Public Education: The Greatest Invention of Modern Times — and the Most Rigid System We Have

· William L Hartwick

A blog by William L. Hartwick

Public education is the greatest invention of modern times. It is also, as it stands today, the worst system we keep refusing to fix. I can hold both of those truths in the same breath, because I have lived on both sides of the desk — as the child the system could not figure out, and as the principal who ran the buildings.

WHO IS SAYING THIS

I have Tourette Syndrome. I was not diagnosed until I was 35 years old — thirty-five years of adults telling me what was wrong with me, and not one of them being right. I have never read a book cover to cover. Not one. And yet I spent 27 years in education, running schools, sitting in the IEP meetings, making the phone calls home, and shaking the hands of graduates whose parents had been told their child would never make it.

I am neurodiversity. I am the child your teacher doesn't know what to do with — grown up, and put in charge of the building. So when I talk about what is wrong with the system, I am not quoting a study. I am the study.

THE RIGID SYSTEM

Here is what I watched for 27 years. Rigid academics — one worksheet, one pace, one way to prove you learned it. Rigid discipline — a tic read as defiance, a meltdown read as manipulation, silence read as respect when sometimes silence is a child trying to disappear. Rigid judgment — a file that follows a child from building to building like a rumor. And rigid, top-down administration — decisions made in offices by people who have not sat with the child in the chair outside the office.

A student's file is a rear view mirror. Glance at it if you must. Then look out the windshield at the kid actually standing in front of you today. That child is not last year's paperwork.

And when the same approach fails the same child for the tenth year in a row, the system's answer is to do it again, harder. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result — we all know what that is called. In education, we call it protocol.

RESEARCH BASED IS NOT REALITY

I took the most comprehensive mental health turnaround in education to the people who publish the experts. The answer, in so many words, was: we only offer research based. Research based is not reality. Research is what already happened to somebody else's children, written down by somebody who was never in the room.

Reality is what this child is actually carrying this morning. Reality is what this teacher is actually able to do at 2:15 on a Tuesday. Reality is what this family is actually able to give tonight. Every educational reform agency and organization has a menu. My solution is not on those menus — because menus are printed, and children are not.

WHAT I OFFERED — AND STILL OFFER

My process is not complicated, and that is exactly why it works. Sit down with the child and have a real conversation. Bring in the family — and family means the people who actually love this child: extended family, caregivers, providers, not just whoever is at the home address. Gather information through observation and more conversation. Ask the backpack question — what are you carrying that I cannot see? Build an individual action plan for that one child. And then turn the educational pyramid upside down, so the child is on top and the system serves the child instead of the child serving the system.

That is not a theory. That is 27 years of watching it work while the rigid way failed.

WHERE EDUCATION IS GOING — WITH OR WITHOUT THEM

Mental health and neurodiversity are not a trend. They are the future of education, and the future is already sitting in every classroom in this country, tapping a pencil, staring out a window, carrying an invisible backpack no one has asked about. The administrators who keep gripping the rigid way are not protecting standards. They are protecting paperwork.

I don't teach compliance. I teach cadence. Say it, feel it, keep it. Four words I gave every staff I ever led, and the ones I want on a wall in every building in America: Acceptance. Patience. Tolerance. Love. That is not a slogan. That is the whole job description.

A mind changed against its will is of the same opinion still. I am not trying to force anyone. I am inviting the world of educators — the reform agencies, the organizations, the current administrators — to stop defending the old way with better paperwork, and start with the child in the chair. That is the reality. That is where education is going. The only question is who is willing to go there first.

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William L. Hartwick
Founder, The Invisible Backpack Organization
william@theinvisiblebackpack.org | 904.609.1313
theinvisiblebackpackorganization.com