This was dug up from the comment section in a recent Colossus of Rhody post regarding great education movies.
“Sometimes these movies make it seem like the right teacher can inspire even the most reluctant of students, but in nearly every case, the teachers just got rid of the students that weren’t being inspired. Apparently, the moral is that many children must be left behind.”
Posted by Ivan Wolfe at January 6, 2007 11:39 PM
Question:
Has this nation, bent on the noble intention of educating everyone, lost its innate ability to educate anyone?
It has.
This nation should shift its focus from whether “any child is left behind”, and go one step further and guarantee that all children, are endowed with the inalienable right to be educated to their own full potential.
Briefly stated, the educational focus needs to change from holding a class back until the “dumbest” finally “get it”, to pushing each member of a class forward to the best of their own abilities, whatever they may be. In doing so, not only are we educating each student to comprehend those basics needed by society, but we are also able to challenge and groom the brightest minds, on whose talents our future will depend.
Education has not caught up with a significant change in our brain development. Due to breast feeding, early development toys and tools, and educational programing, the child entering our educational stream is far more developed than what our educational system presupposes. The first year of instruction at age 5 in kindergarten covers what most kids know by age 2, simply from watching Sesame Street, Nickelodeon Jr, or assorted special videos purchased by their parents. The second year of instruction covers the same material. It is necessary review, the bureaucrats tell us.
Think for a moment. Have you ever seen a five year old who doesn’t want to learn. No, they are bubbling full of questions covering every topic. Next compare that with a room full of high school seniors, slumped in their chairs, staring at the ceiling, who are there only because they are forced to be. Somewhere in between we, as a society, lost them.
As we banter back and forth over the security issues that flash across our screens and news-wires today, we spend relatively little emotional energy to the most pressing problem facing this country’s future.
And that is our country’s corner on the market that creates technology. We have moved so far, just in the past three years, (as the technology of this very blog proves), that it is becoming obvious that any nation’s dominance in the world arena, will be determined by that country’s grasp of exciting technology. The power to shape world events, which has been ours since WWII, will fall to whatever nation advances furthest in matters of intellectual prowess. A nation’s wealth will be determined, no longer by its indigenous raw materials, but by the number of its cell phone companies, broadband Internet providers, and cable services it can offer to the world economy.
Tom Friedman put it most succinctly to his children using the old adage mothers fed their children by. ” You had better do your homework, because somewhere in the Third World, there is a child doing his homework, WHO WANTS YOUR JOB.”
On this playing field, what does our country gain if everyone knows the history of the underground railroad, the rote of vocabulary words picked two generations ago, and how to add and subtract, multiply and divide. All are worth knowing, don’t get me wrong, but just how necessary are they to our future? Basic blocks of knowledge, but as a society we have to figure how to play and win at NFL playoff-level football after having just been taught how to throw and catch.
There are good ideas out there to move us in this direction. I will make them the subject of another post.
But right now, the point that needs pondered, as put best in the quote I started with, is whether or not some kids do need to be left behind.
kavips 
4 comments
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January 8, 2007 at 2:23 am
Ivan Wolfe
Good comments. I have no real answers – all I was doing was pointing out how very unegalitarian these “inspiring” movies (which are often held up as models of saving the apparently unsaveable) really are.
Myself, I’m conflicted on the point, and there are no easy answers. I personally think the public education system in America is in need of a major overhaul.
January 8, 2007 at 8:11 am
David Anderson
My friend, I get to be moderate today with an on one hand and on the other hand.
I strongly disagree with the notion that we should write off children who don’t have the advantages of other children. If we can only teach those who already know the material, what good are we doing. It has been shown time and time again that most children can learn regardless of their ethnic, economic, or social status. Is it easier if you have two caring parents, extended family, broadband internet, your own home library, and no worries about daily bread? Yes, but our job is to provide education for those who don’t have that advantage. It is that basic attitude that provided America the economic advantage to pass the old world within 5 generations or so. We don’t waste as many of our citizens as say India which writes off hundreds of millions.
Marva Collins showed that you could take minority inner city kids and have them out achieving white suburbia.
I do agree with you that we should not hold children back to “be fair” to the rest of the class. You should not bore children into academic apathy.
I will also disagree with Mr. Wolfe. These movies and the true stories are not unegalitarian (though I don’t have particular affection for egalitarianism), they do not exclude teens or children, the few that are excluded exclude themselves.
This is where I agree with you. We cannot labor under an illusion that all children will learn. Even children make their own decisions and have to live with those consequences. We can influence them and should, but we can not control them. We have to accept that people are responsible for their choices and actions. That is not popular to say in some circles, but it must be said again and again until we get it.
January 8, 2007 at 11:40 pm
kavips
Apparently we agree:
I too do not want to write off those who do not have the advantages of other children. To do so defeats to entire concept of “public education.” Educating those who could otherwise not afford to be educated, is still a worthwhile objective. For an America, consisting only of elitist private schools, would eventually breed the same national arrogance that cost Great Britain the Americas.
The point of my post is that we must shift our focus from “bringing up the bottom”, and keep the rest of students in limbo until “the bottom rung” gets it, to giving every other child the opportunity to advance their knowledge beyond the current cirriculium.
As for Mr. Wolfe, go easy on him. (I think you both agree, “they exclude themselves”). I stole his line from a movie review and built up my argument around it because “it worked.” I recomend clicking his original post to see the context that his point should be taken. He had no intention of creating this argument that could eventually resurect our education system to again, become one of the world’s finest.
As for me, the greatest burden I carry, is the knowledge that their are many brilliant minds, lost in our inner cities and their attempt at public schools, primarily of the African or Puerto Rican genetic line, who will never get the opportunity to rise to their full potental, and there is nothing I can do to change it.
February 22, 2007 at 12:25 pm
garyM
with posts like this how long before we give up the newspaper?!!