EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- The Bill of Rights Exists: An Open Letter to Dianne Feinstein
- Major Loss to Organic Farmers as Court Rules in Favor of Monsanto
- NSA Whistleblower Revealed: Q&A with Edward Snowden
- One American Who Isn't For Sale
- 'Reprehensible, Reckless, Illegal': Washington Officials Slam Heroic NSA Surveillance Leaker
Popular content
Today's Top News
School Woes Rooted in Boardrooms, Not Classrooms
Champions of public education often claim that student achievement drives the economy. Economic innovation and competitiveness supposedly depend on how much students learn in school. Investing in public education is thus wise policy because it ensures our collective prosperity.
This conventional defense of schooling goes wrong in three ways: it misstates the relationship between learning and economic growth; it attributes too much power to schools and teachers; and it limits our understanding of what education is for.
True, our economy couldn’t function if students didn’t learn anything in school. Most jobs in our society require literacy and numeracy, and it’s crucial that schools impart these skills. For this reason alone, we would be foolish not to invest in public education.
But we should understand that student achievement -- how much students actually learn in school -- is less the cause of economic growth than its consequence. It is not student achievement that drives the economy but the economy that drives student achievement.
Consider what we know about student motivation. We know that students strive to learn when they feel respected by their teachers, when they are confident in their ability to learn, and, most importantly, when they believe their efforts will pay off.
It is the latter factor -- belief in a payoff -- that links student learning to the state of the economy. When students know that there are good jobs waiting for them, provided they get the required knowledge and skills, they work hard at learning. When the effort seems unlikely to pay off, they don’t.
Recognizing the link between effort and reward helps makes sense of the so-called achievement gap. Students of color who believe that racial discrimination in the job market will negate the benefits of schooling may invest less effort in learning. When racism leads students to doubt their abilities or to dread school, the demotivation effect is even stronger.
Yes, parental encouragement is important. But sermons and pep talks don’t create jobs. And when students can see for themselves that there aren’t enough good jobs to go around, they aren’t likely to be inspired to great effort by platitudes about success in school being the key to success in life.
Student achievement thus depends as much or more on the relationship between students and the economy as between students and teachers. Once we acknowledge this, it becomes clear that teachers do not deserve the blame heaped on them by critics seeking easy targets. The real culprits are far more powerful political and economic actors.
Teachers did not send U.S. manufacturing jobs to Mexico, India, and China. Nor did they lose billions of dollars of other people’s money by gambling in deregulated financial markets. They did not deplete the public coffers by cutting taxes on corporations and the rich. Teachers did not drag us into two unending wars that are draining our national treasury.
As our economy has suffered because of these ruinous policies, so have our schools.
Cutting resources to schools makes it harder for good teachers to do their jobs. Bleak economic prospects sap student motivation. Misguided attacks on teachers further dishearten both teachers and students.
The implicit message students are getting -- mainly from budget-cutters and those who scapegoat teachers -- is that school isn’t valued by society at large and probably isn’t worth their time. No wonder students learn less than they could. No wonder about half of all new teachers quit within five years.
Defenders of public education are right to tout the potential economic value of what students learn in school. But overplaying the economic argument can make us forget what else schooling should accomplish. Students need to be educated, not merely trained.
Our economy needs skilled workers. It needs creative scientists and entrepreneurs. It needs versatile managers. And it needs good public schools to produce such people.
But democracy needs more. It needs citizens who can think critically, assess facts and arguments, and engage in civil discourse. Education is what produces citizens, and public schools are the places we have created to make this happen. We may not always succeed, but to give up on public schools is to give up on democracy.
Ideally, teachers and schools would receive every possible support needed to impart not only job-related skills but also the qualities of mind needed for participation in a democracy. The main threat, were schools to do this, would be to those who want us to look for the source of our troubles in classrooms rather than corporate boardrooms.
- Posted in
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
38 Comments so far
Show All"But democracy needs more. It needs citizens who can think critically, assess facts and arguments, and engage in civil discourse. " Yeah, how many students ever have rigorous training in logic and critical thinking? About none I'd venture.
Wonder why?---- MD
I think you are a little unrealistic. I was in the public schools in the 1950s. In my senior year in high school (1956) I took a "civics" class in which we learned about the Constitution . But we certainly did not read the Federalist Papers, and I am sure that they were never mentioned. I do remember that the teacher collected our class notes each week and read them (he made comments in the margins).
