Students Getting Dumber: The Sky Has Always Been Falling

Here’s a few relevant tidbits on this subject from the news….

Item: “Our standard for high school graduation has slipped badly. Fifty years ago a high-school diploma meant something. . . . We have simply misled our students and misled the nation by handing out high-school diplomas to those who we well know had none of the intellectual qualifications that a high-school diploma is supposed to represent…and does represent in other countries.” — Historian Arthur Bestor

Item: The New York Times gave a social studies test to seven thousand college freshmen nationwide. Only 29 percent knew that St. Louis was located on the Mississippi; only 6 percent knew the thirteen original states of the Union. Some thought Lincoln was the first president. The results, the Times reported, revealed a “striking ignorance of even the most elementary aspects of United States history.”

Item: The National Association of Manufacturers reports that 40 percent of high school graduates could not perform simple arithmetic or accurately express themselves in English.

Item: Harvard’s Board of Overseers, shocked at entering students’ preparation, published samples of freshman writing to demonstrate how badly high schools prepared students. The Harvard professor who authored the report wrote that there was “no conceivable justification for using the resources of Harvard College” to instruct undergraduates who were unprepared for college work. Another Harvard report, five years earlier, shows that only 4 percent of students who applied for Harvard admission could write an essay, spell, or properly punctuate a sentence.

Oh, I forgot to give the dates for these news items. They come from (in order) 1958, 1943, 1927 and 1896, and are quoted in the book The Way We Were?

When it comes to what teens are learning, not only is the sky falling, it’s always been falling. A typical example is Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn’s 1980s book What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? The book concluded that “if there were such a thing as a national report card for those studying American history and literature, then we would have to say that this nationally representative sample of 11th-grade students earns failing marks in both subjects.” What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? got lots of press attention and is still pretty commonly cited today.

An academic got curious about What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know?, and did the research to find if similar questions had been asked of national samples of 17-year-olds in the past. Many questions (of the “who was the general at Yorktown?” sort) turn up again and again on these “what do our students know?” tests, so she was able to use the results to compare how 1980s students compared to previous generations when asked the same questions.

The results – which did not get lots of press coverage – showed that high-school students know just about the same amount of history today as their grandparents’ generation of high-school students did. (“What Have 17-Year-Olds Known in the Past?” American Educational Research Journal 25,4: 759…780)

Actually, the current generation is probably less ignorant than previous generations. Six decades ago, only elite 17 year olds were still in high school… most 17 year olds were working. According to the book Setting the Record Straight, “In 1987, 83 percent of U.S. students graduated from high school on time. In 1964, the rate was around 70 percent; in 1944, about 45 percent; in 1933, about 30 percent; and in 1917, about 15 percent. That the overwhelming majority of teenagers today know what only an elite were exposed to 50 or more years ago is quite remarkable.”

There’s no doubt that some public schools are terrible. But overall, American public education does a pretty spectacular job of educating a wide range of the population. The need to improve the worse schools (which is real, and essential) shouldn’t blind us to our system’s successes.

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56 Responses to Students Getting Dumber: The Sky Has Always Been Falling

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  5. 5
    The Countess says:

    Hi, Barry. I thought you’d find all this interesting:

    “U.S. high school students who took the SAT in 1999-2000 posted the highest math scores since 1969… The fact that math scores have been regularly increasing and that verbal scores have remained constant despite the ever-broadening population taking the test suggests that those who claim that schools are in crisis in the United States are not telling the truth.” [Figures from College Entrance Examination Board, Princeton, NJ. Article 08/30/2000 BOSTON GLOBE A01]

    “Culminating a decade of steady improvement, US high school students who took the SAT this year posted the highest math scores since 1969, according to scores released yesterday.”

    “Nationally, the SAT scores released yesterday continue a roughly 10-year trend. Scores declined throughout the 1970s and early 1980’s, but they stabilized in the mid-1980’s and have risen steadily since then. Many attribute the initial drop to the fact that a far larger and more diverse group began to take the test.” [SAT math scores best since 1969 Figures reflect steady US climb; Mass. students keep up the pace; The Boston Globe; By Scott S. Greenberger, Globe Staff, 8/30/2000]

    “Andrew Cherlin and his colleagues studied random samples of over 11,000 children in Great Britain and over 2,200 children in the U.S., using information gathered on parents’ and teachers’ reports of behavioral problems and the children’s reading and math scores. They statistically controlled for the children’s social class, race, the children’s early behavioral and test scores, and factors such as physical, mental, and emotional handicaps as assessed by physicians.

    After controlling for those factors, boys of divorced parents scored as high as boys from intact couples on the behavioral and academic tests. For girls , there was a small residual effect, apparently caused by the divorce itself, on their parents’ and teachers’ ratings of their behavioral problems.

    This work implies that most of the problems we see in children of divorced parents are due to long-standing psychological problems of the parents, the stresses of poverty and racism, disabilities the children themselves suffer, and so on.” [Mahony, Rhona, Divorce, Nontraditional Families, and Its Consequences for Children
    http://www.stanford.edu/~rmahony/Divorce.html,
    citing to Cherlin, et al., Science, 1991, June 7, 252 (5011), pp.1386-89]

    “Children of divorced homes with high grade point averages have mothers with a lower level of depression, a higher educational level, less conflict with their ex-spouse, and less intense levels of conflict between mother and child than those children with lower grade point averages.” [McCombs, A., & Forehand, R. (1989). Adolescent school performance following parental divorce: Are there family factors which can enhance success? Adolescence, 24, 871-880.]

  6. 6
    Magis says:

    Just because the scores are as high doesn’t mean they haven’t dumbed down the tests. It’s true that the sky has always been falling and the kids of today aren’t as good as the kids of yesteryear.

    That said, the “dumbing down of America” is a real problem but it is more the fault of higher-ed than public-ed.

  7. 7
    RonF says:

    If I had the power to make one change in the American high school educational curriculum, I would add at least one semester of formal logic as a requirement for all graduating Seniors. Probably stick it in first semester Sophomore year. Hopefully it would help with evaluating much of what politicians (of all stripes), advertisers, and various advocacy groups are trying to tell them.

    If I could wave a magic wand and do something to improve the American educational system as a whole, I would set up a system by which teachers could be evaluated independently of the income, social class, etc. of their students. This would be what I consider the thing most necessary to enable school districts to get rid of inadequately performing teachers. Which will not protect the kids against inadequately performing parents, which I what I think the #1 problem in American education is, but I think the only way to change that is through Divine intervention.

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  9. 8
    Meteor Blades says:

    Couldn’t agree more, Ron.

  10. 9
    Melinda says:

    Ron,

    I think you’re on to something. The other issue I have with current public education is the tendency to “teach” to the standardized tests that students are required to take.

    Last year my dauther’s teacher spent six months teaching the Leap Test, and not really teaching the curriculum. This made my daughter lose interest in school and caused her grades to slip a bit. Scores may be coming up, but does that truly reflect an increase in the level of education, or a system that has figured out how to fool it’s watchdogs?

  11. 10
    Lauren says:

    It’s been reported that the public education sky is falling every decade since the public schools began. The sky has always been falling, but lo, look at all the successful adults in the United States. One has to wonder where all dem stupid people are.

  12. 11
    Elena says:

    “There’s no doubt that some public schools are terrible.”

    Actually, there is plenty of doubt that public schools are terrible. I have doubted this for a very long time. I have never been able to reconcile what I experienced in public school as a student and substitute teacher and what I observed at a few elite private schools in Latin America with what everyone seems to accept as gospel truth: US public schools suck.

    I am suspicious that people who have no personal knowledge of public schools accept completely the claims that public school teachers are incompetent, when anyone who has ever dabbled in teaching knows that it is private schools that have relaxed standards for teaching credentials. As for claims of US students fairing poorly compared to students in other countries, well I’m just not buying it. I find the claim that the average 17 year old in India, with its overwhelming problems of poverty and homelessness are doing better academically than the average 17 in this country. It simply doesn’t make sense.

    I have read that international comparisions are invalid because they generally allow each country to use its own measurements. Thus, Germany may test 18 year old seniors, while US seniors are 17. Another country may test only elite school students. Still other countries have customs or economics that effectively keep low performing students out of school. If you think about it even a little, these international comparisions beg a lot of questions which I never see brought up when they are discussed.

