I think pretty much everyone has picked up on the fact that I have a child in elementary school. We haven't spent a whole lot of time discussing education on the page, but we have touched on it some. Mainly we have touched on it while discussing other topics like parenting, religion and politics, which isn't quite the same as getting down to brass tacks about what is right and wrong with the way we educate our children in this country. An article I was reading reminded me that I haven't yet taken the time to vomit out all of my views on the American system of education, and since I was bored I figured I might as well do that now..
Regardless of what your religious or political views are, and frankly even if you are not a parent with young children, I think that it is safe to say that everyone agrees that kids need to be taught some things. Not too many people out there advocating that we should just let children stumble around picking everything up on their own through trial and error. There are a plethora of different views about what the correct way to educate kids is, but they all start with the basic premise that if we don't figure out a way to at least teach them the basics like reading, writing and arithmetic then they will never progress to the point where their parents can hope to get their own lives back.
Some people believe that home schooling children and having them learn from their parents is the answer. Some people believe that the church that they belong to should provide not only religious instruction, but practical education as well. Still others believe in various forms of publicly funded education. Unfortunately, with all the different options and ideas that there are to choose from, people spend most of their time arguing the comparative merits of one type of education over another, and this has led to an overall system of education in our country that is broken, and in quite a few areas, broke.
I, being stuck at home all day every day, have had a lot of time to think about this subject. Thanks to my nifty little blog and Facebook page, I also have an outlet with which to share my thoughts with others. I think I will try and organize this is a Question/ Ranting Answer format, just to make it less painful to slog through. Hang on, cause here we go:
What should American children be required to learn?
To my mind, the answer to this one is rather obvious- as much as their
little minds can possibly hold. The reasoning for this is that despite
the best guess of any parent, teacher, or politician, absolutely no one
can predict with any certainty what a child is going to choose to do
with their life once they reach adulthood. Ours is a free country, and
eventually every child is going to be an adult who has the right to make
their own choices. So it doesn't much matter what Mom and Dad or
anyone else thinks is valuable and necessary information, because that
one thing that they decide isn't important may turn out to be what the
child turns out to be most interested in when they are older. Giving
them access to a little bit of knowledge about a wide variety of
subjects allows them to identify those areas that they want to explore
more deeply.
Of course
there are children who are more talented in some areas, and less
talented in others. There are kids who have learning disabilities, or
who are less driven to climb a corporate ladder, whatever. I am firmly
convinced that no one is adequately qualified to determine a child's
potential to learn or to develop and maintain an interest in a
particular subject while that child is still in the process of growing
up. Adults through the ages have made many mistakes trying to gauge for
one reason or another what children under their control are capable of
learning, and with each generation those kids grow up thinking that the
adults who influence their lives are stupid. We wonder why that is, yet
time and time again it is one of those children, who was deemed by
their parents or a school counselor or someone else as dull, that turns
out to have what it takes to succeed in ways that no one who knew them
as a child would have dreamed of.
Obviously educators, no matter who they are, need to cover the basics
like reading and writing and arithmetic. Those are still going to be
universal because they are so necessary to being able to function in
society. The rest of the education that children get needs to be
focused less on training them to do what adults think they will be able
to do,and more focused on helping them to figure out how to do what they
think they might like to do.
So who should be teaching our kids?
The short answer to this is whoever the kid is willing and able to
learn from. The reason the issue of education has many of us so divided
is that there is no right or wrong way to teach every child. This is
not to be confused with the idea that there is no wrong way to teach any
child, and I think a lot of people don't see that. Children, just like
the adults that they later become, are individuals. Not every child is
able to adapt to a classroom setting, nor is every child able to focus
when being taught in a home schooling environment.
One of the things that we have discussed on the page is that in my
particular case, Thing One and I could not possibly succeed with
homeschooling. Our personalities and our lifestyle just would not allow
us to make that shift from parent and child to teacher and student.
Both of us would be miserable, and history has shown that Thing One
would choose to be ignorant out of spite. For her, a classroom where
she can learn alongside and from her peers is best. On the flip side, I
have known many children who do not cope well with the traditional
classroom, and who instead thrive on the one on one interaction that
home schooling or alternative schooling provides.
The other thing that must be considered here is the attitude and goals
of the educator as compared to those of the child. For me, this come
more into play when considering the religious vs secular education, but
it also applies to other situations. A teacher who is intent on
incorporating religious teachings into every lesson is not going to
reach a student who does not share those religious beliefs. A student
who is intent on getting out of school so that they can start working
and making money is not going to engage with a teacher who does not
relate the information they are providing to real life.
So who should pay for education, and how?
