I just got clued in to a movie that came out a few years ago called Girls Rock. It’s about a rock-and-roll camp for girls age 8-16. Check out the trailer:
This is the line that screamed out at me: “We all remember what it was like to be an adolescent. I think we all hope that we can give them what we needed at that time. I mean, our whole program is about that. It’s just, music is our medium.”
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Here’s an excerpt from the website of Reel Grrls, a Seattle-area after-school program: “Reel Grrls empowers young women from diverse communities to realize their power, talent and influence through media production. Our mission is to cultivate voice and leadership in girls at a vulnerable age in their development.”
From Youth in Focus: “Youth in Focus is an afterschool program that uses intensive photography training as a tool to help disadvantaged teens develop personal voice, positive identity, social skills and artistic skills.”
See the connection? The point is not the content of the workshops. The workshops are just the vehicle to support kids in their transition from childhood to adulthood. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter if the kid is a great rock star, filmmaker, or photographer. The goal is empowerment, cultivating leadership skills, and positive identity.
Everyone seems to get this. Except schools.
Schools operate under the delusion that academic content should be the primary focus of the program, rather than a natural by-product of it.
Schools operate under the delusion that if only we had a nation of young adults who could apply the quadratic equation and explain the causes of the Spanish-American War, we all would be happy. When this program fails—that is, when kids graduate with limited understanding of abstract mathematical concepts and facts of American history—experts and researchers re-dedicate themselves to the task of how to improve our processes for delivering academic content (the overwhelming majority of which has little utility in people’s daily living).
Meanwhile, we rely on our after-school programs to pick up the slack, doing the important work that schools ignore. Can you imagine what school would be like if it were run like a really successful after-school program?
I’m fortunate in that I don’t have to imagine. I work at a school that does this, and it’s amazing. If you ever want to visit to see what it’s like, please email me at [email protected] and I’ll invite you in for a tour. I’m telling you, you’re not going to believe it when you see it.
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