Only 98% left behind
As long as I've been writing, education has been one of my frequent subjects. I need to again make clear the difference between education and learning. Education is about school, while learning is adding new information and understanding for your own use. The intent of "education" is supposed to be facilitating learning for individuals.
We must never forget that all learning takes place in individual minds, regardless of the quality or quantity of help those individuals receive from others. One can be placed in the best educational environment and still learn almost nothing, or even learn destructive lessons. An educational experience can produce negative results as well as positive.
Last March, in Learning is easy - Education is complex, I wrote about charter schools in Minnesota, and expressed a general opinion that educational opportunities are improved by the presence of charter schools, but that it's a damned shame that the entrepreneurial people starting and running charter schools can't instead open PRIVATE schools on a level playing field with public schools.
Charter schools ARE public schools, of course, but with a bit more freedom in some ways. In other ways, they are even more constricted than the large traditional schools. Their regular oversight is perhaps less stringent, but their results are more harshly judged. We've come to expect poor results from traditional schools... to understand that those school systems are so well insulated and protected that hoping for real change is fantasy. Charter schools, because they don't enjoy the patronage of the teachers union or the maze-like insulation of the public school bureaucracy, are sort of hanging out there in the breeze, tolerated by the powers that be. There are those who enjoy the failure of a charter school.
I'm doing a bit of teaching in a Minnesota charter school... just started my 2nd quarter teaching art at a charter high school, as an unpaid volunteer. The school serves a special student need... it's for students who have had a substance-abuse problem and have been through treatment. That's what the students all have in common, and dealing with that issue is a significant part of the way the school helps their students. Because the people in the school understand the abuse problem, they can and do provide a helpful setting for the students. Students must remain clean to remain in that school, which gives them an incentive and reward for staying clean.
This "Sobriety High" is of real value... providing a good choice where none existed before. I will opine that the traditional public high schools are of almost no help for a student who has fallen into some sort of substance abuse. More likely that they make the problem worse and are even a contributing factor to the original occurance.
At a time in life... the teenage years... when young people are struggling to identify and develop their own individuality, that place where they spend all day, 5 days/week is a damned important context. Large schools cannot deal with students as individuals, and that is precisely what teens need. To condemn teens (or any children) to big slab-walled, prison-like institutions is contrary to the develoment of inquisitive, intelligent minds. Remember... our public school system was copied from the Prussian system, which had as its goal the creation of compliant, obedient workers for the government. Individuality was (and remains) a negative trait in such schools.
Charter schools are, to be blunt, a half-assed solution to the public school problem. They're a wonderful choice, but only when compared to the miserable standard of public schools. If they were free of the regulation and bureaucracy of the public school system... free to really innovate... free to please nobody except the parents and their children, there is no doubt in my mind that they would take a giant stride forward in effectiveness. Parents can move their child from a big traditional school to a charter school, at no extra cost to them, but if they could take that same money to any private school, unfettered by government control, we could at last see a return to the spectacular learning that our nation once had.
For those of you who believe that the poor would suffer from elimination of "public" education... do some study of the history of learning among blacks and other immigrant peoples in America BEFORE the idea of government-controlled schools was introduced. Back then, poor people didn't allow their children to suffer in violent, drug-ridden, depressing inner-city schools... they organized their own schools, and literacy, even among the poorest, was higher than it is now.
Some people working in charter schools are not likely to appreciate what I've said. I've listened to leaders of some of the prominent charter schools, and, unfortunately, they speak the same education double-speak one can hear from the entrenched bureaucracy... language designed to say little but give a glowing impression... spoken with that practiced constant smile intended to give the impression that all is swell here. I imagine that they too have designs on moving up the governmental administrative career ladder. They also have to worry about not rocking the boat and about pleasing those who can remove their charter.
Charter schools are another "program" that's supposed to demonstrate that the public school behemoth is innovating and serving special needs. Sure, it's an improvement for a few children... 17,000 in Minnesota, out of about 810,000. That's just 2%, and Minnesota is a "leader" in charter schools.
