Dylan Joyce Works at BTtoP: A Somewhat Interesting 900-Word Contextualization
By Dylan Joyce, Project Assistant, Bringing Theory to Practice
We live in challenging times. In a country composed of those who define ourselves by our work, our money and status, and our autonomy, we continue to face record levels of unemployment and underemployment, widening economic and social inequity, and a governing structure that many feel neither effectively responds to the needs of those it governs nor allows for an environment in which those governed can effectively fulfill their own needs. But our challenge is to help define our circumstances rather than be defined by them. What we do now determines not only who we will become as individuals, but what we will become as a society.
So your intrepid recent college graduate would like to make the argument that, as I stared grimly into the darkening abyss that was the 2009 US job market and considered my employment options and the merits of subterranean hometown dwellings, solely such a conviction was present in my mind. And even if I cannot deem myself so unerringly principled, I will at least flatter myself in saying that I try to be an interesting person, and as such I insist on engaging with those persons and pursuits that I find interesting in the sense of being challenging or unique—which is really why I have been with BTtoP (handling grants, conferences, technological initiatives, our just-published book, all manners of correspondence, copying, collating, box-moving, etc.) for over two years. Interesting times produce and require interesting people. Since it seems we are doomed to live in interesting times, we find ourselves well-positioned here.
If you follow the news, you’ll probably agree that we as a society face significant, nearly existential, challenges, and since you’re reading our newsletter, you’ll likely allow that education is an integral part of a functioning democratic society. Like Churchill, I believe that democracy, however flawed, is still the best system of governance we have and it cannot function without citizens who are educated to make reasonable, strategic, and empathetic judgments. I judge the failure of the US to communicate with itself and to maximize the public good to be, on some level, a failure of education. Our country’s education system does not teach people how to effectively engage and cooperate with one another; it does not teach us how to be citizens.
As a (since reformed) SAT tutor, I know from personal experience that today’s students struggle to reach educational standards so narrowly defined that even their accomplishment would be somewhat trivial. Educators, parents, admissions boards, and the students themselves know that the worth and richness of a person cannot be captured by such reductive metrics, yet our educational system behaves as if students can be understood in this way, or that whether or not they are fully understood is unimportant. In attempting to achieve and sustain effective management and assessment of a massive and diverse national student body (an immensely worthy and difficult task), our system treats students financially, and then, perhaps inevitably, pedagogically, as agents for producing scores rather than as full and living learners—as actual human beings. My view, albeit based on my limited experience, is that the nearly ubiquitous but flawed SAT test is emblematic of the US education system’s weaknesses: narrowness, impracticality, and inhumanity.
Would we expect students who are treated as percentile instances to flourish as individuals, learners, and citizens? In response to such a system, most students will either become as narrow as the educational model imposed upon them or they will disengage from a system that is incapable of recognizing and developing what is truly valuable within and to them. In this way, for so many, formal education has become an obligation instead of an opportunity.
As I survey the enormity of the problems within higher education and society and suspect that my mind and experience have revealed relatively little to me, I am honored to work with those who can see further. Those who compose and contribute to the Project have dedicated years of their lives, and in some cases the majority of their careers, to the idea that the student should be treated as a whole person; a person with varied and complex needs; a person who can be a contributing member of a whole democratic society. So it is obvious that the Bringing Theory to Practice Project promotes far more than good education (which is worthy by itself). By educating whole people, the Project promotes a Good Society.
Beyond the merit of our mission, I am perhaps most grateful that Project has put me around Good People (playfully referred to as “the Family”). One cannot seek anything so ideal directly; such a good must be approached gradually with humbler ends in mind. So I’ve also found that one does not find individuals and groups whom one enjoys, respects, and can learn from by seeking them out, but one does tend to discover them by engaging in worthwhile pursuits. As we run toward some light on the horizon, we inadvertently but inevitably intersect with those who are travelling roughly parallel. When we do, we must have the sense to realize the shared trajectory, to introduce ourselves and run together a while, for company and speed as we span the distance.
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