Lydia Leftcoast
03-13-2009, 09:19 AM
This paragraph is in response to David Brooks' column on educational reform. Here's his original article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/opinion/13brooks.html
Here's my response:
Vouchers are a crock. They don't cover the cost of a really good private school, and they are a distraction from the REAL problems:
1) The majority of children still and mostly will (unless the Republicans get their way and destroy all public education in this country) attend public schools. All of them deserve a good education that not only prepares them for a job but gives them the broad knowledge necessary for informed citizenship. All of them deserve this, not just the ones with parents savvy enough to know the difference between a good private school and one that's in business just to suck up voucher money.
2) Local control is a sacred cow in America, but it is also a major reason for disparities in achievement. Public schools in college towns are usually excellent. Why? Because the parents ride herd on the school board and demand the finest teachers, a demanding curriculum, and enriching extracurricular experiences. In the next town over, the parents may take the attitude that the most important function of school is to field winning sports teams, train the kids for dead-end jobs like the ones their parents have, and prevent them from learning anything that violates local conventional wisdom.
3) Because of local control parents who are dissatisfied with their local school system have an option that only a tiny percentage of them take: to vote out their school board and elect people who will improve the system. Republicans do not like to mention this option, because the last thing they want is poor people voting in large numbers. Why, if they realize that they have power over their school board, whom might they try to influence next?
4) Everyone blames the teachers for all the problems of American education. Yes, there are bad and lazy teachers. I had some of them going through school. But the majority are dedicated, hard-working, stuck in overcrowded classrooms full of misbehaving pupils, required to do mountains of ridiculous paperwork, and then criticized because they have long vacations, make almost as much money as a law clerk, and belong to (gasp!) unions. No wonder the smartest college students don't want to go into public school teaching.
5) Critics point out that American pupils perform at lower levels than those of many other industrialized countries. I will point out that almost all the pupils in those high-achieving Asian and European nations attend their countries' PUBLIC schools.
6) American culture is a huge problem, as I noted in my remarks on another column yesterday. When I was teaching on the college level, I had students who were avid readers but didn't want anyone to know about it, because they were afraid it would ruin their social lives. One of the colleges I taught at required a year of Western Civilization, which the students all claimed to hate. When a student in one of my classes (I didn't teach Western Civ) said that he thought all that stuff about the Greeks and Romans was pretty interesting, the rest of the class literally booed him. When famous political and cultural figures visited the campus, the events were attended almost exclusively by college faculty and staff and older townspeople. These are disturbing examples, but not surprising, giving the relentless anti-intellectualism of the popular culture that children and youth are steeped in.
7) High-stakes testing is guaranteed to turn children off to learning. We had the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills when I was in elementary school, and our parents were told how we had scored, but the results didn't affect whether the teachers kept their jobs or the school was allowed to operate.
Under the current system of continual drilling in reading and math, many teachers complain that they have no time for CONTENT lessons, the ones that are necessary for informed citizenship. It's as if the Bush administration and its clueless supporters among the Democrats wanted to create a generation of unthinking corporate cogs. Never mind that APPLYING skills in meaningful and interesting contexts is the best way to retain them.
When I participate on Internet discussion boards, I like to challenge people who make uninformed statements. (Recently, I challenged people writing on my local paper's website who called Obama a "Marxist" to read the platform of the Communist Party U.S.A. and explain which parts of it Obama espouses. So far, no takers.)
Anyway, Mr. Brooks, I have a challenge for you. Since you seem to have opinions on education, I challenge you to go to a local public school, one in an affluent district, if you wish, and teach seventh grade for two weeks. Then see if you can repeat the right-wing talking points about education with a straight face anymore.
— pdxtran, Minneapolis
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/opinion/13brooks.html
Here's my response:
Vouchers are a crock. They don't cover the cost of a really good private school, and they are a distraction from the REAL problems:
1) The majority of children still and mostly will (unless the Republicans get their way and destroy all public education in this country) attend public schools. All of them deserve a good education that not only prepares them for a job but gives them the broad knowledge necessary for informed citizenship. All of them deserve this, not just the ones with parents savvy enough to know the difference between a good private school and one that's in business just to suck up voucher money.
2) Local control is a sacred cow in America, but it is also a major reason for disparities in achievement. Public schools in college towns are usually excellent. Why? Because the parents ride herd on the school board and demand the finest teachers, a demanding curriculum, and enriching extracurricular experiences. In the next town over, the parents may take the attitude that the most important function of school is to field winning sports teams, train the kids for dead-end jobs like the ones their parents have, and prevent them from learning anything that violates local conventional wisdom.
3) Because of local control parents who are dissatisfied with their local school system have an option that only a tiny percentage of them take: to vote out their school board and elect people who will improve the system. Republicans do not like to mention this option, because the last thing they want is poor people voting in large numbers. Why, if they realize that they have power over their school board, whom might they try to influence next?
4) Everyone blames the teachers for all the problems of American education. Yes, there are bad and lazy teachers. I had some of them going through school. But the majority are dedicated, hard-working, stuck in overcrowded classrooms full of misbehaving pupils, required to do mountains of ridiculous paperwork, and then criticized because they have long vacations, make almost as much money as a law clerk, and belong to (gasp!) unions. No wonder the smartest college students don't want to go into public school teaching.
5) Critics point out that American pupils perform at lower levels than those of many other industrialized countries. I will point out that almost all the pupils in those high-achieving Asian and European nations attend their countries' PUBLIC schools.
6) American culture is a huge problem, as I noted in my remarks on another column yesterday. When I was teaching on the college level, I had students who were avid readers but didn't want anyone to know about it, because they were afraid it would ruin their social lives. One of the colleges I taught at required a year of Western Civilization, which the students all claimed to hate. When a student in one of my classes (I didn't teach Western Civ) said that he thought all that stuff about the Greeks and Romans was pretty interesting, the rest of the class literally booed him. When famous political and cultural figures visited the campus, the events were attended almost exclusively by college faculty and staff and older townspeople. These are disturbing examples, but not surprising, giving the relentless anti-intellectualism of the popular culture that children and youth are steeped in.
7) High-stakes testing is guaranteed to turn children off to learning. We had the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills when I was in elementary school, and our parents were told how we had scored, but the results didn't affect whether the teachers kept their jobs or the school was allowed to operate.
Under the current system of continual drilling in reading and math, many teachers complain that they have no time for CONTENT lessons, the ones that are necessary for informed citizenship. It's as if the Bush administration and its clueless supporters among the Democrats wanted to create a generation of unthinking corporate cogs. Never mind that APPLYING skills in meaningful and interesting contexts is the best way to retain them.
When I participate on Internet discussion boards, I like to challenge people who make uninformed statements. (Recently, I challenged people writing on my local paper's website who called Obama a "Marxist" to read the platform of the Communist Party U.S.A. and explain which parts of it Obama espouses. So far, no takers.)
Anyway, Mr. Brooks, I have a challenge for you. Since you seem to have opinions on education, I challenge you to go to a local public school, one in an affluent district, if you wish, and teach seventh grade for two weeks. Then see if you can repeat the right-wing talking points about education with a straight face anymore.
— pdxtran, Minneapolis