Blog #9

An editiorial I found that I whole-heartedly disagree with is an editorial about our education system located here. Essentially what this article says is that Latino and African-American children are not being properly educated in Algebra in 8th grade. However, Asian and white children are at a much higher proficiency rating. It points out that charter schools have a much higher rate of proficiency in 8th grade Algebra one, and we need to change our school system to better prepare kids for college.

Now, I am incredibly passionate about education. I want to be a teacher or open a charter school for goodness sake! And I do agree with this article in that I think our school systems don't work, and that they need to be reformed. However, I don't think the race of the student matters as much, nor do I think the government can implement many programs to help, other than to completely change the entire school system. First of all, parents need to be more involved in their child's schooling. That's a given. And it's not even mentioned in the article. But that's the least of my worries.

The thing that tells whether or not these students are proficient is a standardized test. Some students are not very good test takers, whereas other students are. I could almost always get good grades on tests regardless of whether or not I studied, whereas my little brother almost always failed, regardless of how much he studied. That's not entirely fair. Also, if these kids aren't doing well in school, maybe someone should take a long hard look at their teachers. After all, the teacher's responsibility is to teach. And I can't tell you how many times I had a tenured teacher that taught us absolutely nothing.

But the thing that bothers me the most about this article is the solutions presented. First of all, they define education as the ability to get into college. Anyone can get into college if they memorize the facts and then just forget them. Last I checked, to educate someone you're actually teaching them a life skill that they will retain, not just training them to do well enough to get into a college so they can be up to their ears in debt and owe tons of money to the government. The whole idea that the goal of education is to get as many kids as possible to college disgusts me. Education should be about teaching kids something valuable and allowing them to do with that what they will. The ultimate goal may be college, but the primary goal should be learning. Let's keep in mind here that people can be successful and happy with or without a college degree. Hello, Steve Jobs anyone? I also really hate the fact that this article points out charter school that are doing well, and public schools that aren't. Charter schools are awesome, but they're alternative education. Instead of saying, "hey, here's a silver lining this charter school is doing well, let's make some more!", we should be focusing on the fact that our traditional schools are sucking pretty badly, and reform those to include more innovation and be altogether a more student centered environment. Given, that can be achieved by taking a few pointers from charter schools, but we need to reform our entire school districts, not just implement some halfway finished government programs. Of course, to reform our schools, we'd actually have to be funding them. But that's a whole other argument...