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StumbleSUN EDITORIAL:
Teaching our children
NCLB knocked, U.S. risks falling behind, and concerns about sleepy students
Monday, March 8, 2010 | 2:06 a.m.
There were a few items about education that caught our eye during the past week from The Washington Post and The New York Times that should make all of us question how children in this country are educated:
• A news story from Tuesday’s Times was about the intellectual transformation of one of this country’s leading proponents of dramatic education reforms. Diane Ravitch, who the Times noted was once “outspoken about the power of standardized testing, charter schools and free markets to improve schools,” has changed her mind — in a big way. Ravitch, who was an assistant secretary of education during the first Bush administration, finds these to be faddish trends that hurt public education.
A few years ago Ravitch started having second thoughts about the reforms she championed, particularly after hearing from other education experts that the No Child Left Behind law wasn’t actually improving student achievement. “Accountability, as written into federal law, was not raising standards but dumbing down the schools,” the Times says she writes in her new book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” “The effort to upend American public education and replace it with something that was market-based began to feel too radical to me.”
And for those who rightly believe that we have lost our way when it comes to preparing students for the day they graduate, there was also this telling anecdote from the Times story, recounting Ravitch speaking to school superintendents at a conference last month in Phoenix. “Nations like Finland and Japan seek out the best college graduates for teaching positions, prepare them well, pay them well and treat them with respect,” she said. “They make sure that all their students study the arts, history, literature, geography, civics, foreign languages, the sciences and other subjects. They do this because this is the way to ensure good education. We’re on the wrong track.”
Hopefully, with the sound advice from Ravitch and other researchers, we can scrap this insane practice of teaching to the test that has resulted in children not getting a well-rounded education.
• New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote Wednesday about how vital it is for the United States to ramp up its infrastructure, education and innovation policies in a global economy. He sat down with Paul Otellini, Intel’s CEO, to get his insights about U.S. competitiveness. With respect to education, Otellini told Friedman the U.S. is badly falling behind in developing scientific talent. Otellini, when asked if Intel was hurt by America’s weak science and math education in K-12, responded: “As a citizen, I hate it. As a global employer, I have the luxury of hiring the best engineers anywhere on Earth. If I can’t get them out of MIT, I’ll get them out of Tsing Hua,” which Friedman dubbed Beijing’s MIT.
Maybe, just maybe, we can start making the wise investments necessary in science and math so we’re not left behind other countries.
• While Friedman was looking at the big picture, the Post’s George Will, in his Thursday column, looked at some of the everyday issues involving parenting and how we educate our children. Will approached the issue by looking at a new book by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, “NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children.”
One of the more interesting tidbits that Will mentions from the book is that scientific studies have found that a lack of sleep by children can have a profound effect on a student’s academic performance: Not enough sleep equals poor grades. This isn’t particularly revelatory itself, but the effect from lack of sleep among children is startling. Bronson and Merryman write that “the performance gap caused by an hour’s difference in sleep was bigger than the gap between a normal fourth-grader and a normal sixth-grader.”
Tired children have difficulty learning, the writers say, “because neurons lose their plasticity, becoming incapable of forming the new synaptic connections necessary to encode a memory ... The more you learned during the day, the more you need to sleep that night.” Indeed, Will notes that the school day starts much too early, especially for teens. “Awakened at dawn, teenage brains are still releasing melatonin, which makes them sleepy ... When Edina, Minn., changed its high school start from 7:25 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., math/verbal SAT scores rose substantially.”
We’re not sure there will be a stampede among schools to change their days to later start times, but it’s a change that is long overdue.
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And then there's the garbage that so many children consume - the schools being a major contributor - that is called "food" by some stretch of imagination. It starts with infant formula.
Come on in and look at the blank faces and stares. Come on in and watch the inability to answer simple questions on topics that have been covered repeatedly - in the past five minutes. Come on in and watch the inability to remember anything from the previous day. Come on in and watch the inability to make the most basic logical connections to be able to answer a simple question.
It's not across the board, of course, but the numbers are huge, and it's not just the low-income kids.