Even though education is something that only has to be considered by
parents, it is the responsibility of everyone. For parents, we are
educating our children in the hopes that they will manage to gain
independence of us some time before we die. For society as a whole,
children need to be educated so that they can keep things going when the
rest of us are too old and decrepit to do it ourselves. Even if you do
not have children yourself, that snot nosed kid from around the corner
is still going to grow up and join our society and do something that is
going to help maintain the economy. They might be the person who pumps
your gas, or they might be the doctor who discovers that you have
cancer. You never know. What you can be sure of is the fact that no
man is an island, and not even the Amish can get by without raising up
the generations that come after them to work in some capacity to keep
the community and all it's members going.
Recently, certain political candidates have made the argument that it
is the responsibility of parents to educate their children, and those
idiots have tried to make the point that prior to industrialization,
mothers stayed home and taught their children without the benefit of any
formal education system. What these people fail to realize is that
we've long ago progressed beyond simply teaching our children to read
and write and do basic math. We have also progressed beyond the point
where the economy revolved around simply providing for the basic needs
of each family. Gone are the days when most of our citizens lived and
died on the family farm, making do with what they could make or grow for
themselves and supplemented only by the items that could be purchased
down at the General Store.
In a society where even the poorest among us has grown accustomed to
such luxury items as telephones, microwaves, and running water; in a
society where the only thing left to be had without a cost is the very
air we breathe, this is no longer a feasible option for the majority of
society. Very few families are in a position to not only keep one
parent home for the years that it takes to educate their children, but
to also have that parent become knowledgeable enough about the vast
amount of information that there is to know in order to allow a child to
grow up and be anything they want to be. Basically, Ma Ingall's could
not have raised up and educated Mark Zuckerberg all on her own.
Keeping this in mind, society as a whole is going to have to contribute
to financing the education of everyone's children. Most people have
known this on some level already, and every level of government we have
has had a hand in trying to develop a system for meeting this need.
Again, this brings us back around to politics and who is best suited to
collect and dole out the money for education. My personal belief is
that this is a Federal Government issue, and this is why: We are a
nation. A whole, and we are all created equal, at least according to
one of the documents that our country has considered to be a pretty
important part of our national heritage. Being a nation of equals, I
believe that a child in Florida deserves and needs the same educational
opportunities as a child in Alaska.
Before you start spluttering, I am not advocating that the Federal
Government take over setting the curriculum for every child in America.
Exactly the opposite. I simply feel that an equal amount of taxes
should be collected from every adult in our country (and then double
that rate from every business in the country) and then that money should
be distributed equally back to the parent or guardian of every school
aged child in the country in the form of an education voucher that can
be used to pay for their education. Public schools will still be run at
the local level, but the difference is that those schools will now
receive their funding in the form of tuition, which will be paid by the
parents choosing to enroll their children in that school with their
vouchers. Collecting and allocating these funds, along with setting the
minimum standards for education in core subjects should be the only
role of the Federal Department of Education.
So basically we go with the school of choice idea that has been tossed
around, but we do it in a way that guarantees that no child starts with a
lower baseline than any other child. Any school or education program
that can earn accreditation by their state will be able to redeem the
voucher assigned to a student enrolled in their program. Schools
wishing to raise additional funds for their school to use for education
purposes must do so through fundraising and donations. Yes, you're
going to have some schools that are better at fundraising than others,
but at least they are all starting out with the same amount of per pupil
spending.
What was that you said about minimum standards?
Now we get to the dreaded standardized testing argument. Yes, you read
that line about the Federal Department of Education setting minimum
standards correctly. I know people hate the idea of having standards
and stuff, but it is a necessary evil. I do however have a twist
though. Rather than just using a bunch of adults to sit around and
guess what it is that children should know, let's use the kids to
determine that. Take the school with the highest graduation rate in the
country. Test that school districts students on their knowledge of
reading, writing, and arithmetic, and use those students test scores to
set the minimum standard. If the average student in a school district
that actually graduates almost all of their students can learn a set of
skills, then that seems like a pretty good baseline to me.
Then make a few changes to the way that we test. Instead of testing
kids only every few years, test them EVERY year. If they do not
demonstrate a grasp of the basic minimum standard skills for their grade
level, do not promote them to the next grade. Also, stop testing kids
in February and March on knowledge that they are supposed to still be
learning until the beginning of June. Test two weeks before the end of
the school year, and then have those tests graded either locally or in
the state capital to determine which kids have passed and which have
failed. Students who have failed should be required to take Summer
School in the subjects that they failed, and retest at the end of it.
Still don't pass? Then it's time to consider either repeating the
grade, or reconsidering whether that child is in the best learning
environment for them. This decision should be left up to the parents,
but the child should not be promoted if they can't grasp what they
should have gotten out of the grade level they were in.