    I wish that anyone who shoots her mouth off about how awful our teachers and schools are would spend some time in a public school, because I am almost certain that most of them haven’t, at least not as adults.

  13. 12
    jrochest says:

    One has to wonder where all dem stupid people are.

    Without wishing to join in public-school bashing, I’d have to say “In my first year English classes”.

    Really. When the best-of-the-best to graduate from high school arrive at university without the ability to write a simple grammatical sentence, there’s something wrong. I don’t care how they perform on standard tests: if I was to cut and paste randomly chosen snippets from my current crop of papers, the hoots would be overwhelming. I wouldn’t: it would be unkind and disrespectful, but still.

    I suspect it’s because they’re taught, over and over again, that English is for Stupid People and that they will never need any advanced literacy skills: only math and science count. And, of course, they plagiarize everything from grade 8 on, so if you give them an exam booklet, a pencil, an hour and a relatively simple topic, they’re unequipped to produce anything but wibble.

    Endless, endless amounts of badly spelt, badly argued, ungrammatical wibble, at that.

  14. 13
    Elena says:

    People who are good writers underestimate what a very difficult skill this is to master. I always try to remember that many GI’s who fought in WWII were illiterate. I’m certain most frosh English students of yore were’t Hemingway either, but surely the increased access to higher education has contributed to a percieved drop in standards, when overall people are more educated.

  15. 14
    Lauren says:

    I’m certain most frosh English students of yore were’t Hemingway either, but surely the increased access to higher education has contributed to a percieved drop in standards, when overall people are more educated.

    Exactly. Looking at IQ scores from WWII era and today, our great-grandparents shouldn’t have been able to leave the house unchaperoned sans helmet.

  16. 15
    RonF says:

    I was one of the brightest high school kids around when I was in high school, but I sure didn’t learn to write.

    When I went to college, I was taking a course of study that concentrated in math and science. I took a course in “Fantasy and Science Fiction”, to satisfy the school’s requirement that among all the courses that one took at school during your 4 years, two had to be “Humanities” courses (a.k.a, courses where the books had no equations).

    The syllabus was for each of us to read a book or two assigned by the professor and write a 2 or 3 page paper on it. The professor would grade the papers, and we would then discuss them. After the first couple of weeks, the professor strode in and announced, “I’ve read all your papers”. She then threw them across the room, in a grand scatter. We were informed a) although we were at one of the finest universities on the planet, none of us could write, b) we all thought that the way to write impressively was to write long sentences with multi-syllabic words, 3) we were all going to learn how to write a simple declarative sentence, and 4) the course was going to turn into a writing course for the next 6 weeks to accomplish this aim.

    She was right. On all counts, as it turns out. We still read the books and wrote the papers, but at least half the grading and discussion focused on the writing, not the literary criticism. And I developed a skill that, when I take the time to edit, still stands me in good stead long after the technical skills I learned became outmoded.

  17. 16
    RonF says:

    I am not among those who make a blanket declaration that American public schools suck. My kids did quite well; both are engineering students at first-rate schools. I was discussing this with the school board president when she told me that this was because “you have expectations of your kids”. Her belief was that the major reason kids in our district’s schools were not meeting standards was due to a lack of effort and dedication on the parts of the parents.

    It’s my thesis that American students are not learning as much as their international counterparts because they are not pushed as hard by their parents as people in foreign countries do/are. When I interview kids for entrance into MIT, I talk to a very disproportionate number of Chinese and Japanese kids. Why? Are they genetically smarter than American kids? No. Your typical oriental Mom and Dad think getting A’s is more important that getting scoring records, and getting tutoring is more important than getting an X-Box.

    I work with a lot of kids. I’ve heard too many American parents say, “I didn’t do all that well in school and I turned out O.K., so my kid should be all right.” I’ve never heard an Oriental kid’s parents say that. American public schools have their problems, all right; the biggest one is that the kids’ parents don’t respect the concept of education and the schools enough to keep their kids’ goals straight and to get involved in the schools enough to keep them straight.

  18. 17
    RonF says:

    Hm. I tried to put [ /rant ] at the end of my last posting, with angle brackets (and spaces), but it didn’t work.

  19. 18
    La Lubu says:

    If I could change one thing about public school education (as a parent of a child in public school), I’d make all the schools year-round—no three-month summer break. My daughter is in kindergarten, and I worry about her falling back during the summer months. I”m also worried about being able to find a place for her to be during the summer that is at least partially educational—not just fun and games.

    It’s maddening to me that even at this point in time, the school schedule (both yearly and daily) is still geared toward that miniscule portion of the population that has a stay-at-home parent. You’d think that by now, at least half the schools in at least the bigger districts would be geared to coincide with the typical working schedule (which doesn’t include summers off), no?

  20. 19
    Shell says:

    If I could change one thing about the education system in this nation as a whole I would arrange to fund all public schools equally – and that means taking into account the *higher costs* in some areas but not parcelling the bucks out according to local whim and incomes. If folks want their kids to get more & better schooling they’d have to either pay for it separately or work to increase the funds & capabilities of public schools in general.

    As far as grading teachers – part of the problem has been that many of the people evaluating teachers for tenure don’t know what teaching is all about. And, at least at the high school level, some don’t care…so long as the candidate can also coach.

    I don’t know how it is now, but when I was in high school my pop described the public high schools as “strangling on jocks.” I do know that, whether you can describe it as “strangling” or not, cross this great nation entire small towns and rural school districts live & breathe high school football & basketball…

  21. 20
    JustaDog says:

    Good post. As you read it and think about the public school system, sing that little jingle “Look for, the Union Label…”

  22. 21
    Robert says:

    One has to wonder where all dem stupid people are.

    Easy.

    My own opinion of the public school system has undergone evolution in response to having actual data from having kids in it. (Let’s just erase everything I wrote on the subject from 1986 through 1998.)

    They try. They really try hard. Lots of them succeed. Although the overall public system functions quasi-adequately, there are some terrible systemic problems. By and large they are not caused by the people actually working in the schools. In no particular order:

    a) Uninvolved/disinterested/not-MY-kid parents.

    b) Union leadership – NOT rank and file – who are grossly out of touch with the real needs of teachers in the trenches.

    c) Geographically-based funding that is oriented towards institutions, rather than needs-based funding that is oriented towards individuals.

    d) Thoroughly broken compensation systems that pay you better for being an quasi-educated goof-off than for turning in spectacular results.

    e) An ed-school infrastructure that is out of touch, rent-seeking/gatekeeping/corrupt, and deeply, deeply flawed in its pedagogical technique.

    f) Related to (d), a career system that does not attract qualified individuals to be teachers.

    I feel a blog post coming on…

  23. 22
    Rachel S says:

    Great post……the recent National Literacy results also indicate that people are more literate than ever. I also object to some of the English professors statements. I do have some poor writers, but for the most part they are average.

    However, the other posters do note the need for education that doesn’t just teach to standardized tests. That is the biggest problem as I see it– writing, logic, critical thinking, and some basic life skills are lacking in many school systems. Nevertheless, the kids I have who went to private schools really don’t seem to be any better prepared for college than their public school counterparts.

    Just a few rants…..good post….good comments…..

  24. 23
    Rebecca E says:

    I do think something could be gained from teaching the mechanics of writing. I learned more about grammar in my high school German class than in all the years of English and grammar leading up to it….I remember elementary school “Language” being mind-numbingly boring copying of sentences out of a book, learning that there was a subject and a predicate and that was a sentence goshdarnit!! I was a kid who read a lot, so I picked up a lot by osmosis, but I didn’t know why sentences worked the way they did.

    In ninth grade I had an epiphany when the German teacher spoke about direct objects and the like. “So that’s what they call those!” When I went to college majoring in creative writing, there were still a few students even in that program who couldn’t seem to grasp punctuation.

    But a lot of the comments here seem to drive home what I’ve noticed about public schooling. It’s like a sewer…what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

  25. 24
    Brandon Berg says:

    U.S. high school students who took the SAT in 1999-2000 posted the highest math scores since 1969

    Does that take into account the recentering? By 1995, the median score had fallen to around 900 points, so the test was recentered to move the median to 1000.