That only leaves 98% "left behind".
We must never forget that all learning takes place in individual minds, regardless of the quality or quantity of help those individuals receive from others. One can be placed in the best educational environment and still learn almost nothing, or even learn destructive lessons. An educational experience can produce negative results as well as positive.
Last March, in Learning is easy - Education is complex, I wrote about charter schools in Minnesota, and expressed a general opinion that educational opportunities are improved by the presence of charter schools, but that it's a damned shame that the entrepreneurial people starting and running charter schools can't instead open PRIVATE schools on a level playing field with public schools.
Charter schools ARE public schools, of course, but with a bit more freedom in some ways. In other ways, they are even more constricted than the large traditional schools. Their regular oversight is perhaps less stringent, but their results are more harshly judged. We've come to expect poor results from traditional schools... to understand that those school systems are so well insulated and protected that hoping for real change is fantasy. Charter schools, because they don't enjoy the patronage of the teachers union or the maze-like insulation of the public school bureaucracy, are sort of hanging out there in the breeze, tolerated by the powers that be. There are those who enjoy the failure of a charter school.
I'm doing a bit of teaching in a Minnesota charter school... just started my 2nd quarter teaching art at a charter high school, as an unpaid volunteer. The school serves a special student need... it's for students who have had a substance-abuse problem and have been through treatment. That's what the students all have in common, and dealing with that issue is a significant part of the way the school helps their students. Because the people in the school understand the abuse problem, they can and do provide a helpful setting for the students. Students must remain clean to remain in that school, which gives them an incentive and reward for staying clean.
This "Sobriety High" is of real value... providing a good choice where none existed before. I will opine that the traditional public high schools are of almost no help for a student who has fallen into some sort of substance abuse. More likely that they make the problem worse and are even a contributing factor to the original occurance.
At a time in life... the teenage years... when young people are struggling to identify and develop their own individuality, that place where they spend all day, 5 days/week is a damned important context. Large schools cannot deal with students as individuals, and that is precisely what teens need. To condemn teens (or any children) to big slab-walled, prison-like institutions is contrary to the develoment of inquisitive, intelligent minds. Remember... our public school system was copied from the Prussian system, which had as its goal the creation of compliant, obedient workers for the government. Individuality was (and remains) a negative trait in such schools.
Charter schools are, to be blunt, a half-assed solution to the public school problem. They're a wonderful choice, but only when compared to the miserable standard of public schools. If they were free of the regulation and bureaucracy of the public school system... free to really innovate... free to please nobody except the parents and their children, there is no doubt in my mind that they would take a giant stride forward in effectiveness. Parents can move their child from a big traditional school to a charter school, at no extra cost to them, but if they could take that same money to any private school, unfettered by government control, we could at last see a return to the spectacular learning that our nation once had.
For those of you who believe that the poor would suffer from elimination of "public" education... do some study of the history of learning among blacks and other immigrant peoples in America BEFORE the idea of government-controlled schools was introduced. Back then, poor people didn't allow their children to suffer in violent, drug-ridden, depressing inner-city schools... they organized their own schools, and literacy, even among the poorest, was higher than it is now.
Some people working in charter schools are not likely to appreciate what I've said. I've listened to leaders of some of the prominent charter schools, and, unfortunately, they speak the same education double-speak one can hear from the entrenched bureaucracy... language designed to say little but give a glowing impression... spoken with that practiced constant smile intended to give the impression that all is swell here. I imagine that they too have designs on moving up the governmental administrative career ladder. They also have to worry about not rocking the boat and about pleasing those who can remove their charter.
Charter schools are another "program" that's supposed to demonstrate that the public school behemoth is innovating and serving special needs. Sure, it's an improvement for a few children... 17,000 in Minnesota, out of about 810,000. That's just 2%, and Minnesota is a "leader" in charter schools.
That only leaves 98% "left behind".
posted by Robert Ronald Smith at 12:04 AM
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