“We must make it possible for the boy and girl of average ability to walk with confidence and to choose his goal with pride even if college would not be a wise choice for him.” — Eda LeShan, “The Conspiracy Against Childhood.”
On March 13 in this newspaper, there was an article titled “Educators work to close achievement gap” written by Austin Walsh and which quoted our San Mateo County superintendent of schools, Anne Campbell: “Through the tireless efforts of educators and policy makers, we are gradually making progress in attacking the persistent presence of the opportunity/achievement gap.”
As far as problems that our schools have had with trying to close the opportunity/achievement gap, I have composed a list of my own of things that no doubt hinder Campbell and cohorts in their efforts. First, because of “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top,” there has been an obsession with trying to stuff academics down the throats of children who are not ready. Along with this goes the focus on academics and testing at the expense of other important subjects. Add to that the apparent unwillingness of the education hierarchy to face the fact that mental abilities vary greatly among students and the failure to accommodate and educate appropriately those children who are not college material.
But most important is the influence of our culture — often as it is personified by the media. We see glorified there the narcissistic, the disdain of anything intellectual, extreme excitement about even the most demented celebrities, constant emphasis that it is what you have, not who you are, that counts, encouraging parents to be away from even their very small children for most of the day, a lack of health care for everyone, the election of politicians who would rather give tax cuts to the wealthy than fund our schools adequately. All contribute greatly to the problem of educating so many of our children.
These days, many teachers report that there is, among children (especially boys), a lack of incentive, no drive to succeed, or even try. Could this be related to the constant connection to and stimulation from electronic gadgets and the influence of the media? After all, you don’t get that constant adrenaline rush at school. School is boring! As Warren Farrell, Ph.D., and John Gray, Ph.D., wrote in their new book, “The Boy Crisis”: “The number of boys who said they didn’t like school has increased by 71 percent since 1980. Boys are also expelled from school three times as often as girls.”
Could it be that fast-food diets lead to torpor, disconnect and dullness? How many kids regularly get the amount of sleep that’s so very important for success in school? How many are left to fend for themselves so much that they lack the kind of parental guidance that provides good role models? “Teenage boys are looking for models of mature adulthood, but we no longer make any collective effort to provide such models.” — Leonard Sax, “Boys Adrift.”
What complicates matters even more is the great number of single mothers in this country. It is reported that in the United States, a total of about 17.2 million children are being raised without a father. This easily leads to more abuse and neglect. And also consider the high number of toxic chemicals in the environment that affect the health of especially children who are exposed to them regularly. Superintendent Campbell et al. have their work cut out for them.
Since much of our culture — especially the media — grovels in sensationalism and depravity, it is more important than ever to have responsible, dedicated, caring and loving parents who have adequate time to devote to their children and see it as their duty to model for them and raise them with high standards of honesty, responsibility and decency. And, besides caring for their physical needs, they care enough to see that their children are not bombarded with the garbage that emanates from movies, television, computer screens, etc. In this culture, they are basically alone in this effort since, unfortunately, all of the above is working against them.
Until, we, as a culture, face the truth — that we are not providing adequately (physically, mentally and psychologically) for an increasing number of our children, about all we can say to Superintendent Campbell is: “More power to you” and “Good Luck!”
“By our current methods, we may be training (not educating) a generation of children who are repelled by learning, thinking it means only drudgery, work sheets, test preparation and test taking. … the goal of education is not to produce higher scores, but to educate children to become responsible people with well-developed minds and good character.” — Diane Ravich, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.”
Since 1984, Dorothy Dimitre has written more than 900 columns for various local newspapers. Her email address is gramsd@aceweb.com.
(1) comment
I think we could all stand to learn something from our foreign counterparts and that we ought to pay attention to Richard Louv and his compelling research in "Last Child in the Woods".
I have friends who live in Sweden and friends who moved from Germany. We've had conversations about education philosophy. I was most shocked by my Swedish friend who's children all studied music extensively in secondary school and university. They all educated themselves in another area of interest and aren't working primarily in the music industry, but their educational system actually encouraged them to follow their drive and passion of music. Because of their education system's affordability, they were also able to pursue an additional interest which led to more career opportunities.
Our educational system doesn't encourage the trades at all. Poverty and expense is a major issue in our country and because higher education costs so much, there's an extraordinary amount of pressure on youth to perform well, get scholarships (which they don't offer for trade careers), and be perfect the first time around. We can't afford to fail or explore or find a passion without ending up insurmountable debt in the U,S.
Some states have a post secondary option to obtain free college courses while fulfilling high school requirements. This is great, except, most of the high school requirements are STEM/STEAM related at the age when students are eligibile AND your core requirements for any college degree/certificate is also science, math, engineering, English, etc. focused so that dissuades students from jumping straight to a trade as well.
We push academics so young that we forget social/emotional skills are even more important than academic skills in succeeding in the workplace.
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