Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2010 | 2 a.m.
Last week I quacked a bit about education funding, after a minion of Gov.-elect Brian Sandoval warned education leaders to brace for deeper-than-expected cuts. That, I wrote, is shortsighted and self-defeating.
Still is.
But that column only addressed itself to Sandoval’s message, so naturally I heard from people who rightly say education is beset by other problems. Waste. Leadership. Inadequate parenting. (One reader, a retired teacher of 26 years, sent in a long list of wasteful practices she’d witnessed in the Clark County School District, which I’ll take up in a future column.)
Only a fool would disagree with these assertions, of course. Adequate funding — resulting, one hopes, from a systemic repair of Nevada’s tax system (a guy can dream, can’t he?) — is only part of a very complex and urgent solution.
Then again, perhaps I’m overthinking this. A guy named Gerald e-mailed his prescription for success, and he sticks to basics: “English only, no illegals, kick out the bad guys and things will improve.”
Before this exchange played out to its predictable end — with me informing Gerald that he is “clearly an idiot,” and Gerald proposing that I am a “piece of left-wing crap” — he trotted out many of the arguments you hear about fixing schools: Throwing money at a problem won’t solve it! (“It’s not the money, it’s the system,” he wrote.) Things worked better in the old days! (“My parents taught me English. Was that wrong? The bad kids were removed from school. Is that wrong?”) Parents who aren’t like his suck! (“School has become their government-sponsored baby sitter and lunch wagon.”) Schools coddle too many interest groups! (“Systems with one language work.”) We’re paying for too much namby-pamby curriculum! (“How many … finger-painting, dance instructors do we have?”)
These are not unusual positions to take in conservative-leaning Nevada (or in many other places), and a few have a tang of accuracy. Teaching surely would be easier if every student was fluent in English. Some parents do try to get schools to handle problems that have nothing to do with education. (Example: A parent recently asked a local principal to do something about her noisy upstairs neighbors, who, she said, disturbed her child’s studies.)
But there’s also an element of reality-denial or tunnel vision here. We have the world we have, and it doesn’t always yield to ideological solutions.
Take immigration, in which Gerald’s get-tough attitude toward illegal 7-year-olds was, you’ll recall, previously voiced by several local candidates emboldened by Arizona’s law. So it’s not a fringe sentiment.
If we wanted to think our way toward a real-world position, we’d ask ourselves: What’ll happen to those kids? (Don’t worry, conservatives, this isn’t an argument for — shudder — compassion.) Gerald and those who think like him apparently assume they’d evaporate. Or go home. Or … something. In any case, they’d cease to be a problem.
But here in the real world, most wouldn’t go anywhere. And while the lack of a free American education for their kids might dissuade some illegals from jumping the border, plenty would still come and bring kids. Denying them an education would likely create an underclass of youngsters with even fewer options than they have now. So all Gerald and his ilk would really do is redistribute the problem from one system, education, to others, including law enforcement. It’ll cost us either way.
I don’t have the solution to the immigration or education issues — judging from the disheveled state of those problems, no one does. It’s certainly not as simple as “English only, no illegals … and things will improve.” But I am pretty sure that a strong school system needs to be a linchpin in a lot of solutions, and that it deserves better than the heavy hits coming its way.
Scott, Scott, Scott.
You've forgotten the Nevader Neo-Nut Mantra;
"We Will Bite Off Our Noses To Spite Our Faces!"
Further cuts to education in the great state of Gamblin', Drinkin' & Whorin' will be DEVASTATING.
Neo cons insist you can't tax your way out of a recession...
Let me assure you; You can't cut your way to a brighter future, either, not when the big piece of meat on the chopping block is EDUCATION.
There ain't no bright future in a state full of Jethro Bodines.
*Jethro: (looking over buffet during Jed's birthday party) What is all this stuff?
Waiter: Hors d'oeuvres, caviar, calamari.
Jethro: What? Speak American!
*Laura Jackson: What a stupid idiot.
Jed Clampett: Did you say something, ma'am?
Laura Jackson: What a stupendous intellect.
Jethro: That's cause I "grad-ge-ated" the sixth grade, ma'am. Only took three years.
*from
imbd.com
woops.
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0021981/...
The fixes are simple, the unions and our uneducated union owned school board will not allow it as they want an uneducated non graduate. Uneducated people will fall for anything, like communism.
Fix 1 Class size goes to 28-32 kids per class
Fix 2 End school breakfast and lunch programs.
fix 3 English only in school
fix 4 Simplify the state school regs, 137 pages is way too many, this will give control back to localities where it belongs.
Fix 5 Refuse all federal money for education, ignore all federal mandates.
Fix 6 Remove all unions from schools.
There is more and all of the fixes are simple.
And yes all illegal aliens need to go back to their country of origin - with their children. The Illegal aliens have no honor and there fore no standing to claim anything.
Read "longgun45". he hit the nail on the head. The problem is "We cannot find a politician, School Board Member" with enough guts to call it, like it is. Why???? they are all a bunch of bleeding heart Liberals, that want to control everyones life but their own. Give, give, give is all they know. The problem is that, "They want to give everyones" but not theirs.
Scott can you answer this question? How did the "greatest generation" most of which were educted before the advent of federally controlled education achieve that label? My father went to school in a one-room schoolhouse and it was the responsibility of the older children to actively teach the younger ones. Scott answer the question why California, which spends about $32k per pupil and the quality of the K-12 education there is falling faster than an anvil heading toward Wile E. Coyote's head? Scott maybe if parents took some time to teach their kids about subject/verb/direct object, or learn to do (Jethro would call it cipherin') multiplication tables or something like that we'd better prepare our children for school. Scott what we've created in society today by way of federal involvement in public schools are "de facto drop-in orphanages." If you abrogate your responsibility to raise your children to the government don't complain when you get just what you're paying for.
The "Greatest Generation" wouldn't pass muster under our current standards push. They had an almost 50% drop out rate but fed into a world that didn't require an education for a good union job in manufacturing or construction. The US didn't exceed 50% graduation until the 70's when schools had a strong investment in vocational education. We now need to educate for world that requires a completely new set of standards, but are still trying to meet the standards of previous generations. The push to meet stale standards with mandated testing is at the core of what is wrong with our schools by stifling innovation. Here are a couple of ideas for improving schools:
*Smaller class sizes, no teacher should ever see more than 25-30 students. This is where the initial investment needs to be made. Many teachers will accept a pay freeze if it improves teaching conditions.
*Less testing, find more creative ways to insure higher level thinking and learning is taking place. It's much more important that students learn how to learn rather than be stuck in an outdated curriculum.
No, Aaronboy, longgun45 didn't "hit the nail on the head," he hit you on the head and whacked himself on the thumb.
lvmachead,
Good refutation for bbtbrains post. Additionally, California does NOT spend $32K per pupil. That is an obvious falsehood nobody in his or her right mind would take seriously for even a second. (California spends $8300 per student, which, though more than Nevada, still only ranks it 43rd in the nation. NY is #1 with $15K/student. Still less than half of longgun's made-up stat.)
NOW, I still maintain -- as I stated last week -- that throwing money at the problem is not the answer. You don't need thousands upon thousands of dollars to teach kids the 3 R's. Math hasn't changed in millennia, and the fundamentals to reading and writing remain the same as when all of us grew up.
ALSO, I agree with English-only in the classroom. Not only are all the ESL classroom aides and other similar non-essential CCSD personnel an immediate place to cut and save precious money, but I am convinced that their presence in school is actually a crutch, and an impediment to the education of the very kids they're supposed to help. I speak from a wealth of personal experience, but my post is too long, already.