Why Public Education is in Peril

Not long after I retired, I was packing away and throwing out education books I had collected over the 25 years. I came across a tattered paperback copy of Teaching as a Subversive Activity, and was struck by how deeply my teaching had been affected by this book: Early in my career, I had vigorously attempted to adhere to these principles. At my very best, I tried to teach students to question everything they were told – even the things I told them. The public education system is not friendly to this kind of teaching. And by the end of my career, I still had the attitude and tried to pass it on to my students. But today public education will beat the inquiry out of you.

According to Postman and Weingartner, students should be encouraged to ask questions meaningful to them, and ones that do not necessarily have easy answers; teachers should be encouraged to avoid giving answers whenever possible, and to avoid giving direct answers in favor of asking more questions.

The method of teaching students to ask questions is motivated by the authors’ understanding that learners need to center their attention on the process of inquiry itself, not merely on the end products, or facts. They list certain characteristics that they think are common to all good learners (Postman and Weingartner, 31–33), saying that all good learners have:
• Self-confidence in their learning ability
• Pleasure in problem solving
• A keen sense of relevance
• Reliance on their own judgment over other people's or society's
• No fear of being wrong
• No haste in answering
• Flexibility in point of view
• Respect for facts, and the ability to distinguish between fact and opinion
• No need for final answers to all questions, and comfort in not knowing an answer to difficult questions rather than settling for a simplistic answer

In attempting to imbue students with this approach to their education, a teacher who adheres to the inquiry method must act in ways that are startlingly opposed to traditional teaching styles.

Postman and Weingartner suggest that inquiry teachers have the following characteristics (pp. 34–37):
• They avoid telling students what they "ought to know".
• They talk to students mostly by questioning, and especially by asking questions that are divergent.
• They do not accept short, simple answers to questions.
• They encourage students to interact directly with one another, and avoid judging what is said in student interactions.
• They do not summarize students' discussion.
• They do not plan the exact direction of their lessons in advance, and allow it to develop in response to students' interests.
• Their lessons pose problems to students.
• They gauge their success by change in students' inquiry behaviors (with the above characteristics of "good learners" as a goal).

Good teaching can be subversive because, among other things, it challenges students to think, to question things as they are, to envision and consider possibilities. To be "subversive", we must encourage students to think outside the box. We need to teach students to desire to be life-long learners. We need to create a thirst for knowledge. The evidence that we have failed in this mission hits us in the face with every new government educational report. We have bright students, but what are we doing that causes the quality of education to continue to degrade? Why is America not at the top of the list of educated, developed nations?

I don’t know when I stopped using inquiry with conscious effort, but I know there were years I didn’t do it as well as Postman and Weingartner would have liked. I could blame my failure on burnout, or on No Child Left Behind, Madeline Hunter and five page lesson plans with stated objectives, checklists, state standards, and benchmarks. I cannot even explain how discouraging it was knowing that Central Office (my bosses) wanted every 8th grade History or Language Arts teacher to be on the same page, on the same day, teaching the exact same enumerated State Standard. I do know that NCLB was why I retired after the minimum 25 years.

The book's authors predicted that much in American education would be changing. In some respects, and it has; but not for the better. I was blessed with a good mind and an excellent public school education. The elementary and secondary teachers I remember best did encourage their students to ask questions. They also taught from the heart and with a love of the curriculum, not from a list of objectives provided by the state or central office. I can’t imagine exactly what some of them would have thought about the inane hoops I was required to jump through after the implementation of NCLB.

We have a wealth of educational technology today. The average 8th grader holding an iPhone has more information at his or her fingertips that all of the previous U.S. Presidents. But if they do not have the ability to sift through the information provided by this technology and recognize what is valid, it doesn’t do them any good. All the technology in the world will not produce an inquiring mind without someone modeling the process of inquiry.

The results of not having a questioning mind are evident in the attitudes and actions of a large majority of adults today. They hear something on TV and immediately take it to be a fact. Our society has become too accepting. We don’t ask why. We don’t ask how. We get in line and do as we are told. We give up our basic rights. We have become sheeple.

Skills for Success in School



What can a parent do to help their children succeed in school? There are five skills that must be learned to be a success in their journey through the educational maze. Your child will be in school for at least 12 years and these five skills are needed from first grade all the way to graduation. The first skills we are going to discuss are Organization and Time Management.

To find out which skills your child already has and which might need development, start a conversation about their interests and goals. Ask about their favorite subjects, which classes are their least favorite, and if they’re satisfied with their grades. Check with your child’s teacher or teachers early in the first grading period. Don’t wait until it is too late to make an improvement. Listen for clues. Use your own observations to check what they are telling you. Is the student turning in assignments late or not at all? This may mean they are having trouble organizing, or poor time management.

1. Organization: Whether it's keeping track of materials or remembering to bring a backpack home, all children in every grade need to be organized to succeed. For many students, academic problems are more a result of poor organization than a lack of ability. Here are some tips to help your child get organized:

• Make sure you have provided all the supplies needed, both at home and at school. This includes the supplies that the teacher requested and extras at home where they do their homework.
• Make a checklist of things your child needs to bring to and from school every day.
• Find out how your child keeps track of his homework and how to organize notebooks, then work together to develop a system. Check to see what system the teacher prefers.
• Try to check each day to see how well the items on the list are remembered.
• Track assignments on a monthly calendar. Work backward from the due date of larger assignments and break them into nightly tasks.

