Education is one of the many hot-button issues that we, as Americans, find ourselves confronting, and like many political and social issues that pertain to our institutions, those who cannot afford the privatized version of service and care are often left aching the most. The way education is designed in America is similar to the way that healthcare is, in that it is perfectly fine for those who are members of the upper class, and to a lesser extent, members of the upper-middle class, but mostly inadequate for everybody else.
The wealthy and upper-middle class can afford private educations for their children, just as they can afford regular visits to medical professionals for screenings or treatment if medical issues were to befall them or their children. While the purpose of this blog posting is not central to all of the inequities of capitalism, I draw a comparison to our healthcare system in order to highlight that education is far from being the only facet of American life in which we are not living up to our self-proclaimed title of "Greatest Country Ever!"
While fantastic public schools do exist, I would wager that the majority of them exist in areas which are of a higher socioeconomic status, and such schools may also be financially augmented further by way of donations made by the wealthy parents who send their kids to such schools. This was a point that I remember Kozol making in his book Shame of the Nation, and this was something that hit particularly close to him with me as well, as I went to a wealthy high school in Glen Ellyn.
Ultimately, our public education system offers quality learning experiences to wealthier students due to the taxation of such areas combined with further donations, while students in lower socioeconomic status areas such as the inner city have poor schools to begin with, and usually without parents who can financially afford to double their roles as parents of students as well as benefactors to the schools themselves.
Unfortunately, the plight of the lower class in relation to public schooling extends beyond the aforementioned. For example, Koval points out that several Chicago public schools focus the majority of their "curriculum" on prepping students for standardized tests, rather than, you know, actually teaching them. Encouraging rote memorization of verbatim answers to questions and the likely and unlikely answer bubble selections is hardly an educational experience I would want my hypothetical children being subjected to. I believe that these standardized tests are incredibly damaging to public schooling, especially for those in Chicago public schools.
As mentioned in class discussions, members of the SOA club partook in a screening of Waiting for Superman, a documentary which offers solutions to the numerous problems which plague American public schooling, with all of these solutions being anti-union. While I was not able to find a torrent to download The Teacher Salary Project, I do plan on watching it eventually as it would be interesting to witness a documentary that counters the solutions offered in Waiting for Superman.
However, we, as a class were lucky enough to have a visitor from the teacher's union come speak to us, who offered his insights as someone who is involved with the union. I was interested in his anecdote pertaining to working class parents and their support of the teachers, which supports what I have read in many sociology texts. It was also disheartening to hear him reinforce what we had read in Koval pertaining to the amount of time (more than a third of Chicago public schooldays) being spent on prepping for tests.
In relation to Waiting for Superman, he also provided some insights regarding one of the more compelling points that I thought the documentary made (at the time anyways). This point was found in the experimental proposition made to teachers regarding their dropping of tenure in favor of taking a higher pay increase or keeping tenure and receiving a marginal salary boost. The documentary implied that the teachers unanimously rejected the offer, and when I saw this portion of the film, I interpreted these actions as suspicious.
My logic was that if a teacher is effective, then he or she has nothing to worry about, and that the only reason for them not to accept the offer is if they plan on coasting through their post-tenure career. Thankfully our visitor was kind enough to explain the reasoning that informed the decision of these educators. Apparently, our public education system is more crooked than I once believed! If teachers were to waive their union rights, then it is possible that they could be laid off for reasons that have nothing to do with their ability as an educator, such as disagreements with the principal or even if they were to pursue a masters or doctorate degree, which would result in having to pay these teachers more. We know this is true because teachers are fired for similar reasons before they even receive tenure.
I am unsure what exactly needs to be done to ameliorate our public education system, but I now believe that the unions need to remain in place, while also heightening the standards and pay required to be a teacher. While some may complain about teachers being paid more, I think it can be agreed upon that we can either pay more now for school teacher salaries or pay even more later for the various social issues that will occur due to high drop-out rates and the reception of an inadequate education for students in the city. I also believe it can be agreed upon that time and resources should be spent appeasing the intellectual curiosities of children rather than teaching them "BACDDAB, etc."
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