What makes a
bad school?
The NYT addresses a rezoning of Tuscaloosa schools.Is it lack of money? Is it the apathy of parents? Of teachers? Of students? The greed and apathy of the school board? The government? Is it the neighborhoods? The preconceived notions? Focus on testing? Students growing up too fast? Misplaced priorities? The media?
I know I was lucky in a lot of ways. My parents were ALWAYS involved in my education. Whenever we moved, my parents tried to put us in the best schools in the area, if they could afford them. I was educated mostly in public schools, and they served me mostly well. Mississippi's and South Carolina's small town public schools were absolutely atrocious, but even a captain's pay can't put two girls through a Catholic elementary school, especially when they had their own problems. One day our bus was over two hours late bringing us home. A lot of us went to the school on base the following year, and my fourth grade was spent doing multiplication drills, watching Reading Rainbow, and rubbing the teacher's back. What a waste. Other times we were luckier. In fifth grade we were put in one of the finest public schools in Ohio. Later, in other suburbs in in Ohio and in our part of San Antonio, Texas, we had great school systems.
Steve and I are moving into an up-and-coming school district. The parents I've talked to who have kids who went through their system say that it could have done more, but where the school left off, parents picked up the slack. One mother's children graduated with honors, went through the university, and now have successful careers. Another's daughter barely made it through ninth grade math, but with tutoring and encouragement, she's working and going to a community college, too. Steve and I have always been good at math. His memory, logic, and spatial reasoning are great (unless you want him to be able to identify where in the city he is on a map), and my verbal skills can help coax anyone through the liberal arts side of school.
But what do kids do when their parents really don't care? Daddy's beating up on Mom, smoking pot on the couch instead of going to work, or you never knew him in the first place; Momma's working fast food and waiting tables trying to make ends meet, gallivanting with her latest fling, or is otherwise busy trying to provide for you, lost in her own world, or utterly incapable of caring for children. Sure, you see the success stories of people like Oprah. There are some great people out there who came from nothing to make something of themselves. Some people were able to become self-sufficient.
What can we do to help in the meantime? Should we help at all? How far do we go?
Does everybody really NEED an education? Does everybody want one? What are the benefits? What are the disadvantages? An educated nation should mean that people care a little bit more about what's going on in the world, or how politics and corporations seem to control our lives. An educated nation should mean that fewer people are willing to work in fast food joints. Maybe we can give those jobs to high school students... or choose to cut down on consumption at such joints, raise standards and prices, and pay those people a decent wage.
How much should the government be involved? How much can we trust the supposedly Invisible Hand of the market, that conservative ideal I used to hold most dear. When corporations are buying off politicians, getting tax cuts, and taking care of their employees less and less, it seems more like puppet strings controlling that invisible hand.
It all sounds so depressing. What can we as individuals do? I'm a pretty lazy girl. I give stuff to Goodwill or to my sister when I have extra stuff. I did literacy tutoring once or twice in Cleveland. And if the middle school across the street from my new house continues to falter in math and science, I'll be there to volunteer to tutor. I talk politics with my friends to try to be informed when I vote. I am friendly to people I meet on the street, trying to boost morale and a sense of community and good will. It's not enough, but it's something. I try to be self-sufficient so I don't have to rely on the charity of others, and I give charity when it's easy for me to do so. There has to be something more. And everybody has to pitch in.
Comments (34)
The children cannot be raised by the schools, and the more time we spend showing teachers and administrators the methods for raising students, the less time they spend teaching the students.
There has to be an outside influence. If not the parents, then other relatives. If not other relatives, then friends parents. Someone has got to take those moments to care about the children.
When you think about how you as an adult react when someone out of the blue does something unexpectedly nice, imagine what it could mean to a 10 year old who has never had anything unexpectedly nice happen, if someone just says - Hey - you're okay! You're a good kid, and you can do things. If it's sincere, it will show, and that kid will remember it for a long time.
Sometimes the biggest impacts are from the smallest gestures. People just have to stop being so busy with their own lives that they never notice the kid who held the door, or picked up a piece of trash off the sidewalk. They only notice the bad.
