Celebrate Learning! Spring 2011 (Volume 2, Issue 1) | Page 2

Celebrate Learning Page 2 from recent installation of bird boxes and pitfall traps; additional dendrochronology studies; and development of ecoregion management goals and priorities. The West Campus Cross Timbers is an ancient and pristine forest, which with proper conservation management and preservation will continue to serve as an outdoor classroom and public education site for future generations. Undergraduate research students from left to right are Houston Wells, Alicia Torres, Courtney Pace, Jamie Snyder, and Jimmy Bowen with Dr. Janet Braun, Curator of Mammals at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. Teaching Hope bolic as it might sound, we are losing our place in the world—fast, really fast. By Lyndel P. Colglazier “The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.” John F. Kennedy Percy Bysshe Shelley said, “Poets are the legislators of the world,” but I believe, in this world, the world of US education, the one of declining learning outcomes, falling literacy rates, and mediocre, if not abysmal, academic standards, teachers are the legis- lators. We have the power of the classroom and the I confess I like the idea of my country being #1 future of our country in our hands. We are the ones in the world, even though my fondness for that desig- who live and work in the trenches and make dreams nation doesn’t comport with my spiritual beliefs or my ethics about being in this world. come alive. I know there are pockets of excellence, of ex- I recognize that all great powers get a little tattered traordinary success. I have those students, too. I over time: The sheen goes flat, their standing shrinks. know what I say here doesn’t apply to every single No more strolling onto the global stage, puffed to student or to every single teacher. But I also know take over. That’s okay. I can live with being second we all fight against the nightmare tide of student apa- or third. Besides, I still admire Britain, Spain, and thy, ignorance, and unwillingness to learn. The conFrance, and Greece and Italy will never have to apolo- sequences are devastating to democracy. The narragize for their gifts to humanity. tive fabric that holds us together as a nation is wearBut if recent studies—added to the mounds of ing thin these days, and, as the American historian studies over the past two decades—are any indicaAriel Durant once noted, “A great civilization is not tion of where we stand in the world, I am both horrified and terrified. I love my country, and as hyper- conquered from without until it has destroyed itself