2. Time management: Time management can be a hard concept for young students to understand. Even when they have a week to do a project, many won't start until the night before it's due. It takes some experience for a student to figure out how long an assignment or project will take. Learning to organize time takes a little practice and parental guidance. Here are some tips to help your child manage time:

• Designate a time and place for nightly homework and help your child stick to this schedule. The best way to stay organized is to do their homework in the same place every night – not in front of the TV.
• The more organized you are, the less time it takes to get things done. Having to hunt for supplies takes away from work time and discourages the student.
• The secret of getting done is getting started. The sooner they get started after school, the easier it will be to get their work done. It is harder to get them started on homework if they are already playing or watching TV.
• Help your child record how much time is spent on homework each week, so together you can figure out how to divide this time into manageable chunks.
• If you start this early in elementary school, the student will have an easier time transitioning to junior high or high school. On the secondary level, they will have 6 or 7 teachers every year that might each have different expectations.

The other three skills that we will discuss are Prioritization, Concentration and Motivation. These are skills that do not come naturally to elementary school students. They need help from teachers and parents and practice to develop these skills. These are skills that are necessary throughout all their years of education and are also essential in the world of work.

3. Prioritization: Just what is prioritization? It is a big word, but it just means deciding what you need to do first and then how to get it done. Which assignment is most important? Which assignment will take the longest to finish? Which assignment does the teacher want first? Sometimes students simply don't know where to begin. Here are some tips to help them prioritize:

• Ask your child to make a list of all the things they need to do, including all their school, sports, and outside activities. You could do this with the student, so they can see that it is an important skill for adults too.
• Ask them to number or rank each task from 1 to 3, with the tasks ranked number 1 being the ones the child feels are the most important.
• Discuss each task so you understand your child's priorities. If they rank social activities as 1, then you know where their attention is going.
• Show your child how to better prioritize for success in school, suggest rewriting the list until all the 1's are at the top.
• Check in weekly to see how well the list is working and how your child is prioritizing new tasks.

4. Concentration: Whether your child is practicing 2^nd grade spelling words or studying for a trigonometry test, it's important that homework is done in an area with limited distractions and interruptions. These are tips to help your child concentrate on the task at hand:

• Turn off access to e-mail and games when your child works on the computer.
• Declare the cellphone and TV off-limits during homework time.
• It usually works best for the child to have a space of their own that is the designated homework spot with their supplies and materials at hand. 
• Some large projects like science fair projects or art projects may take a different space and materials.
• Depending on the age of the child, they should work for about 15 to 20 minutes and then take a 5 minute break. We all concentrate better when we break our work into manageable time periods.

5. Motivation: When asked, most children say they want to do well in school, yet many still fail to complete the work necessary to succeed. The reason is often motivation. Motivation might be the hardest skill to acquire. Tapping into their interests is a great way to get them eager to do well in school. These tips might help to motivate your child:

• Try to link what they are learning in school to your child's life. If they are learning percentages, at the grocery store ask them to figure out the price of a discounted item.
• Link your child's interests to academics. If your child a music nut, give them books about musicians and show them how music and math are connected.
• Don’t over manage. Be there to help, but as they get older allow them more control and choices. With guidance, let them determine study hours, organizing system, or school project topics. If you start early, you will have less trouble as they get older.
• Encourage your child to share the school experience with you. Regularly ask about what they are learning in school. Have conversations where you are listening to their opinions and allowing them to disagree with you in a respectful way.
• Show your child how to have pride in the little things, encourage new ideas and questions, and celebrate all efforts and successes.

Remember all children are individuals and the parents have to adjust to individual learning styles - just like teacher do. Often students are hesitant to try because of the fear of failing. You can help break this cycle by celebrating your child's successes, no matter how small, and by giving them opportunities to succeed. And there's no better time to start than now.

 

Improvements to our Local Schools

One nice thing about being retired is you can reflect on how things SHOULD BE DONE - I have always thought of what I would do, if I was in charge of the schools, or the town, or the world. So, since I have 25 years experience with the schools, this is some of what I would do to fix some of the problems I observed over the years.

Carlsbad School system needs major reorganization. The district needs to build a new junior high school. They need to change the districting line between the two junior highs from east/west to north/south, so the obvious economic disparity would even out. Then they could open up at least one of the grades schools that have been closed. That would make room to send the 6th graders back to the elementary schools where they belong. (11 year old girls do not belong in a school with 14, sometimes 15 year old boys.) The system would then be able to utilize the PR Leyva site as a 9th grade Academy. (Hobbs has 3 junior highs and a 9th grade academy) This would give the high school room to expand the classes offered. This would also make the discipline of students more manageable. The number of students and the large acreage at the high school makes it very difficult to control the flow of students between classes and during lunches. Parking problems would diminish because there wouldn't be 9th graders driving to CHS. The district needs to expand the elementary physical education and music programs. Physical education and music both have an unexpected positive effect on children's brain function and learning abilities. The district also should expand the High School technical, automotive, vocational, and construction classes. And to keep our children competitive in the modern world, there is a need for the foreign language department to add Mandarin to the curriculum. Much more could be done in the classroom to take advantage of the vast technological proficiency of the students. This may not be a complete list, but it is a start.

I think our local school system is full of great teachers and excellent administrators. And I know how hard the job is. This is in no way a criticism of the people who are working their backsides off every day to give our children a superior education. I admire each and every one of them. This is just a wish list of solutions to problems I have seen over my years behind the desk and in front of the classroom.