American Public Education is Broken

A neighbor of mine just retired as a public school teacher and administrator. We have discussed Sir Kenneth Robinson's wonderful TED Talks and other commentaries on our K-12 education system here in America. He recently gave me permission to share his thoughts with you.

Sunday’s featured newspaper editorials on education were depressingly myopic. C’mon folks, lets get serious. American children go to school 180 or fewer days a year while international students go 220 ten-hour days. Their parents pony up big bucks for Saturday tutorials while our parents pony up for Saturday sports uniforms.

It requires little imagination to see that requiring the typical American child to attend school for ten hours a day for 220 days of the year would be disastrous. Doubling school time would probably double the dropout rate for two endemic reasons.

1. One: As it is, our nation’s schools are staffed with so few good teachers that 25% of our kids don’t hang out in school long enough to graduate. In countries that revere teachers and learning, many of its most able and brightest young will opt for a career that is regarded by its citizens with reverence rather than mocked for its mediocrity.
2. And two: After 34 years in my own classroom, plus seven years of visiting many of my colleagues’ classrooms as a mentor teacher, I have not the smallest particle of doubt that too many students come to class with no real intention to learn. How do I know? I asked them.Too many have no clue that there is a difference between attending school and becoming educated. We shortsightedly test students for their knowledge and skills but we ignore students’ readiness to learn by not assessing their levels of intellectual curiosity, for their ability to persevere and learn through failure, and for their ability to develop and ask questions. I have asked class after class of students through the years how they came to believe that becoming educated means twelve years of parroting answers to questions they didn’t (and too often couldn’t) even ask. Without curiosity, perseverance and asking questions, students’ knowledge and skills make good test data, but little else.

The majority of my students felt pretty good about themselves, though.

The American Educational system was born in and remains in the agrarian, 18^th century pre-industrial age. Millennium age technology applied to a system that recesses for the summer so that youngsters can help the family plant, cultivate, harvest, butcher and preserve food is absurd. We, the adults, have led our children to regard a three month summer furlough from anything resembling rigorous learning as another of their inalienable “rights” that come with no responsibilities. But working hard so our children have it better than we did does not mean making everything easy for them.

 Tax-phobic, “me first” Americans care so little about their children’s and our nation’s future that we condemn public schools students to our ridiculously low expectations, and grudgingly pay for too little time in school for them to become internationally competitive. Meanwhile our young, whose talents could raise the teaching profession to achieve the social status (if never the pay) of professional athletes, are so able and so bright they see the mess that passes for American Public education and pass over it as a career choice.

I have worked long and hard with many other dedicated educational professionals to improve educational opportunities for students here in our town, and I can confidently state that we offer our students some of the best educational opportunities available in America’s third-class public education system.

This topic of teaching kids to learn is increasingly being discussed. Mostly in blogs and op-ed pieces. In my profession of adult learning, we are encouraged to engage those attending our training courses. Make them true participants and not just passive receivers. I wonder how long it will take for the establishment (print and television media, politicians, and community activists) to address this issue of American public education? I wonder how much longer America can retain its edge in creativity?