I’m not quite sure how “hot button” Education actually is in most people’s minds, but it’s an extremely important issue to me and thus one I felt worth to talk about in the political realm. Some of our earlier conversations got us into asking the question of what should be a government run entity. Some would say just military, police, maybe roads and a few other things. Others would say everything from healthcare to the airlines. In a conversation with someone last weekend it was mentioned that some of the skepticism about the benefit or success of government run programs has been what people look at as the “failure or public education.” Whether or not this is true (that it is a failure, or that that is where the skepticism comes from), I think it’s important to talk about as an issue and as it relates to politics.
I believe public education is necessary
The effort to privatize education and to create a voucher system are both things I feel are extremely dangerous for the good of our communities. On the surface they seem like possible solutions, but both in my gut and in the evidence and direction I’ve seen, they appear a dangerous alternative to community based public schools. The capitalist notion of competition can work wonders when your producing a product to sell, but education and a childs learning and developmental growth is not a product to sell or market. Children are our future and it is important that we share the responsibility of providing a solid education for all of them.
I do not believe these initiatives are driven by those valuing the best interest of our students, I think it is driven by corporations and industry greedily interested in expanding their profits. There is plenty of evidence to build conspiracy theories in this direction.
Inequality in public education perpetuates the racial disparities that have existed in our country since slavery
We are barely a generation past the Civil Rights movement that ushered in policy changes like Brown V. Board and the Civil Rights Act. Even with these national changes, inequality in public schools has been slow to change. There is both well documented statistics and reports as well as plenty of anecdotal stories of the poor public school systems in many of the urban communities in our country today.
I feel like the quiet undertone of the education debate is one of race, at least that has been my impression. When people talk about “failing schools” they are primarily pointing to inner city schools full of low-income minority students. And what I hear coming across in their critiques are racial stereotypes, biases and prejudices. Maybe it’s just me but I have a strong feeling it is not.
I just finished a book recently by Alfie Kohn who writes some fascinating insights into the education system. I’m going to quote some of what he’s written and try and create a dialog around in later this week.
I agree that providing schools should be one of the things that government does. Of course that leaves a lot unsaid. For example, should the Federal Gov do that, or should it scale back its taxes so that state and local gov’t can tax more to spend on its schools? On that question, it seems to me that if we are going to have “community” schools, then they should be paid for and operated by the community, rather than lorded over by a national government so far removed from what each community needs. The reason the feds get to demand testing and set standards is because they pay money for to the school systems. If a local system wants to give the feds the finger, they can do so, and just lose the federal money. However if the feds are going to pay, then it makes sense that they get to attach strings. You can argue about what those strings should be, but it is nonsense to suggest that they have no right to set standards if they are spending taxpayer money.
Another question is how schools should be run from a curriculum standpoint. Should they teach kids to read and write and process complex problems, or should they be taught what is right and wrong? I for one believe that religion should not be taught in public schools, and that prayer and such should not be sponsored. I think some christians are misguided in thier desire to “get prayer back” in to the public schools. Whose religion would be taught?
I went to crappy public schools all my life up until college, when I went to a good public university, and then after college, when I went to a well regarded private school. My dad was a teacher in a public school. I can tell you that in spite of the money spent that the facilities were crap, the teachers were largely idiots, and the curriculum was weak. I always got the best teachers of the bunch because my parents knew how to work the system, so I got a better education that I might have if left to chance. If there had been a voucher program, you bet my parents would have sent me to a private school. They were not “driven by corporations and industry greedily interested in expanding their profits”, they were concerned that I get the best education possible. (There is a lot I could say, most of which I have said before, about the greedy corporations comment, but aside from all that, I don’t understand what you mean with regard to the connection between that and vouchers.)
So, as to your concern that griping over failing schools is racist: What? The point in griping about failing schools is that the ppl complaining would like for them not to be failing schools. Even if the schools said to be failing are primarily non-caucasion in enrollment, how exactly is wanting to see those schools do better racist? Don’t you want to see those schools do better? I can tell you that the school system I went to was crap, and but for 2 or 3 kids, we were all caucasians. Is it anti-white racism for me to say that those schools were terrible?
I may have more to say, but that is all for now.
Aaron,
First, I like your point about funding education through more local tax systems like the state. I don’t know enough about state to state income levels, etc, but I wonder if there would be a resulting migration of people moving from states with very poorly funded public education to ones with better funded schools?
