Posted by
Eripides on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 1:25:28 PM
Today's students get short-changed in their education. Who's to blame?
The response surprised me.
A recent
Gallup Poll
asked Americans what would be the best way to improve kindergarten
through twelfth grade education in the US today. The poll determined
that "Americans most commonly mention having higher-quality,
better-educated, and more-involved teachers."
Why does this
surprise me? For one, I completely disagree with Americans' perception
of education in the US. The answer to the problem does not lie with the
teachers, but with the support system that teaches, hires, and controls
the teachers.
If I were to answer the Gallup Poll question, from my viewpoint as a teacher, I would point to eight entirely different things:
- Low teacher salaries;
- Failed university systems which neglect to teach the teachers;
- The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and government concepts of "accountability";
- Increased federal interference;
- Top-heavy school and district administration (i.e. district centralization versus department control);
- Failed approaches to teaching, propagated and amplified by 1960s liberal ideals;
- Self-serving teachers' unions;
- And last, but not least, lack of student responsibility.
In
other words, poor-quality, poorly-educated, poorly-involved teachers
isn't the problem. It's only a symptom of the greater problem with
education in the US.
I created quite a list here. The Gallup
Poll shows that very few of my top problems with education in the US
even make it to the Gallup list. This means that average Americans
aren't aware of some of the basic, underlying problems with education
in the US. Why the discrepancy? Of course, I can attribute many
problems I identify on my list to years of personal experience, as I
have watched the decline in student interest and student ability in the
classroom. Some I attribute to my basic distrust of government
interference and big government-run institutions. Some I attribute to
my distrust of liberalized educational principles with which I do not
agree.
The problem remains, however, that students graduate from
high school lacking many of the basic skills necessary to continue at
the college level. I've seen a sharp decline in students' abilities
over the past five years or so. Students now lack the basic reading
skills necessary to tackle the technical or specialized reading
required for advanced education. For example, just yesterday, several
of my students complained about a short article I had assigned them to
read about the historical development of political ideologies. Many
students couldn't read the article and grasp the author's main point.
Many couldn't get past the author's language.
Also, yesterday I
finished grading the first written assignment of the semester, finding
a considerable number of the short essays all but unreadable because of
basic problems with grammar, spelling, and mechanics. Virtually none of
the students could properly group sentences together to form
paragraphs, opting instead to break ideas randomly or to ignore
paragraphs altogether. A significant number of students copied material
straight from the textbook instead of paraphrasing - a clear indication
to me of an inability to process information.
Which leads me to
conclude that yes, the educational system is failing. Getting back to
my own list of problems, I can suggest some solutions, none of which,
of course, will ever happen since the educational system in the US is
firmly under the control of power mongers: teachers' unions, state
projects, and federal mandates and funding.
1 - Increase Teachers' Salaries According to Merit
I
advocate across the board salary increases for teachers. While this may
sound self-serving (which, of course it is), there is the fact that
teachers' salaries simply cannot support a family. Speaking from
experience, in order to make ends meet, I must supplement my teaching
salary with an outside business and investment income. K-12 teachers
are the worst hit, college teachers less so.
Teachers' salaries
should be tied to performance, especially at the college and university
levels. Performance, in this case, doesn't mean publishing the drivel
that passes for research these days, but instead means contributing to
teaching, retaining, and counseling students to successfully navigate
through school. Bad and overpaid university professors should have
their salaries reduced, and should be paid by the number of classes
taught, rather than the number of years in the system.
2 - Get Rid of the Elementary Education Degree
The
utter garbage teachers learn from a degree in elementary education
astonishes me. We now produce college graduates who can spew the latest
teaching theories of facilitation and collaboration, yet they cannot
read, write, spell, or do math. How can we expect these graduates to
become effective teachers themselves when they lack basic educational
skills?
Getting rid of the programs to award degrees in
elementary education, as well as their big sister, the doctorate of
education, and requiring teachers to have graduated in science,
history, English, or mathematics, would go a long way toward producing
better teachers.
3 - Repeal the No Child Left Behind Act
Of
all the stupid things that George W. Bush has been blamed for, liberals
seem to ignore this shining example of bad legislation among them. The
NCLB controls schools at the local level by threatening reduced funding
from the federal level. The NCLB also places great emphasis on some
vague and poorly defined ideal of "accountability" measurable through
standardized testing. The end result produces an almost universal
"teaching to the test." It's happened in my local school district. It's
a good bet it's happened in yours as well.
The emphasis on
standardized testing has produced and will continue to produce problems
such as "gaming" (fixing tests to show better results), changing test
standards, teaching to the lowest level in classes, English-only
assessment, limiting local school control, and others. (
Wikipedia)
4 - Give Education Back to the States
Our
modern sensibilities and ideologies say that we must ensure that all
students, everywhere, are treated exactly the same. Little disturbs a
modern liberal more than the thought that one school may enjoy a more
privileged status than another. The solution to school funding
inequity, was to take school funding decisions away from the states and
place them at the federal level.
