Barack Obama, If I Were President, I’d Be Sure to Change These Things re: Education
Feb 25th, 2009 | 12 responses
For most of my life, I have thought teachers hung the moon. I’ve not changed my mind. I’ve been an artist in residence in the state of Colorado since 1985, and also visiting scholar and diversity scholar at various universities, and I’ve seen radiant profs and teaching assistants. I’ve also seen ‘the dark side,’ the very dark.
Tonight, President Obama spoke about education, about ratcheting up the bar …above high school only, for ALL citizens. Good. Aside from how to pay for it all. I am still waiting for proofs, not just promises. Call me Sarai the Skeptic.
But, I’d like to say this to our President: Being in the midst of watching my grown children struggle to pay for their child’s sixth grade year at Catholic school …which costs per year what I once paid for a year of college for my education
1. and seeing the future for the parents already working more than one job each… that there are only more outrageously high expenses ahead for many years… could we just stop segregating people by whether they can afford the 50k+ per year to go to a ‘good’ college with books, room and board and all else thrown in?
2. Could we see that at elementary and high school currently, huge numbers of teachers are forced by government mandate not to teach… but to literally ‘train’ the students to pass the state standard test.
3. which is not teaching to each child’s way of learning, but a slashing at the student’s longing to learn: ‘Learn this because you have to pass that test in order for the school to get rank, to compete in rankings, etc.’ We want to learn to read and write well, but the joy of learning is different than forcing compliance. Just saying.
4. What if, President, just for the school years, we stopped this ranking idea and just taught ALL children everything they needed to live in THIS world, instead of the world of governmental ranking? What if everything needed to succeed was taught instead of everything to submit to?
5 And what if ALL education at university level, too, was truly free of charge? And all books, free? So ALL who long so to go to school, to get an EXCELLENT education, could do so without being forced out. The time of the acre of land and a mule is past. How about a free quality college education, and the house mortgage paid for in full (I know, call me a Commie)?
6. What if lack of money or ransoming your life for decades in student loan paybacks, would never prevent pulling down a fine education. (When I came out of my doc and post-doc ed, I had over 150k in loans that took years to pay back. I did, and was at the bottom of the economic scale for years while raising a child.
6a. This is not a complaint, but just saying, it is a huge barrier for most who long to learn, those who are afraid they cant make it in one way or another, and money becomes the drowning point, so they say to themselves, ‘I can’t go, I haven’t the money,’ rather than, ‘How can I go, what do I have to do to learn best? I have the money.’
6b. So, what if gaining a great education did not indenture a person, but gave them best running start… without Marley’s clanking chains and money-boxes hobbling them (I know, call me a Commie)?
7. And what if all teachers were paid well to attract the best minds, rather than low paid to attract the best minds that must also bear great sacrifices in order to pursue their beloved teaching?
8. What if we could exit as gracefully as possible those teachers, whether at university or elementary or high school, who are dead ROD, retired on duty? Who put in the minimum hours, the minimum work, who hate their jobs but only hold to them for the bennies?
8a. What if indolent parents had to go to school to better develop in several ways critical to helping children to learn?
9. What if teaching ALL children well… did NOT need to be done at incredibly expensive schools? What if ‘all the best’ teachers and schools were available to ‘all the rest.’ All. All, all, all.
10. What if everyone could have quality, interesting, enthusiastic, caring, balanced, teachers who are not a laughing stock, who are not hostile to children or parents and other teachers, who are not self-interested, who are not fools, who do not have incredibly rotten judgment, who are giving far more to their students in energy, than they are gaining in energy from their students?
11. What if teachers who predate on the energy of their young students had to get a real life and make contacts and work to be fawned over by persons from their own peer group?
12. What if some university professors would NOT be paid or retained if they initiated serial sexual affairs with students year after year, using the rationale that ‘she agreed to it,’ ‘she’s old enough to make her own decisions,’ and etc, … but fail to consider the imbalances of power and the fact of ‘easy pickings’ amongst those who are young and inexperienced… students who do not have their fathers, uncles and brothers nearby and watching?
