THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 5, 1995 TAG: 9501050021
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines
A four part series on school reform concludes in today's newspaper. Readers have learned about the back-to-basics movement, attempts to promote school uniforms, single-sex classes and charter schools. They can be forgiven a sense of deja vu.
Decades of wheel-spinning debate have been devoted to these topics and many others. Should schools go back to basics or forward to relevance? Should they be ivory towers or preparation for real life? Maybe the answer is: both.
Unfortunately, the debate rarely touches the central issues of education - what a citizen entering the 21st century work force is going to have to know and how best to teach it. Too much of the debate is over style rather than substance, process rather than content, politics rather than pedagogy.
Many of the disputes arise from a changing world beyond the classroom door. Parents raised before the sexual revolution, widespread drug use, rampant violence and racial integration often want schools to turn back the clock to happier days. They can't. And if they could, the schools of yesteryear wouldn't produce graduates capable of operating in tomorrow's employment market.
Then, education was a one-size-fits-all process designed to turn out a standardized worker for an age of mass production. Conformity was more highly valued than individuality. Students were expected to learn the right answers, not ask the right questions. Today an era of meandering career paths, lifelong learning and the computer demand different graduates. Schools haven't kept up, partly because parents and politicians want them to go backward.
Often the debate has been on tangential or inconsequential issues. Should schools be permitted to try uniforms on for size? Why not? It may not help much, but how can it hurt? Single-sex classrooms? Certainly. Although, segregation of the sexes after puberty would eliminate more distractions than before.
How about charter schools or schools of choice? Well, there certainly ought to be some way to permit experiments in schooling and break the stranglehold of mindless regulations. But not all experiments succeed and parents had better realize they'll be experimenting with their children's future.
Back to basics? Sounds plausible, but what is basic as the 21st century dawns? Computer keyboarding or cursive writing? McGuffey's Reader or CD-Rom? The debates have gone on for 30 years without reaching agreement. As the poet says: ``Myself when young did eagerly frequent/ Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument/ About this and about that: but evermore/ Came out by the same door where in I went.'' Our grandparents would have instantly recognized that as the Rubaiyat. Should kids today know that basic fact or is it old news?
Often the school debate seems harder than it needs to be. Some things really are basic and others are peripheral. Schools should be safe, supportive havens for learning. Those who disrupt them should be ejected.
In schools even more than in business, workers do best when they have a stake in the the process and are treated as collaborators not cogs in the system. Knowledge workers, as Peter Drucker says. Therefore, decision-making should be decentralized. Bureaucracies should be flattened or eliminated. The job of administrators is to help teachers do theirs, not get in the way of it.
Teachers should be expected to know their subject matter and be competent at imparting it to others. They should be forced to prove their skills on a regular basis, like other employees - public or private. They should be well-compensated, accorded respect and not expected to also be janitor, nurse, and social worker.
In the lower grades, smaller classes and more teachers per student pay huge dividends. Parents are essential partners in the learning process and should be welcome in the schools not discouraged from collaborating. Any sane curriculum ought to aim at producing graduates who possess certain skills and information. Yet there is often no agreement on even this most basic of basics.
At the minimum, students should leave school with the ability to read fluently and write and speak intelligibly. Literacy is acquired by reading widely. Graduates should have read and understood classics in English. They should know the history and geography of their own country and the world. They should learn math, science, basic economics and, in a global economy, a foreign language. For those not headed for college, a start on vocational training is needed.
There's no single right way to learn all that. A variety of learning styles (and teaching styles) need to be recognized and accommodated. One size doesn't have to fit all in matters of style, even if one body of knowledge for all learners is the goal. Treating students like individuals, recognizing differences and helping students of varying abilities to succeed isn't incompatible with high standards.
If agreed upon goals that don't change every year or election cycle are a must, so is time on task. Students learn by reading, writing and working math problems. Not by watching TV, working at the mall or hanging out on the corner.
That means longer school days and years are essential, as are more homework assignments. Long ago, a king was told the sad news that there's no royal road to geometry. Today, we'd say there's no instant education available at some fast food school.
It is a mark of the impatience, hedonism and even anti-intellectualism of our society that not only students but teachers, parents and politicians often act as if there's some easy answer to under-performing schools.
The answer is a demanding curriculum, skilled teachers, involved parents and motivated students expected to work long and hard. This isn't a prescription for bitter medicine but the greatest gift we can give our young people. It will make them strong, self-confident and equip them to compete. by CNB