effective people are always worried about change change is is uncomfortable it's it's it's uh the unknown is always kind of frightening for people and so if the schools try to change to respond on to the the needs that they see in society then there's going to be [Music] controversy [Music] I what do they do with the other percentage own okay so they're really tenant Farmers except the tenant Farmers paying rent in mon in our school kids are generally quite relaxed and this is a very important issue the controversy one side believes that in school you should not be you should not be relaxed whereas other on the other side believes that the best atmosphere for learning is is a is a relaxed atmosphere here that's why we have to add it over here to keep it balanced I think it's gone beyond educational issues I think it's just they're arguing about anything they can think of to argue about just for the sake of arguing and now change that to fource and how many fors have you got there they're fighting over over who's going to who's going to control the school who's going to get the uh the most influence in how the school is going to be run being as good as everybody else or better than or worse than or I'm good at this or I'm terrible at this where does that all come from I think the people around here are just so wrapped up in their own opinions that they're just beyond thinking about what it's going to do to the kids and how it's going to affect us when you're changing such an important institution it it's it's going it's going to have tremendous repercussions on the kids and me personally I uh it whatever happens will have a tremendous effect on my whole life it's very hard for me to uh continue in in school and and keep my head um on my work and not be too adversely affected by the controversy that's going on around me it affects me to the point where I just I don't know which direction to head in or where to go and I'm it really confuses me mainly I think the people feel it is more urgent to uh to voice their opinion than to get a good education for their children what people don't realize when they uh do things to their kids education is that they're not just affecting the kids they're affecting society and uh they don't realize this well good morning Mr Newton I'd like you to meet Arthur lcow Mr lgow this is John Newton he's principal of the high school how do you do sir I'd like to introduce you to Arthur lco I'm delighted that you've asked me here today to share with you some thoughts on the controversy which seems to be affecting your school and your community such confrontations are by no means uncommon schools have always been the focus of controversy in the New England colonies only a few young people attended school for more than two or three years those who did studied Latin in preparation for college in which Latin was the only language spoken or written Benjamin Franklin said that he saw little value in the Latin School curriculum and made the heretical assumption that students should enjoy school during the late 1700s towns and Villages began growing in size trade and commerce increased and it became apparent that the classical Latin education was no longer appropriate for preparing young people to engage in the new occupations demanded by the changing Society [Music] in the 1800s School reformers claimed that the schools were too strict and argued for a more sympathetic attitude toward children in 1893 a group known as the committee of 10 charged that the schools were not strict enough almost immediately people began to criticize the committee of 10 writers asserted that the schools were merely places of detention setting children free to learn became the rallying Cry of progressive Educators the pendulum swung once again the time is 95 I received a letter from a disra woman telling me about her High School AG daughter it seems that the daughter is a good student but has one problem she cannot read oh sure she can read her school books but they are so simple as to be foolish the mother writes well this is not an isolated incident I have spoken many times of the confusion in our schools where quality education has become a rarity if not a lost cause today's teachers seem to believe that schools should be entertaining and not enlightening casual and not challenging in the 1940s new criticisms began to be heard schools were too soft and teachers were just letting children play many critics demanded a return to the three Rs and to a policy of strict discipline and order the object after all is to produce educated men and women not to reward our youngsters with diploma for merely growing up Earl Kelly in his 1948 book education for what is real warned that Americans were being led to believe that working on tasks devoid of interest is good discipline and that making a child conform to a repressive classroom atmosphere will make him want to conform when he gets out of [Music] school then came October 4th 1957 that was the day when the Russians launched the first space satellite called Sputnik into Earth orbit passing over American Skies the satellite the size of a basketball had an immediate and dramatic impact in this country shattered American complacency and attacks on the public schools for their failure to teach the technological subjects followed the news of the successful [Music] launch in the 1960s students began to question established ways of thinking while many people criticized the schools for seeming to be more concerned with blue jeans and long hair than with teaching and learning he thought that long hair didn't look good on boys and that it distracted the class in the 1970s with people becoming more vocal about the school we had the problem of deciding who speaks for the community and of defining actually what the community is burrow Hamlet Village neighborhood Township magisterial District Special Service District metropolitan area Ward block School District city of the first or nth class trade area Parish Precinct beat Town Zone state region and section we have a dictionary full of Divisions and subdivisions and these are all communities of one kind or another many of them are