13. What if university was for learning, and there were non-university residential camps set aside for young men and women whose main goal is to party, cruise and hook up, with making classes or grades being tertiary?
14. What if the parents of the above group didn’t have to pay their retirement to send their grown children on a four year drunk and acting out?
15. What if we just faced facts and understood that much state money goes to support not learning, but other things that require no university setting to make those ways and means manifest (I know, call me cranky)?
16. What if students had to work to pay at least part of their university educations even though their parents could afford full freight… or else not go to school til the student is ready to hire on in more ways than one (I know, call me old school. I’ll take the compliment)?
17. What if it were a perfect world and I were ‘queen of the world’ and I could magically make schools always face the sunrise and sunset, and that poets would be honored with golden trophies in the glass case in the foyer as much as the athletes? And that to be an outsider would be an honor? And so many other good things.
Ok, Ok, I know. Not going to happen. But some part of each of the above and more, is way overdue for a true education in our current world. I hope much will come to pass for the better. I want to see the proofs, not just the promises.
Yet, just my two cents’ worth as a teacher these many decades: Solid education has only one directional wind: Upward. But the egos of all still have to bend over the oars and row hard to make progress, nonetheless.
12 Responses to “Barack Obama, If I Were President, I’d Be Sure to Change These Things re: Education”
Yes, I want to throw open my arms and from one end of the city square yell out my affection for my dear sweet commie poet comrade, who would race across the square into my waiting arms. But something holds me back. What is this hesitation? My schooling loans are yet to be paid off. I, too, believe in education for all as a basic right.
My fear is that there, nestled in my arms, she would forget her request to be called a commie and recoil at being in the arms of one, and there she would revert, transform into something darker, individualistic, and self interested. Suddenly she would pull out of my arms and Race back past the square fountains, back to another financial system, into the arms of another, even though she knows that all financial systems have their weaknesses and a perfect storm can bring them all down. She need only find that loose thread and pull on it, before in no time at all we unravel.
The group in the bubble got bigger and bigger and the bubble outlasted all predictions, and the greed was supplanted with even greater greed, until the greedy feed off each other, until finally there was nothing left…..except the greed, the unsatisfied type, the type that thinks everyone was in on it.
Could it be that the communists care more about education than the capitalists?
[...] Random Feed wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptFor most of my life, I have thought teachers hung the moon. I’ve not changed my mind. I’ve been an artist in residence in the state of Colorado since 1985, and also visiting scholar and diversity scholar at various universities, and I’ve seen radiant profs and teaching assistants. I’ve also seen ‘the dark side,’ the very dark. Tonight, President Obama spoke about education, about ratcheting up the bar …above high school only, for ALL citizens. Good. Aside from how to pay for it all. I am still [...]
” I haven’t the money” Are you joking? What American talks like that? We say “I don't have the money.” Be real.
So what if teachers teach to the test, also? It shows they learned something if they then pass the test, you betcha!
I guess even post-docs can have horrible ideas.
1. Most of the state mandated tests are exceedingly easy. The upper middle class white kids usually act such tests because they are so simple. Yet, there teachers complain about having to teach to them. Any 11th graders that cannot do 7th grade math should never have been promoted to the 11th grade in the first. If students will held in their grade until they master the material, then all students would easily pass such simplistic tests.
I guess making up things and giving functional illiterates A's for trying makes teaching easier but punishes the children for the rest of their lives. Any school that teaches children at grade level would not have to spent one minute teaching to the test. Schools that promote uneducated children and place social engineering ahead of academic education will always have to teach to the test but the students were not taugtht the first time.
If you make college free, you give up the ability to have an excellant education. Colleges, even easy admission directional state universities benefit from being able to flunk students out and having students decide college is not for them. If you make public universities free, then the value of those degrees goes down while the value of a private university education where academic learning is more important that social engineering will go up.
If you want to destroy the bachelors degree, then make it free.
