Is anyone satisfied with the state of education? Silly question.
Everyone has complaints but most of those complaints are specious. Most of the proffered solutions miss the point.
There is no doubt that our schools are not producing results that generate pride. The first matter at hand is to determine why. That will lead us to at least part of the answer.
Despite what I just said, I am going to start off by delivering some corporeal punishment to the troublemakers. They are those opting for home schooling and private schools to avoid dealing with the real world.
If it makes any difference, my wife taught in the public school system for 34 years and then another 6 years in private education. I attended prep school for a couple of years and was singularly unimpressed. I was graduated from a public high school that produced far more National Merit Award scholarship winners than all of the prep schools in the state combined.
While I’m willing to concede that some exist, I have yet to see any parents qualified to provide suitable, quality education to their children. Yes, I know what some will say. They will boast of their degrees. I could do the same but I know better.
Education is more than preparing a child to pass tests.
Every country provides education, not for education’s sake, nor for the benefit of the individual student. It is provided as a major part of the socialization process. No, it has nothing to do with economics. As I prefaced this paragraph, every country does it.
Socialization is the preparation of the citizenry, or subjects, for functioning in that nation in the way that the leadership wants it to function. They may think a middling education is in their (the leadership’s) interest or they may prefer idiots pouring out of madrasas with guns and illiterate women to best secure their positions.
No nation has leaders that want a truly educated electorate. Quality technical training may be afforded but history, philosophy, sociology and economic education, except for those sequestered in ivory tower or otherwise marginalized, will be inculcated with a national twist. They will not contradict the national myths. They are not usually afraid of an educated class because it will be carefully circumscribed and far outnumbered by the hoi polloi.
I would be surprised to find a home schooling parent who is aware of that aspect of socialization. There is, of course, a form of socialization much more readily understood. I do think though that its importance is not fully appreciated.
This is the part of interacting with peers, teachers and others in a variety of situations. Home schooling and private schools almost universally turn out children who consider themselves special and superior. My direct experience in prep school and paying attention to other products of those situations confirms the sense of superiority and entitlement that result.
This leads to a multitude of problems. This attitude can easily cause a businessman to consider the personal advantages of shipping jobs overseas. The importance of those jobs to his employees is not really a consideration, as the people themselves have no value in his eyes. Overcharging customers or providing poor products or service is likewise easy to see from a personal perspective and difficult to see from the perspective of those who are not so special as he.
Two things. I will leave it to you to think of other possible manifestations of this attitude of superiority. The other matter is that this attitude is obviously not the exclusive domain of private schools and home schooling.
The latter in no way diminishes the problem I have outlined. It does speak to two factors. One, the public system is not fully eliminating that attitude. Two, there are many other sources for that attitude.
When parents saw children as a form of social security, they spawned a dozen or two children to ensure someone to take care of them in their dotage. The children considered themselves lucky if they had a name other than, Hey You. Children have become an extension of one or both parents. The child must excel in sports or education or money-making. They are put in the position of ruling the roost at a tender age. They are denied nothing. And somehow, they get from all this the strange impression that they are important.
Sure, parents get the bulk of the blame. They deserve it. People don’t always have children for the right reasons. Many don’t actually want to parent. They turn the bulk of the parenting over to the schools. They allow the television, the internet, texting or video games to provide the basic babysitting services. They drop the brats off at church so the church can provide the moral aspects of parenting.
Those providing home schooling must be admirable then. Hardly. They just feel that they and their children are too good for us. They fail to realize that the example they put forth is not exactly a positive. Those that I have seen up close and personal are really trying to make their offspring into clones of themselves. That isn’t parenting. The children would be better served as latchkey kids, their education left to their peers in the streets.
Am I saying that parents should stay out of the picture? Absolutely not. I am saying that they need to be properly educated as to their proper role.
The biggest determinant of success in school is parental involvement. You don’t need to do their homework for them. You don’t even need to help with their homework. It’s their homework. You have other roles. Also, parental involvement in homework would leave the disadvantaged in a permanent disadvantage.
Talk to their teachers. Talk to the children. Keep tabs on the crowd they run with. At important stages in their development, peers become the dominant force molding them. Let them know that you consider education and their performance critical.
The second most important factor is class size. Every study confirms this.
While parental involvement and class size are far and away the most critical elements in education, the public, lead by interested parties and idiots, puts the spotlight on standardized tests and the quality of the teachers.
Let’s take that second one first. These people have no idea what makes a good teacher and, in a community with as much diversity as most have, a limited, static concept of results rating is ludicrous. Again, those making all of the noise have no idea what makes a good teacher.
These selfsame noisemakers denigrate the career to the point that even some who would be inclined to pursue it are put off. These “leaders” ensure that it will be difficult to find a lower-paid profession. They refuse to treat them as professionals. They refuse to support their efforts. Hell, they even refuse to listen to people willing to devote their lives to such an unappreciated vocation.
I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret. The pressure on teachers to teach to those standardized tests is overwhelming. I’m surprised that any fail to succumb. Those standardized tests are distortions of education. They are biased in several ways. They are created for profit, not for the enhancement of education. They are severely limited. They are standardized. The children aren’t standardized.
Time devoted to teaching to the tests is time stolen from education. Some time should be given to teaching the children how to think critically. Please don’t tell anyone I said that. It is anathema in this country.
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Two things.
First, my daughter teaches biology and anatomy at a private high school. According to what she tells me, you have the two major determinants of sucess exactly right.
Second, the college professor from whom I learned the most told us at the beginning of the course that he wasn’t going to teach us any “thing”. He was going to endeavor to teach us to think and reason about what we read and heard.
In other words, good article!
Thanks, Ed. At one time Chattanooga had a larger percentage of students in private schools than anywhere else. The primary reasons had nothing to do with improved education. This was due to either a claimed moral superiority or to undisguised racism. I know that some private schools were, as the one I went to, created so that the elite could avoid contamination. I obviously never belonged. There is the possibility that some private schools aimed at a better education. The ones I am most aware of are largely misguided. Knowing what I do about the pressures and limitations of teaching… Read more »
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