Education Question:Well I am back here enjoying the down time, reading my mail responding to some activities in my email, browsing the web, finally taking a look at my BLOG and deciding to share a thought with anyone who may be interested.
Blogs are interesting and those I read are sometimes entertaining while others are interesting in all kinds of ways. I find learning is the ones I find myself going back to the most. I guess I have never been one to find much excitement in jokes and what others find funny. Those have always been at the expense of someone and that I never liked.
Anyway I hope you find what I write here of some value or interest that will keep you coming back ever so often to see what I’ve written.
In this setting I’d like to ask a question and I hope some of you will respond in some way be it in agreement with my comments or in disagreement and I hope you have an opinion too. You see I think this subject is one that affects all of us and we have the obligation to be involved. So here goes.
Do you think that the current education system especially the public education need to be overhauled to some system other than what is there today?
Now here is what I think, but first let me give you some background on how I come to ask this question.
I have spent most of my working career in some kind of technical involvement. I begin my work career in communication and medical electronics where I spent about ten years. About fifteen years of that time I worked closely with research professionals in higher education with PHD or Masters Degrees in most of the cases. Later I interfaced with mostly professional individuals in different fields such as education, engineering, and other fields or technical persons in technical areas such as communication, medicine and business.
During almost all my working life while holding a position in the above areas I spent lots of time in community work and trying to operate some type of business outside of my so called 8 to 5 job, such as entertainment procurer, fruit and vegetable store front, moving business, radio talk show host and DJ, internet access, manager of singing group, museum originator, and concert, art organizer and real estate broker. I have also volunteered as city historical district board member, youth computer instructor, elder support and community board member of a public radio station.
While all this make up a part of my life experiences I have pushed my children and grandchildren and any others I came into contact with to strive for the best education they could get by reading everything they could get their hands on and study math as if it was a daily prayer. I always told them it was a means to a better life and in that way they could be a benefit to their community and society as a whole.
Now with this background I come to my thoughts on our current education system. In interfacing with my own children and grandchildren I have found that the schools I came in contact with were not very friendly towards parents, especially when parents came to the school to check on their children, in fact many times the parents including myself were treated with disrespect.
That treatment caused many parents to not want to go back to the schools and especially back to face the individuals that caused them to feel uninvited.
That is just a small observation off the main subject but I wanted you to get a feel as to why I am asking the question.
Along with this attitude I come to the conclusion, based on my own experiences and observations in the schools and in the news that the school system as a whole is not doing the best job it could do.
In fact, I am not by myself in this conclusion see http://www.herblondon.org/1432/the-failure-of-new-york-city-schools an article by Herbert London who comes to the conclusion that schools need to be overhauled.
The Commission on the Skills of American Workforce has come to the same conclusion in at least two of their reports. See: http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/12/14/commission_seeks_school_system_overhaul/
New York City has been trying to improve it’s school system for years. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has announced plans for centralizing the New York City school system to adopt a unified curriculum for improvement.
Even Obama wants to overhaul the school system and has made strives in that direction. “A handful of states stand to win significant federal funding to revamp schools and impose strict testing standards under an Obama administration effort to alter educational practices across the country”. See: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125799419446144683.html
I could list others but you get the idea. So I come to my question. What do you think?
Just yesterday with family and friends over we got into this discussion and some were in agreement and others were not so there seem to be some disagreement that overhaul is not the answer yet the school system to me is a failure.
It is a failure because too many children are not graduating and of those that are too many do not have a quality high school education.
For Black students the dropout has reached epidemic proportions and many of the graduates who go on to college enter far behind white students. In HBCU colleges many students are not able to read at high school level and their math understanding is at the ninth grade level.
While the US is ranked, according to The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development places the United States 18th among the 36 nations examined, we continue to slip and our students continue to fail. see: http://askville.amazon.com/United-States-rank-education-industrialized-nations/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=21721726
Well I think you see my point. You may also see Obama’s point too here: http://obama.3cdn.net/a8dfc36246b3dcc3cb_iem6bxpgh.pdf
I am in agreement that we can do a better job but to do that we have to match education with laws and enforcement to ensure that students stay in school and that the school take charge of education in all aspects of a child’s life and provide the resources to make that a priority.
If we can build nations and spend billions supporting other nations that have a better education than we have why can’t we spend the money and make the changes necessary to enhance our most valuable asset, our children?
So I ask you, do we need to overhaul our education system and I encourage you to get involved in this discussion at all levels everywhere and answer the question with whatever passion you possess.
Until Next Time;
Gbarn
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