I sat at my dining room table this morning, finishing up a crossword, before moving on to what’s new in education news.
Budget cuts, great numbers of teachers leaving the profession, and frustrating class sizes are creating an education dilemma. An edulemma, if you will.
In an effort to view the current situation from all perspectives, I donned my alter ego, William P. Levitt, and found that solutions to our educational situation are within reach.
Here are a few ideas on how to deal with the coming edulemma.
Funding
Quite possibly the easiest solution to how we can save education is to remove funding. It is extra money anyway. It is excess. Schools do not need it. Some of the areas in which they are spending that money are buying novels to read, providing students with school supplies, bringing more adults into the classroom, programs for improving student skills, and after school support programs. Do students really need this? No. We can make schools stronger by not giving them money. This will force them to figure it out. Struggle leads to success, and if we lose some students along the way, that is the price of the success of others. My grandfather shared some wisdom with me once; he said he never spent time with my father because he did not want my father to get soft and come to expect support and love. No, my grandfather continued, better to learn to do it on your own. Let’s make education do it on its own and expect a high-quality outcome. It will work.
Teachers
There is not anything special about the act of teaching. My wife used to teach Sunday school and she is not a teacher. Really, anyone can do it. All you need is an adult in the classroom. Just get a teacher’s edition text book and a package of worksheets and we can support our students by not dealing with teachers. They complain too much.
Class Size
Children like being with other children. Children like having friends so being in a room with more friends will make our children even happier. In addition, most classrooms have room for 40 desks, even more if the teacher is creative. Why waste that space in the room? By filling the room with desks, and putting a student in each desk, we are being more efficient. This is good for our students. They will see us being efficient with their resources and they will take this lesson with them into adulthood.
Goals
One thing that will help our education system is to have goals. We need to write up some goals and pass them out to the adults in the classroom. Decades have been spent without goals. It is a wonder I made it through school. I propose we call them goals, targets, or standards … it does not matter what we call them, once implemented, these goals will change education. Prior to this teachers did not know what to teach, and students were unaware of what they were learning in school.
I hope the ease and simplicity of these actions are clear. We have already started along this road by reducing funding; increasing class sizes; complicating the role of teacher; and implementing well written goals. We are started, but have much work to do in order to strengthen education.
Dedicated to all the Levittheads out there.
Looks like you’re finally ready to start making policy!
The scariest part is that there are people who think these are real solutions. I got into an argument recently with one fella who was complaining that kids were not graduating with job skills (with which I agreed) and his solution was 1. require more metal shop, engine repair, wood shop, electronics-repair and hands on skills, and 2. stop “throwing money at the problem.” I asked him how he expected to fund those metal shops, engine repair tools and garage, etc., and his answer was simple: “fire some of those administrators at the big central offices.” Alas, even reclaiming one administrative salary would not sustain a teacher AND a well equipped voc garage AND its materials… When people oversimplify the problems, they easily convince themselves of their overly simple solutions.