I know some of you want to blame it on me. No, there's something really wrong that goes way beyond teachers. Way too many of these kids can't think at a level that's developmentally appropriate. There's something wrong that nobody has addressed yet. It's scary. This society needs a reality check, but I know why people don't get it. You have to see it and experience it to believe it.
When you feed the kids brains with the equivalent of pablum, you get bored and sleepy students. Unable to learn and unwilling to participate as this is not education, but a subtle propagandizing they know is not true.
When the school system cares more about teaching /educating the children, the children will start paying more attention.
The change is coming.
longun45 writes: "When you feed the kids brains with the equivalent of pablum...." Remember the curriculum is not set by teachers--it is set by the areas and the district. The textbooks the teachers use are mandated at the area and the district level. Much of the teacher's ability to be creative has been removed by area and district level mandates.
Fosimmons.
I am getting concerned. I understood every sentence you wrote this time. That is a first :)
The one ingredient missing in the editorial and the comments thus far is the lack of commenting on parental involvement/accountability.
Some schools have their "Meet the teachers" night and there is no room in the parking lot, and parents walk for blocks to get in. Other schools have a ghost town, maybe 3-4 parents per classroom.
It is a total commitment needed to change what is broken, from administrators through teachers, students, and parents everyone needs to pull their weight.
Until the parents in all areas of America, rich to poor, urban, suburban, and rural all get interested in a profound way this is all just spittin in the wind. They are the missing link.
It matters not what you teach the children. They'll vote the way their parents did and we'll always be in this nanny state. Education gurus are just in it for themselves.
Standards matter--The standards of NCLB are certainly open to discussion and debate, but the idea of a no standard standard is absurd.
If students can't add, read or write a complete sentence by the time they graduate something is wrong. That they can graduate at all speaks to the problem.
Set the bar high enough and kids will reach for it. If they fail they get a chance to repeat. Real simple.
You say, "this insane practice of teaching to the test that has resulted in children not getting a well-rounded education". Absolutely wrong! It has resulted in teachers teaching something measurable rather than giving grades based on how well students suck up.
A well-rounded education requires highly qualified teachers in their subjects, but unfortunately a large number of teachers are still unable to demonstrate that NCLB goal of minimum competence.
The "teacher" made several very valid points... The same can be said with JeffFromVegas....
Unfortunately, many parents have come to believe that they have done their job as parents once their kid is born... In other words, it's the responsibility of other people to make sure that their kid receives a good education...Not them!
If their kid does not learn, then its the fault of the teacher....the fault of the school. It can't be anything that they have or have not done...
Learning for the joy of learning is no longer viewed as something that is worth while...The accumulation of knowledge is for nerds, not regular people... I see that attitude right here on this board. It's common place in America.
The emphasis on grades has replaced the need to master subject content... As a result, "grade inflation" is common place in most schools.
That why universities such as UNLV, have started to require remedial classes with many incoming freshman.... They came out of high school with the grades, but not the knowledge of the material that was taught....
ALSO:
Too few children come to school everyday ready to learn..many did not eat a good breakfast that morning & many didn't get 8-10 hours of sleep the previous night...
Too few children do the homework that was assigned the previous day.....some have lost their text book and many have no paper or pencil.
Too few children come to school with the understanding that the teacher is the boss and doing exactly what the teacher says, without question, is what is required... In other words, class discipline is often a problem.
Too few parents monitor the eating, sleeping and homework habits of their kids. ...
Too few parents monitor the weekly academic progress of their kids.... Many parents don't even know what classes their children are taking nor the name of any of their kids teacher's.
Depending upon the school, parents who show up at a school's "open house," aren't normally the parents that the teacher needs to see...Those kids are doing well in school!
It's the parents that don't show....those are the ones that the teacher needs to talk with...
I could go on and on but I think you get the general drift of my message...There's many other factors that are reasons why the American educational system is failing, but that post is for another time...
My whole theme of this post is that the parents in America need to get involved in their kids education. If education is important to the parents, then more times than not, it becomes important to their kids...
Me insult Rhooster?....never! Heaven forbid...