A high-stakes quandary for schools
| Thursday, Aug 13 2009 08:05 PM
Last Updated Thursday, Aug 13 2009 08:08 PM
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In the coming days, thousands of Kern County primary and secondary teachers will return to their campuses to attend annual pre-school meetings. These meetings usually serve as a natural plateau for reflection (and teacher socialization) -- a time to pause and thoughtfully digest the successes and failures of the past year while simultaneously considering the possibilities of the next.
Unfortunately for Kern County educators and students, many of us sitting in these meetings will walk away with the disturbing impression that we are collectively heading in the wrong direction. Underneath the raw and demoralized sensation that there is something radically amiss in our schools, there is a sinister synthesis taking place in our state that is the true cause of our despair.
This synthesis is the convergence of two undeniable realities: at the exact moment in history when the world is changing in ways that require innovation and dynamism in the classroom, California's budgetary woes and testing tyranny render such innovation utterly impossible.
Consider the following:
The most recent budget shortened the mandated school year from 180 days to 175. At a time when countries such as Japan go to school for 243 days a year and Scotland goes for 200, the impetus for a new school calendar is obvious. Rather than adding days to the school year or altering the schedule (not too many of us still use our summer vacations to get ready for the autumn harvest), California has sanctioned a trend that goes in the wrong direction.
A never-ending parade of education research confirms the same immutable truth: high student performance strongly correlates to high teacher performance. Excellent teachers tend to produce excellent students. Only in the peculiar world of education are the most inexperienced teachers given the most arduous teaching assignments in the most challenging schools. The results should not surprise us: for every 10 students who enter the 9th grade, only seven will graduate, fewer than four will go to college, and less than two will complete a degree of any kind.
Instead of implementing policies that reverse this trend, the new paradigm of California education is besot with larger class sizes, lower teacher pay, and absolutely no incentive for talented young people to enter the teaching profession -- poisonous trends that will tarnish California education for generations to come.
In an era in which calamitous education cuts have become the norm, it would be wise to remember that an educated citizenry is the grease that empowers the wheels of democracy to progressively turn. Yes, human beings are naturally free. Yet the great insight of Jefferson, Horace Mann, Rousseau and others, is that citizens do not naturally know what to do with this freedom. Democracy requires a community of learning.
Without education of all sorts --academic, artistic, athletic -- liberty quickly degenerates into chaotic license; freedom loses its vitality to provide the framework for the pursuit of a meaningful life and an enriched civilization.
Teaching students about the positive possibilities of their freedom is the great charge of every American teacher -- no matter the subject, the grade, or the level. In moments of utter honesty, most teachers I know would readily admit that they are romantics who faithfully believe that the lessons and experiences of their classrooms can echo beyond the school walls for a lifetime. We close our eyes and imagine moments of pure enchantment occasionally scattered throughout our teaching careers -- moments when we know our teaching has magically intersected with the needs of our students.
Such pedagogic romanticism will remain the stuff of high fantasy, however, if we do not marry these ideals with the cold realism of resources and innovation. One is tempted to agree with the great Scottish essayist, David Hume: "We are satisfied with our mediocrity because we have no experience of any thing better."
Jeremy Adams is a government teacher at Bakersfield High and an adjunct lecturer in CSUB's political science department.
