The Problem with Public Education

     Over the past three or four decades politicians, intellectuals, educators, and the like tried to solve the ills of public education. And so the quest continues. More experimentation. More blame. More calls for change. And more nasty stuff thrown at the wall to see if it sticks. Has anyone gotten the correct answer to obvious question? What is the problem with public education? If you don't get the answer right, you certainly will not see any improvement. After reading chapter three of Goodwin’s “Simply Better”, my suspicions have been confirmed. The problem with public education is the public. Simple but true. Twenty plus years of teaching in the inner city has demonstrated to me that education is in the condition it is in due to the current condition the public is in…specifically, the family. The break-up of the family, the building block of society, is broken all over the country to some degree and certainly the effects are compounded in the city. If I can find a two-parent family, it's a rarity and very pleasantly noticeable. We know the problem (unhealthy broken families) and the answer to that brokenness is not within our power to remedy. Yet, we can attempt to fill the gap that the broken family has left. Simply Better is on the right track. I’ve seen the movie, The Blind Side and the solution was the family. That family rescued him, nurtured and loved him, fed and clothed him and gave him a bed and a place to grow. Hodgkinson’s 13 risk factors associated with lower student achievement are seen by me on a daily basis. Yet, Goodwin quotes Rothstein, ”Good teachers alone, for most children, cannot fully compensate for the disadvantages many children bring to school.” Then how does the teacher effect change? Short of taking children away from parents, early childhood programs are the answer. Teaching children social skills (negotiation and compromise) and giving them exposure to things they would not otherwise not know, will change lives and futures. Additionally, teaching children to read will not only transform their lives, it will rescue them from a life of poverty and hopelessness. This is the ounce of prevention approach. Knowing that many critical brain functions and processes take root before the age of five and implementing strategies to heighten those critical brain functions; this can have a major effect on many children.
     Exposure creates background. Children need prior knowledge to achieve. My field trip to the High Museum was canceled due to the exhaustive testing of the third, fourth, and fifth grade. No exposure for these inner city 5th graders. This exposure thing must be a top down agenda and thought of as important. Now it's up to me to bring the High to the fifth graders. I wonder if the High will allow me video the show?
     Goodwin mentions something that I will attend to. Being moved around from school to school and then pushing a cart around affords me little in the way of word walls. Now that I have my room back I can bring out that packed away art word wall that I created. If I can't find the rolled up alphabetized four foot by eight foot chart I will certainly make a new one. I have one on a window shade, yet I want one that always displays the words all the time for viewing and perusing. I do want words to be pegs, as Beecher says, for students to hang ideas on. One word I use constantly is appropriate. It demonstrates the uniqueness of art and answers the whinny complaint children use, “He’s copying me!” No he’s not, he is appropriating it; which means take and use for your own. In art you are allowed to take another's idea, change it and use it for your own. I will intentionally weave vocabulary into my art instruction. The five step process for direct vocabulary instruction is a winner. A living vocabulary is a crafty way for children to take what they have learned with them where ever life takes them. This is a legacy of sorts for teachers; to impart knowledge, through words, in unforgettable ways.
     Another topic Goodwin covers is interest and motivation. I think we can work too hard instructing children. There is a place for play in instruction. I use it as much as I can. Play greases the instructional wheels. This is where interest and motivation comes into the picture. Capture their interest and you've done half the work. That's a chapter out of Kay Toliver's book.
     Goodwin is correct, “Unless educators act proactively rather than reactively, they will remain in a perpetual state of emergency.” Sounds like a correct assessment of the current educational dilemma. We know the diagnosis, now to implement the plan. We cannot put the family back together, yet we can transfer knowledge and motivation into those we teach in hopes the cycle will not repeat.