I am fed up with people’s unending numb-skull suggestions on education reform, and I’m about to offend some people in that regard. <\/p>\n
Check your twitter feed, your facebook streams, your other snorking tools over a period of time and you’ll see the occasional comment on either what is wrong with our system of education, or what can be done to fix some problem or another. If you’ve got nothing along these lines in your recent snorking streams, try an experiment: Put up a facebook post, or send out to the twittosphere a tweet that brings up something about the education system. With that bait, you’ll see what is annoying me. You are no more able to identify the problems in the educational system of the US or elsewhere than a lawyer or bank manager or truck driver is to identify flaws in what Physicists call their “Standard Model” (how everything works) and your lame-brained idea of how to fix your delusional concepts of what is wrong are no more likely to work than some dumb-ass perpetual motion machine. <\/p>\n The only difference between physics and the system of education vis-a-vis the crap you are thinking is this; Physicist’s have a simple answer to your suggestions: “Show me the math. Oh, you don’t have that worked out yet? Then get back to me later on that…” The field of education has no such easy answer. <\/p>\n I first realized that every single person on this planet has a) thinks they have identified what is wrong with our system of education and b) thinks they know how to fix it, while I was sitting in the audience at a Skepchick Track panel at CONvergence three years ago, and five or six people in a row … representing humanity in general (I should note that all were audience members) felt the need to stand up and regale the rest of the room with their wisdumb and experience regarding the American System of Education. There were actually people who were using their own personal experiences in high schools in the 1960s as a reference to make their point about what is wrong with “teachers these days.” There were actually people who prefaced their mumbled missive with something like “I am not an expert in this field” and then, instead of just listening to themselves say what they just said and sitting the hell down, they followed that with a, “… but …” and then, annoyingly, kept talking. OMG.<\/p>\n None of this would be more than mildly annoying except for the transition that I’ve noticed over the last few months, with the last straw coming at me via a tweet from the National Center for Science Education.<\/p>\n Here’s the thing. Our system of education in this country has remained the same or gotten worse in most measures, objectively and scientifically. What are the major trends behind this? There are two, with the second one having very specific consequences, although there are many other factors. Trend one: More kids are being filtered out of public schools, or, in the case of comparative statistics, kids are being differentiated between public and charter schools, with the charter schools, being fully filtered, making the public schools look bad and, probably, be bad. Trend two: Less and less money per student, and the specific consequence is larger class size.<\/p>\n How do we fix this? Money. <\/p>\n Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. <\/p>\n Spend. More. Money. On. Education. Not less. More.<\/p>\n All the other ideas everyone has are pretty much useless as long as the per capita spending relative to inflation stays the same from year to year except in those all to frequent years when it goes down. <\/p>\n The shift that has happened in recent months, maybe a bit longer, is that this part of the process has been left out of the conversation. Over the last 8 weeks I’ve listened to two major interviews or panel discussions by top educational experts on how to improve education, and neither one once mentioned either funding or class size. The assumption is, apparently, that these will not change. If you mention funding you will probably run into the phrase “taxes” and everyone has been beaten into submission in regards to taxes. Taxes will never, ever, ever be raised again in the United States. They will only go down now and then when a tax cut for privileged individuals or powerful corporations is arranged. So mentioning taxes is a big no-no. Thus, class sizes can not be mentioned either.<\/p>\n And this tweet from the NCSE sent me to an on line article at Oxford American where average citizens are being asked to say how to improve the system of education, in which it is said:<\/p>\n What matters most about education is what you choose to teach and how you choose to teach it. That seems almost axiomatic to me, so it’s strange that so much of the intense ongoing debate about education ignores these topics and focuses instead on structural issues like teacher tenure, administrative control of schools, and class size<\/strong>.*<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Emphasis added. <\/p>\n First, no one is talking any more about class sizes. And, if they are, how is it that class size is a “structural issue” like “administrative control of schools”? Has the most fundamental variable in teaching and learning just been thrown under the big yellow bus? One on one tutoring vs. large lecture, vs interactive lab groups? Number of students requiring individual attention per tech er in a class of N individuals? Structural? No, I don’t think so.<\/p>\n The problem with our system of education is obvious: We have stopped talking about the problems with our system of education and rather engaged in some sort of cynical semi-professionalized circle jerk. The way to solve this problem is obvious. Give up. Or, see above. The parts about money. And taxes. <\/p>\n _________________________ I am fed up with people’s unending numb-skull suggestions on education reform, and I’m about to offend some people in that regard. Check your twitter feed, your facebook streams, your other snorking tools over a period of time and you’ll see the occasional comment on either what is wrong with our system of education, or … Continue reading I am fed up with all this talk about education reform. Coming from you.<\/span>
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\nI promise you, whatever you are thinking is wrong with the system of education is either something that simply isn’t true (and you don’t know what you are talking about) or it is something that has been noticed.1<\/sup> You have nothing to bring to the table that wasn’t already there. And, there is little doubt that any suggestions you might have to make things work better are useless, dumb, stupid, or if they are good ideas, they are already being done. <\/p>\n
\n1<\/sup>Obviously I’m speaking here to people who are not in the education field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"