dudn't- a new word from the decider, a.k.a. the commander guy, or as I like to call him...Th' Pres-dent.

Some people just can't be educated.

For me, it's not about school's failing. Rather Dr. Kovak's discussion seems more about the irrelevance of the current mode of education. Our grandchildren's children must be able to contribute in world where an exponentially increasing rate of change and unpredictability are the case. National, even state norms/standards, means individual talent and innovative thinking, as hallmarks of survival and growth, cannot occur--and are not.

We need future citizens who can reason and make connections between thoughts, concepts and events where unity might not be perceived--divergent thinking is critical to developing the innovations required by a world system that is no longer sustainable.

Education's modes are no longer of use, of service to the future jobs that we don't even know will exist. Jobs currently held did not exist 10 years ago. Flexibility, adaptability, and creative thinking are the only way forward to a harmonious existence--economically, environmentally, and getting along with one another.

Re: Mr. Lawrence...

"Am I the only one that saw the Dow break 13,000 yesterday? Given that 89% of Americans attend public schools, am I supposed to believe that it was a failing country that created the conditions for that particular economic spectacle?"

This statement is problematic, but I'm curious as to know why you think so...let's take this conversation off of this space...can we?

philipkovacs@yahoo.com

Mr. Kovaks: I can appreciate that your profession is one of the most highly politicised in America today. This is indeed unfortunate, but prabably also inescapable. One of the most painful things I've read recently were the opening chapters in Steven Pinker's recent book "The Blank Slate."
Of course I'd have to be living under a rock not to have at least some awareness of the extreme pressure that teachers everywhere are subject to from every quarter. But Pinker's description of the vitriolic hatred and in-fighting between the different schools of thought was depressing and dispiriting.

I have two young sons. The eldest is working on a four year teaching certificate. The youngest is a gifted musician and an honors student. I am deeply involved with the progress of my youngest son and I will state here, for everyone to read, that he is getting a far superior education than what I received some 35 years ago.

After the last several posts I googled your name to try to find out a little about you, then I re-read the above piece. You and I sir are on the same side of the fence. Before the 2000 election I researched what information was available about GW Bush and his tenure as Gov. of Texas and his education policies there. Big red flags went up. Most of us in this country were already disgruntled about mandatory standardized testing and the requirement that all school districts and teachers were spending so much time "teaching to the test."

And yes, you did attack me. If you would like I will forward to you e-mails I sent to Mr. Bush, Senators Kennedy, Voinovich, and DeWine BEFORE the invasion of Iraq to prove that my ability to process and analyze information is not impaired or narrow-minded. I saw with great clarity everything that was to come. Even to this very day. I wrote Mr. Bush that "nothing good will come from this" and indeed nothing good has.

"Am I the only one that saw the Dow break 13,000 yesterday? Given that 89% of Americans attend public schools, am I supposed to believe that it was a failing country that created the conditions for that particular economic spectacle?" That statement can be dismantled and dismissed on so many different levels from so many different approaches that it set me back when I read it.

Again, I truly comprehend the highly-charged atmosphere of the education profession and so can appreciate your defensiveness, but I will continue to cast a skeptical eye upon Wikkipedia references and object to unsupportable statements like the one quoted above.

Re: Mr. Lawrence...

It's Doctor, not Mr...

I understand your reluctance to trust Wikipedia. It is often questionable, and I don't allow my students to use it as a primary source. I do, however, encourage them to see what they find and then to compare that to more established sources.

To the matter at hand, is the definition I used above correct?

And, is it not a more robust definition than those compiled here:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/propaganda ?

If the definition is better than the one provided by old man Webster, why shouldn't I use it?

Tradition?

As to your suggestion that 1) I attacked you and 2) I can't handle criticism...That was no attack, sir, and if I couldn't "handle" criticism, would I be taking the time to respond to it?

Check your sarcasm meter sir, you may be missing something...

Mr. Kovacs: Apparently you can't even sustain a slight bit of criticism, so I suggest it is you, not I, that is suffering from close-mindedness. I originaly typed "I don't trust any writer..." but revised it because I don't know enough about you to make such a statement.

Likewise, you don't know anything about me and are completely off-base in your attack on me. Be careful as you jump to contusions.

Are you unaware that many teachers are telling their students not to use Wikkipedia as a primary source for research and term papers because of the unreliable nature of the information posted there? That is the first irony. A bigger irony though is the very entry you chose to reference - propaganda. I can think of no source of information more scusceptible to propaganda than Wikkipedia. I or anyone else can go there and post whatever nonsense I feel like injecting into this "knowledge base."

