Jhild, I have reread all those posts several times, and still stand by my interpretation that you were asking Duncan to substantiate something he didn't say about German education. I think it is interesting to talk about social issues; I am just concerned that we should all be on the same page when we do so, arguing every which way about anything under the sun, but trying to do that from positions that we agree we actually have.
In answer to your question about my position, I do not believe there is a left-wing conspiracy to dumb down our educational system. I think that most teachers enter the profession with a real love of children and a real desire to teach them. I think the reasons American children don't seem to be competitive with children from other countries in standard testing are very complex, but would include the following:
1) Teachers' salaries, and respect for teachers as professionals, are both very low in America compared to other countries. The result of this is that really gifted people are not attracted to the field.
2) Many teachers are teaching subjects that were not their majors or minors in college, partially due to a general shortage of teachers.
3) American children, because we are a melting pot country, are very diverse. In Oakland, CA, near where I live, the children speak 52 languages. This makes it very much more difficult to teach them than it would in a place like Germany or Japan, where almost all the children come from similar backgrounds and speak the same language.
4)All of the new research seems to indicate that most of the essential development in order to learn happens in infancy, and to a lesser degree, in very early childhood. One of the things I would make mandatory is child development courses for all children, starting with an emphasis on how we nurture in late childhood, and more formal instruction in high school. No one should become a parent without basic knowledge of how babies and children grow healthy. Babies need to be held, talked to, read to, and stimulated with bright colors in order to learn well later, and everyone should know this. It is also an argument for many more HeadStart classes, which statistically make a marked improvement in achievement for disadvantaged children. I think the children should start them at an earlier age, also.
5)This society is overwhelmed by television, and the more hours a day it is watched, the less a child achieves academically, statistically speaking. I am not sure why we let our entire lives be dominated by this mindless and often violent entertainment, and I am surprised that there is not more of an effort to teach parents about how damaging it can be to a child's education.
6)While in homogenous societies like Japan and Germany you might be able to get away with classes of 30 or 35 children, because of the problems inherent in educating groups of very diverse children in America, we need much smaller class sizes here. Of course, that costs money. I am absolutely a liberal on educational issues, and believe that much more should be spent, because I don't think we are going to be able to solve all the social problems in our society, but still need to make sure that our children are educated better, which will reduce social pathology in subsequent generations.
7)Children who do really well in school tend to come from families where the parents are also relatively well educated. If we want more of our population to do well in school, we will have to reach the parents of at-risk children very early, and help them understand the importance of reading to their children, minimizing television, keeping the atmosphere at home calm and nurturing, and providing a quiet place to do homework and offering support during homework time.
8)Parents need more choice in education. I personally do not support the voucher idea, because I believe it drains money from public schools, and I have separation of church/state problems with paying my tax dollars to religious schools. However, I do support the creation of many more public magnet/charter schools. Of course, this takes more money, not less, for public education. There were one thousand applicants for 24 places in the kindergarten in my child's magnet school. Definitely there is a huge demand that is not being met. Until we address this by offering reliably excellent public education, middle class parents will continue to pull their children out of public schools, and it is just those well-nurtured, academically-oriented children who keep classroom energy positive and academic.
9)I think we have unrealistic goals for children. We college educate a larger percentage of our children than the society actually needs, and at the same time do not offer much high-quality vocational education. Society has an interest in a well-trained workforce, and yet not much which would produce people with marketable skills is being done in schools. So children who aren't academically oriented get further and further behind, and lose interest when there are skills they might be more successful at which they could learn are not taught, and the opportunity is being lost.
10)Too many children go to school hungry, and do not get good medical care because their parents cannot afford it. It is very difficult to concentrate on learning when you are sick or hungry. While everyone is busy dismantling the safety net, I don't think they see that there is a huge societal cost that children pay. It costs much less to provide these children healthy food and good medical care now than it will to pay to have them incarcerated later. In a country of great wealth, I believe that prenatal, infant and child health and nutrition are absolutely essential. Children, after all, are innocent, and the state has a viable interest in protecting and nurturing them. |