  26. 25
    Lauren says:

    Robert, I’ll take a dig at Kos anyday, but your tome against the public school system is going to take a lot more than baseless assertions and “because my kids ‘re in it.” Waiting for that blog post.

  27. 26
    Brandon Berg says:

    Looks like the SAT trends the Countess (1) mentioned did account for the recentering. Here are the data (PDF). Math scores bottomed out in the early ’80s, and verbal scores bottomed out about ten years later. I’m not sure how they control for difficulty across different years, though, assuming that they don’t reuse questions. Interesting that boys did better on average in both sections (particularly math), but took the test in significantly smaller numbers (about 7/8 as many boys as girls).

  28. 27
    sacundim says:

    Ah, this is going to be a long one.

    RonF writes:

    If I had the power to make one change in the American high school educational curriculum, I would add at least one semester of formal logic as a requirement for all graduating Seniors. Probably stick it in first semester Sophomore year. Hopefully it would help with evaluating much of what politicians (of all stripes), advertisers, and various advocacy groups are trying to tell them.

    Oh, yeah, sure. Next time I turn on the TV, I’ll make sure to dig out my good old Enderton textbook, and review Gödel’s proof of the completeness of first order logic. Fox News, here I come!

    jrochest writes:

    When the best-of-the-best to graduate from high school arrive at university without the ability to write a simple grammatical sentence, there’s something wrong.

    *sigh* Yet again, somebody who hasn’t studied linguistics misuses the word grammar. Not that I doubt that you’ve encountered students that fail to meet your standards about writing skills, but I’m pretty confident already that you’ve failed to understand what your standards are, what they entail, and how students fail to meet them.

    Elena writes:

    People who are good writers underestimate what a very difficult skill this is to master.

    Yes. Absolutely. It requires one to master an archaic language that, strictly speaking, nobody has ever spoken, because (a) it is exclusively written, and (b) its written norms mix and match things that, when you look at when they were part of the spoken language, are often separated by centuries. I mean, English spelling is still stuck before the Great Vowel Shift back in whichever century that was (sometime between the 14th and 16th), but the syntax and morphology are from considerably later.

    Child language research tells us that children do not reliably learn a language from just listening to it, or seeing it used in the TV; they require first-person interaction in that language. When we expect a child to learn to write English “grammatically,” we’re, in effect, asking them to be bilingual in a language that nobody speaks. And of course, we’re trying to make them learn this other language under the misconception that we’re just teaching them to write the language they already speak. Now that’s not going to help, isn’t it?

    And then, of course, there’s the whole thing about how written communication is systematically different from oral communication. I don’t remember being taught much of this in my English classes; I mean, all we did was to waste our time on the little stuff, like where to put commas if you don’t want English teachers to balk at your writing, which grammatical constructions that have been used by all of the writers of the English literary canon are the ones that thou shalt never use, and so on. Or to put it this way: the overall premise of the curriculum seemed to be that writing correctly consisted of not doing certain things. Yeah, right.

    And I haven’t even said a word about the good old canard about children who speak a nonstandard dialect at home not being labeled as such, but rather, as children that have a “language deficiency.” (Actually, not much reason for me to do so, given that I can just link to a PDF file of Labov’s “Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence.”)

    Rebecca E writes:

    I do think something could be gained from teaching the mechanics of writing. I learned more about grammar in my high school German class than in all the years of English and grammar leading up to it….I remember elementary school “Language” being mind-numbingly boring copying of sentences out of a book, learning that there was a subject and a predicate and that was a sentence goshdarnit!! […] In ninth grade I had an epiphany when the German teacher spoke about direct objects and the like. “So that’s what they call those!”

    The “mechanics of writing” is not the same thing as “grammar.”

    But anyway, here’s a devil’s advocate argument: if you already knew (standard) English, why would you need to be told how an English sentence was constructed? On the other hand, you did not already know German when you enrolled in that course; so you obviously needed to be told how German sentences were constructed.

    In other words, do we really need to teach English grammar to kids that already speak English? (The answer is actually “yes,” but hardly anybody can give you a good reason why; such reasons, however, do follow from my remarks about how written language is archaic relative to spoken language, and the fact that I’ve brought up nonstandard dialects.)

  29. 28
    Melinda says:

    Sancundim,

    In other words, do we really need to teach English grammar to kids that already speak English? (The answer is actually “yes,” but hardly anybody can give you a good reason why

    The reasons for wanting children to learn grammar and good writing skills are 1) Written communication is a skill that I still use today. Though I am in my thirties, I still need to be able to communicate effectively through written communication.

    The other obvious reason, imho, is that children that are taught effective writing techniques will fare better in post secondary education.

  30. 29
    RonF says:

    And I haven’t even said a word about the good old canard about children who speak a nonstandard dialect at home not being labeled as such, but rather, as children that have a “language deficiency.”

    I don’t care what kids speak at home; there’s plenty of kids in Chicago who are bi-lingual because they speak Spanish or Polish at home and English in the rest of the world. But when they are dealing with the outside world, they need to be able to speak English, and they need to speak it in a way that others can readily understand them, or they will be at a great disadvantage when trying to get and keep a job. If they cannot, that’s a deficiency.

    That doesn’t mean that an accent is a deficiency, as long as people can understand you. But if your accent is difficult to penetrate, or if your vocabulary or language structure or both is sufficiently non-standard so as to interfere with communication, then that needs to be fixed.

  31. 30
    Elena says:

    RonF brings up bilingual or non-English speaking students- another reason why public schools and teachers are perceived as sub-standard. These kids present very difficult challenges for public schools, problems no private school has ever dealt with, and indeed would refuse to deal with.

    People love to say that back in the day non-English speaking immigrant children were thrown into classrooms to sink or swim and everything worked out fine. I have a lot of contact with non-English speaking refugees and other immigrants and I have come to believe that the highly adaptable immigrant children of decades ago are a myth. In times when accountability and student retention programs were unheard of, I’m certain that non-English speakers who had any difficulty at all adapting probably dropped out, if they ever made it to school in the first place.

  32. 31
    Dan S. says:

    The perpetual cries that “students are getting dumber,” however originally intended, invariably end up as weapons in the war against public education, differentiated from the struggle for better education by 1) its near-complete ignorance of sociopolitical reality, 2) its abundance of simple solutions, and 3) said solutions’ remarkable resemblance to conservative ideology: the verneration of tradition, antipathy towards unions, near-worship of market solutions, and the persistant odor of institutionalized prejudice.

    [It’s strange: millions of American work in a corporate setting, but you hear almost no public statements about how CEOs should act, beyond basic suggestions that perhaps skyhigh salaries and destructive fraud arebad. Teachers, on the other hand . . . ( full disclosure: I am one) . . ]

    Which is not to deny that pubic education has many genuine prob – but let me stop there, since there are at least five different major modes of public education operating in this country, most with a private or quasi-private equivalent. They might be best described by reference to settlement patterns, encompassing class and race and other such things. The upper-middle suburban schools (most akin, in purpose, to traditional prep schools, including the more progressive ones) and the struggling urban majority-black/hispanic schools (two sides of our de facto educational and residential segregation) are familiar institutions, at least superficially, but there are also rural, working-class town, and sprawl systems – and this is way too simplistic and out-of-date, as they are mutating right along with changing demographics , etc . . . Each has distinctive problems and challenges. A lot of public discourse seems to smoosh it all together into one school system with upper-middle suburban resources and urban poor results.

    My 2¢/3 word solution for fixing everything?
    Take education seriously.

    What would this entail? No more nonsense about whether funding matters (sure, sure, money can be easily wasted. And?* First off, lower class sizes – something which is being nibbled at here and there, at least). A long, honest look at social/economic/racial inequality and how it effects education. Some sane form of funding equalization (ie, schools in impoverished neighborhoods with high rates of social problems and disturbance, parents with little social/cultural capital, etc. should be funded at a substantially higher level than one where average income, parents’-ed-attainment, overall stability, and in-place social support systems are superb.). Sensible standards. An increase in the professionalization and status of teaching, so the field is able to attract, train, and keep even more top-notch people (this is a tricky one, since teaching is very much both an art and a science, one which very bright people can easily fail at).

