Category Archives: education

The real problem of U.S. public schools

I am tired of reading about edreform in the news focusing on failing schools, merit pay, test scores, school of choice, bad teachers, etc. It is time that politicians and “reformers” recognize the huge elephant in the room of education reform-poverty.

by Shavar Ross 

First go read Mel Riddile’s excellent post about poverty’s effects on PISA  Here is evidence that all of our schools are not failing, but the real problem in this country is poverty. Our best schools compare favorably with the top countries of the world. (By the way I personally could care less about these test scores, but since everyone else uses them to make points-here you go).

Next University of Texas psychologists release a study about poverty and genetic potential. Summarized they found that 50% of the progress of wealthy children can be attributed to genetics. No, they are not smarter than poor children, but they reach their genetic potential because of extra resources and opportunities. Children of poverty do not reach their potential.

Finally a New York Times piece by Charles Blow states that

      According to the National Center for Children in Poverty,
      42 percent of American children live in low-income homes 
      and about a fifth live in poverty. It gets worse.  The number
     of children living in poverty has risen 33 percent since 2000.
     For perspective, the child population of the country over all
     increased by only about 3 percent over that time. And, 
     according to a 2007 Unicef report on child poverty, the U.S. 
     ranked last among 24 wealthy countries.


My thoughts are that this is not any new information. We know that socio-economic is the most important factor for school success. We know that our poor schools in rural and urban areas are the schools with the most students who struggle and drop out. Of course we need to take every means necessary to improve these schools.


But lets stop dogging public education non-stop in the media. Let’s stop portraying teachers as lazy and worthless. Let’s stop acting like the entire system is broken when we have thousands of successful schools and millions of successful students. Let’s stop treating public education as both the cause and solution of our economic problems.


I for one am appalled that 1 in 5 children in this country live in poverty. 1 in 5! It is an embarrassment that we have the highest poverty rate of developed nations. I will not pretend to have all of the answers to end poverty, but let’s acknowledge it as the real problem of inequity in this country.


Let’s fix that problem and quit blaming public schools and teachers.

Hat tip to Bill Ferriter for the Charles Blow link.

Passion

Still thinking about passion as a major part of student learning. I have a lot of rambling thoughts in my brain right now and this is my attempt to organize them a bit so help me out where it does not make sense.
One thing that has me thinking about passion is the path of my life-long learning. I was an excellent student and great at “playing the game” of school. I knew how to listen, read, take notes, and pass tests. I was also convinced at the time that I was “smarter” than most people. This was a major part of my adolescent identity. I now look back and see that I was just better at playing the game than others, and lacked many problem-solving skills.

By Robert Hruzek

After I returned to the US from teaching English in China, I started working for the largest commercial concrete construction company in our area. My skill level was mostly as a laborer in residential concrete. I had a foreman who became my mentor and trained me to be a legitimate concrete finisher. After that I watched others being trained. The difference I saw between myself and some of them was that I did not naturally figure out how to finish concrete. I needed to be taught directly just like in school. I saw other guys who experimented and figured it out on their own. I began to recognize a skill set that they had toward problem-solving that I lacked. It was a standing joke that I asked questions about everything, especially “why.” But eventually I became an expert at knowing what to do after I understood the reasoning behind things.

The other thing I have been thinking about are my “strengths” and “weaknesses.” In school, I was a math/science kid. I hated English (writing) and thought history was a waste of time. In college I had to take one philosophy class and saved it for my senior year because I knew I would hate something so impractical. When I finally took philosophy I loved the class and wished I had minored in it. I decided to become a teacher when I returned from China. I loved learning about the culture and history of China so I majored in history. This year on the National Day of Writing I wrote for “fun” for the first time in my life by my own choice.

So I would have never chosen philosophy as a passion until I experienced an actual class in it. I don’t think I would have ever chosen writing or history in high school either. I needed to mature and have more life experiences for when I was ready to learn these topics.

Maybe the key is I know how to learn and how to access learning. I can now learn anything that I want to because the tools are easily accessible. Maybe the key to schools should be teaching how to learn and exposing kids to as many learning opportunities as possible and let them run with the ones that are most interesting to them at the time and trust the future for them to learn about the “standards” that they might miss while they are pursuing their passions.