CSotD: Expert Textpert
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Well, timing is everything and sometimes it's nothing, but you're probably better off for it. I just got "Waiting for Superman" from Netflix but haven't watched it yet, which forestalls a long rant about this Signe Wilkinson cartoon.
But it doesn't preclude a shorter one which will be quite long enough, I'm sure.
She's right, of course. Everybody knows what's wrong with our schools, everybody has a way to solve all the problems facing American education, nobody really wants to honor the people who are actually on the frontlines, or even include them in the discussion. In fact, a fair amount of the conversation centers on finding ways to get better people to teach instead of the ones we have.
The idea that maybe the majority of teachers are good at what they do but operate in a structure that doesn't let them achieve excellence only comes up when someone wants to either create a more prison-like structure in the schools, bash the teachers unions or unleash their own brilliant plan for education which is usually on a level with those familiar film clips of pre-Wright Brothers inventors trying to achieve flight.
A few thoughts:
1. Having eaten in a restaurant does not qualify you to be a chef. Having attended school does not qualify you to be an educator. I spent about a dozen years working with teachers, including going into their classrooms and taking over for 45 minutes at a crack. I've also simply watched from the sidelines, and I've sat in the teachers' lounge and listened. I've written curricula and created other educational materials for classroom use on a local, regional and national level.
I know next to nothing of what it actually takes to go into the classroom day after day and truly educate.
But knowing that puts me head and shoulder above a lot of self-appointed, and sometimes government-appointed, educational experts. (And let us not forget that "No Child Left Behind" was designed to replicate the educational achievements of a superintendent whose district, we later discovered, had engaged in widespread cheating and outright fraud to achieve those impressive gains.)
2. I find it depressing and defeating that we talk endlessly about how other countries are ahead of us in various measures of academic success, but refuse to follow their model. Instead, we pile on more of our own failed ways of doing things and hope that, by testing more, and by insisting that kids pass these tests, we'll catch up with the rest of the developed world. The motto of the US Department of Education should be "Pedal faster, Gilligan!"
Specifically, most countries offer two tracks of curriculum, one for college-bound students and one for those with technical interests. Both streams include solid academics, but each is geared to the talents and interests of its own student-client base, and it's not surprising that the kids learn better under those circumstances.
Meanwhile, we insist that all students should be educated with the goal of going to college, and we treat kids who would rather work on things than on ideas as if they were (you should pardon the term) retarded. In New York state, vocational students are even sent for their technical training to the same place where students with intellectual, learning and emotional disabilities are sent — often riding the notorious "short bus."
And then we wonder why they don't do as well as students in other countries whose talents are honored and acknowledged and whose curriculum is geared to help them sharpen those valuable talents, and we persist in justifying this, in part, with an outright lie.
A few years ago, I went to a high school in Maine to interview the International Students Club, a group of about 20 exchange students from a number of countries including France, Vietnam, Turkey, Serbia, Venezuela, Mexico, Egypt — in short, every continent except Antarctica. I asked them, if a student chose either the college track or the engineering track, and then later changed his mind, how hard it would be to switch to the other.
They looked at me in some puzzlement and then all – ALL – came up with the same answer. You go talk to your guidance counselor and say you want to switch and you get switched. No big deal. They did admit that, if you kept doing that every semester, your counselors would probably become annoyed and it would likely take you forever to graduate, but there was nothing actually stopping you from doing it.
The idea that a two-track system locks kids into one or the other is a damned lie, and it shouldn't take anyone more than two minutes to find that out, if they want to know.
3. "Waiting For Superman" was hailed as a great public service, sponsored by various foundations and intended to start the dialogue that would save our children. NBC put on prime time programs discussing it, Arianna Huffington let it dominate Huffpo for a couple of weeks, and yet only those in major cities actually got to see it during that time when it was being discussed.
Seems to me that, if the foundations were serious about opening this great dialogue, they'd have ponyed up a little more money and arranged to have the thing broadcast or streamed or available on disk from the get-go, so we could all join in the discussion. But as long as the People Who Matter got to see it in a timely manner, I guess that's good enough.
Meanwhile, Signe Wilkinson is right, but I don't think anybody really gives a damn.
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