Most people in American will agree that public school education is falling well short of it's goals. Our teachers are blamed. Parents, who grew up in the same public schools, are blamed. Our government is blamed. The blame lies in the methods we use to "fix" the teaching system.
In Michigan we have the vaunted MEAP testing that "awards" schools with higher financing for the schools with the higher test scores from their students. I, personally, fail to see how this increases the performance of schools. All the schools have done is change their structure to teach kids to test well on the MEAP, ignoring all other knowledge. This means that from 5-6Th grades onward, classes focus on teaching students the same classes over and over again in order to ensure higher financing for the schools. Neglecting the further education of the students in new material is a blatant result.
From my own personal experience, I can say that I was disappointed in my teachers from early on. I know I may not have been a typical student. I was a sponge. Never did much studying but always tested very well. Much of this was due to the fact that most of what I was taught from 6Th grade to 12Th was review. Think about your own classes. How many years were you taught who invented the cotton gin? How many years was American History a required class? What was the first year that advanced mathematics became available? How many years worth of public schooling were you learning the basics of cell structure? Every one of my teachers would assign 1-2hrs of homework per day. I had 7 classes every day in high school. That is a lot of homework... Most was review of things I had been taught for the previous 6yrs. I did homework in 1-2 classes. I used tests and quiz scores to pass all my other classes. Yes, my grades were not anything to be proud of. At the time I was honestly ticked off at my teachers and the school system. It isn't that I was a lazy student. I loved learning. I just wanted to learn something NEW! I had 2 teachers in high school that understood and tried to provide new material within their state guide lined curriculum's. I applied myself fully to their classes. I wasn't rebellious and I was not disruptive. Every teacher that asked me why I refused to do homework was given the same answer. "I have been taught the same things since 5Th or 6Th grade. I get it already. Teach me something new. Challenge me with more than hours and hours of homework reviewing the same things I've been taught for the last 6 years. If you are unwilling to teach me anything new, I am unwilling to do pointless review of material I have proven I know." It wasn't said in an argumentative manner. I wasn't being condescending. I was being open and honest. I was informed by several teachers that I was a daily topic in the teacher's lounge. My Economics teacher was the only one to speak up for me in those discussions. He was one of the 2 teachers I had that took up the challenge I offered. He said it was the best thing he ever did. All of his student's grades improved after he started including new material into his class.
When students are faced with the same thing every single day they become bored. They stop trying to remember the materials and focus on blocking it out. Consider this example. The nagging spouse/parent. When you are told over and over again for an endless period of time the same thing... you actively try to block it out. After a while, this starts to stagnate the testing scores in those subjects. Not to mention... do away with grading curves. If a students do not understand the material well enough to get decent grades, do not reward them with a grading curve in order to salvage the TEACHER'S class score average... Put any teacher found using a grading curve under review with possible termination as a result.
How to fix this instead of just complain? It is going to take drastic changes. Nothing else will do the job. First off, I challenge everyone to look at the different education systems around the world. Quit looking at the system in the state next door. Theirs is broken, too. One place to start comparing is Japan. Yes, I have a personal love of Japan. Mainly, due to the fact they seem to know what they are doing in many respects. In Japan, they make schools competitive. If you want into a good college you have to have a good GPA as well as test well on the entrance exam. Right? That is how Japan treats all levels of schooling. If you want into a higher rated junior high school, you need to score well in grade school, and take entrance exams to get into the best junior highs. Same with advancing from junior to senior high schools. What this does is drive the students who want to get the best education to try harder to learn new material. It also drives the teachers and schools to offer a higher level of education. Granted, the driving force in all of this is still money. The teachers in the schools that rank the highest get paid more. All schools will improve because the teachers all want to make more money... right? Also, this method of education introduces what are currently college level classes, into the grade school level classes. This is far from being a bad thing. It will influence our colleges to also increase their level of performance.
I am always hearing politicians and teachers saying that our children are our future. Start acting like it. Bite the bullet. Kick the school unions in their collective butts. They are doing the same damage to our children as the auto worker's unions have done to the Big 3. They are trying to treat the union as a business. That is not what a Union is supposed to be. It should protect the teachers and do what it can to make sure those same teachers are doing their jobs properly. If a teacher does not perform well, they should be replaced. I have a firm belief that a teacher that has lost, or does not have, a passion for teaching, should be replaced or re-evaluated. Teachers need enough flexibility in their curriculum's to find the best way to teach their students.
Adding student teachers/interns into every class to provide support and added tutoring is also a must. This will allow for an increase in student's understanding of the material. (There are basically 3 methods to learning. The assistant teachers will help the head teacher implement these on a per student basis if needed.) Schools should offer student tutoring after school. For the advanced students that are tutoring others after school, offer them perks. I am not sure what these could be, but in place of credit for extra curricular activities, they could tutor. Require , or strongly recommend, all students take part in after school "clubs". These clubs could be the sport programs or school newspaper. Leave the different clubs up to the student body to decide. Meaning, if 10 students want to start a bird watching club, allow it. Set up teaching staff to monitor the clubs. This would be a good place to implement the assistant teachers.
I am aware that all this would take a large influx of funding to get going. I also believe that the tax payers would be willing to pay it if their children were being educated at a higher level and the schools were actually taking responsibility for their performance as educators.
As a note I would like to state that I am aware that this new system of education would take time to organize and that, if we were to fully adopt Japans system, it would involve making many of the schools private based with public funding. That does not mean they would fall into the same catagory as current private schools, though. It means that a new system of educational governance would need to be impemented. In this post I merely touched on many topics involved in the new system, in order to limit the post. I could have gone into much greater depth but I didn't want any readers to feel overwhelmed by a 30 page blog entry. :)
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