Can We Fix The Failing School System?
I started a discussion the other day asking why Finnish students are so smart. The teaching methods, styles, and ideas used in Finnish schools seem to be so different from the mainstream teaching ideas used in American schools it almost makes you wonder if making a huge change in their direction could help.
Christine threw her own two cents in on education in America in her blog. She hits it exactly when she says that education is one of the areas that everyone agrees needs improvement, but what to improve and how to do it are hot topic items. The debating surrounding what to do to improve our schools, and more importantly improve our students, never seems to die down. This topic lights a fire under all parents who want only the best for their children’s education. Unfortunately no one has the answer to solve everyone’s problems.
Kids are each so very different. They are intelligent in their own ways, grow in their own time, and respond to pressures uniquely. It is one of the major reasons I just cannot support the push of standardized testing. Where one child may fail another may succeed, but neither are showing what they really know by filling in circles on a piece of paper. For me that is one of the greatest benefits of homeschooling, the ability to move at your child’s pace and desires in order to offer the personalized education they need.
But we can’t do that in public schools, not even fully in private or charter schools either. There has to be some kind of standard to ensure that the students are learning what they are being taught, and being taught what they need to learn. So what can we do? How to we help failing schools? What do we do for the students not getting what they need out of their schools? Are there any answers?
I don’t know.
March 15th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Summer- I think the answer, or at least part of it, is to look at the reason public education exists. It is ineffective because those reasons are no longer valid.
It’s like the story of the Christmas ham where the mom cut off the end of the ham, and the dd asked “Why?” So mom went to her mom and asked, and she said her mom had done it that way, so they went and asked Grandma. Grandma’s answer was that the ham was usually to big to fit in her pan so she cut the end of the ham off so it would fit.
Public education is the same way- no one knows why we do it this way, but it has ‘always’ been done this way, so we keep perpetuating a system that needs to be rethought completely.
I find this somewhat amusing, since we ‘look down our noses’ at anyone who doesn’t keep up with current technologies and methods for accomplishing things, but yet our educational system is essentially the same one that has been in place for over 100 years. How quaint.
March 16th, 2008 at 8:41 am
That’s a great analogy to the existing system. It is the way it is because that’s what they needed it to be, but that doesn’t fit what it needs to be now.
March 18th, 2008 at 6:22 am
There are many who believe that the school system should become a free market based opportunity instead of another gov’t inspired and directed welfare program, which is what it currently is, IMO.
We plan financially to purchase a home, a car, vacations… but not our kid’s education? We shop at the stores that best fit our needs, and when we aren’t satisfied, we can complain, get our money back, or find a different store- but parents have limited educational choices, and then must pay for others to go to school as well? I could go on and on about this subject…. but I’ll shut up now. I need another cup of coffee anyway.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:39 am
[...] considers the question of Can We Fix The Failing School System? posted at Mom Is Teaching. Another question might be, “Should we try?” Or even, [...]