Brainwave

Rocketstar posted a few days ago on a topic which, considering my childlessness, is surprisingly near and dear to my mind and heart: education. Specifically, he said something I've long agreed with: TEACHERS ARE NOT THE PROBLEM.

There is a fundamental disagreement on the very purpose of primary and secondary education. Some people believe it should be all about jobs: about teaching every child the skills required to function in later employment. Some people believe schools should place their emphasis on rote learning and memorization; some think that's bunk. A minority of people, myself among them, believe that empathy and critical thinking should be core curriculum concepts, instilled on an ongoing, basis from an early grade.

By either standard, our education system is a failure.

Not a complete failure, by any means. There remain a fair number of students who go in one end of the education tube and come out the other not just with the credentials, but with whatever it is you believe education is supposed to engrain. Some kids have attained both knowledge and wisdom, and you hope those kids will go far in life.

But too many kids slip through the cracks. And the cracks aren't scholastic: they're almost always domestic. In other words, as Rocket so succinctly says, "[t]he problem is with the PARENTS".

It's usually, but by no means always, a cultural and class thing. There are plenty of lower-class parents who raise their kids well and take an interest in their education, just as there are middle and upper-class parents who don't give two shits...but odds are, if a child is struggling--not just with academics but with the so-called "Life Skills"--that child is poor. Either his parents are too busy trying to get food on the table to spend as much time as they should on their child's education...or (and there's no way to gild the lily on this) education is not culturally important.

Compare the showings of Asian children--whose parents generally place an extremely high value on education--with those of inner-city black children or rural hillbilly white kids. This begets a chicken-and-egg question (which came first, the success or the attitude which breeds it?) The answer to that sort of question is always attitude, and parental attitudes transfer to children long before they're of school age.

Too many parents--of all socioeconomic classes--treat schools as dumping grounds. Here, take my kid and parent him for the day. Oh, and he better get an A on that paper. Schools are forced to devote time teaching students life skills--there's that phrase again--that should, by rights, be taught at home.

This problem has bothered me for years, because it's so big. How do you change a culture? How especially do you go about changing a culture which demeans smart kids as geeks and nerds and elevates the school jock to herohood? Most importantly, how do you make parents care?

I give up. I don't think you can make parents care, and so my solution is simple: take the kids away.

Not permanently, no. I envision something like the British boarding school system, built and maintained--just as schools today are--by taxpayers. You build these schools out in the country, as far away from the inner-city slums as you can get. Perhaps they have working farms attached. Perhaps they become the centerpieces of rural villages. The idea here is to build community and to expose the kids to a way of life they've likely never suspected.

Admission would be by application at preschool age. Most parents, I suspect, would want a better life for their kids than the life they're living. Perhaps that's a naive assumption, but I think it's an assumption worth testing.

Speaking of testing, you would test the aptitudes and attitudes of each child at various stages in her education. No matter what you do, some of them will fail to make the grade academically. Maybe you stream those kids into the trades, which would also be taught on site. Regardless, ALL children would get a thorough grounding in the sort of life skills they were probably lacking at home...backed up by discipline when necessary.

This is not an ideal solution. An ideal solution would be to have all parents take a direct interest in their childrens' education. That's not happening and likely never will. So this is maybe the next best thing. Odds are, removed from a culture that encourages and in some cases actually celebrates failure, a child has a much better chance at success. By whatever definition you care to use.