The result produced many
unintended consequences. First, because schools got federal funding,
the states took money away from the schools. The net effect didn't
raise up under-advantaged schools. It didn't "level" the playing field.
It didn't provide more funds per student.
What it did was to
lift educational responsibilities from the states and hand them to the
federal government. The result is an actual decline in the schools'
abilities to fund programs and pay teachers' salaries. Most schools in
my state, including universities, now suffer from inadequate funding.
How
many examples of ineffective federal controls do we need before we
figure out that the federal government simply cannot fix the problems
it creates. When the Democrats pass federal health care "reform," we'll
have another shining example. Large bureaucracies simply cannot respond
to local needs.
5 - Return to School-Independent and Departmental Control
Following
the example of the federal government, the school administration where
I teach has discovered a newly found power in taking decisions away
from the department to create greater control and centralization over
the entire system. Where my department chair used to make decisions
about teaching loads and class size, now a bureaucrat makes the
decision for all the departments across all the campuses. Where each
campus had its own email system, now students must have a system-wide
email (as well as a campus email, forcing students to check both
systems). Where each campus had a single database listing of students
for each class, now we must access two systems: one for grading, one
for contact information. The new centralized control has multiplied
high-paid administrative positions, yet has reduced the number of
classes, reduced the numbers of teachers, and has significantly
increased the numbers of students per class.
A simple rule
applies here - centralization and big bureaucracies to not respond well
to the needs at the local level. "Modern" centralized school
administration growth buries teachers and students alike.
6 - Give Up Silly Liberal Teaching Models
The
liberalization of today's educational system demands layer upon layer
of bureaucracy to ensure such things as fairness, equality, compassion,
and tolerance are taught in school. What suffers, of course, is the
actual education of the students. Equality-based systems replace
merit-based systems. Students learn that education is a right or an
entitlement, rather than a process that demands effort. No child left
behind means reducing educational standards rather than lifting
educational expectations.
The result is a generation of students
who expect good grades whether earned or not. For example, more and
more students who earn poor or failing grades in my class expect me to
change their grades because they don't "feel" they've been treated
fairly.
Recently, one of my students failed to turn in an exam
and plagiarized a book report. He earned an F for the class. His
mother, of all people, called me on the phone and insisted I allow him
special privileges. Her explanation and reasoning? He needed to pass
the class so he could transfer to another school. In her mind, skipping
an exam and plagiarism were minor infractions, not worthy of a failing
grade. Her son was a "good" student and tried very hard in everything
he did. To her and her son, the effort satisfied the demands of
education, despite the glaring omissions of any accomplishment
whatsoever.
This example belies a deeper symptom of the failure
of education. Instead of subject mastery, students expect the
entitlement of passing a class. Instead of demonstrated skill, effort
wins the grade. Instead of learning, copying and pasting someone else's
effort is entirely acceptable. All these point to the disease of failed
educational philosophies invented within the past 40 years.
7 - Treat All Political Lobbies as We Now Treat Corporations
One
of the modern-day boogeymen is the supposed "evil" corporation and
attendant abuse of power. Under the Obama administration, banks, car
manufacturers, insurance companies, Wall Street moguls, and the
nebulous corporate greed have all been blamed for our economic
troubles. The federal government, in turn, has taken over and
diminished the power of the corporations for supposedly failing the
people of the US.
The problem, of course, arises from the abuse
of power, wherever it may arise. Many corporations abused their power
to create cheap wealth (Sallie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, are all
examples). Teachers' unions, as well, have done their part to help
destroy public education. These unions think and act just as large
corporations and make political decisions based, not on altruism or the
ideals of constituency, but on good-old American greed and lust for
power.
Educational lobbies are just as harmful as any other
power monger corporation, perhaps more so, since the future of
education rests in their unscrupulous hands.
8 - Expect More from Students
The
last point is perhaps the most insidious, yet the easiest to correct.
Teachers simply need to expect their student to perform. Administration
simply needs to back up teacher decisions. Students should learn the
basic lesson of education, that the responsibility of our education
falls on our own shoulders and is utterly independent of teachers.
For
example, I expect my students to write well. After initial poor
attempts, many of my students learn to write and proofread and turn in
great essays. It takes time and it takes a bit of practice. I find that
my students will rise to my expectations. I also expect my students to
think. I do not condone lazy thinking in my classes and, for the most
part, the students rise to the occasion.
What this tells me is
that, with a bit of effort, students can and will rise to the occasion
and learn how to learn. Why they wait until they are adults does not
reflect well on our current K-12 system.
Can we implement
solutions to bring us out of the mire of poor education? Given the
political climate and the ideological bent of modern education, I'd
have to reach the conclusion that no, we are stuck in a mire. Our
schools seem to be locked into a badly designed system, spiraling
downward toward the goal of pronounced mediocrity and delusions of
adequacy.