HW # 51 History(school)

Everyone is worried about the poor reading, math, and writing scores of American kids compared with kids in other industrialized countries. Out of 17 countries, we are dead last. Thomas Friedman wrote about how the next generation of Americans are going to hold the country back because of their weak science and math education. He talked to the CEO of Intel, a top U.S. corporation, who said he would rather hire young Americans but might have to hire better educated Chinese people if he has to. It seems
that there are three parts to any solution to the problem of how to make Americans better educated: change the kids, change the teachers, change the schools.

Changing the Students: In the future this could be a great solution and this is the reason why. Jewish people are only 0.2% of the world population, but 54% of world chess champions are Jewish, 27% of Nobel prize winners in physics are Jewish, and 31% of Nobel prizes in medicine are Jewish (New York Times, David Brooks). In the United States only 2% of the population is Jewish, but 21% of Ivy League students are Jewish, 37% of Academy Award winning directors are Jewish, 31% of the major philanthropists are Jewish, and 51 % of nonfiction Pulitzer Prize winners are Jewish. Being Asian is also
good. Asians only make up 4% of the U.S. population, but Harvard has 17% Asian students, and Stuyvesant High School is nearly 50% Asian. A Chinese/American doctor I read about said, “Of all the demographic factors we studied in relation to school performance, ethnicity was the most important…In terms of school achievement, it is better to be Asian than to be wealthy, to have non-divorced parents, or to have a mother who is able to stay at home full time.” John Gatto, in his Teacher of the Year speech, said his students were materialistic, cruel, and have no sense of the future. It seems as though kids need to have some Jewish or Asian genetic material to give them an intellectual edge. We might have to wait a couple of decades for this solution to the problem of how to make American kids smarter.

Changing the Schools: A big criticism of schools is that they have a structure that is so rigid it is like a factory. John Gatto says that schools are so full of rules and testing that they kill kids’ curiosity and keep them from using their imagination. Gatto says that when schools were started, they were based on German thinking about how to control the population and keep students from becoming rebels. The government liked that idea because they wanted workers who would do boring jobs in factories and help make other people and the country rich. Gatto thinks the purpose of schools today is still to dumb down future citizens so they won’t cause trouble demanding change and so that they will be uncritical consumers of whatever is marketed to them. There is some truth in this because people bought tons of SUVs when they could get a good deal on them even though they are terrible for the environment and dangerous to drive. Companies also need smart people to train to be inventors and leaders. More of the jobs available are going to be in technology companies that need smart people. If the companies have to be in other countries then the U.S. will lose jobs and money. It is not that easy changing schools to make students get interested in learning and work harder. Some of the ideas Gatto had about how to make schools develop kids better have been adopted by SOF like the community service requirement to gets students out in the real world so they can learn by doing and the exhibition requirements, which are independent study projects where the students have more say in deciding what they want to learn.

Changing the Teachers: Paulo Freire wrote about the bad “banking system” of teaching where the teacher just deposits information in students’ heads, and they just passively receive it. This system is about memorization and accepting whatever the teacher says without thinking for themselves. The better way of teaching is the “problem-posing system that involves more of an equal partnership between the teacher and the students who have dialogs and think more creatively about subjects. The “banking system” is easier for teachers because they don’t have to get as involved with their students. Dr. Lisa Delpit is an educator who talks about the importance of teachers making the effort to help black children catch up on some things like early reading skills that they did not come in knowing without separating them from the white children in the class. It would be easier for the teacher to send them to a remedial class, but that is not good for most of these children who are made to feel slow or stupid when they are not. They just do not get certain skills early at home although they do get other skills from their own culture that the white children might not get.

To make the educational system in this country better, it is necessary to change students, schools, and teachers. Getting students to change on their own is a big challenge (until they can get some Jewish or Asian cultural genes) because not everyone can be that motivated especially if they don’t get encouragement from home. Getting schools to change on their own is hard because they are institutions that have been doing things the same way for a long time. Teachers are the hope for change because they can have the best influence on the students and the school. That means the pressure to make American students into smarter grownups is all on the teachers. They need to get more training if they need it and be paid more so that more smart people will choose teaching as a career. They should also get paid more or get travel grants as incentives when their students show big improvement.