Kids Aren’t Cars; Schools Aren’t Factories

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

by Kyle Olson

As “Waiting for ‘Superman’” so eloquently points out, the industrial assembly-line model of America’s public schools, created decades ago, isn’t working. In fact, it’s setting us further and further behind our global competitors.

Today, it is essential that our children graduate high school and college prepared for the fierce competition they will face in the global marketplace. Their economic survival will be determined by their ability to compete with countries like China, India, and other emerging economies.

This requires that our public schools be innovative and effective. Instead, our schools are using a failed, one-size-fits-all approach to education that may actually end up hurting our children.

t’s interesting that our slide began in the 1970s. Just ten years earlier, collective bargaining, the crowning glory of labor unions, took root in our public schools. Coincidence?

Collective bargaining agreements, which carry the weight of law, enshrine such policies as seniority (last hired, first fired), tenure (lifetime job protection in as little as two years) and due process (an extra-legal process outside the court system). Oh, and automatic yearly raises– not for performance, but simply for logging another year in the system. In other words, we give teachers raises simply for not dying over the summer.

This is a beautiful system – if you’re a public school employee. But if you’re a student in the public school system, well, it’s like being drafted by the Detroit Lions.

By bringing the auto manufacturing mentality into our public school system, it has turned teaching from a hard-earned, highly-respected career into a blue-collar, see-you-on-the-picket-line endeavor. Taxpayers deserve better. Teachers deserve better.

So just imagine my disappointment when Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced an Education Reform Conference with Dennis Van Roekel and Randi Weingarten, the presidents of the two national teachers unions. The unions are taking a lot of fire right now, and rightly so. But instead of isolating and marginalizing the unions, Duncan is giving them credibility. And the unions’ purpose is clear: buy enough time until the outrage caused by “Waiting for ‘Superman’” dies down, and then quietly maintain the status quo.

What’s troubling is not just that the Obama Administration is going to link arms with the biggest problem in public education; it’s the mindset with which it’s being conceived.

It’s called a conference on collaboration between “labor” and “management.” Is Arne Duncan now the auto bailout czar and I missed that press release? Or is he using terminology usually reserved for blue-collar factories?

What “Waiting for ‘Superman’” showed us is that this assembly-line approach to public education is horribly flawed. If its financial future wasn’t guaranteed by tax dollars, it would be fatally flawed.

But Duncan has once again picked up the union song book and will join Van Roekel and Weingarten’s “Amen” chorus.

So much for looking to the Obama administration to get kids off the assembly line.

http://biggovernment.com/kolson/2010/10/22/kids-arent-cars-schools-arent-factories/

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By bringing the auto manufacturing mentality into our public school system, it has turned teaching from a hard-earned, highly-respected career into a blue-collar, see-you-on-the-picket-line endeavor. Taxpayers deserve better. Teachers deserve better.

What “Waiting for ‘Superman’” showed us is that this assembly-line approach to public education is horribly flawed. If its financial future wasn’t guaranteed by tax dollars, it would be fatally flawed.

So much for looking to the Obama administration to get kids off the assembly line.

http://biggovernment.com/kolson/2010/10/22/kids-arent-cars-schools-arent-factories/

I think you are 100% correct .. we should outsource the school system to Mexico just like we did with car manufacturing.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

I think you are 100% correct .. we should outsource the school system to Mexico just like we did with car manufacturing.

That might just work in California, since half the kids already speak Spanish as their first language. Great idea!

[Obama 2012 1,714]

the dirty of the dirtiest in some states are the teacher's unions... Not always the case, but some unions have a stronghold on the state...

As far as the 'one size fits all' part of things, this is true. It doesn't work, not can it ever work. If you want to properly educate and expand the 'genius' in a society, you have be willing to separate the smart children from the less intelligent ones. I mean even if they were to separate those chosen by Duke's 'Gifted and Talented" program, that would help out greatly and then refocus the education of those who show an ability superior to their peers...

