Archive for March, 2009

Writer Dad writes that he will be focusing his thoughts on education this week.  His first post for the week got me rather fired up, even before I got a chance to see the video.

Since I haven’t had much to say here for a long time (first busy, then distracted, then exhausted), I thought I’d use one of my comments to Writer Dad as the springboard for an education-related post of my own.  I wrote (slightly edited):

Education is a system, like a computer is a system.  It is a system in the sense that it depends on multiple, interdependent, functioning components to be useful.

Parents, teachers, students, administrators, lawmakers… these form the system that is our educational process.  In my “system”:

• Parents are too focused on their jobs, divorce proceedings, and mind-altering substances to function well.
• Teachers are too demoralized, cynical, and entrenched in dogmatic curriculum to function well.
• Students are too distracted by bad homes, cell phones, and sexual escapades to function well.
• Administrators are too intimidated by parents, frustrated with teachers, and out of touch with the students to function well.
• Lawmakers are too resentful of their educational experiences, ignorant of the real process of educating young minds, and distracted with other political concerns to function well.

Take a computer system — any computer system — and smash its mouse, keyboard, monitor, CPU, and power supply with a baseball bat.  How useful is it now?

With practically every component of a system broken or damaged, the system cannot be expected to operate.  Education systems are no different… and we are all to blame.

Parents

If you are failing to encourage, discipline, and provide learning support for your student at home, you are the reason your child is failing.

If you aren’t putting even more effort into your child’s education than his teachers do, you have failed your child.

Teachers

If you have stopped caring about your students, you are the reason your students are failing.

If you aren’t trying to make your subject matter relevant to students’ lives and to the world in which they live, you have failed your students.  (I know that sometimes this is difficult, and I know that sometimes it’s practically impossible.  I hope to address these scenarios later.)

Students

If you aren’t paying attention in class and making a sincere and total effort to do what the teacher asks of you, you are the reason you are failing.

Whenever you give up or leave things unfinished, whenever you allow your friends to distract you from learning, and whenever you convince yourself that high school doesn’t matter because it isn’t “the real world,” you have failed yourself (more on that last point in a later post).

Administrators

If you aren’t protecting the teachers’ right to insist upon a strict and orderly learning environment, you are the reason your school’s students are failing.

If you are backing down in the face of an angry parent or whiny child, if you are ignoring issues which distract children from their learning, or if you are dealing with children who break the law at school by slapping them on the wrist, you have failed your school.

Lawmakers

If you aren’t personally visiting schools and interviewing teachers from your constituency before voting on each and every education-related proposal to enter your jurisdiction, you are the reason your constituents’ students are failing.

If you don’t have face-to-face conversations with teachers and administrators in a solid and sincere grass-roots effort to thoroughly understand the issues facing education, or if you choose to ignore educational issues because you think you have other priorities, you have failed education in your country.

So…

I’ll say it again:  Education is a system.  The system’s components are the reason the system fails.

Think this doesn’t apply to you, because you’re not in one of the five categories?  Think again.  If you live in a democratic society, you can take part in the lawmaking process at the very least.

Is it futile?  No, probably not.  How hard will it be to change?  Extremely difficult, since it requires major attitude adjustments for parents, teachers, students, administrators, and lawmakers.  Pointing fingers doesn’t help.

Ask any of the five components of education where the problems lie, and they will choose two or three other components to blame.  No one component is willing to admit that all five components are at fault.

We blame, we fail.  We fail, we blame.  Round and round the bottle goes…