    And we’re done! Right?

    Right. Instead we’re stuck with Bizarro-world policy (which granted, puts education in quite crowded company these days . . .)
    I mean some of it is the giant race-based elephant in the room, some of it is Republican hostility to public ed. (it’s public! it has unions (who support the Democratic party)! it’s work, instead of glamorous sexy power play – Keizer’s article in the February issue of Harper’s is very, very good – please read!), some of it is America’s particularly mixed attitudes towards education) . . . but all in all, it’s just stupid.

  33. 32
    Lee says:

    Just my 4 cents:

    1) Kids today have more to learn, at an earlier age, than many people who are now adults had to learn when they were in school. Computers, anyone?Kindergarteners are learning keyboarding. I didn’t learn how to type (or need to) until high school. Many kids need to know how to put together a PowerPoint presentation by the time they are in high school. I still don’t know how to do this, although I could probably learn how if I had to. Third graders are learning to look up stuff on the Internet (and how to evaluate Internet sources) as well as how the Dewey Decimal system works so they can find subject books on the shelf in the library. It takes time to learn all of this stuff, and we haven’t changed our school days or our school year to make it all fit properly. So of course a lot of things are dropping off the table. I definitely think year-round schooling is the way to go, but of course it’s expensive to implement, and unlikely to happen any time soon.

    2) Parental involvement isn’t necessarily different now than it was back in the day. I can remember hearing my elders complaining about how difficult it was to convince so-and-so to keep their kids in school past 8th grade, or about Family A that didn’t consider book-learning to be that important. I had one young woman in my class who was a stone brilliant mathematician but who struggled her entire senior year to stay in school – she was the first one in her entire family to have made it that far, and her parents were putting pressure on her to go to work rather than to earn the diploma. I think that we as a society are less tolerant of deviations from the norm, where the norm is “stay in school until you’re 18 and learn x amount about all of these different things”. A lot of kids are in school today who would have been street urchins or working alongside their parents even 30 years ago.

    3) Literacy is the new “normal”. You are abnormal if you can’t read at a certain grade level, which I think recently was stated as 9th grade, and there are all kinds of diagnostic tests teachers can use to figure out why a student isn’t reading. It used to be that you could get along OK if you were illiterate, and you were respected if you could do your job well. For instance, an old family friend can’t read, and he was almost fired last year because his boss had left him a note about something he wanted done that didn’t get done. Fortunately, one of the long-time senior employees found out before anything actually happened and had a quiet word with the supervisor, who was aghast that anybody could be gainfully employed without being able to read.

    4) I agree that written English has almost evolved into its own language. Hardly anybody speaks in ordinary conversation the way we are expected to write, yet the grammatical rules are set in stone. Split infinitives, for instance, happen all the time IRL and on TV, yet students are expected to know not to separate the verb from the preposition when it comes time to write things down. I also think that enjoyment of elegant prose is being sacrificed to the ability to answer the test questions correctly. How many times are our students asked to evaluate the differences between well-written and poorly-written sentences or paragraphs? Just for example, I could hear the difference between Bush’s State of the Union address (which was workmanlike and clunky) and Kaine’s rebuttal (which was much better both in terms of prose and delivery) – and I’m NOT referring to the content! Students may be asked to look for errors, but they are not being asked which one expresses the ideas better or more logically. (At least, this was true the last time I looked – maybe it’s changed.)

  34. 33
    Dan S. says:

    Let me hastily add that “pubic education” was intented to be “public education.”

    That’s a whole ‘nother issue . . .

    On Wife Swap last night, one of the families consisted of homeschooling conservative Christians . . . the temporary mom finally dragged their dad to visit the local public school, with the poor guy clearly expecting to round-the-clock cucumber-condom demonstrations, general chaos, constant profanity, relentless secular brainwashing, I dunno what. Instead, he was faced with what he graciously admited looked like a well-run, orderly, productive and generally infoffensive classroom environment . . .

    shakes head . . .

    The weird thing (well, one weird thing) is the potential overlap between conservative Christian concerns and lefty ones in regard to critiques of runaway materialism, etc. Wish that could go somewhere. Of course, there’s all those other bits . . .

    Elena: “I’m certain that non-English speakers [back in the good ol’ “sink or swim” days] who had any difficulty at all adapting probably dropped out, if they ever made it to school in the first place.”

    That is my more or less my understanding, at least, though all the references, etc. are packed away somewhere. And don’t forget, not only did most folks leave school a lot earlier, educational requirements for work were a lot lower.

    RonF: ” But if your accent is difficult to penetrate, or if your vocabulary or language structure or both is sufficiently non-standard so as to interfere with communication, then that needs to be fixed.”

    From David Neiwert’s Orcinus:

    Senator Roach responded by saying she was sympathetic with the whole language barrier, and that no one should be discriminated against at the polls. She went on to explain that she was an advocate of early English proficiency education, particularly for immigrant children so that they might grow up accent free. She spoke of a future of no accents, which would alleviate a host of problems.

    By shedding foreign sounding accents, she thought people would face less discrimination. It was in their best interest.

    She then turned to Franklin Yi, a Korean immigrant whom she knew as a constituent, and pointed out his foreign accent. However, she jokingly vouched for Franklin, because she knew him.

    Anyway, sacundim isn’t talking about immigration, but the fact that the dialect of English you hear TV newspeople speaking in is considered the true, real, Platonic English, from which everything else is a mere falling-off, a deviation or degeneration, while the (regular, rule-governed) dialect of English many black people speak (esp. at home) is seem as an inferior form of gutter slang. If people read about an equivalent distinction or dispute in another country, many would recognize it as odd or arbitrary, but bring it up here and . . .

    Now, there certainly are pragmatic arguments for making sure everyone masters Standard English (ironically, the horribly-named Ebonics debacle was mostly intended to do so) – for example, so that people will be judged by the content of their character, rather than their dialect, right up to the point when they show up in person and the loan/job/house/etc. that was a sure thing over the phone suddenly hits inexplicable and immovable obstacles . . . (although even that only works if you’re in the right zip codes . . .)

  35. 34
    sacundim says:

    I wrote:

    In other words, do we really need to teach English grammar to kids that already speak English?

    Melinda responded (my emphasis):

    The reasons for wanting children to learn grammar and good writing skills are […]

    You changed my question at your convenience. I am questioning the assumption that native speakers of standard English need to know the structure of English sentences (i.e., grammar) in order to write English effectively.

    I mean, we definitely seem to agree that we want to teach children writing skills. But let’s understand exactly what comprises that goal, instead of blindly assuming it’s got something to do with subjects and objects, passive voice, participles, or other such things .

    RonF writes:

    I don’t care what kids speak at home; there’s plenty of kids in Chicago who are bi-lingual because they speak Spanish or Polish at home and English in the rest of the world. But when they are dealing with the outside world, they need to be able to speak English, and they need to speak it in a way that others can readily understand them, or they will be at a great disadvantage when trying to get and keep a job. If they cannot, that’s a deficiency.

    That doesn’t mean that an accent is a deficiency, as long as people can understand you. But if your accent is difficult to penetrate, or if your vocabulary or language structure or both is sufficiently non-standard so as to interfere with communication, then that needs to be fixed.

    I’m sorry, but I don’t see how any of that is a relevant response to anything I actually said.

    You argue that children need to be able to speak English other people can understand, regardless of what language they speak at home, because otherwise they will have a hard time finding and keeping a job. The problem is that:
    I never made any claim to either to that effect or to the contrary;
    neither claim follows from what I did say;
    you confuse “nonstandard dialect” with “language other than English”;
    you confuse “speaking standard English” with “speaking English that others can understand,” i.e., you assume that this is just a pragmatic and rational matter of communication, which leaves out all of the sociolinguistics of the situation, that make it so that native English speakers can be systematically discriminated against even if they speak English in a way everybody in their community can understand;
    you fail to address the example that I brought up in the paragraph you respond to (African-American’s vernacular dialect).