This isn't a conclusion I just pulled out of the air because of my provincial narrow-mindedness. Several months ago I went searching for info on solar noon and expedient methods for determining true north. I decided to see what Wikkipedia had posted and the first thing I encountered was a warning that the entry I was searching on had been hacked and corrupted. I then decided to peruse the comments section (similar to Common Dreams) and for every method suggested by someone there was a naysayer attacking the previous post using name-calling and personal attacks. If this is a way to advance and record a reliable knowledge base, the logic escapes me. Wikkipedia is a nice theory, but that is as far as it goes.

If you can't tolerate even mild criticism maybe you shouldn't be posting your opinion.

May 1, 2007

As IWW songwriter Joe Hill wrote in one of his most powerful songs:

Workers of the world, awaken!
Rise in all your splendid might
Take the wealth that you are making,
It belongs to you by right.
No one will for bread be crying
We'll have freedom, love and health,
When the grand red flag is flying
In the Workers' Commonwealth.

Up here in Canada it's pretty much the same. That's actually a misconception, as North as "up" is totally arbitrary; and I love those maps – you've got to see one if you haven't yet – that turn the world "upside down" but print the names right-side up: blows your mind. You can also just get a globe and flip it over. Very educational. But you know, anyway, that most people, here as well as in the U.S.A., can't find where they live on a map of the world. I have taught post-secondary, and when I mentioned this to a fellow instructor, he said, "Hell, that's nothing. I have students who don't know what's land and what's water." As they say, we don't know our ass from a hole in the ground.

A lot of what people are saying in this discussion is pretty familiar from a Canadian standpoint. We have some really good schools, but by and large the systems (provincial/local) are pretty pitiful. I got my teacher's certification in 1976 at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. I had the naivete to suggest in my first seminar that maybe before we talked about teaching the basics we should stop and consider, bearing in mind matters such as the environment and citizenship, what the basics should really consist of besides reading, writing and math. My prof. testily replied, "I'm not interested in those kinds of questions."

I'd be surprised if 1 in 100 Canadians could tell you what's in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, what they do and don't have to do when stopped by a cop, etc. How many Americans really know what's in the Constitution? The whole thing about the right to bear arms – that's not really about everyone carrying a gun, is it? How many understand what's really going on right now with the erosion of democracy? We'd all be in much better shape if we had some education in critical thinking, but that's a threat to the system, isn't it? Or are people just too lazy? How many educators are even capable of critical thinking? Precious few. Very scary. Democracy is fragile and takes a lot of hard work and vigilance. Our current Prime Minister, Stephen Bush, er…Harper, is a great admirer of George W. Hopefully he won't last as long.

But it's so true, too, as several in this discussion have said: education is pretty meaningless if kids are coming to school hungry, living in violent homes (if they have homes at all), spending so much time on T.V. and video games, doing drugs, etc. It happens here too. It is different, but also not too different. We even have Canadian Idol, for God's sake! Have mercy on us all. Oh well, at least we don't "pledge allegiance to the wall."

Yes. Time to read some Kurt Vonnegut, and Barbara Kingsolver and Tom Robbins. I do read Canadians too, but I sure like the aforementioned. I don't imagine they're part of any American curriculum, though ……. .

Well ..... I certainly have. Each time they open the mouth I die (only to be miraculously resurrected).

Our schools may need a Gates to gear up former standards that included American History. Has anyone noticed the sheer ignorance of many college students who have no background in history? And if Gates wants to help, maybe he could send our low income students to college because if Bushites get their way, funding and loans for the poor to attend college will be taken out of the Federal Budget.

xyz,
I totally agree.
Among the things I despise most is the money-laundering system:
-you squeeze Bangladeshi children, you squeeze American workers, then drop a tiny percentage of stolen money (another version - your dirty underwear) to your victims - for self-satisfaction, self-promotion and tax purposes.
Truly repulsive.

This idea of Gates following in the tradition of Henry Luce, (I think perhaps a more fitting analogy than Goebbels, perhaps?), is interesting to me. The state of the national school system still has particular relevance for me, an undergrad at a liberal arts college in Boston, who graduated from a suburban Atlanta high school only two years ago.

Indeed, there were many glaring omissions from my high school curriculum and a general sense in me and my peers that our teachers and administrators were not exactly up to par. Of course, I do not say this as though it should be seen as representative of the national state of affairs, but perhaps it should be kept in mind that there are most certainly cultural and economic influences on the nature of public education.