Wow, that turned into a kind of disjointed ramble! :) Better on your xanga than mine!
Hey there! Congrats on the house! It's adorable and fabulous. I'm reading "The Poisonwood Bible" because of you. Love it.
This is one heck of a post. Education is my "beat" and you've touched on so many important issues. The ones that really grabbled me were: about how much government involvement there should be and what makes a bad school. The schools that suffer the most are the ones with the least money and that's got everything to do with government. We don't hand our tax money over to the schools directly, our legislators make that call. So, whether we like it or not, there's an intimate relationship there. We have to depend on our government to do the right thing when it comes to our kids. If something seems amiss, get involved. Go to school board meetings. Ask questions about funds. Get involved in the voting process when there are school levies and school board trustees on the ballot. The school districts are their own political entities, answering only to the state and the federal government. Who's running your district? Volunteering time is fantastic, but someone needs to find out, why is the district across the street faltering in math and science? What is the district doing to resolve this? Call the district, ask questions. It's your right.
The focus on testing is another problem, directly related to both government and money. Because of the No Child Left Behind Act, students in districts have to pass standardized tests for the districts to receive federal funds. Districts' curriculums are based on passing the tests, not on whether children are actually learning. The tests are what the government has decided our kids should know. There is no money or time for many life lessons in elementary education - the kinds of things learned creatively by observing the universe, things that can't be measured by filling in a circle with a #2 pencil.
One thing corporate America does right in many ways, is provide grants for teachers to use to pay for the creative learning tools the districts have no money for.
I don't care what their agenda is, if it helps our kids. Others feel differently.
Oh, I could go on and on. Yes, education is absolutely necessary. Is college necessary? Of course, not. But, in many places, our students are not receiving the kind of vocational-technical education needed to succeed without college. Again, I believe that's a direct result of No Child Left Behind.
Wow. I could go on and on and on. Aren't you glad you asked?
Be well, girlie and I'm looking forward to watching you and the hubby move into your new home.
What can we do to help in the meantime? Should we help at all? How far do we go? Does everybody really NEED an education? Does everybody want one? What are the benefits? What are the disadvantages?
Parents, and I know you have heard me say this before, must take responsibility for their children's education within the public system. We cannot sit back and assume the teachers are doing their jobs. Review curriculum, drop by unexpectedly once or twice a semester, call the teacher or send notes of encouragement.
Public school was entrusted by the founders to be a responsibility of Americans at a LOCAL level.
For the advancement and preservation of the republic, all our citzens must be educated. Whether it is wanted or not, there is a reason school attendance is mandatory for unemancipated minors. That reason is because the continued functioning of a free state requires it.
I think you have the right idea in the "think globally, act locally" philosophy. Honestly the problem runs from to bottom and inside out. I think that there needs to be a greater culture of responsibility in this country. In my experience education begins in the home. It's no great coincidence that everyone I know who were the children of a teacher (or teachers) are some of the brightest people I know. There are a lot of people out there having kids who probably shouldn't. Sadly, streaks of irresponsiblity runs through every culture, and socio-economic group. Food and clothing do not a good parent make. So many parents seem to think it's a race to get your children as independent as possible as quickly as possible, like that's somehow doing them a favor. In some cases it may be because they honestly don't have the time to keep the bills paid to do it right. In other cases parents are handing out priveledge without responsibility rather than being a parent.
Sadly, so many people look at the those problem instances and crap on the idea of paying higher taxes to fund our schools. "It's someone else's screwed up kid, why should I have to pay to help them?" It's always a hot button topic in Texas every election and every damn year there's another round of stories about how underfunded everything is around here. I've had two siblings go through the process of becoming teachers in Texas. There's plenty of job security in it, but that's only because it's a job that fewer and fewer people want. When you can take your college degree and make a boatload more in the private sector with it, why even consider teaching? Like I said, top to bottom and inside out, there needs to be a great culture of responsibility.
