Lately, I have seen a ton of news items outlining how the Obama Administration is going to make public education a big priority.
When Bush came into office 8 years ago, he came in offering the same explanation for the failure of public education in the US. Teachers are not qualified enough, they don't have enough training, the standards are too low, and there is no accountability. If we raise expectations, increase the standards, make teachers accountable, and pummel the hell out of kids with high stakes testing and use that data to guide our instruction everything will get better.
It hasn't. In fact, every experienced teacher I know is alarmed at the change in students that are arriving in their classroom. Each year, students arrive at schools with less background knowledge, fewer social skills, shorter attention spans, and more emotional baggage from families torn apart. What has always been a demanding job is being slowly turned into an intolerable one where teachers must not only be teachers, but parents, counselors, entertainers, and caseworkers.
The federal government and media would like to pin all the failure of education on teachers and school administration. What was once a noble profession that attracted bright, hardworking people is now the scapegoat for the failure of American Society. Is it any wonder that the United States has such poor teacher retention rates? Why
would anybody want to be a teacher if society is constantly blaming them for the failure of the entire nation?
While it is convenient to publish studies about how poor teacher quality creates failure, the real truth of it is that we have more teachers in schools with Master's degrees than ever before. Many teacher preparation programs in college are no longer true 4-year degrees, but take 5 or 6 years with a regular workload, due to increased requirements. The US
already has pushed teacher expectations through the roof in the last decade and it isn't producing any real gains.
The United States is not suffering from an epidemic of bad teachers. It is suffering from an intellectual deterioration that reaches across all segments of American society.
Here are the top 4 cultural influences that I think are devastating American education. Until these cultural forces are addressed, it won't matter how much money is thrown at education.
1.
Americans spend way too much time watching TV. Just when you thought people couldn't possibly watch more, the average household has increased to an average of over 8 hours of TV a day. This activity in the last couple decades has created a culture of pseudo-life where children grow up in a passive receptive state acquiring almost no real life experience.
This has damaged people in many ways. Television has come to consume time that was previously taken up by interaction with real people. Communication, which demands immediate processing and verbalization of ideas, is something that
must be practiced and refined, and is critically linked to the ability to think. Families, especially poor families, are increasingly using the television as a babysitter, depriving children of thousands of hours of developmentally enriching communication necessary for their ability to effectively read, write, and speak.
Television robs children of the ability to practice manipulating their physical environment. This is absolutely essential to the development of spatial reasoning and number sense for math, as well as for the opportunities for make-believe play that sparks imagination.
Television is effectively killing not just American society, but is dumbing down and depressing the entire world by pacifying them and giving them a route to live a pseudo-life of fantasy instead of developing their real lives into something engaging and satisfying. Is it any coincidence that
the most unhappy people also watch the most TV?2. American existence is defined by materialism. This empty ideal is not a true motivating force to acquire or retain knowledge. It certainly doesn't stop American society from trying though.
Recently, there have been a lot of programs springing up that pay students for good grades. Rather than being posed as a privilege and an experience that opens the world to us, we have repackaged education as a job. This can also be seen in our colleges. Once upon a time, they were beacons of light that attracted inquisitive minds and created communities of intellectual sounding boards. These communities pushed our understanding of human knowledge and experience to the limits. Now they are becoming increasingly obsolete diploma mills and job training institutions.
Despite this, many
businesses are unhappy with the communication and problem solving skills of new college graduates, some even resorting to the drastic measure of remedial classes for new employees.
The reason so many people are getting through high schools and colleges without essential skills is simple and has nothing to do with standards or teachers. Americans have become masters of the art of jumping through hoops. They will learn whatever they need to pass the test, get their diploma/paycheck, and go back to watching TV. Why? Many people in college have absolutely no interest in the material they are studying or any intention of applying what they have learned in their lives. They're at college to get a diploma so they can get a job. Learning in the United States has become a means to an end, something we lord over others (white collar vs. blue collar), but which most people privately do not value intrinsically, and perceive exclusively as a path to acquiring more material wealth.
