Bruce Holtgren is an aspiring schoolteacher. Now transitioning careers, he is a veteran newspaper journalist of nearly 30 years, most recently as a copy editor and website producer at the Cincinnati Enquirer and Cincinnati.Com.

At PIE, where we are proudly Partners for Innovation in Education, we champion all manner of thought leadership in “whatever works” to get our children to learn in the best, newest, most exciting ways for the future – and rightly so! Who can be against being innovative in education, indeed?

But there can be little use in even trying to innovate when we keep battling a bevy of old enemies. There are the traditional old baddies, and they’re serious: Poverty. Crime. Drug abuse. Countless more. But just as challenging are the more subtle, insidious – and basic – that we too often overlook.

In my extensive experience in tutoring, I have come to realize the most successful students are the products of a sturdy three-legged stool:

1. Positive, engaged parents.
2. Top-quality teachers and schools who care about the student and won’t settle for mediocrity, ever.
3. A hard-working, healthy, well-adjusted student who has her priorities straight herself.

Most of all, these three players – parents, student, and teacher/school – work together, and hard, at all times to make sure the student really does learn.

And all must understand that “learning” does not mean rote memorization and regurgitation – which, sadly, is what most people probably actually do in most schools today, a la the way we “learn” our Pledge of Allegiance. We should truly know what we are taught, and what it means, not just become able to recite it for next week’s test, or mumble it at public events.

Robert A. Heinlein invented a wonderful four-letter word – grok – in his classic science fiction novel “Stranger in a Strange Land.” It means to truly know totally and thoroughly – to understand profoundly and intuitively. Or as Heinlein himself put it: “

to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed.”

Our ideal in learning any subject should be to not just gloss over it, nor to sorta-kinda “get it,” nor to more or less understand it, but to grok it. If you grok it, then you’ll truly be able to apply your TOTAL knowledge of that concept to … the Next Thing You’ll Be Learning. And that’s … um, the whole idea of education – which is exactly why our education system usually doesn’t work very well for most people.

Let’s be honest: Because most students don’t have that sturdy three-legged stool in place, they don’t really learn the way they’re supposed to. They gloss. They don’t grok. Sometimes they don’t even go to school. Or they go, but stoned. Or they get home as soon as they can, so they can spend hours playing video games and shopping. Daily. All year. With dozens of their friends. So do their parents.

So yes, let us do innovate, by all means. But more than anything, we must make these basic, essential, elementary fixes. And most of all, we must lead by example.

Grok and roll.

Bruce Holtgren is an aspiring schoolteacher. Now transitioning careers, he is a veteran newspaper journalist of nearly 30 years, most recently as a copy editor and website producer at the Cincinnati Enquirer and Cincinnati.Com.

Last spring, two very exciting things happened for the “brainy” kids at Kilgour Elementary School. First, the school’s Brain Bowl team won the city’s championship, in a thrilling, upset victory.

Then, PIE announced that first- through sixth-graders had developed “Lemon Smash,” an Android financial literacy app. Northern Kentucky University’s Informatics students wrote the coding for the app, which is for sale as a revenue generator on Google. (Play or buy it here:

http://tinyurl.com/a2hzspn)

This year, it’s getting even better.

PIE is again spearheading a student-focused app project centered at Kilgour, but available for all students in Cincinnati Public Schools: an app incubator program. The idea is to encourage anyone to write an app for something – and potentially make money from it.

We’re still a long way from proper props and parity for the respect that the brainy students in our schools deserve, compared with the reverence our culture has long reserved for athletes. But in recent years, we’ve made great strides.

Sports, to be sure, merit high respect in countless regards for all they offer: the incredible achievements made before our very eyes (and behind the scenes) by the amazing and talented athletes of so many types who compete for our schools and communities.