And last, education will only improve when the impulse to put social engineering ahead of learning is overcome. If you want the public schools to be good, make them more like private schools. Students from kindergarten on should be told that it is a privledge to have a seat in a school and that if they do not want to learn, they will be shown the door. When schools are organized for the student who want to learn instead of organize to force non-learners to pretend that they are learning, education will improve.
the quesiton to ask for every educational proposal is whether it increases the academic learning of the students. If the proposal does not, then there is no need to implement it.
If you leave out the government funded college part, I'd say instead of calling you a commie we should call you a Republican. Vouchers, baby! Bring 'em on!
thanks spirasol, as always. You write like a Spaniard soul, even though I know your domecile is not there.
thanks sweetwilliam, the flower that your name copies, is sweet indeed. This American talks, or rather speaks, “that way.” In your personal lingua, I think you can say it however you wish. Teachers too can teach to the test sweetwilliam, but I believe for most students who hunger to learn, there needs to be more than the rote.
nice to see you again superdestroyer. I think the BA might, as you point out, already have little value. I think it depends on what the degree is in. And I can agree with you about the test of 'does this increase academic learning?' being central. I'd only add, what balance will it give to being able to move through the world we live in now… not ten years ago, not fifty years ago. And, for the record, I dont support quotas or passing people in coursework, who didnt really pass. There are, in my experience, some interesting civil rights. free speech apps that require a teacher to pass a student even though the student did not take in the content of the work, but completed the process. But that's a story for another time.
CStanley, nice to see you again too. I think vouchers are a good idea: For all. Yet, I do know the dark. Meaning, how money given from our pockets to the state and feds, which turns around and 'gives' it in some part to ed institutions, sometimes disappears down a black hole and does not reach the intended persons. The well-dressed who are corrupt, are, well, amazingly bold. That is something that is rampant re 'taxpayer funded' anything… and I am very interested to see what Obama will do re his assertion to 'watch closely.' In this piece I was wanting to think of a world that would not cause pain or harm to anyone, but extinct the bottomfeeders, of which there are way to many to maintain a healthy ecology in ed across the board, and to, you know me, with my daft humor, try to say something useful. I am complimented to be called a person with Republican potential by you CStanley. I am smiling.
dr.e
Hmm, with respects to urban education I would have liked President Obama to explain why head start funding was cut from 4.1 billion to 1 billion in the stimulus bill which studies continuously show that minority children benefit greatly from such programs and reduces the amount of dollars taxpayers have to pay in the future. (Mind you, I am not one who parades the banner “I don't want my hard earned money to go to anything that does not show immediate turnaround. I think that type of thinking is damning to the soul, individualistic, and just wrong). When it comes to education reform in urban schools we—foundations, scholars, researchers, policy makers—want immediate results. Even though studies continuously show that if a child has a good start and social support they will excel in school.
Additionally, there was a lot of talk about the rising cost of college, but what about the many structural issues that intervene that make school, not just college, but high school, an unlikely option for youth of color. I am deeply saddened by the number of black children killed here in Chicago. Just recently four boys were shot on their way from school and a ten year old black girl committed suicide. Last year, at 30 youth from the Chicago Public School System was killed. Something is going on here that moves us beyond discussions of “tax payers’ money” to discussions of structural violence and injustices committed against marginal groups in the US.
Just throwing money at schools or providing vouchers is not the answer. Specifically, vouchers and charter schools take money away from public schools that are already struggling to meet budget deadlines. This is not to say that I do not believe in small schools, because I do, but it is to say that the answer to fixing American schools is complex and requires a serious commitment to justice.
What I would have liked for President Obama to say in his speech is this, “We have failed inner city youth. We have pushed you to meet testing standards without the proper resources to make your achievement possible. We have failed you because we always blame your parents without looking at how we continuously under develop your communities and criminalize you. We have failed you. And as your president, not just the president of the middle class or the “responsible” class or the “hardworking” class, but your president I am going to work with educators, scholars, parents, policy makers and YOU to make sure your schools are safe and that you have equal access to resources—human capital, physical capital, and most important social capital. I make this commitment to you because we will be judged not by what we achieve, but by striving to end injustice. We have failed you, dear ones . . . but this failure will stop with me.”
