Public Education in America is, to put it simply, a mess. We
are ranked 17th in the developed world for education, which is pretty
frightening since all this money is going into a broken school system. In the
beginning of the movie chalk, a quote appears, saying that “50 percent of teachers quit in the first 3 years of
teaching”. Clearly
something is not working. We have gone through several readings in the past few
weeks of how to solve this growing problem, but I think ultimately we need a
complete overhaul of what we define "success" as, how we measure it,
and the class structure itself.
What is Public Education for? There
are various opinions on that, I think what is is for and what it should be for
are two different things however. I identify with an idea of an author we
discussed about how school is ultimately an exercise in creating a group of
conforming individuals who can fit certain, predetermined niches that "the
system" has laid out for us. The system will toss aside students who don't
fit well into this system and label them as "useless". They then end
up with several problems later down the line, including poverty and then even
more stigma attached to them later down the line. This is unacceptable.
Education in America should be
about discovering student’s strengths and weaknesses, rounding them out,
setting goals and pointing kids in the right direction regarding their ultimate
niche that they decide for themselves, not what is decided for them. People who
can get through the system who know what they are good at and where they could
apply it would be much better off than children who receive a broad, shallow,
punitive education that expects them to know what they want to do with their
life at 16 and expects them to spend exorbitant amounts on a college education,
since that is a common view of what success is. They spend more money on the
school itself in some situations, rather than the education that goes into. On
an episode of “The Daily Show”, Lewis Black talks about a school that opened up
in California. "Half a billion dollars on a school? Did they build Los
Angeles a Hogwarts?" Black said. "I went to school in an empty carton
of Pall Malls!" There would be less debt across America if people did not just
go to college because they feel as though they have to as well, and their time
spent there would be much more productive.
So why should there be a change?
Well for one thing, it is largely impractical to assume a student’s
intelligence based on a bunch of test scores. Tests should not be assumed to be
these perfect, infallible tools when they are definitely not. They do not take
into account any situational influences that could affect a grade. For example,
I recently read an article about a teacher being forced to administer a certain
test to her elementary school students by the district. Many of these students
were ESL, but the test was clearly biased towards white, native English
speakers. It was testing on idioms that were often confusing for these Spanish speakers.
I believe another way we can help
change our school system is buy changing the entire format. Kids go to school
for 8 hours a day, plus homework. They are crammed with as much information as
they possibly can in this time period to remember until their next test.
Students could be placed on a system where they attend school for a half a day,
with only 2-3 classes at a time. A part of the class could be blocked for
lecture, another part of the class would be application and discussion. bell
Hooks refers to this as “engaged pedagogy”, which “begins with the assumption
that we learn best when there is an interactive relationship between student
and teacher”. A small quiz could be done at the end of the period to determine
if the students “got it”, and if they didn’t, an extra discussion could take
place before lecture the next class period. I think this way emphasizes
critical thinking and gives students time to process information without
switching back and forth between disciplines.
Do you need another reason for a
call to change? Standardized test companies often make ridiculous amounts of
money by selling these new tests, all the money that is getting spent on buying
these tests to measure an abstract amount of success could be used to hire more
teachers and improve class sizes. Possibly these test companies could be
sabotaging students and teachers so more tests could be ordered and made so
they can make even more money. Privatizing the public education system in this
way is incredibly detrimental.
The good of society depends on
something being done to fix this. Apathy and judging the students and teachers
as lazy, incompetent, or just stupid is only perpetuating this system.
Some people are stuck on tradition.
They are proud of the grades they made in their day, and they got into a good
college and have a nice job with no debt. Well good for them, but it is a very
different world now. You cannot assume that just because you had a wonderful
experience in the public education system that everyone else did, especially if
you are white and have parents that have moderate to high income. Privilege
does not erase that the system is set in your favor.
"Well, how do we measure
success?" some may ask. Success is a very individual thing. For some
people that is being the CEO of a company, for others it’s having good
interpersonal relationships and being able to get by independently. I’m going
to use the definition of success as being capable and comfortable in the amount
of money you are earning. A test score from the College Board is not going to
predict this however, it is going to predict how well you do on a test. If we
stop measuring students in test scores, and start measuring success in how many
students can get jobs out of high school that can support themselves, that
might be better (this also involves a overhaul of the minimum wage system, but
that is a separate essay). It could be how many students manage to pick a major
and stick with it in college, it could involve testing their stress levels.
Finally, some people are hell bent
on believing that some kids are just stupid, and are doomed to fail. This could
be because of the narrow definition of what success is, or because the
education system is failing right now and people cannot seem to accept that its
not the sole problem of the parents, teachers, or students. It may sound a bit
elementary, but everyone is good at something, whether it be empathy or
mathematics. John Gatto discusses this in his paper when referring to the “basic
functions” of public education, including the “diagnostic and directive
function…School is meant to determine each student's proper social role.”
School emphasizes that the student is stupid and useless if they are not
conforming or performing in the way that is expected of them. However, no one
is useless, no one is untouchable.
I am not a teacher. I
am not someone with a master’s degree in education, I have not spent time
working on a school board. However, I am someone who went through the ringer
when it came to public education, and there are clear failings to be seen that
cannot just be blamed on the student. As Pablo Freire wrote "Those truly
committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety,
adopting instead a concept of women and men as conscious beings, and
consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world. They must abandon the
educational goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the
problems of human beings in their relations with the world."
Freire,
Pablo "Chapter 2, Pedagogy of the Oppressed" Pedagogy of the
Oppressed, New York, Continuum Press, 1993. Print
Gatto, John
"Against School" Harpers Magazine, 2003. Print
Black, Lewis “On Education in America” Comedy Central, 2010.
Television
Hooks, bell “Teaching Critical Thinking” Routledge, Print
Chalk, Film, 2006
