[Noozhawk’s note: One in a series of commentaries on understanding and reforming education.]

I recently read Adventures of a Bystander, the memoirs of the late Peter Drucker, probably the most influential — and humane — management consultant of the last half of the last century.

In one chapter he talks about the methods of his fourth-grade teacher, Miss Elsa — who was also the school principal. His narrative about her and her techniques is charming — and instructive.

What is the purpose of education? What is education? What works? Some of Miss Elsa’s practices, more than 100 years ago, give insightful answers!

I quote Drucker directly:

Miss Elsa told us that we would have two to three weeks of quizzes and tests to see how much we knew. This sounded frightening but turned out to be fun. For Miss Elsa made us grade ourselves or grade each other.

At the end of three weeks, she had an individual conference with each of us.

“Sit down next to me,” she would say, “and tell me what you think you do well.”

I told her.

“And now,” she said, “tell me what you do badly.”

“Yes,” she said. “You are right; you read well. In fact, reading rats like you don’t need to work on reading, and I haven’t scheduled any for you. You keep on reading what you want to read.

“Only, Peter, make sure that you have good light, and don’t strain your eyes. You’re reading under the desk when you think I’m not looking; always read on top of the desk. I’m moving you into a desk next to the big window so that you have enough light.

“And you spell well, and you don’t need any spelling drill. Only learn to look up words and don’t guess when you don’t know.”

And, she added, “you know you left out one of your strengths — you know what it is?”

I shook my head.

“You are very good in composition, but you haven’t had enough practice. Do you agree?”

I nodded. 

“All right, let’s make that a goal. Let’s say you write two compositions a week, one in which you tell me what you want to write about, one for which I give you a topic.”

She continued, “You underrate your performance in arithmetic. You’re actually good — so good that I would propose that this year you learn all the arithmetic that the lower grades teach — that is, fractions, percentages and logarithms — you’ll like logarithms! They’re clever.

“Then you’ll be ready to do the mathematics they teach in the upper grades — geometry and algebra,” she added.

I hope you were as delighted as I was to read this brief interaction.

Perhaps that explains why Drucker was such a contributor to the business and human community. Miss Elsa saw who he was and encouraged him to be himself!

Without getting into too many details, here are five points this passage says to me about real education and its purpose:

• Grades are still useful, but the needs and abilities of the student are what counts, not the needs of the school system. Testing is valid, but since anything can be looked up on the internet in seconds now, using tests to see who has a better memory — and to rank students on that —  seems a silly game. Also, when you grade yourself, you become fully responsible for your own education.
• Wouldn’t it be great if every student had the opportunity to talk to a teacher/mentor regularly about how they were doing. For instance, every three weeks?
• The student evaluates him/herself, looking at the positives first. Isn’t the ability to evaluate yourself one of the major things schools should give the student anyhow?
• Students shouldn’t have to sit through boring classes when they already know a subject. Or don’t want to know about it. Or don’t have the capacity to know about it.
• The level the individual student is at, not the age or grade, should determine what the next steps should be.

I suspect most teachers would dearly love to do all of these things — and many partially do. But they can’t do them fully. The system doesn’t allow them to.

I have coined a phrase to describe that system: “The Educational Industrial Complex.” More to come.