  36. 35
    Shannon says:

    I agree about the ebonics, although maybe we should work on people not being needlessly prejudiced. We all should read Shame of the Nation as well because it gives a very interesting view into the schools. I’m not a great writer, but kids should be taught organization. I always get marked off on papers in college because they aren’t organized.

  37. 36
    Elena says:

    Dan S.-

    If you hadn’t brought up last nights “Wife Swap” I would have. I was transfixed by this man who thought God knows what about his local public school, and how completely he changed his mind after a tour. He even agreed that he’s discuss educating his kids there with his wife.

    This echoes what another homeschooler I know thinks. I think homeschooling is a huge decision with huge implications for a kid- among other things you’re rejecting the community your kid lives in- but she based her decision on her belief that public schools won’t let kids wear crosses around thier necks. When I asked her where she heard such a thing, she said “dr. Laura.” She lived ina great district, and her daughter would have done very well there, I’m convinced.

    Yet her misperception is not unlike other, less wingutty people’s, who haven’t been inside a school in decades. Liberal public school bashers tend to think that schools quash creativy or some such thing. I meet parents all the time who shop for schools, using some mysterious criteria I can’t discern. This is how I picked my daughter’s school: I moved to a safe neighborhood and I sent her to the nearest school. I know that every public school reflects the community it’s a part of, and I love my community. I have nothing but respect and admiration for her teachers, whom I regard as competent profesionals.

  38. 37
    pdf23ds says:

    I, for one, cannot understand full AAVE worth a shit, and I have trouble with even its more moderate forms. I think I respect it enough, but respecting it doesn’t mean being able to understand it. Black people, if they grow up in an AAVE environment, need to learn General American English (or British English, or whatever the mainstream dialect of the region is) in order to make themselves understood to those who don’t speak the dialect, just as much as immigrants do. Virtually all of them do. I totally agree that it shouldn’t be seen as any sort of deficiency. But it might justify some sort of ESL-lite kind of program, or at the very least increased attention in English class. It would be important to make it clear to the students themselves why they need the extra attention–that it’s not because they’re deficient or stupid, just that they speak a different dialect.

  39. 38
    pdf23ds says:

    “Virtually all of them do.”

    Not, “Virtually all of them do need to.” but “Virtually all of them actually do.”

  40. 39
    Kathleen says:

    I teach high school foreign language. The subject of language and communication skills relates to standards of education. In order to qualify a high school graduate as educated, we assume that they have mastered basic communiaction skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening. Clearly people of diverse linguistic backgrounds can conceptualize and learn in other areas.
    As a high school student, my father told me something to this effect :” If you are able to communicate effectively, people will listen to you even if you are an idiot. On the other hand, if you have discoverd the cure for cancer and cannot communicate it to people, it is worthless”. The point is, that educated people need to be able to communicate with each other on the same level, so that we can most effectively understand each other.
    This brings me to something not mentioned directly. We now convey the expectation that all kids ‘can’ go to college. The ADA has catapulted us into an educational system that sets expectations way above what our resources can support.
    I come from a large,multi-generational family of teachers. Teachers are now MORE educated and prepared than they have ever been. Kids are not stupider. Kids who have abilities in technical areas or athletics should be encourged to pursue those. Instead, we convince kids they, their schools, their teachers are failures because they don’t all succeed in academics. They need to develop self worth and work ethic by being able to complete somthing at which they are successful.
    It IS the family’s responsibility to pressure it’s kids to do well, to value education. Parents need to educate at home and look for ‘teachable’ experiences for their kids. The mom who wants schools to be open year round ? Holy smokes! One of the biggest burdens on teachers is that we are expected to parent kids! Educational value is something that you EMULATE in your family life. You can’t spend so much time chasing your career that you must depend on the educational system to do all the work ! Many studies done to research the common denominator for kids with anger, violence and abnormal behavior have found that kids who are overscheduled, shuffled around don’t form a real bond with an important adult who can teach them VALUES. Educational , moral, ethical values are not learned through academic processes..they are learned through example, socratic method and constant ,invested emotional support with an adult.

  41. 40
    sacundim says:

    pdf23ds writes:

    Black people, if they grow up in an AAVE environment, need to learn General American English (or British English, or whatever the mainstream dialect of the region is) in order to make themselves understood to those who don’t speak the dialect, just as much as immigrants do.

    That’s the opinion most people who understand this offer, and I’ve held it in the past myself, but the more I think about it, the less I like it.

    One needs to understand the full consequences of this position: it officializes the linguistic disadvantage of African Americans in the USA. That is, if we officially acknowledge proficiency in standard English as a reasonable requirement both for middle-class children who speak it at home and their communities, and for children who speak AAVE, we are thereby requiring more of the African-American children to have access to the same benefits that the standard speakers get with less effort and education. Or to put it bluntly, it’s a racist policy.

    Notice also that you’ve equated African-Americans with immigrants. This is an equivalence that the African-American community very strongly resents, because they perceive it casts them as second-class citizens. I can’t say I disagree with that.

  42. 41
    La Lubu says:

    The mom who wants schools to be open year round ? Holy smokes! One of the biggest burdens on teachers is that we are expected to parent kids!

    Nope, that’s your baggage, your assumption. I am a parent who reads to my daughter (we have a houseful of books….the kind of house where visitors say “holy shit! you have a lot of books!”), we do “homework” from educational workbooks even when there isn’t any official homework from school. There are puzzles, Lincoln Logs, blocks, dolls, art supplies, tangrams, memory games, counting games—all kinds of learning tools here. We go on nature walks, to museums, to concerts, art shows, the library, and all kinds of special events in the community. We study karate together too. Literally every minute of every day that I’m not at work is spent with my daughter—except for my union meeting (grandma and grandpa babysit). And I love it. I’m much happier with life as a parent than life before I was a parent.

    But what I’m not particularly happy about is the assumption that I must be a fuckup, disinterested parent if I make the slightest criticism of how the artificial construct of the school day and the school year does not reflect the reality of our lives today. Yes, our lives.

    The summers-off school program is an archaic schedule that was instituted back in the days when children were expected to go home and help out on the farm. I’ve never lived on a farm. My parents never lived on a farm. My grandparents never lived on a farm. Why the hell do we have a school schedule designed to meet the needs of an agrarian society? Most of the industrialized world has gotten with the program and has year-round schooling for children. Why should the United States be different?

    And yes, school hours should reflect working hours. Parents and kids can then have the same schedule and get home at the same time. Again, this doesn’t seem to be a problem for the rest of the world.

    But it’s ok, Kathleen. Next time I post a criticism about schools, I’ll be sure and do it under a “masculine” name, so that maybe, just maybe, you’ll actually pay attention to what I was saying, rather than shoot your mouth off with antifeminist stereotypes like “chasing your career” and how I’m supposedly not teaching my daughter any “VALUES”, because I’m not “emotionally invested” with her.

    While you’re sitting there at the keyboard, take a good look at your knuckle. Yeah, your knuckle. That’s the size my daughter’s hand was when she was born prematurely, at 25 weeks. I sincerely doubt you can conceive of the kind of emotional investment I’ve proven over the years—from the first six months in the NICU, to the three years of physical, occupational, speech and developmental therapy, to the next two of Early Start, and now on to kindergarten. My girl is now indistinguishable from any other kindergartener (‘cept perhaps with a little more savvy; she’s pretty slick), as long as her belly (and its telltale extensive surgical scars) isn’t showing. And yes, it is very much on my mind that my girl continue to make progress and not fall behind. She is at more risk of doing so than the average child. I’m doing my damnedest here, with very little in the way of resources.

    Yet, there’s one “resource” I’ll never be without—the judgement of people like you.

  43. 42
    Shannon says:

    Many black people’s ancestors have been here longer than the ancestors of many white people. There are also literary works written in AAVE, which are studied in schools. I don’t have much to say, but it’s not either or. It’s not like white students can’t read Thier Eyes Were Watching God, and have a little dialect lesson, or that black students can’t read I Robot, and talk about how the language is used there. All kids would be taught in ‘written’ English, which isn’t the same as spoken English.. Well, that’s my idea anyway.

  44. 43
    mythago says:

    I’ve never heard an Oriental kid’s parents say that.

