What did you learn in school today? It’s the starter
to routine, casual conversation we have every evening at the dinner table with
our daughter, a first grader at Old Kings Elementary in Palm Coast.
That evening the answer was unlike any my husband and
I had heard. Our daughter started reciting words we’d never heard from her
before. “Be proactive.” “It’s a win-win.” “Seek to understand.” “Sharpen…” She
couldn’t articulate the rest. But she offered to perform a routine that she’d
obviously practiced several times.
Eagerly, she told us about the school project she is
working on, writing the “Seven Habits” on a visual aide as a classroom project. I
suddenly remembered the flags flying on school property, reiterating the “Seven
Habits.” The following day, all the teachers at drop off sites were wearing the
same blue polo shirt with a “Leader In Me” logo.
I started to have flashbacks to my childhood. I grew
up behind the Iron Curtain where you were rigidly taught the right behavior,
the right words, the right greeting. There was no room for choice, no room for
individualism. Struggling to understand, my American-born spouse compared it to
New Age Teaching and Scientology.
Old King Elementary selected the “Leader In Me” program
as its character-development program. The school claims this program will raise
leaders and prepare them for 21st century jobs.
The program is based on Stephen Covey’s best selling
self-help book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” Covey, who died in
2012, was an author, educator and motivational speaker with a degree in
business administration and a doctorate in religious education. He was a devout
Mormon who fought his critics until his death regarding the religious aspects of
his books and his principles.
The company implementing the program at Old Kings is FranklinCovey
, a training and consulting business established in 1997 when the Covey
Leadership Center merged with Franklin Quest, a time-management company. The
publicly traded, for-profit company had $191 million in revenue last year. FranklinCovey’s
“Leader in Me” program promises higher academic achievements and a decrease in
disciplinary issues, and it teaches
character and leadership.
But other than
anecdotal evidence, there are no independent studies, data or statistics to
verify FranklinCovey’s claims. The company in its own literature boasts of “the power to improve organizational culture
in ways important to teachers, students, parents, administrators, and district
board members.” But it presents no hard data to justify the claim. A 2012 Johns Hopkins University study commissioned by FranklinCovey concluded that the program
“positively
improved school climate.”But the study is based on observation, not data.
The Staten Island
School of Leadership in New York is praised in StyevenCovey’s studies as
indicating “promising results” as a result of the Leader In me program. But test
data collected in when the program was in effect at the school shows scores dropping in that time frame.
Our children are
becoming fluent in a corporate language that includes phrases like, “Be
proactive, synergize, think win-win.”
Flagler County Schools’ Curriculum Director Denise
Haymes confirmed to me that the Leader in Me program did not go through the
same rigorous review as the core curriculum since it’s part of Old Kings
Elementary’s flagship
program. That’s a district-wide, careers-driven initiative
that gives schools ample latitude to implement programs that intersect
academics with the business world. Some programs have more tangible
value than others. Nor
did Haymes personally researched the program, instead choosing to rely on data
provided by FranklinCovey’s marketing arm. Yet the “Leader In Me” curriculum
accounted for 40 percent of the graded assignments in Social Studies last
quarter at Old Kings.
The promise of all our children becoming “leaders” by
indoctrinating them with some corporate
training manual buzzwords in a cult-like environment is
repulsive. It is equally terrifying to watch how easily our public schools are
willing to give up our children to over-intellectualized
fluff with no content, and a slyly marketed program.
All this at a cost of
$57,000 for the first year alone. If continued next year the price will reach
$68,000. Flagler schools and taxpayers aren’t picking up the tab. It’s funded through a private grant from the “I am a Leader Foundation,” whose CEO, E. Boyd
Craig, worked alongside Stephen Covey for years and is still serving
as the head of FranklinCovey
Co.'s Stephen R. Covey Group.
The company’s goal is to
spread the program in all public school districts. After all, it works best
when we all speak the same common language, when we all students, teachers,
community members are embedded in their culture of leadership.
Can you imagine if we
used that private grant to invest in arts and languages, in science for all
kids, for all classrooms? If we used that grant to invest more in our teachers?
Or to invest in our exceptional education students? Maybe then, my child,
instead of reciting some corporate-tailored phrases would learn who was the
first President of the United States.
Old Kings Elementary
school could raise very smart kids who will be prepared for 21st
century jobs not by memorizing expressions or formulas that suppress their
individuality, but through their knowledge, their true academic intelligence. Nothing
could dash what hopes I have for my child’s education more than that sort of
corporate hold on the public school curriculum.
I cautiously hope
that our school board members will carefully review and revisit this program
and will not allow its further implementation in our public schools. In the meantime, we are proactively seeking to understand the
process of transferring my child to a different school, which shall be a
win-win for all of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment