While flipping through the channels earlier I came across a program on PBS called “A.K.A Creek: Educating a Big City Schoolboy” which looked at urban schools and their problems, as well as three different groups viewpoints on how to fix them. It also trailed an approximately 17 year-old Latino male attending a public school in LA and his daily life both with school, and outside of school. A few things were blatantly obvious to me as I watched the documentary. Our school systems are horrible, and are in need of serious reforms. But in order to fix the education problems many kids are faced with, it will take a lot more than throwing money at the schools, protesting “racist” tests and curriculum, and demanding affirmative action to make up for what teachers and parents fail to do for their own kids. Here are just a few things I noted.
1) The overuse of “racism.” This buzzword is quickly heading down a path to losing its meaning. Any time a minority group doesn’t like something they slap this word on it and suddenly everyone jumps up to the cause. No matter that many times the word doesn’t belong in the context. PROVE to me that racism is what is keeping these children from getting a quality education, and from having the opportunity to succeed. Just saying there is racism in the schools isn’t enough. Telling me that minority students tend to get lower test scores, or don’t go to college as much as white students isn’t enough. Plus, many of those statistics are severely flawed and biased. As a matter of fact, low income white males enter college at a far lower rate than do low income blacks, and low income Hispanics. Should I cry racism against whites? No. That does nothing to pinpoint the real cause, and does nothing to fix it.
2) Social promotion. In the interest of kid’s “self-esteem” our school systems have been in the practice in recent of years of allowing kids to promote up to the next grade level, regardless of whether or not they are ready and qualified, just so that they can stay with their friends and not feel stupid because they are older/bigger than the other kids that would be in their classes otherwise. Social promotion does not give children a fair opportunity to learn. By telling Johnny that despite the fact he can’t read, you don’t want his self-esteem to be hurt and so you’re going to allow him to go to the next grade anyway, you are doing him a great disservice. Instead of Johnny learning to read in the next grade level he’s going to find that all of the other kids are able to do what he can’t, and he’s going to get further and further behind to the point that it will be impossible for him to learn. And what do you think
this will do to his self-esteem? Make him feel just as “bad” and “stupid,” if not much more so, than if he had been held back a grade. Social promotion is a horrible idea, and does way more harm than good. Children should be taught, not passed off to someone else to deal with.
3) Poor teachers. And I don’t mean “poor” as in “they don’t get paid enough.” We can argue teachers salaries till the cows come home, but that says nothing about their jobs. At this point I think many teachers (particularly in lower-income urban schools) are not even earning their pay. Teachers know coming into the job that it doesn’t always pay so well. They should come into the job with a passion to teach. And teaching children should come above everything else, including their salaries. When teacher’s strike over pay issues, it hurts the kids more than anyone else. It’s hardly fair, or right to make the kids suffer. Any teacher who puts their paycheck above the success of their students is sick and greedy. Certainly teachers have an important job, and should be paid well enough to live well in their communities, but should that come at the price of the kids education? Show your protest by leaving the district to go to better paid schools, or finding another job besides teaching that pays better. When suddenly the school districts realize they can’t attract qualified teachers something will have to change. And eventually, things will change for the better. The real problem with many teachers is that they give up, or don’t try. They pop a movie into the VCR instead of teaching the kids (this was showcased constantly in the documentary). Or they’ll ignore kids who are sleeping in the back of the classroom. And instead of taking the time to help a struggling child learn, they’ll ignore them because it’s just too much work. I can vouch for this in my own hometown’s school district with my younger brother. Teachers just don’t care. They look for the easy way out.
4) Parents who don’t care. Many parents, particularly those in lower class families, don’t give enough care or attention to their children’s education. In the documentary the mother told her children that since it was raining they didn’t have to go to school. That sends a message to the children that school is not a priority, and that it’s not that important. Of course the kids jumped on the opportunity to stay home all day and watch TV and play video games. I remember the day after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 my mother sent my brothers and I to school. The school wasn’t damaged, and my mother realized it would do us no good to be sitting around the house all day, and so we went. Many kids were absent that day. But, my mother sent us a strong message that school is a priority. Many parents do not instill proper values in their children. They do not teach them that school is important, and why. They don’t show their children that they value academic success. They aren’t involved in their children’s education, and in many cases they are hardly involved in their lives. These parents set their children up to fail, and should be held accountable for that. I understand that many parents work long and hard hours in order to support their families. But that brings up two points. One, if you cannot afford the kids in the first place, you shouldn’t have them. That is poor family planning. It’s a lot easier, and cheaper to raise one or two than to raise five or six kids. Birth control is much cheaper than children. And the second point is that the parents can use their situation to encourage their kids to be successful. These parents would do a great service to their children by helping them understand that they work very hard, in often unpleasant and low paying jobs because they did not have enough education to do anything else. They can help open their children’s eyes to see that if they work hard in school they can be something more so that they don’t have to take the jobs nobody else wants. Certainly money is a factor, but there are many options available to low-income students including state and federal grants, scholarships, and job opportunities that can help them get a college education. Even going to a vocational or community college is better than quitting after high school, or just plain dropping out. Parents must be held accountable, and take responsibility for their children’s chances in life.
5) Kids who make poor choices. In the case of very young children it is often not up to them to make important choices, and they often lack the skills, values, and ability to make good decisions. That again is a responsibility which falls on the parents. Parents have to teach their children right from wrong, and good from bad. Parents must teach their kids how to be responsible and to make wise decisions. After children hit their teenage years, the parents have more or less missed their opportunities. The teenage years are the time when kids begin to make choices for themselves, and often ignore or disregard their parents advice. At this time children are old enough to make choices for themselves. Many kids choose to put popularity over academics, or to get into life’s of crime, drugs, violence, sex, and disregard for the future and their education. This is a small point, but an important one nonetheless. As children get older they need to be held increasingly accountable for their actions. As they grow, parents, teachers, and the community need to be responsible for teaching them how to make the right decisions.
6) Absence of the “three R’s.” Reading, writing, and arithmetic. Those used to be the key focal points of every child’s education. Even minority children of the past were better educated than many children today (in many cases, regardless of class) because they were taught the essential skills above everything else. All of the other curriculum that teachers focus on today will do nothing for a child’s success without the basics. If a child does not learn to read, write, and do basic math, they will never be able to succeed in society. There is no chance for them to go to college. They will be forced to take manual labor jobs. And everything else they have learned will be meaningless. Schools need to make a priority out of teaching children the essentials first and foremost.
7) Bilingual education. Most of the programs we’ve had in the past are jokes. I’ve seen them firsthand. Children are left in bilingual classes for years, sometimes throughout most of their education, and they barely learn to speak English. Children should be put into total immersion English classes (it has been proven that this kind of language teaching works best, particularly by our own military). This way children could potentially be out of bilingual education, and into mainstream classes within a year—less time if the student is younger, since younger children pick up new languages quicker. These kids will have an awesome benefit over most other people. They will have the opportunity to not only speak English well, but to also fluently speak another language. However, without being able to speak proper English, children will find a hard time finding good jobs and being successful in society. And the longer you leave them in bilingual education classes, the less likely they are to learn proper English, and the less likely they are to learn the basics too.