I remember my Reading Methods class in college. My professor asked, "I want you all to be honest. Raise your hand if you read for pleasure." I will never forget the look of horror on her face as 4 future teachers out of 30 raised their hands. Most of these people are now teaching reading in public schools. The 26 who don't read for pleasure will have a hard time fooling the kids that they do, and they will teach children (albeit indirectly) that reading is not fun, not cool, but rather...a job. This is very in keeping with what American society is teaching their children every day, and which is why we're at the desperate point of actually paying children to do their schoolwork.
3. American society has developed a warped idea of masculinity. Our idea of masculinity as portrayed by mainstream culture involves physical strength, athleticism, material wealth, humor, and objectification of women. Nowhere in the American concept of masculinity is there room for love of knowledge or curiosity. 50 years ago, the scientist or mathematician were seen as a manly figures. Men tap danced on screen and sang with joy about their feelings of love, but were still regarded as manly. Most teenagers today watch that and think, "How gay!"
As nearly all professions have become gender mixed, we have reached toward the extreme to define what is a man-NFL football players and combat soldiers. American male insecurity has been driven to find those small pockets of male identity, unclouded by female presence, and adopt them as the standard.
Today, nearly all males in professions that revere knowledge are characterized as effeminate in American society, especially if those professions involve the use of language. Is it any wonder why there is a growing gap in graduation rates between boys and girls? Is it any wonder why we have websites like this?
http://www.boysread.org/
Mark my words, this is going to get worse.
4. Victimhood has penetrated every corner of American society. We see it every day with this financial crisis. The one thing that politicians can't do is blame their voters for bringing a bad situation upon themselves. And so, everybody becomes victims instead of agents of their own self-destruction.
Ultimately, if children are to be successful, there are four groups who must take personal responsibility. School administration, the teachers, the parents, and the students. American society has undergone a shift. It used to be widely accepted that if a student didn't do well in school, that student was lazy and it was largely their lack of effort or their home life which accounted for their poor performance.
With modern research and testing, it was discovered that many students weren't doing well in school for cognitive reasons, and there was a shift in holding schools accountable for teaching students with learning disabilities. This shift saw an increase in special education, classroom inclusion, and differentiated learning. But somehow during this very important shift, all the personal responsibility for academic success shifted to the school.
Today, just like 50 years ago, the vast majority of students who don't do well in school are still lazy and it is still their lack of effort and absence of parental support which accounts for their poor performance. The only difference is now, teachers are blamed for it.
Each year that passes, schools are demanding teachers assume more and more responsibility for a student's academic performance and behavior, ignoring the glaring fact that the majority of a student's life takes place outside the school and is completely beyond the control or influence of the teacher. While some schools in poor areas have succeeded in creating a "counter-culture" of excellence, these schools are rare, because most schools don't make a calculated effort to change the school culture, even if they follow the same supposed "formula for success."
Politicians like to side themselves with parents and tell them that the schools are failing their children. That gets them votes. It's much easier to find a handful of incompetent teachers protected by unions and blame them, rather than realize that it is America, as a nation, which is failing our youth. We have permitted our children to be shaped by forces within our control. Instead of placing all the blame solely at the feet of teachers, politicians need to spread the blame around.
Parents have not read books to their young children. Parents have not modeled reading in their homes, and do not spend enough time communicating with their children. Parents have not limited their children's television or video games. Parents have not made an effort to provide their children with a variety of experiences to become a well-rounded, and ready for school.
"I'm too busy," is their excuse. If that's true, how do they have time to watch an average of over 8 hours of TV a day?
Schools have created oppressive learning environments that revolve around teaching to tests, and have in some cases completely thrown out Art, Music, and Social Studies, all so they can focus exclusively on Reading, Writing, and Math.
School administration obsession with performance on standardized tests has eliminated much student-driven learning or exploration. Rather, everything must be tightly focused on standards-based objectives. Oftentimes this results in teachers teaching skills artificially in isolation and has them covering huge and broad topics far too quickly for any deep understanding to take place. All this only further serves to isolate the phony institutional school environment from the "real world."
Until the federal government realizes that American culture is greatly at odds with their educational goals, public education is doomed to fail. It will continue to deteriorate, no matter how much money is thrown at it, or how much they push teachers for improved results. We do not need governmental education reform targeting teachers or schools or curricula, but rather a concerted governmental effort to lead a cultural American Renaissance.