I believe Shirley Franklin, the current mayor of Atlanta, has made progress in the urban school system. However, I am inspired to juxtapose this with what I have come to learn about the public schools in Boston, where private schools are wildly popular it seems, to the bourgeois of today, and the public schools are stigmatized by cultural, racial, and class stereotypes.

These stigma are important, not only in that they may illuminate the truly disparate nature of American society today, one led by the Bush oligarchy (oiligarchy as Amy Goodman quips) and thriving off of rampant privatization and unbalanced tax breaks for the rich.

The expectation that a Southern education would undoubtedly pale in comparison with the Boston public school system illustrates these social stereotypes as they apply to myself, in the way I viewed my own transition into college and New England.

Gates' corporate identity is surely inescapable, but he is not a Goebbels. If you want to complain about propaganda, stick to the Bushies. The class war in America is just like the strife in Iraq: Bush and his crew lead the masses with the milk and honey of fallacies and talking points. Perhaps it is not a war, but a systematic suppression of those who, if they knew they were being taken advantage of, would at least usurp their rights as citizens and kick the bum out. But Bush's nefarious character goes beyond his greed for oil; his deception of his constituency in particular, and his parasitic siphoning of funds out of education into the pockets of military-industrial corporations is destroying American culture in unprecedented ways.

All this begs the question: Where has Bush destroyed more schools, Iraq or Middle America?

je,
thank you.

How come no one has noted the remark about the UNICEF Report?

"In a recent report UNICEF ranked the United States the second worst industrialized country for a child to grow up in. That rating had nothing to do with public education and everything to do with a lack of healthcare, an incarceration industry, and a growing poverty rate. One out of five children comes to school hungry."

I found that report to be astounding, check out the articles about it.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/14/europe/EU-GEN-Child-Welfare.php

Doesn't it seem a little silly to be so focused on the school failure while the adults (including me) who run this country have allowed us to rank at the bottom of the scale in terms of childrens health and safety. Are we going to rearrange the deck chairs of the Titanic by blaming kids, teachers and cirriculum. How did we end up with both educated and uneducated adults who steal, lie, abuse, control, manipulate and consider their own needs as more important then others. Where are these values coming from? I suspect the schools, despite their problems, are not completely to blame.

Frankly, at this moment (after the American Cultural Revolution – like Chinese) it's almost impossible to have principles and integrity and be employed in the non-profit sector. Like in all similarly pleasant societies, those unfortunate who have these qualities are outside, by force or decision.

Bill Gates was a part of the advancement of technology, a generally good thing.

He paid as little as possible to his workers, outsourced and engaged in monopolistic practices to become absurdly rich. Now he shuffles some of it back to the poor.

If he taken half the share he did and allowed his workers to EARN more, therefore having less to make the poor more dependent on his charity it would have been better for the world. Fair business practices would have allowed even greater technology to be developed.

Of course, then he would not be the media darling he is and his opinion on every subject under the sun would not be transcribed by the msm.

Well, I am inclined to blame Reagan for everything, but, frankly, it's impossible. If society is democratic to a some degree, probably everyone is to blame for collaboration, unfortunately, more often than not, not abstract at all.
It does matter how one behaves in a workplace, for variety of reasons.
Every liberal is eager to talk about "standing up to power."
What they conveniently don't remember that it means to "One's own power." Kissing a-s of a boss who destroys an institution and fires employees who oppose the destruction, and shouting on Saturday "Reagan is bad" doesn't qualify one for a medal. Au contraire, au contraire.

The public needs to know what a "highly qualified teacher" is...Poor teaching? I disagree, poor support for teachers and students....oh hell yes. There are so many bullshit artists in the field of education; I've been a teacher for ten years and am leaving the profession because I am tired of compromising my principles. these think tanks don't talk about what is real and there is a huge disparity between inner -city schools and non-minority schools. It's a big lie.

For those of you blaming liberals for the current situation in our educational system, may I remind you that since 1994, it's been the REPUBLICANS in charge? How does THAT make it a liberal fault?

As a matter of fact, it all started going downhill when Reagan came along and started bad moutyhing everything and everyone in this country. I Watched as education changed drastically, and it went from being an all around education to a serious indoctrination of young minds. It ceased teaching youth how to think, and concentrated on propagandizing and making them into good little republicans.

It also became a rush to the bottom, and anyone from that era can tell you that if they were paying attention. Education suddenly had to be all about turning you inot a better little worker bee than a good American.

You can see the difference every time you try to talk sense to a child of the Reagan era. Those of us from the Kennedy era have a far different take on life than they do, and it's really distressing to see a whole generation so seriously twisted. They can't write, they can't speak clearly, and they certainly can't think past their wallets. The CONSERVATIVES and NEOCONS did their job well, and they seriously screwed up a whole generation. And that will come back to haunt this country in the future.

