SO YOU WANT TO REFORM EDUCATION...!

There are facts. And then there are fables. Every year about this time, America toys with the fable of a reformed public school system in which kids are wonderfully trained by wonderful teachers in wonderful settings.

The fable is worth chasing, but the facts are worth admitting. Once large city systems grew and bureaucratized, too many variables crowded into the storyline. Clashing, often competing variables that were supposed to fit together, but didn't. Aging buildings...bloated administrations....inadequate budgets ...out-dated curricula...over-tenured teachers...under-concerned parents...over-aggressive ethnicities... ever-present gangs.

Into this academic chaos ride the occasional reformers with dreams. Some dreams come in the form of system-wide restructuring programs. Others arrive in the form of visionary gunslingers who personally embody the dream. The first tend to replace one orthodoxy with another; the second usually work only with and where the gunslinger is able to draw. However, it's not long before both the reforms and reformers fail to fulfill the fable.

Mark Twain used to say, "Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it." In a cruel sort of way, education in our large city systems is like the weather. A force unto itself. Something you can see, but always just beyond your reach. And surely beyond your control.

So here's the deal.

With a little reflection, each of us can confirm this fact -- the best education is a gifted teacher passionately engaged with kids whose curiosity he or she has just ignited. Buildings, budgets, books -- not really that important in the final measure. This engagement can take place in a multi-million-dollar campus or in a warehouse. It can happen in a small class or a large one. It all comes down to that head-to-heart dynamic in which the teacher begins stirring something dormant inside. Something the kid never even knew lived there.

Not enough such mentors? Not enough such moments? You're right. Which in the long run all comes down to this un-deniable, un-fabled fact. Systems change, but only slowly. Students, on the other hand, can start to change on a dime. When even they least expect it. Just when society desperately needs such adults-in-the-making.

How...? Lets face it, how did it happen to us...? Very often only if and when the capricious lottery of life hit our way. That certain teacher was teaching that certain class when you just happened to be in that certain room. You know, something like how you met that certain someone in your life!

Not very scientific. Not very replicable. And certainly not anything you can put a proper reform's name to. Frankly, it's life's que-sera-sera by which one generation sorta passes the torch to the next. It doesn't mean we throw up our arms in total surrender to the gods of chance; reformers and reforms will always be indispensable. But until indispensable becomes inevitable, it's good to know this lottery of life is still in play.