By Tom
I found myself at a district technology workshop yesterday. I was sitting next to my friend Taylor, who teaches third grade across town. We spent the day planning ways to incorporate technology into our curriculum. Taylor’s a smart teacher and she had some great ideas. I learned a lot from her, and she might have learned a few things from me. Or maybe not. The point is, we came from different schools and spent the day sharing ideas and working together to improve our teaching practice. There was no competition. I may or may not have been helping Taylor’s students outperform mine, and I couldn’t care less.
From time to time, I checked the internet to see how things were going in Congress. That’s right; I was off-task. And as it turned out, Congress was in the process of letting the administration buy up lousy loans in an attempt to save the US economy.
I hope it works. But as I was switching back and forth between my curriculum and my country, I couldn’t help but notice something. We’re going to spend $700 billion bailing out a system that is supposed to deal with failure in a Darwinian fashion. And at the same time, many of the same clowns who ruined the very economy that they’re supposed to manage are trying to get public education to act more like private enterprise.
For the last 25 years, the business community has been relentless in
its criticism of public education. And what is their solution? Make it
more like the free market system. John McCain, on his website, articulates the business community’s call for competition as the path to education reform. When schools compete, we win.
Or do they? When schools compete, they don’t cooperate. If Taylor’s
school and my school are competing for the same students and the money
that follows them, there is no incentive for us to cooperate. My goal
will be to see her school fail and my school win. Kind of like WaMu vs.
Wachovia.
Sure, our education system has its problems. Lots of schools and
lots of teachers and lots of students are performing well below their
potential. And we need help fixing those problems. Help from the
government and help from the business community. But the one thing we
don’t need is the introduction of a free market system that compels
schools and teachers to stop sharing good ideas.
It might sound like a good idea. At least to some people. But these
people also thought that loaning money to under-qualified people for
over-priced property looked like a good idea, too. And I can tell you
this, no congress will ever spend $700 billion dollars bailing out our
public school system after these people mess it up.
Good point about the competition… Fortunately, the amount of money a school receives from its students is not very much connected with a teacher’s salary so I think that teachers will continue sharing experience and ideas for better education for all students.
Kathy, diplomas teacher
http://www.alpha-school.com
Great comment, Travis. Thanks. Tom and Annette offered a good stem for discussion.
I’ve lived, instructed, and advocated the ideas you describe clearly. Gestalt, Jung, Bruner, Dewey, et al. ideology still hold a sentimental place, as does Summerhill. They serve a useful, but insufficient foundation to increase learning.
I offer a fuller response on my blog. http://tabletpceducation.blogspot.com/2008/10/raising-high-school-gpas.html
Hope this contributes to your discussion, Tom.
@Bob Heiny (left on his blog as well)…I read your blog post and have something to say
Yikes…education is not a business and cannot follow a business model. There are common analogies made between the two. However, those analogies should only be used for pondering.
If a business were in the business of people, especially young people, then the analogies would have more worth. As it is, businesses are usually (and please do not get hung up on the exceptions) involved with a product or end service that the person receiving the service has requested.
This is not the way education works.
Bob, I value your ideas and I like your angle on many of the topics in education so I feel that there must be more to what you say and think. However, I cannot get past the superficial ideas that “if you do this” ….. “this will happen” because a teacher does not have a consistent product or material base and so therefor cannot make education a business.
Education is more like counseling with learning. Each student is an individual.
Take for instance a company that makes skateboards. If this company received different sized boards; wheels not only of different hardnesses, but inconsistent so that not even the differences could be grouped into patterns; and the materials used in the making of the trucks, bearings, and bolts was nonstandard and come from upwards of 60 different countries; and if this company were to be able to exist and turn a profit for centuries, then an analogy could exist between education and business.
Again, Bob, I like your thinking so tell me more on how the models you propose take into account the differences in children. Teachers use systems, methods, standard practices to educate the students in their classroom. Direct instruction, the model you mention, is only one of them and has been shown to not be very effective, especially in the area of higher concepts. You did mention a “period for ‘discovery,’ etc”. How would the effectiveness of this be judged? What would “discovery” entail? What would be the purpose and would that purpose connect to a standard or state goal measurable by a test?
Let’s turn our different angles into a dialogue that is mutually educational for us both and those reading the comments. I look forward to continuing our thoughts.
Respectfully,
Annette, I posted on my blog 3 business practices I’ve used in schooling. I hope they help.
http://tabletpceducation.blogspot.com/2008/10/raising-high-school-gpas.html
Best wishes for raising those GPAs this year in your high school. It’s doable!
Kudos to your principal for trusting teachers to make it happen.
This is so timely to what is going on in my district. Our district office has told our principal that he has to have GPAs and test scores that rival that of the other high school in the district and he can choose how he would like to make that happen. Free choice is a good thing – right?
In the last few years we have been working on a directed studies program where students who have 1 or more F’s are placed in a classroom with a teacher and a counselor who work with the student and their teachers to get classroom work done and improve study habits. We have data to show overwhelming success from the program by a decrease in the F’s. The district office added the statement they would give us money to do anything but the directed studies program, but our principal can do anything he wants to bring us up to be competitve with the other high school in the district.
It sure seems like we should be all working together to discover what will work for the students in each school to make them successful.
I’m glad to hear that you were working with a colleague from another school, I find that to be very stimulating and when I find my best new ideas.
Best wishes to your and your friend’s students as you teachers use some of the ideas you shared. It sounds like you take reasonable steps for students in your class.