The Crisis in Education

Useful Websites
Cramster.com  is a good site high school and college students, it is an on-line study community with lots of useful resources and advice.  Social networking for study!!!
The Week in Rap is a novel way to let your students learn about the news of the week in the language of rap!
Veterans History Project - The Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center collects, preserves, and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war.
Today in History Calendar - One of the free educational resources at Thinkfinity.  A great bulletin board addition!

Books to Read
The Education of Gospel by W. Norton Grubb and Marvin Lazerson discusses the idea that more schooling for more people is the remedy for our problems and that the aim of education is to prepare for work.

Interesting Articles about Education
For Students at Risk, Early College Proves a Draw by Tamar Lewin from New York Times on-line.

There is a payoff for the long bus rides: The 48 SandHoke seniors are in a fast-track program that allows them to earn their high-school diploma and up to two years of college credit in five years — completely free.

These Things We Believe by John Norton, Teacher Magazine on-line (you may need to subscribe to read this article)

 Good teachers are frustrated, I believe, because they care so much about the work they do. They feel strait-jacketed by conflicting directives from above, and overwhelmed by constant budget cutting that makes a hard job even harder. More and more, there’s a temptation to respond to the constant criticism with angry rebuttals that point out society’s mixed messages: “Teach to the test.” “Individualize instruction.” “Stick to the teaching script.” “Transform students into critical thinkers.” Then, when teacher tempers boil over, we hear: “How come they’re always whining?”

A Climate of False Crisis by Deborah Meir from the blog Bridging Differences in Education Week on-line.   (you may need to subscribe to read this article)

Narratives are easier to remember, and so we invent them. And, we always insist that at this moment we cannot move with caution because—it's a crisis in need of an immediate fix.

Thoughts from Yrisarri

For more than a decade the American school has been under one of the severest attacks it has ever encountered in its history. This assault is focused, in part, on the school's alleged inability and inefficiency in helping our children master the knowledge and skills they need to live in a highly technological and constantly changing society.

This statement is from Philosophy and the American School by Van Cleve Morris and Young Pai. The book was my Philosophy of Education text book in a class I took in 1979!  My entire career has been one marked by the educational crisis. This drumbeat of crisis in American education has been the driving force for change in the public schools. When we change we have to buy new curriculum materials from educational publishers. My guess is that the crisis is not real but manufactured for America's two competing/cooperating institutions - government and corporations. It is part of the  philosophy that allows us to remain in a state of stress about the future so that we will buy ideas and programs to alleviate that stress. What I have seen in my career in response to this fear is a movement away from local control of education to increased state control and less local curriculum development in favor of purchased curriculum programs.

There are problems in education that need to be addressed, but to place the future of our country on the shoulders of our children is wrong.  One way to improve learning in our schools is to decrease the stress on children not increase it.  As Jonathan Kozol has pointed out in his books, there are deplorable schools in our nation's urban centers. It feels as if the educational reformers want to make educators the scapegoats for society's neglect of  inner cities and rural schools.  We have been busy fighting terror in foreign lands when it festers in America.  A terror that makes children look to gangs and violence as answers to their problems rather than school and education.  This is not the fault of our schools; it is the fault of our national priorities.  To punish all schools for this problem does not make any sense.  I have always maintained that any one can get the best education in the world at about any school in America if they are motivated to learn.

Our biggest problem is that children and adults are rejecting the traditional American education while government and corporations, who have taken control, insist that what needs to be done is more of the same.  Charter schools, home schools and technology are providing new avenues for the customers of education and they are using these new tools in ever increasing numbers while the public schools are not allowed to compete.  Teachers and their learning communities have good ideas about what is needed.  They know that learning is more important than passing tests and they know how to make that happen.  They realize that they must motivate their students by providing a curriculum that is interesting and contains the correct challenge for each student.  They know that all students need differentiation because each person is unique and to provide a blanket curriculum across a nation as diverse as American is counter productive.

Our aim in American schools should not be to educate based on the average of the data to solve society's problems but to educate each person to reach their potential.  Our country will be much stronger if we allow individuals the freedom to learn what they need for their future.  More government and more corporate control will not accomplish this task.  Just as each student is an individual so the needs of each community are unique.  Let's put our resources behind helping each community meet its needs and that will further larger national interests more than dictating those needs from the top down. There is not a crisis in what our children know, but rather how our politicians and governments use them to further their interests.