Robert Fried says…
We have opted not to create schools as places where children’s curiosity, sensory awareness, power, and communication can flourish, but rather to erect temples of knowledge where we sit them down, tell them a lot of stuff we think is important, try to control their restless curiosity, and test them to see how well they’ve listened to us
I listened to Gore Vidal at the Key West Literary Seminar on Book TV. Among other things he said:
We have the worst Educational System of any country on earth….
I get around a bit and I’ve never met a stupid six year old and I’ve never met an interesting 16 year old. Am I meeting the wrong people or could you tell me what it is you’ve done to him with our educational system?
Gore Vidal
I think that Vidal's comment which he made later in the presentation was appropriate. We need to have well-rounded teachers. Teachers need to be more than baby-sitters and parents need to be closely involved with the education of their children. I always found that the most successful students are those who had parents who read to them and discussed things with them, encouraged independent thinking and learning. As a teacher I could do nothing if I did not have the support of the parent. The most important component of the educational system. The little video points up to me just how very important it is to prepare students for a future that has not even been imagined yet. I think there needs to be a radical change in our system of education and I don't think it is going to happen with the current group of people running things.
Addendum -
John sent me a paper to read - In part it says:
Almost 13 million children in America live in poverty - 5.5 million in extreme poverty.
• 4.2 million children under the age of five live in poverty.
• 35.3 percent of black children, 28.0 percent of Latino children and 10.8 percent of white, non-Latino children live in poverty.
• There are 9.4 million uninsured children in America.
• Latino children are three times as likely, and black children are 70 percent more likely, to be uninsured than white children.
• Only 11 percent of black, 15 percent of Latino and 41 percent of white eighth graders perform at grade level in math.
• Each year 800,000 children spend time in foster care.
• On any given night, 200,000 children are homeless - one out every four of the homeless population.
• Every 36 seconds a child is abused or neglected - almost 900,000 children each year.
• Black males ages 15-19 are about eight times as likely as white males to be gun homicide victims.
• Although they represent 39 percent of the US juvenile population, minority youth represent 60 percent of committed juveniles.
• A black boy born in 2001 has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in his lifetime; a Latino boy has a 1 in 6 chance.
• Black juveniles are about four times as likely as their white peers to be incarcerated. Black youths are almost five times as likely and Latino youths about twice as likely to be incarcerated as white youths of drug offenses.
As these figures suggest, the notion that children should be treated as a crucial social resource and represent for any healthy society important ethical and political considerations about the quality of public life, the allocation of social provisions and the role of the state as a guardian of public interests appears to be lost. Under the reign of the market-driven punishing state, a racialized criminal justice system, and a “financial Katrina” that is crippling the nation, the economic, political and educational situation for a growing number of poor young people and youth of color has gone from bad to worse
. . .
Obama’s message of hope and responsibility seems empty unless he addresses
the plight of poor white youth and youth of color and the growing youth-control complex. The race to incarcerate - especially youth of color - is a holdover and reminder that the legacy of apartheid is still with us and can be found in
a society that now puts almost as many police in its schools as it does teachers, views the juvenile justice system as a crucial element in shaping the future of young people, and supports a crime complex that models schools for poor kids after prisons.
Some years ago I attended a "Business Roundtable" meeting where business "leaders" suggested that we should test students and if they are not performing the funds should be withheld from the "non-performing" schools until they brought their scores up. That came to pass under the previous administration in the so-called "No Child Left Behind" Act which enable Bush cronies to make millions of dollars from the Educational system while systematically destroying the public schools. This is the awful legacy of those folks and it is a disgrace.
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