Even M.I.T. isn't what it used to be as far as "genius" goes. Those students today face the same BS that every other student faces by being bombarded with social networking, multi-tasking, etc....actual learning and theorizing just cannot take place as well in that environment, despite how smart those kids might actually be.

[Used to be broken 147]

the dirty of the dirtiest in some states are the teacher's unions... Not always the case, but some unions have a stronghold on the state...

As far as the 'one size fits all' part of things, this is true. It doesn't work, not can it ever work. If you want to properly educate and expand the 'genius' in a society, you have be willing to separate the smart children from the less intelligent ones. I mean even if they were to separate those chosen by Duke's 'Gifted and Talented" program, that would help out greatly and then refocus the education of those who show an ability superior to their peers...

Not sure you can lay the failure of the school system squarely in the lap of the unions, I am not for mediocre teachers but other factors in the school system effect outcomes.

I had an interesting conversation with a a co-worker a couple of years ago. She linked the decline of student performance to the de-segregation of schools. Sounds racist? Well apparently since she was black she came at this from a totally different perspective. She said prior to integration schools were placing of learning where the teachers were respected and yes.. feared and students knew their proper place in that environment and understood they were there to learn.

After integration school discipline became a problem because white parents didn't want their children disciplined by black teachers. Kids took advantage of it. I thought that was a very interesting theory. I see a huge problem in the schools stemming from discipline related issues.

The flat field approach to learning has its drawbacks but there is no correlation between teachers pay and student performance IMHO. I was driving to work and some rural one room school house in Illinois had a principal / teacher being interviewed. The school apparently had test scores so high in all grades that it attracted attention of other educators. The interviewer asked "what is your secret", the simple reply was "we don't have any money we are a poor school district, so we just focus on the three R's.

There have been other studies where they link the teachers expectations of performance to the students performance. Teachers were told at the outset of a school year that their children were hand picked because of their intelligence levels to participate in a "special program", the kids were really no different then their peers in any way, but the tests scores and performance for the class at the end of the year compared to the other 'non special kids" in other classes at the same school was notable.

Lastly I agree with the concept some kids outperform others and have genius potential. By getting rid of school to work and trade school programs in most districts to transfer to college prep only we do a huge disservice to young adults who never would attend college and at the end of high school are ill-prepared to enter the workforce as productive young people.

Edited October 23, 2010 by brokenfamily

[R&V 8]

By getting rid of school to work and trade school programs in most districts to transfer to college prep only we do a huge disservice to young adults who never would attend college and at the end of high school are ill-prepared to enter the workforce as productive young people.

Totally agree with this. At what point did a solid trade stop to be valued? I don't get it.

Sometimes it feels as if the value of a person is measured by their college degree -#######? All that proves is that you had anough stamina (and money) to get through four more years of school.

Anyway, I think there should be a solid foundation in english, social sciences, math and science - informed members of society. Not everybody needs a degree though.

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Very Interesting Article

Working on the kindergarten and first-grade programs, I observed something that I thought was truly remarkable. In these grades, children spend most of their time learning things that no one growing up in our culture could possibly avoid learning. For example, they learn the names of the primary colors. Wow, just imagine missing school on the day when they were learning blue. You'd spend the rest of your life wondering what color the sky is. They learn to tell time, to count, and to add and subtract, as if anyone could possibly fail to learn these things in this culture. And of course they make the beginnings of learning how to read. I'll go out on a limb here and suggest an experiment. Two classes of 30 kids, taught identically and given the identical text materials throughout their school experience, but one class is given no instruction in reading at all and the other is given the usual instruction. Call it the Quinn Conjecture: both classes will test the same on reading skills at the end of twelve years. I feel safe in making this conjecture because ultimately kids learn to read the same way they learn to speak, by hanging around people who read and by wanting to be able to do what these people do. ...............