    Talk to some of the “Oriental” parents whose kids have dropped out of school and are in gangs. I doubt they will tell you that they blew off their kids’ education or that they, unlike other “Oriental” parents, placed no value on school and achievement.

  45. 44
    Jen says:

    I’m not sure where to began – this thing got so much mileage. I agree with the comments about the schools still being focused on the “traditional” family – hours not acceptable to working parents and so on. I also agree a lot of educators are working their tails off – the key is to find them and make sure your kid finds and listens to them. I have a daughter – who now is 22 – who entering kindergarten was eager and happy to learn. When the sole requirement of the early years was spelling tests and deealing with endless substitutes as her teacher was always at a seminar – I swear she lost it – she never cared about school – it seemed to not apply to her life. The only grace to her high school career was a Science teacher I could always reach and who contacted me within two weeks of the semester beginning who kept her eyes on her and cared even though by then she was probably known as one lof the dumb kids. My now 9th grader is a really smart kid who is only finally starting to perform because he is getting the encouragement of the teachers and staff that recognize his ability. Mom – single mom, too, – only hold so much ability to inspire in his life. I need the schools support and standardized tests and all while being in the right spirit – to make our schools better – are not the true answer – it is in the true educators that really CARE about all their kids – smart and (supposedly) stupid. I’m not going to go into the past versus now scenario although I could – for instance why does my ten year old write upside down? Maybe legibility goes out with the computer but why did I write all those lines and curves in elementary school?

  46. 45
    Jen says:

    To the educators: I read back -maybe I shouldn’t have but this bit about lecturing parents for teaching kids values – give me a break – as a parent I teach values but you will never convince anyone without them (values) to do so. The schools place is to teach my kids what I can’t. My kids need what I can’t give them from an educator’s point of view – a true excitement about the given subject. Show them how history is real and exciting and revealing, how language flows forward and grows, how math can solve some real life problems. Encourage them – it might have a bigger impact more from you than me believe it or not (I’m just “Mom”). Look at the child as not just a statistic and a metric – you might be planting a wonderful seed.

  47. 46
    Lee says:

    Word, La Labu. One of the biggest factors in success in school is parental involvement, as many posters here have stated. Yes, there are plenty of parents who expect the school to do everything for their kids, but the world will always have its share of idiots, so why is that given as an argument against making any changes to schools as they are now?

    Kathleen, I also come from a multigenerational family of teachers. My husband’s family has many teachers in it, too. One of my sisters-in-law is even a middle-school ESL teacher. I am the ONLY one in my family who is NOT a teacher, so maybe you will dismiss my opinions as uninformed. As a parent of children who are in school and as the sister, daughter, niece, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of teachers, I can assure you that just about the only aspect of teaching I am uninformed about is about what it would be like for ME to stand in front of a class of children and get them to do what I want them to do. I will not go into the many hours I have spent listening to shop talk, comparisons of school districts, principals, school boards, SOLs, TAG programs, AFT vs. NEA, contract negotiations, tenure, reading recovery, immersion programs, and so on. I think I have a pretty good clue from both sides of the fence, thank you.

    I will say that the teachers in my family and many of the teachers I know as friends and neighbors are behind the idea of year-round school, as long as they are paid for the extra time this would entail, and as long as the schools had adequate climate control for the summer weather conditions. The elementary school teachers in particular are very vocal about this, because of the ground the children lose over the summer, plus it’s easier on the kids if there are no big breaks in the routine. (Not to mention the fact that the kids who need the most surrogate parenting would benefit the most from this scheme – sad, but true.) If the school year were divided into 6 parts with 2-week vacations in between each part, and if each teacher were allowed professional time to go to seminars and so on, my friends and relatives would be in heaven! Plus, as La Labu said above, we would finally be in sync with the rest of the world. Maybe we’d actually be able to give our kids the time to spend learning more art and music, and they could have recess, and maybe even spend half an hour eating their lunches!

    I agree with you that in general, teachers are now more educated and prepared than ever before. The requirements for permanent certification are now more stringent than before, more continuing education credits are needed than ever before, and so on. Overall, teachers frequently get screwed in terms of pay, working conditions, and job expectations, and it’s amazing what they are able to accomplish in spite of all of the obstacles placed in their paths. But there is a contingent in the education community (and I’m sure you know a few of its members) who like the status quo just fine and feel threatened by change, or who would rather trust the devil they know because they can only see the downside to any proposal. Maybe you’re too young to remember this, but there were teachers who resisted going to a biweekly paycheck system (you know, where the pay you get for 9 months of work is spread evenly throughout a calendar year). They were afraid that it would be more difficult to negotiate pay raises because it would look as if they were getting paid for summer vacation. Maybe this looks kinda silly now, but back then it was a real issue. So maybe 30 years from now, your argument that year-round school would be a disaster because teachers would be doing even more babysitting than they do now would look equally absurd. Just food for thought.

  48. 47
    Richard says:

    As a community college professor whose professional credentials are in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) but who teaches courses ranging from Freshman Composition and Technical Writing to Modern American Poetry and Creative Writing to Grammar and Theory of Comedy, I find it more than frustrating to read through these comments. Not because they are not thoughtful and engaged, but because there is so much to agree with and to disagree with, often in the same post, that it is impossible to know where to start to say anything. The problem of education is so big. Nonetheless, here are some thoughts I had as I read:

    1. A really good essay on the origins of the American public school system was published some time ago in Harper’s. It is on the web here. As far as I can tell, it reproduces the original article faithfully. The thesis, that public schooling was originally conceived of as a means of social control and not as a means of improving the lot of the people the system was meant to educate, is a very sobering one and worth taking into account in a discussion like this. Even if the thesis is only partially accurate–and I have not done the historical research to verifyu the author’s claims–it makes the point that any attempt to improve public education in this country should take into account the degree to which the ideological underpinnings of the system’s structure–which has not changed much since its inception–are at odds with, and antithetical to, the goals of most public school reform.

    2. The issues with which AAVE and ESL students confront a school system–public, private, higher ed, whatever–cannot be grouped into the same category except in one way: There are similarities–though there are also many differences–in the kinds of language-teaching approaches that work with each population. In part this has to do with the socio-economic, cultural and political differences between the groups; in part this has to do with the ways in which learning another dialect is at one and the same time more difficult and more simple than learning a whole new language. I would also point out that the question of how to deal with AAVE students, from the point of view of a teacher, is not so different from the question of how to deal with students who come from places where they speak an English creole, or from places like Nigeria, where students are often taught in English, know standard English grammar quite well, but nonetheless produce in their writing grammatical forms, idioms and so on that resemble the kinds of errors made by second-dialect speakers rather than second-language speakers.

    3. The question of the quality of student writing is one that has vexed me for a long time. It is true that teaching even native English speakers to write clearly and competently often has about it aspects of teaching another language. Certainly we use a different level of diction when we write for a formal audience; we use a vocabulary and syntactical structure that bears little or no resemblance to what we use when we speak; we are bound, or, rather, we have to teach students the need to observe organizational and referential parameters that we don’t need to pay much if any attention to when we speak. And there is more that could be said along those lines.

    Despite the truth of all that, though, and the ways in which what I have just delineated makes it hard not only to learn to write effectively (whatever that means), but also to teach that kind of writing, I think there is another question we need to ask. When we talk about the quality of student writing, what standard are we using and, even more importantly, what expectations do we have. Specifically, if I expect my students to write like me when they enter my class, I am being delusional; and the same is true if I expect them to write like me by the time they leave. More to the point, if the basis on which I judge the overall quality of student writing comes from the students that get A’s in my classes, then of course I am going to think that the overwhelming majority of my students are poor writers; but that is not a fair basis for judgment. The goal of teaching writing, it seems to me, is not that everyone in the class should become an A writer, but rather that people should learn to write competently. For some, their competence will be at the level that earns them an A; for others, it will be a C, and we need to remember that a C is a passing grade.

    What I am trying to get at is that the question of the quality of student writing is in part a question of the instructor’s perception. More importantly, though, it is also part of the system of questions that plagues all forms of educational assessment:

    a. Are you teaching what you think you’re measuring? b. Are you in fact measuring what you say you are teaching? c. Is your measure valid and reliable?

