How I Love Lucy Could Help Stave off Education Reform

My professional life very much revolves around the notion that much can be learned from the teaching and reading and viewing of Shakespeare.

The English, as they say, built an empire organized around those plays.

Lately, however, as I read more and more about education reform in Michigan and the rest of the United States, I have become convinced that another dramatic form might do the country much more good at the moment than the venerable playwright.

As an American child I watched – not Shakespeare – but hours and hours of I Love Lucy reruns. They ran constantly. But in an age of cable and digital television one rarely sees them.

As I flick through channels I see more Rifleman than I Love Lucy.

This is really too bad.

The repetition of the Lucy episodes did much, I think, for me, and for the nation.

As most of a certain know every episode followed the same plot trajectory (for younger folks, think Law and Order). Lucy, the zany housewife, came up with a scheme for fame and fortune, usually in show business, the business of her husband Ricky, a working musician in New York. Every episode Lucy would try some “end run,” some quick scheme to be the star. And every episode her efforts were shown to fall apart, often in hilarious fashion.

Her efforts stood in stark contrast to Ricky who showed that show business – while seemingly glamorous and simple – is really a work a day profession. It takes experience, persistence, and training to succeed. One doesn’t get there by “end runs.” If you try, you look like a clown.

Lucy was a wonderful clown.

If you watched enough Lucy reruns you absorbed this very valuable lesson. Any profession, any life endeavor, involves hard work, persistence, training, the patience to move through an established system and a willingness to take your lumps and learn from those who have been a while. Build your career in your twenties we advise; it isn't easy to start in a profession at 40.

Politically, one once called this general understanding of life's processes “conservatism.”

When I am at work in Detroit and discuss living in Bloomfield I often hear some remark that suggests that those here were born eating grapes, and spend most of the day now being fed grapes.

There is a bit of that, of course.

But the vast majority of people I meet have worked to receive training, have worked hard within a system, and have moved up in a particular profession, very often after years of taking a beating at the bottom.

Ask young lawyers about their early years. Physicians? Auto executives? Small businessman?

You won’t hear too many true tales of successful end runs, where a whacky Lucy scheme brought one to success.

But education reformers are putting their faith in Lucy’s methods. Today’s NY TIMES as a stunning story about charter schools and the TFA. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/education/at-charter-schools-short-careers-by-choice.html?nl=today... reformers want you to believe is that anyone can teach, can do it for two or three years, and then run a school or (in Camden, New Jersey) even a District.

It takes years to build a good teacher. It takes even longer to build a good academic administrator. Much longer to build a good school. Decades to build a district. There is no Lucy Ricardo whacky get rich scheme to education stardom.

But that is what we are routinely voting for in our state and in our country.

I so wish we could run those continuously for a while.