Switching back to being a Democrat for a minute, every child should be
required to either graduate, obtain a GED, or at least be trying to
graduate until they reach 18. The statistics on kids who entered the
workforce without at least a GED are grim when it comes to be able to
support themselves without the assistance of welfare or Mom and Dad, and
I could give a rat's behind whether employers like these kids to start
working young because they work cheap or not. If a kid wants to quit
school because they have dreams of working at McDonald's until they
eventually work up to being a franchise owner, then they are probably
delusional and need some more education. If a parent needs their child
to quit school and work to help support the family, then that parent is
being selfish and shortsighted, and they need to find another option. I
don't care if they have to enroll the kid in an alternative program
that let's them learn online at home while still working for a paycheck,
that kid especially needs to be learning as much as they can to help
them get into a career that will support them as an adult.
What would public school look like with all these other choices?
Public schools would definitely lose some funding if parents could
actually choose how their child was going to be educated without the
pressure of having to pay out of pocket for all of it unless they picked
public school, sure. But public schools are wasting a hell of a lot of
money now that they shouldn't be.
For starters, public schools (and schools in general) need to dump the
athletics programs and physical education, art class, music class, and
every damn one of the extracurricular activities. Public Education is
about providing information and teaching children to apply knowledge to
life. The reason that public education sucks is because people are
trying to cram too many different options and activities into the school
day. Most of these add ons exist to meet the needs or desires of a
small percentage of the students but are getting paid for out of the
funds of every student. Kids spend so much time trying to jump from one
activity to the next in elementary school that they are rushing through
the actual information and not getting to delve deeper into the things
that they find interesting. The extra time they have to spend on actual
lessons will give the teachers more time to deal with students one on
one and address any problems that those kids who aren't getting it have.
I also think that public schools should cut back to a four day week for
the regular curriculum. On that fifth day, let community groups use
the school for art classes, music classes, driver's ed, cooking classes,
etc. for a nominal rental fee. Let the school buses provide
transportation to these activities. Sports programs, chorus and band
groups, cheerleading, all these activities, if they were not offered in
the schools, would pop up in the community if there was a demand for
them. Heck, they are already there, they just haven't been able to
accommodate as many kids because most of those kids are doing the same
activity in school for free. Let these community based programs expand
and look to their communities for funding, rather than restricting them
to the elite few who are willing and able to pay through the nose for
them.
In addition to
cutting non education programs, I say let the PTO actually raise money
for things that the kids need in their classrooms. Stop limiting them
to purchasing fripperies like a decorative bench for the school, and get
the parents and kids involved in supporting their schools. Let the
schools take cash donations from the community for the school, rather
than The Red Cross and every charity program known to man. I can't
count the number of times that my kid has brought home a flyer asking
for a donation to a charity and I've thought, Why aren't they asking for
donations to buy books for the school library or something?
What about higher education?
Personally, I want my kids to go to college and get at least a
bachelor's degree in whatever area of study interests them. I spent a
lot of years working my tail off in dead end low paying jobs because I
was not qualified to get hired doing anything else that interested me
and paid better. Even being reasonably bright and willing to work an
insane amount of hours never got me to where I was earning more than
$20,000 a year. The Ex will probably never make more than $50,000, and
even H2, with two associates degrees and five years of specialized
training likely won't pull in six figures unless we get damn lucky with
some natural disaster that calls for some serious overtime working out
of state. Thing One has progressed over the last few years from wanting
whatever job she could get without having to learn to read to now
wanting to be a veterinarian/ rock star. She's pretty big on the rock
star thing, but we've agreed that she needs to have a fall back plan,
which luckily she agrees is sensible. Thing Two can't even speak
clearly yet, but this kid is already showing signs of being scary
bright, so I'm hoping she turns out to be the one who helps H2 and I
retire in style.
My
personal feelings aside though, I know that there are a lot of people
who aren't cut out for or interested in going to a traditional college.
I don't believe that every child should be required to attend college,
but I think that every kid who wants to should be able to. With higher
education costs being what they are, and still climbing, it is almost
impossible for parents to foot that bill all on their own.
Traditionally, economists have said that people can afford a house that
costs twice their annual salary, if they get a mortgage to pay it off
with interest over a period of thirty years or so. Well, it's already
gotten to the point where just one year of college is sometimes equal to
my family's annual salary, and we don't get to try and pay that off
over thirty years. We're some of the lucky ones who might be able to
pay for our kids to go to college without selling our bodies by the time
they are ready to go, but it's going to be tight, and I know that we
are a lot better off than a lot of people.
Just like primary education is something that has to be supported by
society in order for society to reap the benefit, secondary education
needs to be supported by everyone as well. The funding for it needs to
be a little bit different though, since the potential for waste is
higher when dealing with young adults than it is with minor children.
