We Take Them All. No Matter What.

In Jamie Vollmer's latest video installment, he shares his famous 'Blueberry Story'. In it, he describes an eye opening moment with us about how he came to be one of public schools fiercest advocates. It is through his interaction with a high school English teacher during a presentation that he transitioned from a public education critic to an ally. The story is quite humorous, but drives home an important and often overlooked point when it comes to our public school system: we don't get to choose our students. We take them all. No matter what. 

The argument that is sometimes made in education is that we should simply run schools like a business. Frankly, in some respects we do run our schools like business. But there are many, many stark differences that make it very clear that schools are not in fact businesses. What Jamie explains in his latest video is that in the business world quality control measures exist that enable the business, in this case his ice cream company, to reject raw material that doesn't meet the standards needed for the ice cream. If there are rotten, smashed, cracked, dry; whatever: those blueberries are simply discarded. Only the very best make it into the ice cream recipe which ultimately ends up on the shelf in the grocery store. 

In our public schools, our raw material is the students. We take them all: no matter what. Students who have learning difficulty or health concerns. Students who come from very wealthy families that want for nothing; and families that wonder where they will sleep the next night. Students who come from families that ensure their child has their homework completed daily, and those who are in a constant battle of the wills. We'll have children come through our doors at kindergarten with a vocabulary of 2,200; and others who won't speak a word of English. We take them all. No matter what.

In a business or manufacturing model, raw material that has met the prescribed quality control standards is taken and crafted into an end product that looks exactly like thousands, or even millions of others just like it. That product has been designed to perform the same way, ever single time. And frankly, it should. We want our cars to start when we turn the key, and we want our blueberry ice cream to taste the same way each time we scoop a bowl. But our students? 

For starters, considering each student who enters our doors enters at a different place on the learning continuum, how would it even be possible to get them all to the same place at roughly the same time? That is what the goal is though. By the end of 'X' grade, students should have mastered a specific set and series of skills and concepts. However, further exacerbating our efforts to reach this goal are all the other 'thing's that come along with our raw material (see paragraph 3). I'll tell you what though, what our teachers are able to produce daily in their classrooms with this raw material is pure magic. 

Perhaps what the question really should be is: Do we really want to produce blueberry ice cream that tastes the same way every time we scoop a bowl? I say not. What we really need is a diverse population of a well educated citizenry that can think on their own and solve problems. We need mechanics. Doctors. Teachers. Plumbers. This list goes on and on an on. The skill set for each varies and we should ensure that our students are ready for whatever awaits them when they finally leave our institutions.

We're going to happily use all the blueberries that are provided to us. And in the end, I think you'll find our ice cream is fantastic. We take them all. Every single child. No matter what.