Headed Down East

If you want to know about water, then why is the fish the last one asked?

By the time students reach high school they have maintained the same “career” for longer than most adults ever will.  Students graduate high school with thirteen or more years of analyzing and critiquing teachers and their practices.  So why do we teachers (and I fault myself, too) rarely ask the experts what they think about schools?  Fortunately, when my students were asked to write about what they felt were important domestic issues in America today a few of them wrote about education.

Andrew examined the logic behind Connecticut’s standardized test that is one part of the national No Child Left Behind program.  He writes:

Everyone today has their opinions, yet most agree there are inherent problems with both public and private education in America today. When “No child left behind” was passed many were outraged. Basically the problem in No child left behind is that when each school district is required to issue CAPT tests, the schools with good scores recieve more funding, while the worse scoring schools recieve less funding. This whole system is completely STUPID, it takes funding away from where it is really needed and distributes it unevenly where it will not be used as well.  New ideas to reform the education system include completely revamping the way we teach, and redistributing funding to states rather than local district funding. (Andrew’s Blog, 12/15/2006)

Andrew’s summary of NCLB is brief, but cuts to the core of one of the main criticisms of the act in that it does not properly or accurately redistribute funds for education.  Education reform is typically conservative and ill directed.  Rarely does real reform occur.  Andrew states that “New ideas to reform the education system include completely revamping the way we teach.”  This couldn’t be more true, and especially in a time when there are so many technological tools at our disposal to truly revolutionize education.  It’s time for significant change, not politically correct change.

Another student of mine, Jesse, took a more reflective look at what education does versus what it should do:

Education is still an issue - uneducated poor, uneducated you, uneducated youth. This is my stance: most of us are not educated enough. Those who want to learn have to teach themselves. Most are caught in a life they didn’t create, told what to want, where to go, why they shouldn’t stray.

I want to learn how to love, how to live, how to be a man, how to dance, how to play music and make art - I want to learn things that change how I look at the world, things that give me power over myself, knowlege of myself, acceptance of myself. It seems like i’m taught to not accept my life, but to always be looking for something more - money so that one day i’ll have a safe and soft place to be. But i’m not taught to be, i’m taught to become. 

The world today does not know enough about what matters. We don’t know how to live without watse. We don’t know that we don’t rule the world. Mankind was not meant to be king, we put that on ourselves. And that has brought us problems. We live like the earth is ours to use, like the earth was made for us to live on it, like we know now how to live, as if we know what is best for us. “There is no higher power than man” we say, and so we guide ourselves, as if we know the way to go.

We don’t, but we can learn. (a big log, 1/21/2006)

These responses may not be loaded with evidence, but they contain a raw honesty that adults by and large have difficulty tapping into.  Students are professional learners with a keen awareness for good teaching practices and are individuals with nothing to lose by speaking the truth.  They do indeed have something to offer that we cannot.  Listening to that source and incorporating it into the larger discussion about education reform will be invaluable to the future of America’s schools.