For one thing, the burden of cost needs to be higher for the businesses
that require a degree for employment than it is for the individuals who
support those businesses. So right off the bat, any company requires a
degree or specialized skill needs to be responsible for outlining the
expectations they have for schools who are handing out those degrees.
Then they need to be kicking in to a fund to meet at least a third of
the cost of meeting those goals.
So for example, take the position of pharmaceutical sales. This
happens to be one I'm vaguely familiar with. Right now, to land a job
with a company to peddle their drugs to doctors, a person has to have at
least a bachelor's degree. Thing is, it doesn't much matter what your
bachelor's degree is in. Younger Sister went to college for four years
and got a degree in Speech Communications because she started out
thinking about a journalism career. Then she hit a job fair, and was
recruited for several sales jobs, pharmaceutical sales being one of
those. I think that the companies doing the hiring for that job need to
provide a list of what they expect potential employees to know, and
then all the companies who are trying to hire based on that criteria
need to pay into a fund that goes to help colleges who try and meet that
goal with a degree program. The more companies that there are looking
for a specific skill set, the more funding that schools get to teach
that skill set, and the more students there are who are going to try and
complete that program knowing that there are jobs to be found if they
have it.
Essentially, we need to track the money. Profitable companies are the
ones who do the hiring in our economy. So who is making the profits?
Make them use a portion of those profits to train the workforce that
they need to keep growing or maintaining those profits, rather than
expecting the people whose money provides their profits pay out the butt
for the privilege of being able to work for them and increase the
profits that they are pocketing. This works across the board for pretty
much every profit based business. Car manufacturers may only need a
few people to design cars for them, but if they are the only ones
looking for the skills needed to do that job, then the programs that
they help fund will also be smaller, and fewer students will go into
that field...
After
we have the pricy degree programs that prepare people for high paying
jobs set up, then you go down the ladder with other businesses setting
up the programs that their potential employees will need to compete to
do the jobs that they need done. Eventually you get down to things like
one semester CDL programs and such, and then you're left with only
those businesses that require unskilled labor and provide their own in
house training.
There
are going to be some gaps in the non profit areas, and with the degree
programs that people get into that train them for careers that exist
solely for the benefit of society, such as the arts, plus we can't
expect businesses to carry the whole load. This is where the rest of us
come in. Remember the Federal Department of Education? Yeah, they're
gonna collect a smaller amount of taxes from everyone than they did for
primary education, and they're going to allocate those funds as well.
This time everyone is going to kick in about half as much as they did
for primary education, since we're paying for a lot less students, and
the funds will be disbursed to the schools as the students earn their
credit hours.
Did you
catch that? Yeah, no more prepaying tax money in the hopes that
students will actually go to class and get credit for them.now, the onus
is on the college to make sure the students are actually learning what
they are being taught, and on the students to actually go to class and
do the work needed to pass. This is also where the student contribution
comes in.
I think
that colleges, with these programs that have been started with the seed
money from the businesses that will actually be hiring the graduates,
should have to allow students to pay to take the class, but only let's
say a third of what the class costs per credit hour (that's another job
for Federal Department of Education, setting a per credit hour rate that
colleges cannot exceed that is tied to the cost of living index for
increases) So you figure that the school is getting the start up and the
first 1/3 of a credit hour paid for by the businesses fund, then the
student has to pay for the next 1/3 in order to get into the class, and
then, if the student passes the class, Dept of Ed cuts them a check for
the remaining 1/3.
I
know a lot of people will think that this would just lead to colleges
passing everyone regardless of whether they earned it, but you should
also have a set of checks and balances where businesses who can identify
students who graduate without being able to demonstrate the skills
necessary to do their jobs can file complaints requesting that the
colleges guilty of this lose funding from the businesses for their
program. Plus there is no better whistle blower than a college student
who has worked their ass off and seen a professor just hand a grade to a
slacker. Peer review will go a long way towards preventing this
problem.
There also
needs to be more programs set up to allow college students to work off
the cost of books and room and board fees. There are a lot of programs
that benefit from hiring college students to fill a need that can't be
met by just anyone off the street. The America Reads program comes to
mind. It is a program that pays college students to works as teacher's
aides for a few hours a day in elementary schools. The student gets a
little more than minimum wage, the teacher gets an extra body in the
class room to provide one on one, and the school district isn't paying
someone off of the substitute teacher list to do something that doesn't
require any advanced training (subs actually make more per day that the
actual teacher does)
Bottom
line, we need to be investing in education, but we need to be doing so
in a way that reflects our culture, and in a way that we can afford to
sustain. We will never be able to copy the educational system of
another country, because our country is unique in so many ways. We are
capable of competing with those countries, but only if we pull together
and play to our strengths, instead of letting our weaknesses tear us
apart.
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