With all the political news and events lately, one of the things I keep hearing about is education – specifically, funding. I don’t know that I’ve weighed in on the issue before, but here are some of my thoughts on the matter, in no particular order.
If we assume the problem with education is that the end result of the system’s efforts – that is, whether or not people are educated – is less than ideal, then we must approach the problem from a certain direction. Not all people see it that way, but for the sake of my own sanity, that’s where I’ll be addressing it from.
If the issue is that children are not getting a proper education, then we must first seek to answer the question: what is a proper education? Most agree it includes some math, some history, some basic grammar and language skills. Many would add other knowledge subjects – geography, civics, or literature. Some would add practical skills like critical thinking or logic. Others would insist that subjects like art and music be added. Establishing a baseline expectation is, I think, nearly impossible when addressed in specifics, but becomes manageable when addressed as general goals. My proposed goals would break down into four basic groups:
- Knowledge – Having a basic understanding of mathematics, history, geography, civics, language, literature, science, etc.
- Reasoning – Critical thinking skills, deductive reasoning, logic.
- Character – Knowing the difference between right and wrong, the value of honor and honesty.
- Skills – Specific to the individual. Could encompass trade skills, art, music, writing, or general skills needed to hold a job.
This list does not seem to align very well with the results of public education, or even the stated goals – and that is not surprising, for I am no fan of public education. Education is a much bigger issue than just what is taught in the classroom, which I think gives us a fundamental problem when talking about public education as a concept – one that is deal-breaking, in my eyes, but we’ll return to that subject a bit later.
Let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that public education seeks only to address the first two goals – knowledge and reasoning. This is a more realistic goal for that sort of program, and more or less in agreement with what many seem to believe on the subject.
In the area of knowledge, let’s ignore for now the topic of exactly how far each subject should reach. Let us instead simply say that public education should seek to give its students at least a basic, working knowledge of world history, national history, geography, mathematics, civics, economics, the sciences, and literature. I think that this is a fairly reasonable list of topics that I would expect anyone who would consider themselves educated to be able to discuss, at least to some degree. Given a student is expected to spend at least twelve years in the school system, that should be plenty of time to learn these subjects quite well.
But they do not. In fact, in a recent study of 65 developed nations, we placed 14th in reading, 25th in math, and 17th in sciences, while spending more than all but three of our competitors per student, and having the most average years spent being educated of any nation.
We know that pouring more money into the problem doesn’t help, as we’ve tripled the amount of money going into students since 1970 with essentially no effect on test scores. The Department of Education has grown by nearly 500% in the same period of time, but yet states that spend very little on education seem to do almost as well as those that spend much – Florida, for instance, is 35th on spending per student, but 2nd on reading proficiency.
Perhaps it’s what we’re paying the teachers, then? South Dakota pays its teachers very poorly, by comparison to other states – 70% of the state’s median income, third lowest in the country. Yet they boast the 10th highest scores. The top paying state, New York (113%, or $57k per year), has the 22nd highest scores. Pay doesn’t seem to equate results. Maybe it’s something else entirely.
John Taylor Gatto wrote a book about ten years ago called The Underground History of American Education. Despite the conspiratorial title, it’s an excellent read, and available online for free from the author. He proposes that the very nature of the system that our public education resources go to is flawed, perhaps even harmful. I’ll not go into details of why, and would suggest you read the book to get a grasp on his ideas – but the conclusion is that an alternative is needed.
My ideal solution would be something classified by the government as “homeschooling” – a movement that has nearly doubled in size over the last ten years – but not necessarily as most people envision it. Parents being the sole instructors of their children might work through elementary school, but beyond that I think it would be ideal for a community effort to take over. I don’t mean the government – I mean your community. Your church, your neighborhood, whatever. Small groups, preferably, with the various subjects taught by people who are especially knowledgeable in those particular areas.
I’m a big fan of the Socratic method, so these groups would not be standard classrooms, but places of discussion and debate about topics as much as possible, as opposed to just the absorption of information from a lecturer or text. This helps develop critical thinking and logic skills – which comprise the second point on the list I had above. There’s a reason this method is widely used in law schools. By high school, this would be the primary method of education. By integrating this learning process with the community, relationships are built and there is no disconnect between the home and the classroom, the family and the teacher, the community and the school.
There’s at least one big problem with my solution, however, and that is that many parents are simply not capable of educating their children in this way. They lack the time, the money, the education, or perhaps just the concern to invest in their children in this manner. A large part of that is probably due to the fact that those parents were also raised in the system we have now, and know nothing else – a problem that is not easy to get around. My solution requires a stable family, a healthy community, and people to be willing to invest in each other – things we simply can’t take for granted anymore.
Maybe that, not educational funding, is our problem.
Great blog, Dan.
Hmm, I have a lot of thoughts, but aren’t really sure where to begin.
I’m not anti-public schools, but there’s no arguing that there are flaws in the system. (If/when I have kids, I am still undecided about how they will be educated.) You know I went to public school and I feel strongly that I received a good education. But I don’t think that can fully be attributed to the public school system. For one, the school I went to was pretty small by public school standards. (My graduating class had 81 kids.) I feel like I had solid teachers and was generally in a safe, supportive learning environment. Secondly, I had parents that encouraged to be a good student and believed education to be important. And thirdly (not to toot my own horn), I was an overachiever and school came really easy for me. So for me, I had a pretty good recipe for success between my home, the school, and myself.
In the very short period of time I’ve been working for a public school, I have observed some conversations about standardized testing. I don’t know enough to have really formed an opinion on them yet, but was curious for your thoughts. I did find it interesting to listen to a conversation between two math teachers about an upcoming state benchmark test where part of the test will be covering areas that the state issued curriculum doesn’t have teachers cover until later in the year. Didn’t make any sense to me.
Ultimately, I think you come to the correct realization at the end of your post. In fact, before I got to your two last paragraphs, I was already writing my comment in my head about how big of an impact family life can have on a child’s education and the lack there of would ruin your ideal school “system”. (I’m sure that would have been a shock coming from your social worker buddy, ha!) But then you brought up the point so well, I didn’t have to!
If my formula for my academic success could be generalized (not saying it can be, but let’s just go with it for a second), any given student needs a combination of a good learning environment, a supportive home environment, and the inner drive/abilities/motivation. My theory would be that with all three core qualities, a student will be successful in a public school. If you remove one of those three core qualities, a student may still find success (thought it may be harder to achieve. But with only one? The best school in the world would have trouble properly educating a student when the parents and the child both see no point in education.