Military Boot Camp and No-Excuses Charter Schools

The military long ago solved its education problem: How do you take collections of disparate individuals from all walks of life, who have never killed anyone, and turn them into cohesive, well-disciplined units of warriors? First, get the individuals who enter the program to sign up for it voluntarily. This way they have some idea of what they are getting into and they are, for the most part, at least eighteen years old and physically fit. Second, the military doesn't have a lot of time to whip recruits into shape. They've got to get the job done as efficiently as possible in seven to twelve weeks. Boot camp is designed to be challenging and tough with all contingencies for reward and punishment controlled by the military 24-7 because the recruits are living on the premises. Thus the initial tough tactics are designed to put maximum stress on the recruits -- break them down emotionally so that they can be built back up to become soldiers. It is powerful and effective. Many find comfort and strength from the disciplined life imposed on them, especially if they come from unstructured, somewhat chaotic backgrounds. Soldiers take pride in whom they become precisely because they endured and overcame tough training challenges and they know, deep in their bones, what they've achieved. Some people don't make it. But that is not a problem for the military. They can go find other careers.

It seems that some charter school chains have taken a page out of the military training manuals with their harsh performance standards for a no-excuses school. One such chain is Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy in NYC. The philosophy is shape up or ship out. Diane Ravitch recently reposted an interview with teacher Emily Talmage who had worked for Success academy. Although they don't exactly follow the military manual; they used a derivative: Doug Lemov's book Teach Like A Champion, which Emily paraphrased "Teach like a robot." Children are expected to walk silently, sit quietly with hands folded, keep eyes on teachers while a monotonous lesson is parroted to them. And what if you break the rules? Suspension is the consequence for children as young as five. John Merrow, the distinguished education commentator for PBS NewsHour did a segment on this, which is eye-opening. Such draconian measures have the effect of winnowing out the children who can't comply with the rigor. Developmental studies of the readiness of children to learn various academic skills is absent from their lexicon. Frightening!

The up-side for Eva Moskowitz is that Success Academy students do well on standardized tests--the only measure of success for today's data-driven education reformers. But at what cost? Damage to children who can't conform? High attrition rates of students who don't graduate the program and must find other schools to go to (usually public)? High turnover among teachers? Loss of instruction time for creative endeavors on the part of the students? No development of the concept of personal freedom and dignity? And we have no idea of how well these students would do in an unstructured university setting.

Education is a long process -- it takes twelve years, not twelve weeks. The basic thesis of freedom and democracy celebrates individual differences, not conformity. The no-excuses philosophy is especially horrifying to me, a product of progressive education, who became a children's book author because I learned to love learning. I remember seeing a news segment, years ago, of a principal in Texas with a bullhorn yelling orders to his students. The students responded with alacrity, smiles on their faces. I remember wondering why they were obviously enjoying themselves in an environment I would have hated as a child. Did they feel safe because they knew what was expected of them and they could deliver? Was it the structured environment that made them feel safe? If so, would they seek out such structured environments in their adult lives because they had never had the opportunity to develop internal discipline and control?

Literature is rife with stories, starting with Dickens, of the mistreatment and abuse of children. We know what is needed to provide a nurturing, rich environment that allows the natural predilection to learn, which young human beings have in their DNA, flourish. Public schools must, by law, educate all children, including those who don't shape up by militaristic standards. No-excuses charter schools take public funds and use them to discard and damage children who are entitled to a good, publicly funded education while they are still growing up.