    4. There is no one solution to the problem of education and the questions raised and solutions proposed in this discussion will arise in any system of education, though with varying degrees of emphasis and areas of concern, because teaching and learning are messy and problematic processes that involve whole human beings, even though we like to think that teachers and students somehow leave their non-teacher and non-student selves outside the classroom door.

    Okay, I am starting to ramble and lose track of my thinking, so I guess I will stop for now.

  49. 48
    Dan S. says:

    Year-round schooling?

    There are a number of good points in favor, true – no big chunk of time for kids to stop learning/regress, more instructional time (depending on the details), and yes, for those kids for which school is a refuge from a chaotic/harmful/neglectful home life, more of that.

    But – and this is going back to my point about the different models of public school in this country:
    Both my wife and I teach in the Philly school district. Year-round school? First off, there wouldn’t be adequate climate control. Maybe after a few years . . at which point it would start breaking. Pay increases would be minimal. But those at just minor points. The big problem is that teachers would start cracking. Not everyone, of course – there are great teachers who would simply continue working magic month in and month out, mediocrities (and worse) who would continue to plod along, even everyone in between. But I am convinced the attrition rate would start climbing, as people were simply worn down at a faster rate. Fixing this would require major changes. In other circumstances, I think it might be a really exciting idea (although those tend to be places where “but they’re going to work the rest of their lives, let them have summers to play now” has a more convincing ring to it, since familial privilege virtually ensures year-round education (ie, houses o’ books, educational toys, etc,) some level of sucess baring complete screwing-up, and a safer environment to play in). If you could get it so we don’t have people being hospitalized for stress-based ailments with a regular school year (or for places where things work a bit differently), my suggestion would be to use that extra time to provide a sort of academic camp/outward bound/apprenticeshippy chunk of progressive happiness, full of exciting hands-on character-developing confidence-building real-world-applicable project-based creative stuff

    I do not think this will happen here.
    Instead, we are getting a sort of longer school year, anyway, as more and more students are sent to mandated summer school in order to be promoted to the next grade, spending several hours a day for several weeks in (generally not air-conditioned) rooms being presented with scripted curricula. Not horrible ones, granted . . .

    ” I can assure you that just about the only aspect of teaching I am uninformed about is about what it would be like for ME to stand in front of a class of children and get them to do what I want them to do.”
    That is about 97% of it, though. (No offense meant, of course – and you obviously have a lot of knowledge about teaching . .. )

    It’s an amazing aspect, though. It’s where all the ed. theories and content knowledge and ideas and everything soars, or stalls (or worse case, comes crashing to the ground). I really wish someone would make – I don’t know what exactly – a long running documentary/mini-series – about teaching and learning at several schools around the country. It would be an eye-opener for many people; I think such a thing could even have a real (if small and temporary) impact on talk about public ed. Which gets us to what Elena said:

    “This echoes what another homeschooler I know thinks. I think homeschooling is a huge decision with huge implications for a kid- among other things you’re rejecting the community your kid lives in- but she based her decision on her belief that public schools won’t let kids wear crosses around thier necks. ”

    [smacks forehead with hand] – Oy vey! I’m a cautious supporter of homeschooling, in certain circumstances – eg, parents with lots of time and resources, including extensive education or at least overall competence and the ability, etc., etc. – but like you say, huge decision and . . . ach. I’m speechless. (Although to be fair, her vaguely-Dr. Laura-inspired belief probably were standing in for a whole host of anxieties, ideas, etc.)

    People have a lot of odd ideas about schools and teaching. Why, now that is a very interesting topic . . .

  50. 49
    Kathleen says:

    Please let me clarify that I AM a female. And ‘MY baggage’ is not a judgement call.
    Please do not feel you have a corner on the investment in your child just because you have gone through so much and because you so heavily involve her in ‘quality’ activities.
    You see, before YOU judge ME…let me tell you. I ALSO had a very difficult pregnancy and childbirth. My son was regularly ill and in the hospital a few times before he was 2. That was the easy part. I did it alone. His father left when I was pregnant. My family temporarily disowned me because I wasn’t married. I had no money.
    So we ( my son and I) entered into this partnership with our own set of difficulties. Nonetheless, I have managed to graduate from college, get halfway through my postgrad work, move across the country and build a house for my son and me . I did it with no child support and no emotional support from anyone.
    I decided to become a teacher because I previously worked in social services and have seen an abundance of problems and disadvantages of kids whose parents don’t have good relationships with them. They are not unique to kids without money,with uneducated parent/s or of single parents. I decided to live somewhere where my child could be a child. In the summer he does fun stuff, that he looks forward to as his reward..like we do for our vacations. He gets to socialize and learn in a loosely structured environment, at his comfort. We get to spend time together just BEING.
    As a child I went to a year around school in California. I can’t say it had a larger impact on my value for learning and curiosity than what was fostered by my parents.
    I , too , had a different career before my son came along. Someday, maybe I will return to it. I changed and made choices that have been difficult at least and greatly sacrificial at most in order for my son to be HAPPY.
    By the way…my son also does very, very well in school. More importantly, he is very well balanced. He is tempered by the high expectations I have for him and the freedom and opportunties that he is allowed to fulfill his curiosity.
    And for the record, I am not judging you…just as I hope you wouldn’t be judging me. I don’t know you well enough to judge you. I would be remarking the same regarless of your gender. Honestly, I still wouldn’t have known it had you not mentioned it.
    What I can tell you from having worked in social services, being a struggling single parent and having studied and lived with the results of a society over projecting on their kids is that ….they just need us to BE with them…without an agenda, without a ‘goal’…just to talk about anything.
    I am sure you love your daughter very much. I am sure you want what is best for her…you realize we only get one chance to bring up our kids. I am sure that in all that busy schedule you mentioned and all those things you all ‘do’ together, that you take time to emulate the joy in life, not just it’s accomplishments.
    Kathleen

  51. 50
    La Lubu says:

    No, it’s not just accomplishments, Kathleen…but damn. As a single parent, you are probably also well aware of the ‘default’ assumption being single parent=lousy parent, and I get this attitude turned my way more often in the school environment than anywhere else. It’s maddening. I have to be SuperMom (TM) just to reset that default setting to ‘normal parent’. I’m an electrician. I’m not chasing anyone’s career. One of the reasons I really enjoy my job is because it does provide a balance; my work stays on the jobsite rather than coming home with me. The standard workweek is forty hours, not sixty.

    But the fact is, like most people, I do need to work. And school hours don’t coincide with working hours. And that is a problem for me and for other parents. Who gets off work at 3PM? There is one public school in my city that has a full-year schedule; and you oughta see the waiting list to get in there! I’d love for her to be able to attend, but priority goes toward siblings of kids already there before it gets to the general list (when they opened the school to the year-round schedule, placement was first offered to kids already attending, then by lottery). I’ve realistically got a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening.

    I mentioned similar work/school hours and year-round school because there seems to be far less resistance to either of those helpful changes than to say, funding schools equitably (as opposed to the property tax system which leaves suburban schools with scads of resources and urban and rural schools with little to none). I’m frustrated by the fact that we fund our schools as if they were a beat-to-hell used car. I’m ready for what relief I can get, and year-round school would be a good start. The battle for that has already been won in the minds of parents and probably the lion’s share of elementary school teachers. I’m not worried about her curiosity and enjoyment of learning; she has that already in abundance. I’m worried about her nuts-and-bolts skills. Like I said, she is at greater risk, and she needs all the practice she can get. A summer spent doing the same routine she’s already accustomed to would be of great benefit to her. There are many other parents in this area who feel the same way about their children and year-round schools, it’s just that we don’t have the political clout to make it happen (yet). Children aren’t really valued in the political game. Just follow the money.

    Dan, I live in Illinois, so I’m well acquainted with the necessity of climate control. Then again, adding air conditioning to schools means….more work for electricians! No, seriously—see the above statement about “beat-to-hell-used car”. I attended some of those dilapidated old school buildings with no air circulation, and it was miserable even just for the limited time of hot/humid weather we were in them. I would be down with the “academic camp/outward bound/apprenticeshippy” type of summers you speak of if I had any hope of actually seeing this in my lifetime. Hell, if we can’t get school districts to pony up for physical improvements to school buildings, what are the chances of publically funding summer programs for children? At least the general public still thinks of school as a necessity; summer educational-type programs are still thought of as “fluff”. And by the same people who bitch, piss and moan about kids running the streets all day, and not testing up to grade level during the school year—go figure.