formally bounded and charted on maps others are invisibly outlined in the social habits of their populations all of us live simultaneously in several of them and thus we are faced with the fact that seeking the community simply depends on our definition do you see a pendulum effect in American Education well you got you're right on target with that question I think everybody's quite well aware of the fact that this pendulum swings back and forth you know we've been over to the what we call the basics whatever they are some of us are not too sure about that we've also come the other way to what we call the Progressive Movement and we go back the other way to to something nearer the basics but right now we seem to be headed back to n unknown territory probably more to the basics than ever before due to the unemployment due to the pressure brought to bear upon the schools and therefore I'm afraid they're going to take you and everybody else regardless of what your style and need for a learning style may be and force you into a mold that will be an extreme how can we avoid these extremes well I think it would be very simple I think we ought to get get into something the same as we do in the selling of automobiles I think we ought to give the consumer a choice I'd like to think that my responsibility as a school administrator should be to furnish to you and to your parents several ways in which you might become educated and then you take your choice of that rather than to saying we'll take everybody package them up and dip them into something called Basics or something called progressives you have your basic I'll have my Progressive or I'll have my basic and you have your Progressive have it any way you want to and my accountability will be to give you plenty of options from which to make that choice the community is not homogeneous in any sense uh we have a broad spectrum of people of different backgrounds different educational backgrounds different uh social and economic backgrounds and one group might think that your leadership is just great and another group thinks it's just terrible and that's that's really where the pinch [Music] comes [Music] when I first came to leand and gray I said to the staff some of which was old been there a while and some of which was recently hired and I said how do you feel about the program that you've been doing are you happy with that and nobody was so the next question is of course what are we going to do about it so we've tried quite a lot of things and they've haven't all been successful and some of them have been very successful but almost all of them have been criticized and so I I feel that that's my job is to be in the middle of the controversy even though as I say I don't always like it we believe that many of the allegations being made against you are false or misleading we have personal knowledge of your deep concern for the students of your close working relationship with the faculty and of your integrity we urge you not to resign cther Keller active faculty secretary that's the end thank you get the names of the people and their addresses who are the authors of the 13 pages of reasons charges or allegations for the record please with the with the office of the 13 Pages please stand up I did notth 571 people stand up is that what [Applause] you I'm an author of it pass out the now we're directing questions to the chairman is this correct Mr chairman excuse me we are directing questions to the chairman right would you please would you please I'll direct this I'll come when the petition was passed around the P 13 pages of charges were not along with it I want to tell you something the petition excuse me you direct your answer to the chair yes Mr chair I am the author of the petition I compose the the petition and I signed the petition this is my request 540 other people agreed at the close of that meeting um seeing the reaction of the people and the school board and uh realizing that U everyone had become so concerned with his own Viewpoint and his own uh ideas that he had forgotten really why he was there um is very uh was a very depressing thing for me to the seven or eight members of this board that wrote this letter and to Mr Caine who admits to being the author of this petition I invite you to come into my classroom and find out what's going on in this school I don't think that any teacher could have sat through that meeting Any teacher who spent uh years in preparation and years of experience and teaching could have sat through that meeting and not felt like uh uh the whole educational process is going down the drain we have presented our case to the board a long time ago I don't know where all you people have been you had your heads in the sand and now all of a sudden you're excited thank you and all the people that signed this petition and most of them had kids in school or kids that were going to be in this school and as far as your resignation from Mr Newton concerned I don't know why the people are arguing you got seven people on the board that want his resignation and I don't know why they can't ask for his resignation and get all of this seeing the attitude of the people and they're obvious lack of respect for um the teachers and for the for U Mr Newton and for um the whole educational process it uh made me feel that U even though I've spent my whole life in education and teaching has been my life I um I don't feel that I um would want to continue to teach um in a situation like this one group might think that your leadership is just great and another group thinks it's just terrible and that's that's really where the pinch [Music] comes I think the people around here are just so wrapped up in their own opinions that they're just beyond thinking about what it's going to do to the kids and how it's going to affect [Music] us in the midst of all of this that's gone on and at this meeting the child has lost person's become so concerned with expressing a particular Viewpoint that they forget the child entirely forget the needs of the child forget what education is all about why why they are even there why they are even in the [Music] [Music] meeting [Music]