I doubt that I would have passed your test when I graduated, so I think you are being a little harsh on today's students.
Critics of the educational system should take the time to read Henry Adams's memoir The Education of Henry Adams. In it he shows that the education we get at any stage of our life is not complete. What we learn is overlaid onto what we already know. Over the years, as we live our lives, we acquire the education which the critics think high school students should receive in school.
Critical thinking is out the window. The memorization of facts for the test, facts that have no relevance to the students and thus are quickly forgotten, is what passes for education these days in our public schools, and increasingly in our colleges. This prepares them for mind-numbing boredom in the workplace. It also inhibits learning, which I'm increasingly convinced is the purpose of public education in the US. We wouldn't want people to be able to question things, would we? How then could we get them to believe the crap that they hear on the news?
The dean at the community college I work at has informed me that my student evaluations were poor, but has refused to let me see them. I have a feeling some of the little fascists went to the dean because I suggested that maybe torture is not a good thing and maybe thinking killing Iraqis is fun is a sick thought. Just making little suggestions. I have a feeling I won't be working there anymore.
The thinking they are taught is how to give the answer someone wants. That may help them in the business world. Don't say what you know, or stand up for yourself or others, or worry about right or wrong, or worry about the truth just tell the boss what he wants to hear. And say what the boss wants you to say. Sell your soul to the devil and he will give you a few more crumbs than the other workers. Just remember, every time you sell a piece of your soul, you have that much less.
Good for you Elizabeth H. You have refused to sell your soul. You can look in the mirror and hold your head up high. Sleep well at night and have sweet dreams!
Ms. Elizabeth, Mr. Butterfield,
Do you have any idea of how ridiculous you appear and how apparent your lack of education undermines your public school bashing rant? When you talk of a soul, and the devil you simply reveal how steeped you are in the quagmire of the dominant ideology that cranks out this kind of bullshit to keep you both from questioning the cause of why you're both so incredibly ignorant. Please try to read more and say less. You're both poster children for why public schools need more funding in this age of idiocy.
John uses the term “sell your soul to the devil,” which somehow proves to you that both he and I are “steeped [. . .] in the quagmire of the dominant ideology that cranks out this kind of bullshit to keep you both from questioning the cause of why you're both so incredibly ignorant.” Nice duckspeak! What does it mean, other than that criticizing public education offends you and prompts you to bash people?
Criticizing the public schools is off the table because the schools need to be better supported. Of course. The problem with education couldn't be the curriculum, the methodology, or our ridiculously mindless teacher-training; if we pour more money into the present system it will obviously work better.
I have no problem with investing in an educational system that works. However, the US already spends more per student, on average, than most other wealthy countries, with notoriously inferior outcomes. That money is hardly evenly dispersed, true, strengthening the class lines. But maybe we need to think a bit beyond the easy answer of throwing more money at the problem. You appear incapable of going there.
By the way, learn how to use commas, particularly if you are going to bash other people’s writing.
r-u-thru: nuts! You'll be better off once you understand how your comment applies to you, directly, more than to those to whom you direct it. The best and brightest are so turned off by rote learning that they've lost all interest by 9th grade. The existing educational system would be better described as No Child gets ahead of the median
I have experienced just the kind of kick back from right wing students. Your dean ought to be required to show you the evaluations -- it is outrageous to refuse to let you see them, they could say anything. Even if he or she is trying to protect your feelings, to tell you they are bad but not show them is ridiculous. Do you have a union to stick up for you? aren't there guidelines about this at your school. I understand if it doesn't feel worth it to fight back; if the dean is against you and you have no tenure or anything, you may be fighting a losing battle. Wish i could help and sending you support -- a recently retired CC prof.
You are correct gdale, and that's what is wrong about basing teacher pay on this sort of 'evaluation'. A better way would be for a competent administrator to sit in the back of the room and simply count student questions and other indicators of involvement. Teaching for NCLB tests fosters the production of workerbots when what we need are critical thinkers. Criticism of the current system, including school board members who are mere ideologs and tax dodgers, does not indicate a lack of support for education because the system we have has become decrepit.
The mysterious "them" is the same society which criticizes the educational system. Insstead of saying you do not agree with the structure of the argument, try telling us what the writer said that is wrong.
