Why don't schools have means to pull off a TV broadcast?
The debate over whether schoolchildren should be permitted to hear President Obama encourage academic responsibility by way of a C-SPAN broadcast this Tuesday raises two troubling questions about the state of California schools -- and neither has much to do with presidential politics.
Some local educators interviewed this week said they couldn't show the president's speech in class even if they were inclined to do so. Two reasons were cited.
One was technology. Many classrooms simply don't have television sets or screens onto which televised or streamed images might be projected. How does the state formerly known as the most advanced and technologically savvy in this advanced, technologically savvy nation get this far into the 21st century without acquiring the means to show a substantial number of its students a TV broadcast?
Chris Crawford, superintendent of the Greenfield Union School District, admits that his district is among those in that category.
"We only have one, maybe two school sites that have the ability to show this in the classroom," Crawford told The Californian on Thursday. He said most classrooms in the district don't have a TV monitor, and only one school site has cable.
The other obstacle is time. Every moment of every day is strictly accounted for. Taken on its face, that might seem like a good thing: No moment wasted, no time lost to meandering lesson plans.
But ask any teacher or school administrator and you'll find out why: slavish adherence to the dictates of test-driven curriculum removes most opportunities to explore the world outside "the schedule."
Is concern over test scores so persistent that school officials dare not break away for a special offering? Apparently.
Flexibility also comes into play when an opportunity avails itself on short notice, as is somewhat the case here.
But as Norris School District Superintendent Wally McCormick told The Californian Thursday, anything and everything proposed for Norris classrooms must first be vetted by the district board. Even words spoken live by the president of the United States? Yes, apparently. And, invariably, once such questions become matters for the school board, they are instantly elevated to ideological value judgements, no matter what the scheduled topic.
This is not simply about Obama. Be it a presidential address, a major breaking news event like a NASA launch, a national tragedy (best suited for older students, of course) or some other much-anticipated broadcast, schools -- on rare occasion -- ought to have the flexibility and technical capability to break away from fractions and past participles for an unusual but memorable moment.
Many people today can remember such an occasion at school. The fact that those out-of-the-ordinary days stay with them years later underscores their power.
So the president wants to talk about commitment to education, huh? These two basic obstacles, technology and flexibility, deserve consideration if and when the conversation gets started.
This may not seem like the time to invest in such things, given the state of education funding in California. It makes sense to acknowledge the system's shortcomings, however. Otherwise we may never address them.