Go ahead and hope for change, but it won't happen positively if you allow Gates, et al, to call the shots. You WON'T be teaching anyone how to think, just how to be a good little worker bee. And go ahead and place blame, but get it right. It's NOT the liberals who have done this to your countrys future, it's the neocons and their world domination crap. They started with your kids, and you LET them do it. Don't blame the liberals for that. They had no power to stop anyone, did they? Blame Reagan, he is who put it into play.

1. Re: Vince Lawrence

I was tempted to use any number of sources, but the Wiki was the most robust and had a definition full of adjectives that described exactly what Broad and Gates are doing. Your distrust of the platform indicates a larger distrust of people...your willingness to dismiss an entire argument b/c you don't like one of the sources indicates a provincial narrow mindedness that is, arguably, to blame for many of the problems this country now faces.

2. In terms of what students need for the jobs of the future...This report would indicate that the vast majority of them require people who don't need high scores in math and science.

Corporate masters behave like thugs who beat a person, rob a person, push the person under a car, and when a person miraculously survives (paralyzed) accuse the person of laziness, and offer to buy a wheelchair.

Dina,

Why do I have a feeling that Gates et.al. are to blame for most of the problems of the public educational system.
Among other things I would mention:
-general culture worshiping money, money, money, and power, power, power, and undermining all public institutions and respect for their employees
- concrete, physical corporate pressure to conform in any respect to corporate culture, and abandon any civil, educational etc. ideals and missions.

Nothing functions in vacuum, most certainly, not schools

Improvement in American education (not Gates way) definitely should allow people actually understand causes and consequences and avoid the easy (wrong) conclusions

I was a teacher who went back to school for 10 years to earn certifications to teach in the public schools. I was casually fired by the uneducated superintedent after I completed my 3 year probation period. Nobody told me that they don't give tenure anymore since not economically productive for the system. My life, career and plans for retirement have been destroyed by a extrememly dysfunctional public school system. One has to live it to know what goes on today. I welcome Mr. Gates efforts at repairing an education system that has become as corrupt and brutal as the govenmental administrators and politics of our country.

Correction:

One can add many ...

Melinda Gates is a liar. More than 2/3 of ALL jobs being created in this country require NO education beyond high school.

She knows this, but she and her greedhead husband want a glut of overeducated people in order to further supress the salaries of professional techie jobs.

Just because somebody has an obscene amount of money, that doesn't make them qualified to talk about things they know nothing about.

The propaganda campaign against public schools is just that--propaganda based on lies. People who support the demolition of public education are anti-American, as far as I am concerned.

Public education and unions are the two means of upward mobility for the vast majority of people in our society. People who despise democracy and this country think there should be NO middle class, only a tiny number of rich and everybody else slaves to the whims of that tiny elite.

Who in the hell in their right mind thinks the likes of robber barons like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs even KNOW what they are talking about when it comes to education? These guys are glorified crooks who want to plunder education for money.

Clue to the clueless: education is NOT a business and cannot be RUN like a business.

One can many other "things"
I'd like to limit to just one:
There is a difference between having Canada and Mexico as neighbors, or being between Hitler and Stalin, for example.
There is a difference between being able to accumulate wealth
or losing any accumulation again and again and again.

I have no doubt that the corporate master shouldn't be allowed to indoctrinate children.
I despise their attempts at blaming teachers, and teachers only for educational problems. I will always remember the evil older Bush spending most of his TV time accusing teachers ... of everything.
And, of course, education is inseparable from the living
condition of students - a very important point. Only demagogues can insist otherwise.

On other hand, I am unhappy with the jingoistic and not so original (in spite of the lack of national standards) statement:

"Arguably, it is creativity, exploration, risk-taking, and liberty that helped this country earn its place as the sole global superpower. Forcing American teachers and children to follow the same script undermines all of the above."

Many other things -
such as pure and simple exploitation (and accumulation of wealth) and the fact that many immigrants come not only creative, risk-taking and free (only to be enslaved, or refuse at a cost), but also much more educated than the locals - have contributed.

I am ambivalent about national standards - they can assure these minimal standards the country needs.

When I think about the poorest kids in a business center of some poorest school in New York, sitting behind desk dressed like Jack Welsh, their role model, I sense that this country is beginning to be as entertaining as Stalin's Soviet Union, or Hitler's Germany was.

It's not Bush, Lady Wolf, or it's not Bush only.