  52. 51
    Dan S. says:

    “Dan, I live in Illinois, so I’m well acquainted with the necessity of climate control”
    No kidding! Back in the archaeology portion of my life, I was on a dig out there – high summer, middle of a cornfield, no shade anywhere except for a blessed patch of trees where we crawled to eat our lunches . . .

    Although I think it might have been preferable to the cool, shady, tree-laced dig site in NH . . .next to a sluggish, nearly stagnant river from which much of the world’s mosquito population appeared to emerge (yes, I know folks from further north will laugh at me). It was bad enough trying to painstakingly brush dirt away from a piece of centuries-old pottery in the face of that maddening, blo0d-crazed whine and constant biting – worse, somehow, I always ended up smacking myself in the head with a trowel . . .

    “I mentioned similar work/school hours and year-round school because there seems to be far less resistance to either of those helpful changes than to say, funding schools equitably”

    That is a good, practical point. It’s just in some circumstances, at least, year-round schooling in the absense of decent funding would magnify already existing problems – and it would require a decent chunk of funding itself . . .
    I’m tired of all the decent ideas that get ruined byunderfunding, lack of resources . . .

    The scheduling thing is somewhat of a problem.

    “I would be down with the . . . type of summers you speak of if I had any hope of actually seeing this in my lifetime. Hell, if we can’t get school districts to pony up for physical improvements to school buildings . . .”

    Yep. The only possibility would be pressure from upper-middle parents pushing for ever more developed and enriched children – but you’re right. Not in these circumstances.

    “I’m frustrated by the fact that we fund our schools as if they were a beat-to-hell used car. . . . the property tax system which leaves suburban schools with scads of resources and urban and rural schools with little to none”
    Agreed. Oh, agreed! Here in Philly a bit back there was an amusing moment when it was pointed out that the the state gov’t’s repeated refrain – look, all these nearby wealthy suburban districts don’t have nearly as much money as yours, and they do fine, stop whining! – didn’t take into account how many more kids Philly serves.. Not just things like relative advantages – they didn’t break it down per-(student)-capita. A-frickin’-mazing. (Well, no). That’s why I say, above, that we as a nation need to start taking education seriously, because we are just out in la-la land (which, granted, is abolutely consistant in its tilt tpwards those with most advantages.
    And rural schools – people tend to forget that, thanks for pointing that out.

    It’s a bit like the issue sacundum brings up in re: AAVE (practical little measures/trying to fix the overarching problem). On one hand, it makes sense to try to make the best of things with modest, practical, feasible programs and changes – the equivalent of clipping coupons, wearing sweaters to keep the heating bill low, and etc. On the other hand, there are the big problems that need fixing, sitting there like a big-arsed enormous rock that one has to roll uphill, at which point it will start slipping out of your grasp and hurtling right back down . . .

    Of course, this isn’t an either/or choice – we do one, and keep fighting for the other . . .

    Kathleen says: “I decided to live somewhere where my child could be a child. In the summer he does fun stuff, that he looks forward to as his reward..like we do for our vacations. He gets to socialize and learn in a loosely structured environment, at his comfort. We get to spend time together just BEING.”

    La Luba: “I’m not worried about her curiosity and enjoyment of learning; she has that already in abundance. I’m worried about her nuts-and-bolts skills. Like I said, she is at greater risk, and she needs all the practice she can get.”

    I’ve been reading Nabhan’s and Trimble’s The geography of childhood: Why children need wild places, and one thing that strikes me – both from this and other sources, -is how many naturalists (from PhD field biologists to nature writers to happy hikers) trace the seed of this particular occupation back to free time. It might have been spent in solitude or with a close companion, (either family or friend), after school , playing hooky, during the summer . . .
    And so many writers (especially women, it seems, but I don’t know) who talk about time spent in their own imagination . . .

    But of course this doesn’t exactly generalize. One of the reasons this sort of thing – year-round-school, say – ends up being like a puddle that you poke with a stick only to find no bottom is that there’s so many complicated issues underlying it – privilege, inequality, what it means to be educated, what kids need to suceed, middle class anxieties, class-based understandings of childrearing, individual differences . . .

    Oy.

  53. 52
    Lee says:

    Dan, if teachers were expected to work year-round with only 10 vacation days a year (the way many worker bees are), then I would agree totally with your prediction of more burn-out. Most teachers do not work 40 hours a week when school is in session – they work 60 or 70, depending on the school district’s extracurricular requirements, the subjects they teach, whether or not they’re taking continuing education classes, etc. Nobody except for doctors, lawyers, and LAN managers :) is expected to work those kind of hours 50 weeks a year, year in and year out. But the year-round school schedule I mentioned still has 12 weeks a year off. Maybe it would be better to have 4 2-week vacations and 1 4-week vacation – you tell me.

    But if the new idea of what school is supposed to be about is preparing competent workers for the future, then we have to change the system to accomplish that goal in the best way possible for parents, students, and teachers. I like the summer program experiences my children have had very much, and I think my county provides a good mix of programs, but my kids need downtime (or wild time as discussed above), too, and it’s extremely difficult for a working parent to give that kind of time (unless said working parent is a teacher) when we generally only get 10 vacation days a year – it’s just a bad fit. Plus, I don’t see how much down time teachers get with the current system, when they are expected to use the summers for working on their master’s degrees for their permanent certificates, taking continuing education classes, going to training seminars, or staffing the summer programs anyway.

    I should have said, I don’t know day-to-day classroom experience. Actually doing the job is a big part of the whole picture (which is part of the reason why classroom teachers get so frustrated with the egghead dream schemes from Admin.), but I am the only one in my family who is not a teacher because I have discovered during my intermittent classroom experience that I’m not good at it. I do know what it takes, and that it is an art, and I just don’t have the gift. I was mainly responding to Kathleen’s sorta brush-offy babysitting comment, which I have heard all too often as an argument against year-round schools. Yes, you need breaks from your students. Teaching is very intense, especially when you have needy children in the room. Nothing except money says teachers can’t have sabbaticals. Nothing except money says schools can’t have rotating marking periods off for teachers. And as far as I can tell, money is the number one reason why we have inadequate facilities with inadequate climate control and hundreds of thousands of frustrated people (old and young) in our educational system. If we were really serious about keeping the sky from falling, we would put our money where our mouths are and insist that the politicians pay attention. Million Teacher March, anyone?

  54. 53
    jbob says:

    Forgive me for glancing at a few posts, then skipping to the bottom to post: vita brevis.

    I regularly subsituted in secondary schools in suburban Connecticut from 1985-99, and taught intro courses in U S History at community colleges and private universities from 1997-2004. In my experience even the brighter students showed little ot no evidence of secondary school level training in English grammar, composition, or elementary standards for evidence or analysis. Lest anyone regard my experience as especially unusual, any colleague or tenured person in or outside my department would laugh and shrug as if I had discovered a dirty little secret.

    I was torn, as we all were, between not wanting to blame students for previous failure to hold them accountable and not wanting to perpetuate the farce. I can recillect more than one student who made a formal complaint to the department head that I was too tough on sincere effort, the “effort” in question wasn’t worthy of a 7th grader.

    I might close, in honor of Zappa’s line “you thought we were talkin about some one else.” by noting I sometimes see confusion of “here/ hear, their/ there, ” etc. and my favorite “its/ it’s” in some of my favorite blogs

  55. 54
    Taylor says:

    Hey! My name is Taylor and I am a freshman at the Sarasota Military Academy!
    I haven’t read your whole blog yet, but what I have read so far, I totally agree with you! School is actually getting easier for me as I get into highschool. When it should be the exact opposite! I am doing a report on education! The topic is: Should the government make the school systems and standards more stringent! So I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind me using this blog as part of my bibliography! I was very inspired from what I read!
    I would appreciate it if you would write me back!

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