I know that everyone sitting around that conference table had good intentions. Everyone’s Outlook probably had “Brainstorming Educational Reform Ideas for a New Millennia” scheduled for Thursday from 2:00 – 4:00 pm. Actually, for ideas this brilliant, it was a full day conflab. You really need to fuel ideas like this with donuts; cream filled, sugar glazed submarines carrying the goo of genius to the minds of educator’s who are looking for the formula for strategic educational success in the 21st century.
Ideas this big had to have a goal statement: Provide an Excellent Setting for Academic Achievers.
Mission; We will synergistically leverage high quality educational methods of empowerment to meet the needs of an ever-changing gifted educational landscape.
There was a consultant with blue-tooth power point presentations of the needs of today’s students, several boxes of cream filled Long Johns, three urns of coffee just in case a participant couldn’t make it past Starbucks and suddenly, educational nirvana is reached and announced on the front page of the Indianapolis Star. Hamilton South Eastern is announcing plans to build a school for 2000 of its district’s high achievers. I hear that the parking lot will have hovercraft facilities for the more attentive parents. I am glad to see that they will not have athletic facilities. It would be painful to watch 11 nerds take on 11 playa’s in football. It might be embarrassing watching the opposing cheerleaders taunt the smarties with “Pythagoras, Pythagoras; you’re so square. You’re not wearing underwear.”
Will somebody look at their statistics book for me? Since when did the top 40% mean the truly exceptional? Yes, Hamilton South Eastern has 5000 high school students total; 3000 academically exceptionally challenged (dumb) and 2000 academically exceptional (not quite as dumb). Or is that exceptionally academically challenged? Adverbs were always so hard to keep track of when strung together.
If truth be known, this is all a result of a school corporation pushing through a tax increase last fall. They have more money than God now and this is how they plan to spend it. More power to them. It is just a stupid idea. I have long argued that school was just day prison for kids. They have metal detectors, armed guards, and lock downs. Now Hamilton South Eastern has chosen to Balkanize them. Keep the Sneetches apart; creating gangs rather than community.
Some will contend that the gangs already existed and this recognizes the facts and lets each gang concentrate on what they do best; the brains learning geometry, the “rest” texting and rolling spliffs. Wouldn’t the “rest” benefit from learning how much weed it takes to fill a tube of a certain length and radius? There’s a story problem for you.
What is wrong with education? I don’t know. But I suspect that much of it could be solved by making schools much smaller, and integrated socially, academically, and racially. Rigor in curriculum would help too. It seems that there is more education with a C and maybe a D in calculus than an A in underwater basket weaving. Motivation would be a problem. Yet, motivation comes in many forms and with an all day educational summit, this problem could be overcome.
The Hamilton South Eastern example is a small symptom of the issues that have come together in a firestorm of debate that started in Wisconsin and is everywhere in the media now. Teachers are paid too much. Teachers are not paid for merit but for longevity. Administrators make too much. There are too many administrators. Classroom size is too large. Parents don’t care. Standardized testing is useless and it is not education. The kids are stupid. For its example, Hamilton South Eastern has decided take its smart bat and go home so to speak.
So while the education system stinks, each constituency is sure that their part of the poop smells like daisies. It appears that now this olfactory debate will be decided by the vehemence, and volume of their arguments.
Like Lord of the Flies for grown-ups. Which only 40% of the children in Hamilton South Eastern will be reading in a couple of years.
Take Care
Roger
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