Soon after Mayor Michael Bloomberg seized control of the New York City schools he brought in former CEO of General Electric Jack Welsh to begin tearing them down. Welsh did what he could and handed the job off to others. Today the plan is being executed by the likes of former president of Edison Schools, Inc., Christopher Cerf.

Soon after Mayor Richard Daley seized control of Chicago's public schools he instituted the "Renaissance 2010" program. Daley closed inner-city schools, disrupted nearby schools with a sudden influx of new students, refurbished the closed schools and turned them over to one "Education Maintenance Organization" or another. Using this method of operation Daley has moved scores of once public schools into private hands.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced his public school takeover plan from a charter school gymnasium. Under his plan, "The elected Los Angeles Board of Education would be relegated to advocating for parents, ruling on student discipline and preparing annual reports on schools." Meanwhile a CEO appointed by the mayor would actually run the public schools. Villaraigosa's team of privateers was headed up by Marcus Castain from the Broad Foundation. Billionaire Eli Broad's deep pockets have funded a relentless attack on urban public education now for over a decade. (Fran Zimmerman, San Diego school board member, told the LA Times about Eli Broad, "he's dabbling in social policy with all his money, and affecting change with it, but it's not necessarily good change, and it's not really school reform. It is basically a business agenda for reshaping the public school system.)

Our nation's Capitol has a higher concentration of severely poor people than any of the 50 states (10.8% of its residents). Washington D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty recently won a battle to takeover the District's public schools. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was by his side in the effort. Of course the Gates' biggest concern is plying every U.S. student with an Xbox and a Zune and training young people in places like India and Taiwan for high tech jobs at low wages. But the Foundation offered the District a $122 million payment in the form of a scholarship program if City and school officials will sign "a memorandum of understanding to undertake certain improvements." Mayoral control is their idea of improvements.

Molly
"As a young nurse I was taught that you couldn't teach a patient in pain. You had to relieve their pain and then you could teach them. I doubt that was research proven. But it makes a great deal of sense to me. Too many of our kids are in pain"

A very important point.

WmC
My question is this: If the US electorate were "better educated", would fewer of them use Fox News as their primary source of information? Would fewer of them show such intense interest in Anna Nicole's baby?

Until you can answer those questions in the affirmative, focusing on the supposed defects in the educational system is silly.

There are many other aspects most Americans, because of gaps in education and Nazi psychiatrists' brainwashing, among other reasons, don't notice.
Had they known the difference between being free and being enslaved, they, the wage slaves, most certainly would not have repeated idiotically "we are the freest people in the world"

My question is this: If the US electorate were "better educated", would fewer of them use Fox News as their primary source of information? Would fewer of them show such intense interest in Anna Nicole's baby?

Until you can answer those questions in the affirmative, focusing on the supposed defects in the educational system is silly.

I don't take any piece of writing seriously that quotes Wikkipedia. That such a reference should appear in a piece about education is so hillariously ironic that it took me a few minutes to make it back to the keyboard.

Personal obsevations are derived from several years of "lecturing" [do not believe that anyone can educate anyone unless its done as propaganda] graduate students.

The one common thread among observed is that even at a graduate level it was very very rare to find students who employed their "thought processes". Possibly those conditions reflected the much mytholized attitude that " real go-getting guys did not need to go to school to get ahead. Only sissies did"

Same kind of attitude prevalent in the USA today that the one sport that the "whole" planet participates in [soccer] and enjoys watching is a sissies as well as low scoring game when compared to foootbawl and besides there are no half clad cuties to watch at half time.

While both soccer and football are considered a sport the ways and means they are played requires certain aptitudes. Parallel observations can be made about the educational [games] practiced on this planet by a variety of societies and unfortunately in a statistical comparison the US does not rank high. Still blaming the educational system "in-toto" shows a bias.

Young people from an increassing number of "single-parent homes" or from homes where parental oversight is at a minimum are brought into an educational environment where a clerical function [superindent of a school system enjoys an income that is three and four times as much as an average teacher one cannot expect the result of an educated young person at the age of 18 or so. What comes out is an individual that has been processed bureaucratically by clerks.

Overshadowing this panorama are the decisions made by admittedly ignorant leaders of a society of 300 million to spend 8 billion dollars month of taxpayers monies under the pretext of creating an ideal society in some foreign land using US taxpayer contributions.

Our educational system reflects the standing of our social fabric. The problem is that we all expect the other to change instead of US.

I am a teacher in Vietnam, working for SEAMEO (South East Asian Ministries of Education). It is multinational, based in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, and a few other nations. What I see here in Southeast Asia is a very serious attitude toward learning and education. These students work their collective butts off, often seven days a week in school.