Our children were being prepared in school to step boldly into the only fully human life that had ever existed on this planet. The skills they were acquiring in school would bring them not only success but deep personal fulfillment on every level. What did it matter if they never did more than work in some mind-numbing factory job? They could parse a sentence! They could explain to you the difference between a Petrarchan sonnet and a Shakespearean sonnet! They could extract a square root! They could show you why the square of the two sides of a right triangle were equal to the square of the hypotenuse! They could analyze a poem! They could explain to you how a bill passes congress! They could very possibly trace for you the economic causes of the Civil War. They had read Melville and Shakespeare, so why would they not now read Dostoevsky and Racine, Joyce and Beckett, Faulkner and O'Neill? But above all else, of course, the citizen's education--grades K to twelve--prepared children to be fully-functioning participants in this great civilization of ours. The day after their graduation exercises, they were ready to stride confidently toward any goal they might set themselves.

Of course, then, as now, everyone knew that the citizen's education was doing no such thing. It was perceived then--as now--that there was something strangely wrong with the schools. They were failing--and failing miserably--at delivering on these enticing promises. Ah well, teachers weren't being paid enough, so what could you expect? We raised teachers' salaries--again and again and again--and still the schools failed. Well, what could you expect? The schools were physically decrepit, lightless, and uninspiring. We built new ones--tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of them--and still the schools failed. Well, what could you expect? The curriculum was antiquated and irrelevant. We modernized the curriculum, did our damnedest to make it relevant--and still the schools failed. Every week--then as now--you could read about some bright new idea that would surely "fix" whatever was wrong with our schools: the open classroom, team teaching, back to basics, more homework, less homework, no homework--I couldn't begin to enumerate them all. Hundreds of these bright ideas were implemented--thousands of them were implemented--and still the schools failed.

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oops

Edited October 23, 2010 by brokenfamily

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I spent my freshman and sophomore years in a parochial (Catholic) high school, and my junior and senior years at a public high school. There were no real fundamental differences in the way we were taught. Textbooks for both private and public schools are still being bought by the same publishers. The Catholic HS only had 120 students and the public HS had at least 1,000 students, however, the class sizes were pretty much the same. These Charter schools are no different. The things that can be done differently, that can possibly improve the chances for learning success of all the students can be done equally well among all types. There are countless examples of highly qualified individuals within the public school system that have worked hard and continue to work hard at improving the learning experience for all students. If people actually believe that private schools can do it better, then I'd like to know what exactly it is that they supposedly do better than public schools and why.

Edited October 24, 2010 by El Buscador

[Used to be broken 147]

I spent my freshman and sophomore years in a parochial (Catholic) high school, and my junior and senior years at a public high school. There were no real fundamental differences in the way we were taught. Textbooks for both private and public schools are still being bought by the same publishers. The Catholic HS only had 120 students and the public HS had at least 1,000 students, however, the class sizes were pretty much the same. These Charter schools are no different. The things that can be done differently, that can possibly improve the chances for learning success of all the students can be done equally well among all types. There are countless examples of highly qualified individuals within the public school system that have worked hard and continue to work hard at improving the learning experience for all students. If people actually believe that private schools can do it better, then I'd like to know what exactly they can supposedly do better than a public school and why.

I think the point of the public school system in America is largely to keep young people out of the workforce as long as possible, so in that sense it can be done in a private or public school setting.

If you are talking about how to educate children to be happy and productive members of society, then the school system is an failure. It think the original poster is just taking a pot shot at Obama and the teachers unions which is the point of the original thread, not a discussion of what we can do to improve our school system, or better yet change our system to have better occupational outcomes...

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I think the point of the public school system in America is largely to keep young people out of the workforce as long as possible, so in that sense it can be done in a private or public school setting.

If you are talking about how to educate children to be happy and productive members of society, then the school system is an failure. It think the original poster is just taking a pot shot at Obama and the teachers unions which is the point of the original thread, not a discussion of what we can do to improve our school system, or better yet change our system to have better occupational outcomes...

Yep.