But now, in greater numbers and with as many thrills and as much pride, we are hearing cheers for chess champions, as well as winners of spelling bees, geography bees, and mathematics competitions. Engineering students have long challenged one another to see which teams can accomplish absurd feats with outrageous, Rube Goldberg-like contraptions – and now these contests are getting more attention on national television.

We can all see and applaud why this trend is important: Intellect matters – and it cannot be publicly championed enough. For years now, it has been universally acknowledged that if American education is to improve, and indeed thrive, it must excel in the STEM subjects: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

And we must have the fortitude to acknowledge that those are the hardest intellectual subjects to master. They take the most time, the most focus, the most grit, the most determination. Except for math, they also tend to cost the most money.

But they must be conquered – and not just by a handful of our very brightest young people – if America is to be dominant in the most crucial services and industries of today and the future: defense, aerospace, computer science, all types of engineering, and so many more. Our students must be graduating, and in large numbers, “career-ready” in these areas.

Thanks to PIE’s efforts to promote STEM-based programs that produce real results such as Lemon Smash – along with the ever-louder cheers for Brain Bowl, engineering and computer heroes, and so many more – we’re getting there.

Just don’t call it revenge of the nerds. It’s simply respect for intellect.

(Full disclosure: Two members of the victorious Kilgour Brain Bowl team were children of PIE Founder and Chief Executive Mary Welsh Schlueter.)

March 2013 Newsletter

Read all about us HERE

CPS Students Benefit From Fifth Third Foundation Grant to PIE!

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Read About it in the Cincinnati Enquirer!

Bruce Holtgren is an aspiring schoolteacher. Now transitioning careers, he is a veteran newspaper journalist of nearly 30 years, most recently as a copy editor and website producer at the Cincinnati Enquirer and Cincinnati.Com.

The concept of the IEP – or Individualized Education Plan – is probably familiar to most in America now. Kids who need specialty help with their studies can often get it, whether because of disabilities or owing to being behind in their learning, if their parents, doctors or caring educators see to it.

Unfortunately, an IEP is often onerous: It can be an administrative hassle for the educators, parents, and students. Some see the plans as special advantages, which they’re not supposed to be at all. And they can cost a lot — despite the benefits.

But shouldn’t all students’ educations be as individually tailored as possible to begin with? Clearly, we can’t hope to have one-to-one teacher ratios. Nor would it be within our wildest dreams to be able to afford individual study programs according to each child’s specific interests, as many college students do.

But learning should be much more than just what takes place in the classroom, and in the school.

Yes, we say and hear that so much that it’s become trite – but too few of us apply it with enough truly individual energy and sincerity. The best parents, of course, are wonderful teachers from the first days of their children’s lives – and woe to those who send their kids off to kindergarten without already knowing their letters, numbers, colors, and so much more (and not just from television and video games, either)!

Obviously, we must make an imperative out of teaching our children how to learn on their own as well – at every opportunity. They should love being curious, and to wonder, and to marvel at virtually everything, as appropriate, both on their own and with others. Asking good questions (and “dumb” ones, too) should be encouraged, not frowned upon; trying new and goofy experiences would seem to be no-duh stuff for all youngsters.

Or, at least one would think. Yet, it’s amazing how often otherwise rational parents seemingly constantly try to restrain kids from exploring their worlds in reasonably safe, yet exciting, creative, and yes, educational ways. Taking the stairs up the highest city building might seem nuts to a worn-out 35-year-old mom, but your 11- and 9-year-olds just might be able to do it – and run back down again – and thank you their whole lives for it.

Some of the most privileged ancient Greek youths had personal tutors in the persons of men who instructed them in not only academe but in all manner of life in general. Some of these grew into among the wisest and most learned scholars of their day. We can’t possibly hope to have that sort of intensive “individual educational plan” today – but it’s yet another thing to recall as we try to re-invent all aspects of excellence in education.

As Former First Lady Hillary Clinton noted, our schools, parents, teachers and communities form “a village” surrounding our children. The responsibility lies within this network to “teach our children well.”

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