I’m not sure quite how it works, but the numbers I’ve seen always seem to show a spending per student disparity between urban schools and their suburban counter-parts. My understanding was the schools where funded by real estate taxes (or something similar) and thus funding reflects the income of the community around the school. As much as this might make sense on some levels, I think it’s wrong for some schools to be so poorly funded. That’s what Brown v. Board was all about and little seems to have changed.
I agree with you about the religion and prayer issue as well. I think the goal of education is to promote life long learning (stolen from Kohn).
A brief word to vouchers. I can understand where you and your parents are coming from and my comment was not directed toward concerned citizens like yourself. Corporations are by nature greedy, so I should have left that adjective out as well. My comment was based on evidence I’ve seen of corporations involvement in education and the profits they seem ready and eager to make from privatizing or influencing public education.
Finally as to the race comment. I’m referring to the side of the debate that says we can’t keep “throwing money at a problem” The comments that carry with it indications that “those” students don’t want to learn anyways, we are throwing away tax dollars, they don’t respect teachers, and so on.
Again, this might just be my impression but I’ve had enough conversations with folks to think it’s not just an occasional perspective. I think underlying some of the conservative thinking that pushes towards vouchers and less on public education is a prejudice thinking that we’ve wasted valuable resources on urban schools where the students are a lost cause anyways.
I’m not saying everyone thinks this way, but I would bet you’ve met a handful of people that do as well.
You have to be careful not to hear racism in every comment about an activity or proclivity or institution peopled by minorities. Yes, we should all be sensitive and tactful, but at some point you can get so careful as a critic, or so reactionary as a defender, that is really helpful to no one.
It really does not matter what color the students are that attend a school that is not getting the job done. If it is not doing its job, then it just is not. Should ppl who find fault with these schools complain and insist on change, or just not say anything for fear of it being somehow assumed that racism underlies their criticism. Put another way, what would be more nearly racist, saying that those schools are wasting money and there needs to be a change, or just ingorning them and letting them rot? Do I need to break out my Charlie Peacock quote about how “betrayal wears two faces again”? No, it would take too long to type.
No one is saying that we should just not educate urban students. They are just saying that what we are doing is not working, and that therefore something different needs to happen.
One other thing – as for privatizing – I am not aware of massive multinational corporations who are itching at the chance to open schools, but even if they were, why should anyone care if a company were to make money educating kids, so long as the kids were indeed well educated? Some would argue that the reason that public schools are so poorly run, and so wasteful, and provide such poor service is because there is no competition. If there were choice, then the providers would get themselves shipshape in order to attract more students. As it is, schools generally just gripe and complain about taking on more students. If they made money for taking them on and giving them a good education, then we’d see their attitudes turn around. I am not saying that schools oughtta be turned over to private companies – I am just saying that to assume it would be bad because corporations is bad is, well, what is a word that means the same in reference to business as racist means in reference to people?
Education is such a big realm of a topic and could lead to a whole series of posts if not an entire blog of its own! It is amazing how each state is setup and does things so differently and are all trying to reach the same goal as mandated by the federal government. Aaron’s point about not accepting federal money is kind of true. As long as a school accepts state money they will still be tied to the federal standards b/c the states standards have to match.
Minneapolis is having a referendum for more money this fall – it will probably pass. But should schools keep getting more money, even as attendance shrinks? I work in a middle school and I think our building is really well run and we need more money but we have done some amazing things on a shoe-string. At the end of last year the district gave us several flat screen LCD TV’s for our hallway and media center. I don’t know if they were donated (doubtful) or how much we paid. You can believe we got a lot of comments from concerned parents though.
We all know about No Child Left Behind and that more and more we are “teaching to the test” which is true to some degree. Our building focuses on the “core academics” of reading, math, English, social studies and science with an elective thrown in. We’ve met the standards most years, but we have a highly transitory immigrant population that makes up 1/3 of our school. It is possible that the day before testing we could get 2 new children who barely speak English and their test scores will count just as much as a kid born and raised down the street. How does that adequately assess anything? On a different note Ariah did you know that around 40% of Minnesota schools failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress goals? 40% which includes many of the rich suburb school districts.
Ok, a final point – more towards the racist comments. There was a school in Kentucky that came up with a radical idea of transporting students around the district so that pretty much all the schools were diverse (racially, economically, etc). I don’t really remember much of the details, but the district had evidence the plan was working. Sadly some well-meaning(?) group sued the district saying that since the plan was mostly based on race, that it violated the law. The court ruled against the school system and ruined their working system. Segregation is illegal, but evidently so is forced integration.
I don’t have a lot of answers, but I know that some places are getting it and making it work.