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Bruce Stewart has strong opinions about education reform. Among other things, he wants the federal government to create a U.S. Teacher Academy, as rigorous and prestigious as the military academy at West Point.
You might think the veteran educator could do his best lobbying from home. Until he retired this year as head of the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, his students included children of some of the nation's most powerful people, including Sasha and Malia Obama.
But Stewart says it wouldn't do to badger their parents at conference time.
"Out of respect for their unique position, I think it would be inappropriate," he says, chuckling.
Instead, Stewart is dedicating his retirement years to telling regular people, as well as policymakers, about the virtues of Quaker-style education and the need for America to reinvent its education system.
With roughly half of students failing to graduate, shaking up the system is the moral thing to do, says Stewart, who's speaking tonight at Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte.
But he also contends that from an economic, military and political standpoint, "it's in our national self-interest to make the investment."
Stewart has deep ties to North Carolina. He received degrees from Guilford College and UNC Chapel Hill, began teaching at a Greensboro high school, and helped create the N.C. School of the Arts and N.C. School of Science and Mathematics, public schools that serve the most talented students from across the state.
Sidwell's educational philosophy is based on the Quaker "doctrine of continuing revelation," Stewart says. That means young people are encouraged to challenge authority, as long as they do it civilly and thoughtfully.
The school includes students of many faiths, as well as some who subscribe to no religion. All attend weekly worship meetings where they sit in silence, with people speaking when they feel a spiritual prompting. No one, Stewart says, has ever asked to be exempted.
Stewart, who helped desegregate Greensboro city schools, believes racial and economic isolation of students is destructive. He supports private-school vouchers to make sure impoverished families have the same access to opportunity as wealthier ones.
"School choice, I believe, is as fundamentally American as apple pie," he recently told a Senate committee, arguing for a D.C. voucher program that sends disadvantaged inner-city students to schools such as his.
He also wants to see public schools and the teaching profession strengthened. He'd like to see the federal government not only launch a Teacher Academy - ideally, with all 50 states doing the same - but create a national curriculum that would lay out a plan for educating children to today's global standards.
He says that requires fluency in a second language, with instruction starting in kindergarten and abundant study-abroad opportunities.
Stewart says public education - like much of the private sector - would benefit from pondering the doctrine of continuing revelation. Things may be stagnant now, but there's always room to rethink assumptions.
"America has a history of welcoming creativity and innovation," he said.
