The discussion about public education is blessed and cursed by the fact that most adults in the United States are educated. Let’s investigate several facts regarding this state of affairs.
Fact one is this – most adults have some level of personal experience in a school and their view of education is based on their childhood experiences. On the positive side, this is a good fact. Democracy and a free enterprise economy function best with an educated populace. The nation advanced through the 19th and 20th centuries on the rising wave of the education and training of its workforce. And, the world economy in the 21st century will rest on the quality of education worldwide. Education remains a society’s best investment in its people and it is good to have an educated public.
On the negative side, this is a worrisome fact. Just because a person experienced the student’s perspective of education as a child does not mean that he or she has any insight or wisdom into how today’s educational systems work best. When I was a child, I saw as a child, thought as a child and perceived as a child regarding my experiences as a student. Now, as an adult, I no longer am experiencing public education first-hand, so I cannot automatically say, as an adult, I see as an adult, think as an adult, and perceive as an adult regarding my experiences as a child in school. An adult’s perception of his or her student experiences remain the experiences of their childhood. A child’s school experiences are not adult experiences although most adults overly simplify and summarize their experiences as a school child as if they are as clear as yesterday. They are not.
Current thinking gives great credence to a parent’s right and need to advocate for their child’s education. However, being a parent does not bring an adult any closer to being wise about public education. The wisdom of a parent really is that of two children – their experience as a child plus the experience of their child. Parent wisdom about school is a lot like the advertisement for Holiday Inn Express being a smart choice for the traveling public. “I can be an airplane pilot because I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.” One does not know more about education by being a student; one knows more about being a student.
Back to the facts. Fact two is this – it is very easy and popular today to be a critic of public education. This is very much like a person who drives a car being critical of the condition of local streets. There is a real indignation when the driver who pays taxes for the maintenance of the streets hits a pot hole. Most of the time, the driver is impervious to the street because he does not feel any of its cracks or seams. His car’s suspension and his own sense of a “ride” accept most imperfections in the street’s surfaces. Potholes, however, awake the driver’s criticism of all streets in general, just as a negative report, US math scores do not compete internationally, the high school dropout rate approaches 50% in some urban schools, or a school shooting, awakes the education critic. There is nothing like a pothole or a flash reporting of comparative achievement gaps to get critics’ jaws flapping. Like the seemingly smooth ride on many streets, the daily successes of so many students in so many schools can quickly be forgotten by a glaring statistic or singular event.
As the general public’s judgments about public education are biased by their childhood experiences and their critical eye typically is wagged by glaring statistics and flash events, national policy is further bruised by our governmental leaders’ misunderstanding of the essential and critical element in the quality of student learning – a child’s teacher. Another fact emerges. Fact three – education is not about policy and regulations or about its standards or testing programs. It is is about learning. As a teacher’s purpose is to cause learning, the presence and work of expert teachers is the most important variable in the quality of student learning.
Why, then, do governmental leaders treat teachers as pawns in non-educational political agenda and policy. One rationale for politico-educational game playing is historic. Teachers’ salaries are paid by taxpayers and school tax bills are very significant every January when homeowners receive their annual tax assessment. It is easy to point at teachers as a cause of high taxes or tax increases. Secondly, the tradition in this country is that teachers historically work nine months for relatively low salaries and teachers typically are women. Women work for less and “seasonal” workers should work for even less. Teachers are a caste of public servants.
A second rationale is Republican political-economic policy. Democrats support public education and teacher unions support Democrats. When Democrats are in power, public education is favored. When Republicans are in power, public education is disfavored. Republican governors and legislators find it easy to point at public education as a manipulative for balancing state budgets while punishing Democrats and Democratic support. Wisconsin’s recent history is more than a case in point.
The Wisconsin budget deficit was repaired by the provision of legislated tools given to local expense-strapped school boards. After state allocations to school districts were drastically reduced to balance annual state spending with lower state revenues, school boards were left with a lop-sided proposition – less revenue and continuing and increasing expenses. Concomitant with reduced allocations, the legislature eliminated the scope and power of collective bargaining so school boards were given the tools to slash health care benefits and post-retirement benefits for teachers thus rebalancing local revenues with local expenses. Reduced revenue plus reduced expenses was not a zero sum game. The real reduction was in the scope of local school programming. Diminished school district budgets typically are balanced by reductions of the districts major expense – teacher employment.
The result of the new political-economic policy has been a tremendous turnover in teacher employment. For the most part, a larger number of veteran teachers have left and a smaller number of inexperienced teachers are being hired. Let us return to fact one and two. From the adult perspective, this evolving educational environment is politically and economically reasonable. From their adult perspective with public education, these are the ways in which adults shape and direct the schools which educate their children. It is an adult view of the world and of the public education they think they remember from their childhood.
From the child’s perspective of their school and education, it is adults being adults and not knowing what really matters. A fifth grade child knows fifth grade and only gets one chance at fifth grade. If the music or the reading or the math program in the elementary school is reduced or the experienced teacher is displaced for an inexperienced teacher, the learning of music, reading or math suffers. Interestingly, there is mathematics to this change in learning. It just is not a momentary disruption or gap, it is geometric. As adults, we remember fifth grade as the year of fractions. Fractions and the ability to manipulate fractions are key to the learning of Algebra. Trouble with fractions is trouble with Algebra and trouble with Algebra is trouble with higher mathematics. Trouble with higher mathematics is loss of performance on international tests and that loss of performance yields one more flash report that is critical of public education. On a different scale, a loss of music or arts programming influences future cultural growth. Loss of reading advancement in fifth grade from narratives to greater amounts of technical reading influences future capacity for understanding and inferring the detailed data required of technical careers.
When adults muck around with public education using their adult perspectives of schooling, they have the potential to create significant unforeseen and unintended consequences. There is every reason for adults who have the power to muck around with public education to invest real time to sit in a child’s desk in a local school, to get the feel of being a child learning as a child and a teacher teaching important learning to children. Real time is not the gratuitous hour-long visit to a local school with standing in a doorway listening to sounds of a classroom. It certainly is not adults sharing stories of their childhood experiences of the secondhand experiences of their children. Real time is sitting alongside a child for the continuity of a lesson and observing learning until the child demonstrates the learning objectives. Real time is sitting alongside a teacher who works through the alternative instruction needed to cause all children to learn. Real time is shadowing various children from different socio-economic strata to understand how life outside of school affects learning in school.
Real time is creating an adult understanding of how important Fact One is. All children must be educated. Real time is creating a clearer understanding of Fact Two. The number of successes in public education vastly outnumbers the flash reports and events that form the daily news. Real time is creating a non-political agenda for education regardless of the party in power. The education of the public is not a revenue and expense equation. Education is an investment in the future of people that pays dividends that greatly exceed temporary disparities in multimillion and multi-billion dollar budgets.
Education is about learning and learning is about people, many of whom are children. Education is about quality teaching and teachers who know how to cause children to learn. Adult decisions about education must include more thinking like and on behalf of real children today than about adults making decisions for adults.