Exactly. When I used to check in on this blog years ago there were plenty of eccentrics writing here, but they could at least string together enough sentences in a consistent manner to form coherent ideas. Even CD evidences the rise of illiteracy and blatant disregard for reason.
Well, no one has actually tried funding the schools adequately or lowering class sizes. If you think that they have, you aren't informed. The problems do stem from underfunding and large class sizes and the SES of students, which are all things teachers cannot control. It's no diversion, it's reality.
Michael, this to me seems like a bunch of hooey! I am a child of 50/60's, my children 70/80's and I knew close to nothing that was going on in the economy and neither did my kids. I studied because if I did not I would get grounded, I studied to keep my parents off my back, so did my children. My parents and myself as a parent encouraged education and the importance of education in your life and maintaining a good life. I did what was expected of me because I wanted to be able to be with my friends and have a social life and so did my kids. Parents with living wage jobs and not having to work 24/7 just to barely get by with what education needs. Education needs parents and just not overly stressed parents. Of course, there are the over achiever parents that have instilled through more structured behavior children that succeed to succeed and miss their childhood. So maybe my parents and my parenting was wrong. My parents instilled values, ethics, and hardwork as I did, but I hid it in the back of my brain and drew on it later in life after my schooling. Children need families, children need parents, family life, a home, and structure which is given by parents who have jobs and self esteem, dignity, and self worth by earning a living wage where they can take care of their family and provide a well rounded environment. Families can go to basketball games, baseball games, plays, art museums, concerts, beach, mountains, camping. Those things are hardly affordable being that we paid the people that provide these things astronomical amounts of money.
As you mentioned this all hard to do with single moms forced into the workforce under "welfare reform" or with work hours going UP in order to earn the same wage. It hard to do with both parents out of the house 40 hours and more in order to earn the income needed to keep a roof over their heads.
It rather odd is it not? Children are educated to join the workforce and the more that join that workforce the more wages are depressed. The more the wages are depressed the greater the need for that once child and his or her spouse to work longer hours this affecting their own children.
Yet the fix is increase the retirement age. Depress wages so the worker more "competitive" with China. Gut social programs. Attack and bust the unions.
The fix is to privatize everything. Nothing should be free. Profits for the corporations must be maximized.
And then you have some one like likeitornot who continually attacks Social spending, who bashes unions at every opportunity, who mocks the Social democracies of Europe that try and enhance the ability of the worker to be with their children who continually preaches the need for fiscal discipline while at the same time insisting that taxes on the wealthy can not be raised say something like "well said" in response to your post.
It mind boggling.
Well said, but I don't see how you disagree with the writer. When you (and I) were in school jobs were not being outsourced, there were no wars in the middle 1950s, the stock market did not plunge into the toilet taking away people's investments, etc. The past was different.
I guess I really did not disagree with much said except how he portrayed students and their motivation.
My cousin home schooled her son. He completed his high school courses at 16 and graduated from George Mason University at 20. He has a good paying job.
Home schooling isn't for everyone, but if you have the time, check it out.
You don't have to deal with big government/big business .
I feel Mr. Schwalbe's essay is very concise and to the point, strips through layers of crap to get at many of the factors that are contributing to the decline of our nation. You, Sir, have my deepest respect. Thank you!
RtTBt
Most of the comments make good points, keep the discussion going people. Nice to see such a quick reaction. It's all about incentives! My nephews and niece, 14, 12, and 10 are good children, married parents, okay schools, still quite innocent. But, they are not learning what I would expect compared to my public school education. Why? Maybe because they know, deep in their hearts, that "new math" is not the answer. Maybe they'd rather be taking courses in Organic Farming and Metal-smithing! Skills they may actually need someday!
The US educational system is a class system, like all economic systems in America. Students who come from affluent, economically stable families already have a big advantage compared to students who come from poor, unstable families.
The students at high-performing public schools and elite private schools have more money, more funding, and an overall better education than those at the poorer, overcrowded public schools. It's much easier to learn and develop an education when you have parents who don't need to work as many hours for the same (or less) money, like so many working-class parents do. It's even easier when you have one parent who can afford to stay at home. Most working-cla s parents don't have that luxury. Additionally, having parents who are more involved in your education is correlated strongly with parents who are of higher socioeconomic and educational status, who haven't had to live with racism and classism.