People will lean on community involvement but that is just a hop away from politics. And the children are forgotten in hidden agendas then. Like with NCLB, companies want disposable employees too ignorant and too scared to question them. I believe the government wants this too. They have done an excellent job doing that too.
Homeschooling parents who are not actively brainwashing their children or just neglecting them have my deepest respect. They are fearless and driven and know that love is more than hugs and kisses (those are cool too though).
The way that is coming will come when the powers that be stop with holding the technology from Americans. We are behind some lesser developed countries in speeds at which the web can be accessed. Companies like Verizon, I just found out on Webb Alert are putting another strangle hold on our progress. There is no mistake. The future of education is online in communities like this one with collaborative distance learning. ESchool. I tell you it will happen. it needs to happen now. I know of what exists right now, and it is crappy. A space needs to be created where substantive feedback and required interaction take place. Right now what is out there is drone work. That will change as technology becomes more accessible. But again, who is stopping that from happening? The government and big business. And they have all the reasons in the world to keep America ignorant.
It will change and for the better, but some of the very rich might just have to settle for being rich.
ps, i'm jealous!
American schools are, on the whole, awful. Places without substance or creativity that offer nothing valid for the future of any child. They are warehouses designed simply to keep kids off the streets, staffed by underpaid, undertrained, very nice (for the most part), very well meaning (for the most part), very hard working (for the most part) teachers. But until we break the industrial model of mass education, it will only get worse as students become more diverse and schools, driven by the complete idiocy of No Child Left Behind, get more standardized.
F the worst students, I say. The world needs fry-floppers and ditch-diggers, even in these computer-times.
I think the public education system needs a complete overhaul. I don't think there's anything we can do at this point to revitalize the system as it currently is. Part of the problem is that education has depreciated. The other part is that I think we are coddling our youngsters too much.
Biologically we are geared to be productive in our middle teens. Instead, we're forced by our society to be sequestered into an extended adolescence that is only lengthening from my generation on (my generation has 30 year-olds still living at home).
I think that formal education needs to be restructured so that the basics (reading, writing, arithmetic, and very basic general science, history, and civics) should be taught to everyone in the elementary grades. Around age twelve, kids should get the choice (perhaps based on standardized testing?) between vocational training and college-prep education covering higher math, literature, rhetoric, and more in-depth science and history.
Then those who go on to college would be better prepared and wouldn't need remedial English and math just to take 100-level courses, ja? Not only that, but those who didn't want to know a profession would know at least a trade. And, since only those who needed/wanted a degree would be getting one, you wouldn't have entry-level jobs like "data-entry specialist" with a requirement of a Bachelor's, any bachelor's will do.
Sorry for the long comment.
It kills me how many people blame "No Child Left Behind".
Like American schools weren't critically failing before 2000. Where have you people been?
It's always easier to blame the devil (or in this case, George Bush) for our own failures.
Well, I think I can understand what Shawnstantine is saying.
However, while not every person is going to be a PhD. or even a college graduate, there is a basic standard of education that every person needs to have in order to function in a free society. That's what public schools were originally designed to help provide.
The "devil" you speak of is a politically controlled education system that demonstrates a failure of leadership at every level. Perhaps the US needs to stop politically controlling research, stop bashing teachers. Stop trying to run schools on the cheap (less than baby sitter rates, and you get what you pay for), and build a national education system run by educators, with highly paid teachers, smaller classes, teacher freedom to individualize curriculum for students, and a wide choice of teaching styles in every school.
US schools have constantly hunted for the "one idea." And for 140 years have produced 65% failure - in every generation - in every decade - with every "great technique." It is time to try something very different.
Even within the same district there can be vast differences in the school system. I was fortunate and my parents got me plugged into GT as soon as possible. My earliest years were at a country school district where I did quite well. The rest were here, in the Northside district where my father now teaches. I went to a ghetto-fabulous middle school, but my high school was elite and prepared me well for college (except for teaching me how to study.)
That thing about your fourth grade year - that's awful! Are all the base schools like that? Good grief. I worry about where we'll send our kids to school when the time comes and we've moved around a lot.