Ok, well that does it Fal, the last paragraph? Fal for president 2012!
dr.e
lol, sorry to be so sermonic, just care deeply about the youth i work with.
2012 could be a possibility . . . i can see the headlines, marxist/feminist black female teacher wins the US Presidency!
I think I know what you mean Fal, about caring about the youth… I can tell what you wrote that you are not only an observer: I sometimes wish I could take people who have power to change/ fund/ stylize education– who have never been in the schools recently– on a tour of the seven circles of wasteland, sort of like Virgil did re Dante's Purgatorio. I think they would be amazed at both the insistence of goodness, and the saddest of sad… and the too often desperate need for new constructs. When I traveled with the governors' wives –all 50… I mean not 50 married to one governor, but the wives of 50 governors, (Man my dyslexia, sometimes, Im telling you… ) a few years back, we visited group homes, schools in impoverished districts, and a day care center… but we did not visit the median or the deep dregs, rather 'the model' arranged for the moment. Never giving a clear view to those who are near power to know what's what… and more so, to be affected, to register the many layers of the issues that rarelyt make newspaper copy.
dr.e
dr.e
I vote for compulsory universal education for at least elementary level. I think vouchers would be ok. Free enterprise works really well. Preschool seems to be very valuable for child development. It helps with the day care situation too. I agree that we should apply the principle of mass customization to education. Individual curriculum and individual pace.
It is absolutely essential that we teach moral values in every school. I also believe that religion is an inherent attribute of human nature and should be taught in public schools. A religious text book would include chapters about each major religion and chapters about all the rest. A true story about the history of religion in human civilization. The stories should be written from the perspective of the religions, not some watered down secular description.
My big complaint about education is this obsession with credentials that our society is adopting. I think education is vital, and the credentials are a great measuring system, but requiring people to have credential to work at certain jobs is oppressive and harmful to human civilization. Schools do not and should not have a monopoly on education. I do not do so well in school, but I like to read. I have a first class education that does not come from school. I do not have any credentials and when I try to talk to people who do, they are usually pretty snobbish about their credentials.
During the 1770s America kind of abolished the concept of a ruling class. We believe in government of the people, by the people and for the people, we don't really want a class of experts telling us what we want and need. You have an equal right to speak, but you have no right to impose your view on anyone. We need to organize our schools and our other social organizations to protect us from these doctors, lawyers and teachers who have appointed themselves to lord it over the people. We do not accept that. We believe in and serve God, the Central Orb of the universe, not any artificial class of human beings.
I believe teaching is one of the most important activities that we all do. We need to insure that we are lifting people up and not pushing them down because they have a different understanding of the truth. There is only one reality.
Which reminds me, we need to teach our children global citizenship. “Earth is but one country, and all mankind are its citizens. (Baha'u'llah) The United Nations is the greatest civilization the has ever existed on earth, it is the next generation of human civilization. The human race is coming together. The diverse assortment of ancient and more recent civilizations are converging into one universal and divine civilization. Ya Baha'u'l Abha
you know earthling09, I am not a trekkie, but just the little I know, I wonder if their planets' federation worked well. Odd day isnt it to move to sci fi to see if phantasmagoric minds have any good ideas for us.
re credentials, I couldnt agree more. There are so many people here where I live who would love to substitute teach, fill in for programs, or teach daily, who have excellent and proven expertise in business, arts, engineering, and degrees often as well … but not a teaching certificate which takes time and money to gain. When I was a trustee on two university boards, and we dealt with registration numbers and mid-career populations… it wasnt that time is money, but its more like time invested with no further real-time-real-use learning, that' seems the sticking point about going back to school to gain teacher cert for mid-career profs.
dr.e