It's been rainy for the past 7 days. And 5 of the 7 days, it rained without letting up. Normally, consistent gloomy weather puts me in a funk, but this time around, it hasn't bothered me. It's actually been kind of enjoyable. Maybe I CAN live in Seattle...? Wishful thinking.
One of my friends is a choir director at a brand new high school in St. Johns County. His students had their final performance Monday evening, so I decided to check it out. After driving through miles and miles of gated communities with perfectly pruned lawns and cookie-cutter houses in suburbia hell, I made it to the school. Before I get on my soap box, I want to say that he and his students did a wonderful job.
My 45 minute experience at this school gave me reverse culture shock (is there such a thing?). And being there pissed me off. How little progress we have made in closing the gap between white, privileged communities and poor, ghetto, black communities AND each one's relationship to education. Explain to me why the county (St. Johns or Duval, it doesn't matter) has the money to build brand new schools in white suburbia but can't afford to repair the infrastructure of older schools (like mine) that are infested with roaches & rats, have playgrounds not up to code, and classrooms that flood on a regular basis. What are their intentions, really? Keep building new schools in safer parts of town so that the inner-city schools will eventually fail (academically, structurally, communally etc.)?
Did you know that DCPS has made the following a requirement: in order to be a candidate to serve on the DCPS school board, you MUST have administrative experience in a Title I school (eh-hem, a school like mine). So, are we planning on Title I schools being around for a long time, i.e., not helping the poverty-stricken communities around those schools so that potential administrators and potential board members can get their rough and tough, hard-core, real-life inner-city experience? That's like saying, "We're counting on you to fail! so that our people can reap a special experience from your shitty, low FCAT score, high-crime, low parent involvement reality!" Okay, okay, let me be rational for a moment: maybe they're just trying to get fair representation from various schools.
I can't say that the lives of my friend's students aren't AS REAL as the lives of my students. They are both equally real. And I can't blame his students for being born into that reality, just as I can't blame my students for their situation. It is what it is. But I feel like I can blame the public education system for making those realities so foreign to each other and mainting the age-old divide between the rich and the poor. I am convinced that one of the biggest causes of poverty is lack of education. I believe that. And I also believe that people should have to work for what they want instead of receiving hand outs. But when you're trying to do that in a system that sets you up to fail, what's the point? I can see why those people would feel that their efforts are futile.
Ugh. I could say more, but my adrenaline is waning. Lucky you :)
6 comments:
I think you hit the nail on the head regarding "a system that sets you up to fail." It's what too many people don't realize. The way public schools are set up today parallels our free-market capitalist economy. In other words, it's about competition. It's not about helping to level the playing field across economic barriers; it's about beating each other. We want to be the "best," and being the best means also having the "worst." The "best" ones have no incentive for wanting to level the playing field then. The mentality is: If you're "losing" at the education game, it's your problem, not mine.
Of course, kids can't will themselves out of their situation with hard work and dedication and all that American dream bullshit. It's not like kids at "failing" schools aren't working hard, and it's not as if the kids at the "successful" schools are working any harder. Yet their rewards are vastly different from one another. There is a large population in this country that works very hard and doesn't receive ample compensation or would love the opportunity to work hard but hasn't been given one.
As for the Title 1 business, it worries me as well that they've made Title 1 schools a prerequisite for school board members. It's not surprising, though. Our board of trustees at the CC consists mostly of people with business backgrounds and very little time in the classroom. When we try to run our educational system like a business, we are going to continue to accept an outdated bell curve with A students and F students and A schools and F schools.
I could go on...
kitkat-yes, yes, and yes!
I can completely understand your frustration in this post. However, I must kindly disagree with kitkat about the comparison of the education to a free-market capitalist economy. In fact, the public education system could not me more opposite than free-market capitalism and enterprise. It is government-run which is the antonym to free enterprise. Free enterprise is why people from all over the world come to the United States to compete in business. It drives creativity, ingenuity and causes the best business solutions to rise to the top so that our economy can thrive. I agree that our education system should not be a competition between rich and poor. Competitiveness, at its core though, is healthy for students - it helps them set goals and go after them so that they can set the next goal and continue to grow.
As for the affluent - they can be a double edged sword. Some people bring in a huge income(and may or may not be truly wealthy) and widen the rich/poor gap. Others, like the family that is a major donor to Cath's school, are wonderful. We need the affluent to exist to help with funding. What we need even more are more philanthropists.
I agree that education can help to reduce poverty - so why is the public school system so painfully antiquated? I think that it needs an overhaul from top to bottom - funding to curriculum. Students need a sense of real life accomplishment through hands on observation and work to learn important lessons through experiences. Sitting and listening to people lecture about subjects (which is the majority teaching method used) doesn't cut it.
Now my adrenaline has run out... :)
LB, I certainly see your point, and I think a lot of people would agree with you. I only want to make two comments, and of course these are just my opinions.
1. Competition can be healthy, but I believe we're imposing artificial competition on kids who would otherwise prefer to succeed at their own rate in their own ways. Generally, the only students who like the competitive nature of our public schools are the top students. Furthermore, these artificial standards (and let's be clear; I mean letter grades) don't allow students to develop their own definitions of success and their own work ethic.
2. Technically, it's true that public education is a government institution; however, it tends to be run like a business and not a socialist utopia. In fact, that's often the philosophy I've heard at my state-funded community college: we provide a service, and the students are customers. We make schools compete for funding, and when a school fails, it essentially has to go out of business. The people who are in positions of power are too often business-oriented, meaning that they will look for ways to cut corners and even profit because that's what's considered "successful" in the business world. While I certainly wish that public schools were run vastly different from our free market, I just don't see it happening that way in reality.
I could also go on a tirade about schools producing little worker bees to enter into the workforce with no critical thinking skills, but I'll save that for my own blog.
LB-I'm going to have to agree with kitkat on this one. Yes, competition is good, but as kitkat said, it's an artificial type of competition. I don't think students (or teachers) should have to feel like they are competing against other schools for better grades, better funding, better buildings, etc, ESPECIALLY when public schools are a government-run institution. Isn't the playing field supposed to be even in this case? Perhaps, in a utopian world.
While I am exceedingly thankful for the family who gives money and programs to our school, I don't think it should have to come to that. It's become this: well, the county/state/government can't get their shit together, so we'll step in and try to give it a facelift while trying to keep our hands clean of TOO much responsibility. While they have helped in countless ways, they are unfortunately in a position now where they have to constantly tell the school board, "Hey, it's not our job to repair your infrastructure!" And they're right.
kitkat-AMEN to critical thinking skills! good lord.
I have discovered our fundamental disagreement: I am definitely not a supporter of socialism (surprise, surprise). The funny thing is that I don't feel like our schools produce good worker bees at all. Regarding families funding schools, I agree that our government's public school system should be well organized and planned so that these donations are just the sugar sprinkles on top instead of the cupcake bottom. At the end of the day I think that we need a combination of both points of view in order to achieve success and balance in education.
It's fun debating with you ladies. I rest my case for now. :)
Post a Comment