A couple of weeks ago I was in San Francisco for a national education conference. One morning I boarded the bus from the hotel to the conference center and sat next to a very well dressed man wearing a "Children First" lapel pin -- and it got me thinking.
The reason that we focus our efforts on schools has to be about children. It is not really about the national debt, or regional budget or even local property values. But too often, in the educational community, those words are used as a cliche, a catch-phrase or salutation that is repeated so often as to practically lose all meaning.
In less than 120 days the Detroit Public School system will open 320,000 square feet of new schools and almost 750,000 square feet of renovated schools. I mention Detroit because, lately, we don't think of Motor City as a place that gives birth to new things (other than the new car commercials: "imported from Detroit.") But it is, and the children of Detroit know it.
The Martin Luther King High School is being replaced. A new 180,000 square foot, $54 million dollar building will replace the 1960 building that, among other things, is sinking into the ground by way of an underground stream. Recently I had the opportunity of walking a large group of students through the construction site; all of the students wanted to see the new building and they all carried questions in mind.
As you can expect, there were the "important" questions: will our gym be bigger than our city rivals, how deep is the swimming pool, where will my locker be? But there were also the surprisingly insightful ones: how many science labs, will they all have fume hoods, will they all have natural gas, will the building be energy efficient, how much less electricity will be used, will we be able to work with the solar collectors?
The students realized that the educational environment being provided for them was going to seriously affect their lives. Yes, a better gym might give them an advantage over their city rivals, but a real robotics lab will expose them to technologies that will give them an advantage in the academic world. It makes you wonder what it's like to see the world through their eyes.
If I can be impressed by the inquisitive wonder of four dozen high school students walking through a construction site, how much more impressive will 4,000 students walking into new or renovated buildings this coming September be? What lessons can we grown-ups learn from their perspective? What do they perceive that we might have missed?
For some answers, I have had the opportunity to get involved with, and support, a wonderful program called "Through Your Lens," a collaboration of the 21st Century School Fund, Critical Exposure, and Healthy Schools Campaign to raise awareness of the need to fund school buildings that support learning and provide a safe, healthy environment for students and teachers.
By sharing photos and stories of what they see at school, students and teachers open a window for all of us to see the truth about school buildings today. You can see the winning photos from the 2011 Through Your Lens photo contest here.
In my academic life I never went to a new school. We never had the "shiny, new and blue" play ground equipment shown in one of the winning photos, but I can also say that we never used a piece of police "caution" tape as a jump rope. These are interesting and compelling images of "what [they] see every day at school: the good parts, the troubling parts, the things [they are] proud of and the things that [they] would like to change."
From May 9-13, the 2011 Through Your Lens Exhibit will be on display in the Rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill.
The first "Through Your Lens" contest received nearly 400 photos and stories from across the U.S. You can view them online, download or purchase a printed copy of the exhibit book here.
According to the Through Your Lens website,
We know that millions of children, especially those living in low-wealth school districts, spend their school days in poor quality, unhealthy, and overcrowded buildings that cause health problems and limit educational opportunities. All students and teachers have the right to adequate, appropriate learning conditions that will allow them to strive for and achieve the goals being set for them.
No single level of government can accomplish this alone. We must create a new federal, state, and local partnership to ensure that each and every single community has sufficient resources to provide high-quality school buildings to their students.
As an architect, I value the visual perspective and depth of perception we can achieve by developing a new way of seeing. So much of what passes before our eyeballs these days is a fast-paced blur of pixels, images, special effects and other technologically assisted viewing. But the reality of what we see around us, enhanced by our own experiences, personalities and points of view, can be extraordinary -- and crucial to our future as individuals, and as a society.
When it comes to schools, the perspective that can mean the most comes from those who are closest to education's "ground floor." I'm always eager to hear that these education consumers are saying and see what they're seeing. To whom should we be listening in this great debate?
Two words -- children first.