All of those advantages that upper and middle-class parents over working-class and poor parents give their students an advantage in things like creative thinking, critical thinking, and making connections between different abstract ideas. Already, in public elementary and secondary education, you can usually tell which students are going to "do well" under the capitalist way of life in America, and which students are going to be worker bees. And there's always more of the latter.
Socioeconomic and class privilege play a huge role in the education of young people. Education, though in theory an 'equality of oppurtunity" public service, is in reality a highly inequal, unfair, and class-based system. Without fundamental changes in social conventions, arrangements, and economic conditions, there will be little or no progress made towards making education an equal, fair chance system.
Yes this point well made in "The Spirit Level"
Yes, very succinct. Thank you for your comment.
Parents in inner-city school tend to be hostile toward their schools, and it's not hard to see why. They got little or no benefit from their schooling, and don't expect the schools their children are in to help them advance. The consequences of this attitude further diminishes the chance for a better education, of course, but there it is.
"They got little or no benefit..."
Have you ever stopped to consider that when you open your mouth and take a particular side on an issue that you might actually be helping the other side more?
Have you ever stopped to consider that failing to consider truths only leads to bad decisions?
r-u-thru really needs a mirror to see the problem. a nice flat one which doesn't distort so much. maybe a copy of an old Pogo cartoon. seems to be defending programs designed to fail and prodding all to board the sinking ship. just amazing.
I agree with this essay. My poor rural students see that parents that work breaking their backs to try to support their families and still the utilities are cut off. The other parents frantically spend gas money they don't have, to put in the job ap's required to continue to collect UI if they qualify. Or thumb to the Job Center to submit online applications that are rarely acknowledged,let alone responded to by requests for references or interviews. And many of these parents have college degrees earned from re-training programs when the first, second and third waves of NAFTA, GATT, TRAA struck. This doesn't happen in a vacuum. The unemployed have children that are students. They find education pretty irrelevant to their lives, suffused as they are with denial of full employment and all that entails: shelter,healthcare, food, heat. We are currently coaching students to fill their tummies up here at school for breakfast and lunch because there will be no dinner at home tonight. Many had parents that didn't apply for the free reduced lunch programs when they initially qualified, so the children's appetites were affected by their initial slow starvation and they don't have hunger signals anymore. Really.
And even the more obtuse caretakers can see it now because their wellbeing is at stake, as well. Climb aboard, I say, welcome to our world. Solidarity.
Well analyzed. Education is a two way street. No matter the quality of the instruction, if the tuners are only on part time, little is received. According to Fed stats 25% of American children live in poverty. That standard is a family of four living on $22,000 or less. By my way of viewing things that probably means a lot more living in economically deprived situations. I live in an affluent area with highly rated schools and have a business that employs young people (pizza delivery) in an economically distressed area, where I grew up in the 50's. The difference in general attitudes (there are always exceptions) toward education and general vision of what life has to offer them is tremendous. In the affluent area the parents and kids are palpably terrified of not getting into Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Cal etc. They know that is the ticket to the good life. I went to Cal from that poor community and so did many of my classmates, but there was little anxiety involved, because one could still make a good living as a blue collar worker. My mother was a single mother of three who worked as a hairdresser and was able to buy her own home and hadn't graduated from high school. Middle and High Schools offered manual training in wood, metal, auto, and electrical. That those things have been deleted along with civics and the arts is no accident. It is telling the mass of students that they are not valued and are not expected to participate at a high level in society. They get it at a visceral level and act accordingly. It took me 40 hrs of work at minimum wage to pay for a semester at Berkeley. Now it would take 600 hrs. That leaves little for any but the well to do. These changes aren't an accident. They are the result of decades of changes fueled by an ideology promulgated by the corporate elite. As a nation we need to reverse that. The obvious way is to reverse the redistribution of wealth that has happened over the last 30 plus years. A vast redistribution that has resulted in despair among the youth of the poor and anxiety among the upper middle class that is communicated to their children before pre-school. The use of anti-depressants may be the result. I could go on, but you get the point. In order to have a social/political democracy it is necessary to have an economic democracy. That can only be accomplished by refusing to cooperate and being in the streets and in their faces. Non-violently of course.