In short, no only SEAMEO, but entire countries are investing in the future through education. More and more students tell me they would not like to study in the USA because they want to go to a country with better standards and which are also more affordable. Here in Asia, it's education first in the private schools, and profit second. In the USA it is the reverse.

I have been in jails in the United States and from what I have seen, most (60%)of the inmates would not be incarcerated had they had a chance at a good education. Once they left high school, the only thing they were skilled at doing was committing crimes.

I have met some of the funniest, most resourceful, talented, quick witted people in my life in jail.

It is a complicated issue and I know there is no easy answer. But one issue that has to be addressed is having well-paid teachers. I believe that is the first step. Next, let each State decide on its testing methods. As any teacher knows, some students are great at a subject but when it comes time for the test, there score doesn't reflect reality. Thirdly, we need to invest in our future. And that future will come from students who have been given an education. Get the corporations out of schools as much as possible because a corporation only exists for a profit. We need to make our schools either free or much less expensive.

I think the most important thing to be added to our curriculum on a elementary level would be gardening. Knowledge of the cycles of soil fertility and natural soil building. Hands on experience. It is our disconnect from the natural world that has lead to the abuse of it.
While it is true now that we purchase our basic needs with money,in the distant future some may find it is not edible.

The peaking of oil and the slow decline of this energy source means the peaking and decline of everything. Possibly for a time even money will be problematic.

The idea that cellulosic ethanol can replace a significant portion of what we now have could result in a massive increase in soil depletion, food competetive in more ways than one. As a rule foresters and farmers know that the material growing above the ground is a very essential part of top soil maintenance. Something that may not be coprehensible by the mind of Archer Daniels Midland or Monsanto.

Nutritional food does not generally come Highly processed in a package sent half way around the world and this unsustainable practice will not be a desirable one in a low energy age.
I believe those who continue to think that alternatives will easily replace what we have are in for a shock.
Our so called "green revolution" farming practices are as or more destructive than any. People need local food fertile farmable soil or not. Professor Richard Hienburg Has said we/the US will need "fifty to a hundred million farmers." The sooner the better,Lets start educating them.

The goal of all these "reformers" is the same - to turn the school and university system into nothing but vocational training. To destroy the notion of being an educated person. The means is simple - remove government funding for education and force students to take out loans.

I enjoyed this article very much.

Last evening I listened to Melinda Gates talk about, again, what bad shape schools are in and how their goal was that _every high school student would go to college_. The commentator asked if she really thought that was realistic and she, of course, said it was.

Now here is the rub. College is not for all students. It just isn't. And besides we really do need some plumbers, electricians, car repair folks, etc. And the republican economy has become best at ginning out service sector jobs. Yes, that is nurses (like me) but it mostly means waiters and waitresses and casino staff and service industry staff.

So the phrase "sending every student to college" is a code phrase that means EITHER turning away from the ideal of educating all (even the SPED kids and the kids that are on a technology track, etc) and putting dollars in to educating only the college material kid OR it means turning all post-high-school education (for the plumbers and the electricians and the waitresses) into education done at the college level. Which changes the notion of the college education away from a place where one learned how to think into something a lot more utlitarian.

As a nurse who works as a school nurse, I still think that schools are reflections of their communities. There is no question that our district serves some children very well and a number of others less well. I can tell you that the home circumstances of some children renders them nearly un-educable, they are in so much crisis. As a system, there is no doubt that schools can and should improve but what we can do will always be limited by a number of factors outside of the school's control--lack of food, chaotic home life, violence at home, lack of support for academic activities etc.

I think people need to ask, "What is it we want our schools to do?" American education has been predicated on the idea of teaching all comers because education was seen as the great equalizer, the thing that could raise people up out of poverty. I have to say that I generally believe in that statement, that ideal. But I think education systems are burdened with expectations beyond the reality in which they operate.

Too many schools struggle with crumbling infrastructure, a too-broad mandate, and a crumbling social support safety net.

As a young nurse I was taught that you couldn't teach a patient in pain. You had to relieve their pain and then you could teach them. I doubt that was research proven. But it makes a great deal of sense to me. Too many of our kids are in pain.

Mr. Markham
"Several hundred" Gates funded schools? Where did you find the time? I don't suppose you work for one of those "independent" think tanks.

You guys are shameless! Most people now think that our present state of affairs is due to conservatism run amok. That the more you have to conserve, the more amok you run. That's some spin!

Our current system is most certainly working for millions of American school children, otherwise this country wouldn't be what it is.

