Fifth Column

Mark Gura fifth column, noun secret or subversive group: a secret or subversive group that seeks to undermine the efforts of others and promote its own ends. Theyve been there all along. Teachers who work in schools but who are not of the institution of schooling. Watching! Waiting! Eternally hopeful! Ready to strike should a weapon fall into their hands! Working in schools can indeed be bitter irony for enlightened teachers. Wanting to nourish young minds, they observe themselves serving up the thin, unpalatable gruel of a standardized curriculum. Anxious to fire up a thirst for learning, they end up extinguishing the sparks of natural curiosity with wet blanket preparation for standardized assessments. So frustrating. The institution conscripts them into enforcing its rules and sucks them into participating in promoting its mind numbing regimentation. There is no escape from the economics of mass education, ensuring that there is little time for individual attention or the following of ones spirit toward personal discovery. School reform movements tend to offer little more than false hopes to teachers aspiring to humanize their little niche in the institution of factory schooling. It is near impossible for individual cogs to turn independently of the machine they are part of, no matter what they may think of the process that engine performs and the product it turns out. Reform, after all, most often is conceived outside the public schools. It is the stuff of Universities, political parties, foundation think tanks, and publishing companies. In the end, it is remarkable how the legitimately good ideas these institutions incubate are deflected by public schools or even more insidiously co-opted and turned around to further fuel the very dynamics that they were intended to defeat. Encouragingly though, we continually move further and further into a new era. An emerging Digital 5th Column is preparing itself to recapture schools from the morass of social and political expedience and re-align them with their original goals of providing for true education, intellectual self growth and spiritual fulfillment. It was a Fifth Column that gave both moral and logistical support to the four regular columns of General Molinas army during the Spanish Civil War, effectively bringing about victory. The spirit of that column of ordinary citizens, upholders of a vision of positive change without regard for apparent do-ablility, is alive and well in the hearts and efforts of teachers who are discovering the remarkable power of digital technology. Armed with his Internet connection, the teacher/Digital 5th Columnist is poised to reverse conditions that, up to now, would have forced his compliance with a system that produces graduates who are minimally educated and who have anything but a love for learning. Schools do not intentionally undermine the intellectual growth of youngsters. It comes about though in a de facto manner. The great pressure of social needs that are imposed on schools as well as the need to accomplish lofty goals despite penury of needed resources

bring it about. Most unfortunate, that portion of teachers who are sharp enough to understand what is happening have little opportunity to take control of the situation.