To solve the problem of public education in America, school reform is not enough. I'm not saying that we should ignore the schools. To the contrary, because the challenge of changing children's lives is enormous and may take years to implement, changes in schools also need to be addressed. The reality is that we need to do it all for poor children if they are to have a chance at getting a good education.It is indeed students, human beings, who are being failed by schools. The fact that we support there foreign wars and not education is an sad commentary on what we value as a society. I've posted before that I wonder if some of this is because of legislators and citizens experiences within the mass public schools. Have we become too comfortable with supposedly necessary authoritarian procedures?
On the literal level, we fail students all the time. Failing grades are handed out everyday to students who have done their best in the world they live in. Grading is a pernicious and costly process that ruins the learning in schools, to some degree, for the majority of kids. But students are only failing because teachers fail them. Perhaps more teachers should step up and start resisting some of this, like Joe Bower.
background posts
grading in the stone age
voluntary attendance
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