I fail to see how this is "liberalism run amok." I am interested in what capacity you have served in "several hundred" Gates' schools, though less interested in whether or not employees there would be willing to discuss economic imperialism, as their jobs are not protected.

There is nothing enlightened or progressive about increasing the standardization of schooling, forcing children to stay in schools longer, or imposing a national curriculum.

That sir, is liberalism run amok. More government control of childhood, less freedom to think outside the box, more repitition of tired old "truths."

Yuk and Yikes.

This is another example of liberalism run amok (which, by the way, comes from the Malay language and means 'crazy'). I am an educator who has worked in several hundred Gates-funded schools. I never encountered a single teacher in those schools who endorses economic imperialism, unfettered capitalism, or anything remotely associated with Mr. Kovac's diatribe about Bill Gates. Yes, Gates is part of coporate America. But his views have generally been enlightened and progressive--and the schools he funds tend to be lighthouses for meaningful, necessary change. Often, they are the only signs in a community that someone in education is thinking about the future.To assert our current system is working for children who live in the 21st century? Give me a break.

I have to echo the author's reply here. (By the way, thank you Mr. Kovacs, for taking the time to join us readers in the discussion here. So many others "write and run.")

To Mr. Markham, I too would like to know how is it possible that you have worked in several hundred of these schools in one working lifetime. By implication that means you spent a few weeks in each school, and in addition to your typical work you interviewed all the teachers in each one on this subject. The fact that you never personally encountered "a single teacher in those schools who endorses economic imperialism, unfettered capitalism, or anything remotely associated with Mr. Kovac's diatribe about Bill Gates" is meaningless unless you tell us how many teachers you met, how much time you spent with each one, and how many times terms like "economic imperialism" came up in the conversation. Your argument sounds like a logical fallacy doesn't it?

I don't believe there is a one-size-fits-all remedy for the state of education in the U.S. But an appropriate place to begin any wide-ranging reforms might be to address the fact that millions of children go to school hungry, and that this has a lot to do with their ability to concentrate and actively participate in class. Returning arts education to the curriculum would also help to improve student involvement and stimulate creative and analytical thinking, while helping to combat the kind of Groupthink (a real problem in our country today in any case) that a standardized curriculum and testing would only serve to reinforce.

Actually, if you want to see how miserably our schools are failing, just read the posts on any blog. An amazing number of Americans don't know the difference between "it's" (the contraction) and "its" (the possessive). In fact, many, many writers use the possessive apostrophe almost every time they want a plural. I understand that typos are often hard to catch, and I've made my share. But leaving out a letter or even a word is quite different from consistently adding an extra apostrophe, always spelling certain words incorrectly, and not knowing the difference between the subject and object of a sentence.

It has become the norm to say, for example, "Come in the office and talk to John and I." An English teacher friend asked someone to "take a picture of my daughter and I." My boss, an ex-teacher and ex-school principal, once said "the problem between she and the supervisor..." At times it seems that most of the American population believes it is incorrect to use "me" or "her" or "him" before or after the word "and." I've even had arguments to that effect with people who should know better.

I've written this before in other blogs, but at the risk of repeating myself, I'd like to propose a simple test for finding out what's wrong with education in America. Just go to any school system in the country, get all the administrators together, and have each of them write a paragraph or two. It becomes crystal clear immediately upon reading their essays that few school adminstrators can write more than about two or three sentences together that are grammatically correct and don't make the reader cringe.

I work for a school system in West Virginia, and most of the adminstrators are nice people. But they probably should not be in charge of what our children learn. One recently wrote to me in response to a request for input into the student handbooks that I edit and publish. Her email contained the line "I'm going to ask a few principal's I know can and do read if they would like to e a mini committee."

One principal corrected my use of the possessive with a gerund in the sentence, "This results in the student's having to stay after school." He apparently didn't know what a gerund is. Another circled all the periods I had put inside quotes (correct in the US, but not in the UK) and drew little arrows in red indicating that I needed to move them outside the quotes.

This is not unusual. When I began editing the handbooks 20 years ago, they were an abomination. I actually called one of the high school principals and said, "I took some liberties with your handbook because I assumed you wanted it to be grammatically correct." He was too ignorant to know he was being insulted.

If anyone thinks this situation is unique to this area, it's not. In a large city in Pennsylvania where I used to live, the head of the English department in one of the big high schools took down an announcement for Shakespeare's plays from the English department bulletin board because, as he said, he didn't think anyone would be interested. He thought Shakespeare wrote "Antigone," which he pronounced to rhyme with "bone," and thought Nick Adams was just an actor instead of realizing he was a common character in Hemingway's short stories.

