Paul Tough’s book, Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why (2016), was given out to every staff and school board member in RSU 71 (Belfast, Belmont, Morrill, Searsmont and Swanville) to articulate a main theme in our school district this year. Perhaps it shouldn’t need to be said; yet it does: Our mission as educators and leaders is to help all children succeed. RSU 71 Parents and Community Members are welcome to join district staff in the book study already underway at the central office from 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. on the following dates: December 13, 2018; January 10, 2019; and March 14, 2019.

Please call the central office (338-1960) or email me (mamclean@rsu71.org) if you would like to join us for pizza, salad and conversation. If you’d like a copy of the book or need free babysitting on any of those dates in order to attend, please let that be known.  If you can’t join us for these meetings, but would like to know how you could become involved in helping our school district in other ways, please let that be known, too!

It wasn’t always the case in public education that we were looking for all children to succeed in school.

The Puritans first established public schools in Massachusetts and Maine in the 1700s primarily to teach children to read the Bible as ammunition against the wiles of the Great Tempter, who in the wilderness was thought to be even more dangerously potent than in the settled communities from whence they had come (Urban and Wagoner, 2004).   

A hundred years later, Thomas Jefferson proposed public education for all children in the entire country to ensure that everybody, and not just the progeny of the wealthy, would be educated to a certain degree.

Jefferson proposed that families should send their children at no expense for three years to a local public, though the aim was to achieve what we now call “tracking” of boys, in order that “geniuses ... be raked from the rubbish.”

Successful boys would continue to be provided a public education at no expense to the family, while others would go right to work (Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-2).

Our needs as a society have changed drastically in the centuries that followed, as has our understanding of the various dimensions of human giftedness and intelligence.

While in agrarian economies it was perhaps not quite as essential that all students learn to think, for example, in the 21st Century it is increasingly necessary that all boys and girls learn to do so, through acquiring what we now call “21st century skills.”

Why?

For one, we really really need everyone; and, second, the skill sets required for gainful employment and a meaningful day-to-day life are more complicated and rigorous in 2018 than skills sets required by previous generations (Jamie Vollmer, NSBA Conference 2018, “Schools Can’t Do It Alone”).

The moral imperative is strongly against selecting so called geniuses these days, and leaving it at that. Think of NCLB and ESSEA, which stand for “No Child Left Behind” and the “Every Child Succeeds Act”!  While we as Americans have usually been an idealistic people, we have also been a profoundly pragmatic people: we don’t just dream big --  we actually figure out HOW TO REALIZE THE DREAM. On a very practical level we truly need all of our children to become aware of and invested in cultivating their unique assets and strengths, and also confident enough to use these daily in school.

How can we as a school system realize the dream of enabling every child to become invested and successful in school and, later, in their lives?  And what might an ordinary citizen, one invested in helping the precious resource that is our children, do? 

Stay tuned for future articles.  And in the meantime, warm wishes for joy and inspiration this holiday season.

Mary Alice McLean is Superintendent of Schools in RSU 71, serving the communities of Belfast, Belmont, Searsmont, Morrill and Swanville.