OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER: Before continuing with today’s post, let me confess that I have never done anything remotely like blogging before, so I’m just beginning to scratch the surface of learning how this works. So when I mess up, I hope you’ll forgive my neophyte-ness (and that’s a real word…I know, because I just made it up).
Anyway, when speaking of these myths about public education, it’s hard to know where to begin—there’s just so much involved here. Compounding this difficulty is my determination to make all of this accessible to the lay person; so much misinformation exists out there, and, let’s face it, very few people are truly invested in fighting through that misinformation when the alternative involves learning something foreign from an entirely different perspective. It’s sort of like when we undergo some sort of serious surgical procedure; we understand the experience from having endured it, but in all likelihood we don’t really have any idea of the complexity of the surgery from the surgeon’s point of view. Education is similar in the sense that nearly all of us have experienced being educated—at least to some degree (pun intended)—but very few of us understand everything that goes into the educational process unless we are participating in it from the educator’s side of it. So it’s very easy to address education issues from a politician’s platform, because politicians understand that very few people can discern between the truth and myth, and many of us are all too willing to accept “bumper-sticker” slogans as truth. For example, several years ago, as I was driving to work, I heard a sound-byte from a speech by Elizabeth Dole, who was campaigning to represent her party in the upcoming Presidential election. In her speech, she promised that if she were elected she would “give [public] education back to the parents, where it belongs.” This was met with wild cheering and applause from her audience. I was thunderstruck by the ease with which she had presented this wholly fallacious idea to such a wholeheartedly approving public. None of the listeners, it seemed, were truly thinking about what Dole said—they just decided that it sounded good. The first part of the fallacy, of course, is that to give something back to someone, someone would have had to once possess it to begin with, and then lost it. Public education has never been in the hands of parents. Secondly, why would we want parents to decide the crucial issues about the education of their children when they have, generally, very little understanding of what the process of educating their children entails? This would be like a parent, in the above example, instructing the surgeon as to how exactly the surgical procedure should be performed on his/her child. So it becomes obvious that in matters concerning the education of our children, parents are asked to exhibit an inordinate amount of faith and trust in a process about which they know very little. They’re being asked to leave the whole process of educating their children to the experts. And, I think, most parents accept this gracefully. But the axiom about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing holds true here. I contend that a lot of what the public is being fed about public education is full of half-truths (at best) and fallacious conclusions; and this has led to public education as an institution now facing complete transformation, thus demonstrating the truth in the message of one of the most memorable bumper stickers I’ve ever seen: “The motto of the U.S. Government: If it ain’t broke, fix it until it is.”
So to dispel these myths, we have to begin with the granddaddy of them all, the myth from which all of the others have sprung.
Tomorrow: Myth Number One: Public Education in the United States is failing.
Oh, I think you miss something. Parents are responsible for their kids education and PUBLIC schools do belong to the parents, and all taxpayers. We hire you[0], the teachers, to teach our kids. When you stop being effective, we use the school boards to redress our grievances. Stating that the schools have never been ours is factually incorrect. How it is in practice is another post, most likely the next one.
ReplyDelete[0] General you, not you specifically.
I absolutely agree that the act of teaching should be left to the teachers. However, a parent should participate in their child's education, in an effort to understand and perhaps learn something themselves. For me, working in an accounting office, the best analogy is this: When someone has their taxes prepared, and signs on the dotted line blindly, they are still fully responsible for the information contained therein. While, I'm not suggesting that people do it themselves, they should at least make an effort to understand what was done. The same applies to education. Parents are ultimately responsible for their children's education, and in my mind, should make an effort to understand that education. Politicians, however, have very little business, medling where they don't belong.
ReplyDeleteI agree that teaching should be left to the professionals. However, a parent is ultimately responsible for their child's education, and should participate in an effort to understand that education, if not learn something themselves. It's like a person that signs their tax return blindly after their accountant has prepared it is certainly responsible for the infomation contained therein. They should at least understand their tax return, because the consequences are there regardless. While a parent has a place in their child's education, politicians shouldn't meddle where they don't belong, and should certainly educate themselves before making promises that "sound good".
ReplyDeleteEric, public education is a service offered to the public, not owned by it. While parent and community involvement in local school districts' policies and functions is generally welcomed, that hardly constitutes public education "belonging" to parents, nor does the fact that it is funded largely by tax dollars.
ReplyDeleteI agree that public schools do not "belong" to the parents. Parents are responsible for getting their kids to and from school, to ensure that they have the proper nutrition, clothing, school supplies etc. to perform at school. While it is certainly in everyone's interest that parents be as involved as possible in their child's education it does not make us own the schools. We rely on and trust the teachers and administration to do what they are trained to do and what I feel most of them do from their hearts, which is to reach our kids and teach them what they need to know in the way that they can understand.
ReplyDelete