It's not just spelling, grammar, and the ability to express oneself that is atrocious. Americans coming out of public schools have little understanding of what is going on in the world. My granddaughter, who is being home schooled, went with her parents to visit some friends. They had some kind of elementary school level academic game. My granddaughter knew so many more of the answers than the public school students, she said to her parents on the way home, "Thanks for not sending me to school and making me stupid."

Having said all of this, I am definitely not an advocate of privatizing education. I am in favor of redirecting a small portion of the $180,000 per minute that is being spent in Iraq into education. Teachers, administrators, and all educators should be scholars. They should not ever be willing to admit, as one assistant high school principal did last year, that English is not their strong subject. Or that they never pick up a book to read for enjoyment. There is a very fine art center in my town, but I could probably count on one hand the number of so-called educators who have stepped foot in it over the past 20 years. Most of those who have are art teachers - they surely are not administrators. I had a show of my work there last fall, and not one of the central office administrators or principals even showed up.

There are good teachers, there are even good administrators, but there are few who are scholars with broad knowledge of science, current events, geography, the elements of higher math, and English. Until we raise our standards for the individuals who are in charge of education and are willing to pay for quality, we will continue to turn out poorly educated students who can't write, don't read, and are woefully ignorant of what goes on in the world around them.

xyz: brilliant and true assessment. Key 89 I agree about CONTENT over form. Good discussion here, gang.

I'm gunna have t'agree with key89 on the issue of how we write...or type...i earned c's in highschool English until 11th grade when Lynn Horton (RESPECT!) turned me on to reading great books.

I read John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany and the next thing I knew i was reading all of the time. The next year I was in AP English, then majoring in English, then earning a Master's in English Education and then teaching high school...wait for it...English.

Had it not been for a teacher turning me on to ideas, to creativity, to the pain and joy that come from expression, I'm not sure I'd be who I am.

The standardization of our children's minds must end, and we need to consider how to help each child integrate her or his unique skill set and personality into a complex and evolving universe...

Bill Gates or no Bill Gates, English grammar or no English grammar, when the standard US history textbook becomes Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States", we can truly say that education is taking place in our schools. Without teaching critical thinking skills, without questioning our assumptions as a society, without encouraging novel thinking, we are trying to build a society without a blueprint.

With all due respect to LeeAnnG, I believe that although our written form of English across the United States could stand to improve greatly, it is the content of our words that truly matters. Give me the raw power of an idea expressed eloquently albeit with spelling errors, and spare me all the grammatically perfect prose lacking in substance.

www.raycarlson.com to connect the dots... ... ...

I totally agree that a powerful idea expressed with grammatical and spelling errors is superior to perfect grammar with no substance. However, I have yet to read many essays with no substance that also have perfect grammar and spelling and, as I qualified in a previous blog, don't make the reader cringe. (Ann Coulter, for example, could have the most perfect grammar and sentence structure in the world, but she would still make me cringe.)

Good teachers make a huge difference, and I had two who were quite wonderful. They changed the way I read how I evaluate the written word. They made me appreciate ideas. Both were sticklers for good grammar, punctuation, spelling, and clarity, by the way.

If I had to make a choice between perfect grammar and creative thought, of course, creative thought would win every time. But the two are not mutually exclusive. Grammar and language are simply the tools of communication. However, far too many people don't seem to know how to use those tools well to express ideas in a lucid manner.

And I also enthusiastically agree - this has been a great discussion, one without the rancor I've encountered so often in some blogs.

ps.. we have had a national curriculum... or did you learn different things in elementary school.. you learn math, science, writing, english, art, history... what changes that much? i am not for indoctrination and am wary of the government having to much say but come on.. every country in europe has a set curriculum that is much more rigorous than one being proposed here... i understand the current times lead us to by highly skeptical but by the time this happens our evil president will be gone and we'll have a lot less to worry about without his slimy hands all over this thing

I dont understand knocking Eli Broad. it seems like the bulk of this is targeted at Gates, with broad as kind of an add on.. I went to a college in southern california that was funded primarily from Eli Broad's fortune.. Having been a student there, i am aware of the impact Broads money has had on higher learning especially here in southern california. Think of him as a modern day carnegie, but not on the same level.. the guy has given hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars to funding private colleges around the counry, updating facilities, building new structures etc... dont knock Broad for seeing a problem, (there is a problem if class sizes are at 40) and trying to fix it.. what have you done for schools lately? (besides taxes) i would take this article and its claims about "universal curriculum" with a grain of salt.. these are two men who i genuinely believe are trying to help.