The problem is as much in bored rooms as it is in Board Rooms. The kind of stuff teachers are required to teach by No Propaganda Left Behind, and by moves like the State of Texas is making to remove controversial "sciency" stuff from the textbooks make it so only to most gifted teacher can manage to make anything interesting. Being publicly educated was boring half a century ago when I was in High School.
Paul Simon:
"When I think back On all the crap I learned in high school It's a wonder I can think at all."
"But democracy needs more. It needs citizens who can think critically, assess facts and arguments, and engage in civil discourse. Education is what produces citizens, and public schools are the places we have created to make this happen. We may not always succeed, but to give up on public schools is to give up on democracy."
_________________________
"[G]ive up on democracy?" Alas! that ship has sailed.
The Brave New World codified in "No Child Left Behind" abhors "education" in the classic Enlightenment sense of imparting knowledge and reasoning skills for the purpose of facilitating intellectual development-- especially the kind that precipitates and develops critical thinking, self-awareness, and intellectual depth or insight.
Once upon a time, there was indeed a declared public interest served in cultivating all of the above, on the theory that a vibrant democracy depends on an intelligent, skeptical, free citizenry.
But the power elite in Amerika's technobarbaric capitalist culture barely even pays lip service to that "quaint" standard any more-- it's gradually morphed into a warped and devolved objective of cultivating and maintaining a highly-functional "workforce" to ensure
that the nation remains economically "competitive"and dominant-- read "triumphant"-- in world of rivals and adversaries fighting for
control of finite and shrinking natural resources.
Oh, there's still a need for a range of sharper and duller tools, or coarser and finer gears.
But overall, this reduces the art of education to a skill-set much closer to "programming", or "training" in the behavioral sense. In
general, learning and intellectual enrichment for its own sake is superfluous and literally "counterproductive". For all but the highest level in the social pyramid, what is wanted are TAMED, well-trained, unreflective, complacent, compliant, and institution-broken worker units-- and in their spare time, enthusiastic consumers of commodities and pop culture.
In a phrase, "obedient servants".
Who needs schools when we have interactive online courses?
ezeflyer,
Who needs interactive online courses when we don't have schools? Since when did you become an advocate for idiocy? You used to post some good points here years ago. Did you just cut and paste those points from other articles and post them under your name? Maybe you should go back to plagiarism. You were more interesting.
Your comments are consistently nasty and illogical. Accusing people of idiocy, as you have here and elsewhere, is not helpful. When you first accuse someone (in this case ezeflyer) of plagiarism in the present discussion and then suggest s/he "go back to plagiarism," you are being illogical. What are you trying to say, beyond spewing hatred?
Good insight.
Students are motivated not only by the availability of jobs, but by the availability of productive jobs. In an economy geared towards redistributing wealth upwards most jobs involve serving the wealthy in one way or another, whether it's as an insurance analyst, maid, scientist dependent on grants, mainstream journalist, government official promoting policies that serve corporations or teacher forced to teach to tests. Democratizing (and socializing) the economy would make more money available for jobs that make people feel positive about what they do. The prosperity theology which seems to have a death grip on all our institutions has to go. The purpose of education is not to get a high-paying job, but to enrich our lives and give people the skills they need to serve the community they live in.
I appreciate Mr. Schwalbe's premise, though I suspect most students are really not all that attuned to the connection between doing their best in school and their future prospects. I think that the connection is more immediate: if students feel respected, if they can see the connections within what they are learning, if they have a feeling of success in engaging the subject, then they are more likely to want to put in the effort necessary for success.
What doesn't work: class sizes of 40-1; cutting librarians and nurses; student-counselor ratios of 800-1 or 1000-1 (proposed for Los Angeles schools next year if state funding doesn't improve); no access to arts, music, and voc ed courses; dirty bathrooms and classrooms because the custodial staff has been cut in half; long, boring standardized tests that aren't connected in any meaningful way with actual class work.
Public education is facing the most difficult challenge ever in modern times in terms of its funding and its mission. Teachers are attacked by Scott Walker and his ilk from the "right" and by the Obama/Duncan/Gates/Rhee types and other "charterizers" from the "left."
Unless we are able to radically reframe the debate very soon, we will wake up one day and find that our schools are gone, our jobs are gone, and our democracy is gone. I fear the worst, I am sorry to say.