ShareThisDEAR DR. FOURNIER: My seventh-grader started this year in a brand-new school. As parents, we felt, finally, that the school system had done something to better her education. Yet it took five weeks for her to receive worn-out textbooks. The teachers made do by assigning projects. Some did close to nothing because they don't know the subject matter. The computers are not all set up yet. The science-lab teacher has asked parents to pitch in with money. Only those with means, even modest, can comply. This leaves the rest to wonder if their children will receive a seventh-grade education. Now school budgets are being cut! My daughter had all A's and B's on her first report card, which is meaningless. As a concerned parent, I know she learned almost nothing. I cannot afford a private school. Will my child be left out of the American dream because the public school she attends doesn't have the money to educate her?
ASSESSMENT: There was a time when our public schools were a source of pride -- the bedrock of American democracy. What has happened? Most Americans are right now wondering if their dream is vanishing before their eyes.
Approximately 23 percent of public-school parents ask themselves if their children will be left out of an education, without which the American dream is unattainable. It is not fair to surmise that the other 77 percent are all that satisfied. The current economic decline has now refocused our attention on education, yet I have been saying for years that we have a pointless attachment to an old model of teaching and until we are willing to let go of this attachment, the sad truth is that American education will continue to decline, even past its current crisis. Yet, the mere idea of brand-new buildings enhances our expectations -- just because they are new.
WHAT TO DO: The most important lesson for our nation to learn from this current economic crisis is to understand one thing about conducting ourselves as a country: What was a good way to run it in the past will no longer work. Every time we hold on to old-fashioned ways of solving our current problems, we'll dig ourselves deeper into a hole. As a nation, we must reinvent the way we work, spend, give and care -- to determine what we value and would die for instead of what seems valuable because of the price tag. The bling effect boosted greed and the greedy grabbed what they could, taking advantage of those willing to purchase what they could not afford.
Education is no different.
Somehow, somewhere, someone decided that the shiny shell was more important than making sure -- before it was built -- that staffing the school with knowledgeable teachers was more important than the bling. We are in desperate need in this country of first having teachers who actually know what children need to learn without hamstringing them to textbooks. We should curtail construction spending while allotting precious budgeted monies to purchasing what is needed to educate children in a way that prepares them for the roles they will be playing 15 years from now. What would that require? It would require reinventing school from the inside out.
Granted, your brand-new school is a disappointment, yet even if it came with all the bells and whistles money could buy, you would still be giving your daughter an education that will make her fit for employment in 1980 or thereabouts.
(Write Dr. Yvonne Fournier, Fournier Learning Strategies Inc., 5900 Poplar, Memphis, Tenn. 38119. E-mail her at drfournier(at)hfhw.net.)
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