Education in America

We are talking this week about Education.  That is a pretty broad term, Education.  How does one define Education?  What is one's philosophy on Education?  What is wrong with education in America and what can be done to fix it?

Obviously I don't have the answers to what would fix the education system in this country, and if I did I doubt anyone of significance would listen to me.  But I can point to obvious problems that the system has from personal experience.  I grew up in East Texas, mostly in poor white trash trailer parks and took the school bus to public schools from K-12.  Due to finances my family moved a lot and I attended many schools throughout my student career including four different high schools.  Whether large or small I usually ended up in a poor school in a poor neighborhood and they had much in common.  For one is class size.  Classes are crammed full of students with very little in the way of supplies and textbooks to accommodate each student.  Schools would run a block schedule to alleviate the daily course load but you still had young and untested teachers trying to reign in an army of young kids and/or adolescents.  In fact my teachers growing up were usually either a young inexperienced teacher fresh out of school or an elderly teacher who was either to tired or to lazy to teach the students who didn't want to learn. (Perhaps they grew weary of trying to reach the children who didn't try?) Teachers had a set course plan that they would follow but we were never able to fit it all into the semesters.  Many teachers would use the "death by PowerPoint" method and have students just write out everything they would need to know for tests and exams.


One thing that really sticks out for me was the attitude that if the student didn't want to learn, then the teacher wasn't going to waste their effort.  Teachers would focus on those one or two go-getters with future college written all over them and ignore many of the students that required more attention.  I for one had trouble studying and a very short attention span so keeping up with the class was always hard for me.  That coupled with my family constantly moving in the middle of the school year so I had to catch up to what a new class was covering.  Very few teachers took the time to get me up to speed or facilitate my visual learning style.  If your individual learning style didn't fit with that teacher's particular teaching style then you were S.O.L. (s*** out of luck).


I don't want to give the idea that every teacher I had was bad.  In fact I had many great teachers growing up that were passionate, took the time to help me master the material, and saw potential in me when I did not.  I just think that schools, poor schools in particular, need to either root out bad teachers, provide them with better training, or a bit of both.  (http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21625653-american-teachers-need-more-money-training-feedback-collaboration-mentoring-and)  I am not big on letting the Federal Government handle every single social problem in this country and am a firm believer in letting State governments handle their issues, but education is one of those things that impacts us as an entire country.  It is what will either ensure or doom the future of this great nation.  We need to focus on providing our schools, ALL of our schools with the right equipment, staff, and resources required to help our young generation grow to keep up and compete with those of other nations.  Personally I say scrap the overly funded private schools and funnel that money into public education.  In truth we need school reform.  Not the "school reforms" that Democrat and Republican politicians have been doling out but real school reform.  I'm talking an Education Revolution.  This country cannot continue to complete on a Global scale in terms of economics, business, technology, etc. if the literacy rate of our kids continues to fall.  If we keep producing under-educated Americans.

A special note I would like to add here is on my philosophy of education.  Obviously children must learn reading, writing, and arithmetic.  These are tools created to communicate and operate in the modern world.  What I mean is the goal of education.  What is the purpose of it.  I don't think that education extends to just memorizing lines of text, dates, and names or solving mathematical formulas.  Yes these help with critical thinking but what about creative thinking?  I believe that education must include experiences.  Experiences that show us knew things, new ideas, and new methods of understanding.  I believe we need to expose ourselves to everything this world has to offer.  That is how you grow as a human being. (http://www.lotc.org.uk/) Learn a new language, learn to play an instrument, take a martial arts course, climb a mountain, visit a foreign country, take an improv class, the list goes on.  Really it is about connecting to the world we live in as a whole and those we share it with.  There is something to be said about reading all about the Galapagos Islands compared to living there for a month.  The tactile responses from seeing, smelling, touching, and tasting is in itself a valuable learning experience that we shouldn't miss out on.  Most of all, the experience of making connections with other people is a rich opportunity that helps us to grow.
(http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/education-update/oct10/vol52/num10/Learning-Outside-the-Classroom.aspx)

Oppression

So this week we are talking about Oppression.  Systematic oppression.  The kind of oppression that seems to be built into the our community.  The kind that controls and governs our social concepts and framework.  The word that shouts out loudest in my mind is Economic Oppression.  Growing up as a poor kid in several decrepit trailer parks meant learning to live on very little.  Growing accustomed to turning the kitchen lights on and seeing the cockroaches and mice scatter.  Having a childhood like that, developing the idea that you will never be able to make more out of life.  The whole economic system is designed to make the gap between the poor and the wealthy enormous and we have been taught that you need to have money to make money.  That you need to be the smartest in order to win scholarships or the most athletic to bank on a sports contract.  This makes kids believe that they have to be the best and that not being the best means failure.  Many out there, much like me, knew that we were not the smartest or strongest or most talented.  The world taught us that we would never achieve anything, that we would never change our circumstances.  Life grinds us into the dirt and lays us low.  Those children are taught that without some helping hand they will never leave the trailer park and most never do.  They accept that life believing that it won't get any better unless they win the lottery or have an unknown wealthy next of kin pass away.

The two major powers in this country, the Government and Corporate America, both argue that the other is crushing the little guy.  They say they are for our benefit and the other sucks us dry.  The truth is that they both suck us dry.  Corporate America has companies profiting off of the cheap labor of uneducated poor class.  The government keeps rapidly growing (meaning more tax income to fund it) while ignoring the equally rapid to resolve the struggles of the middle class, but doesn't mention that this new division or team costs thousands of dollars to operate and maintain, a cost that falls on the very class it seeks to help.  Then you have corporate america that claims that business build jobs, but in the name of profit they take those jobs overseas for a better return.  It seems to me that while the big rich folks (and yes that also means you career politicians on both side of the aisle who have made millions off of your books deals elbow rubbing) fight over who to blame for the poor Americans at the bottom, every step you take continues to increase that financial gap.  Every time someone in a suit goes on television to talk about how great they are and what they are doing to help me, all I see is the gears behind them working to take my dollar.