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and every loose nail out of the board. A half an hour of solid (and loud) hammering, for
nothing. She intentionally humiliated him, for one clear reason. The message was obvious: I am
in charge, and my instructions matter. You will conform and you will meet the quality standards
or you will be punished.
If there’s a better way to steal the desire to dream, I’m not sure what it is.
63. Is it too risky to do the right thing?
Do parents mean well?
It’s about at this point in the discussion that parents get a bit squeamish. We all want the best
for children—and many parents are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to get the best. We
will hire tutors, track down better schools, fret over report cards, go to parent-teacher conferences,
and drive ourselves crazy worrying about homework or the kind of felt used to complete
a school project.
But the sanctity of performance/testing/compliance-based schooling is rarely discussed and
virtually never challenged.
It’s crazy to imagine a suburban school district having serious talks about abandoning state
standards, rejecting the SAT, or challenging the admissions criteria at famous colleges (more
about famous in a minute).
There’s a myth at work here, one that cannot and will not be seriously questioned. The myth
says:
Great performance in school leads to happiness and success.
And the corollary:
Great parents have kids who produce great performance in school.
It doesn’t matter that neither of these is true. What matters is that finding a path that might be
better is just too risky for someone who has only one chance to raise his kids properly.
64. Connecting the dots vs. collecting the dots
The industrial model of school is organized around exposing students to ever increasing
amounts of stuff and then testing them on it.
Collecting dots.
Almost none of it is spent in teaching them the skills necessary to connect dots.
The magic of connecting dots is that once you learn the techniques, the dots can change but
Stop Stealing Dreams Free Printable Edition 47