As a teacher for 33 years, I have posted in defense of hard-working education professionals, who have recently come under a lot of false fire. They are not, as one right wing narrative goes, a pack of Liberals intent on indoctrinating American youth. Wrong on both counts. American educators mirror the political beliefs of the rest of the nation and are not dominated and controlled by leftist ideology; and, more importantly, they are much too busy delivering their assigned curriculums to engage in political manipulation. Partisan Politics is not part of those curriculums despite what partisan political bloviators like to say.
The problem is not the people who teach, nor is it what is being taught. The problem is the archaic and outdated system.
In the August 2022 issue of the National Review, the former head of the Department of Education, Betsy DeVos, wrote well about the ideal future of education, Classroom Disruption, Imagine what Innovation can do. Optimistically, she imagines the world in 2030. Here is a summary of what she foresees with commentary:
Parents and kids will have control over the choice of classes to be taken. This could be accomplished by creating an educational fund for some tax dollars that parents would control. Currently, our share of tax revenues for education are dispersed widely and broadly to all the schools in the public system. Currently school administrations produce a class schedule based on the teacher staffing needs to fill up teacher loads. The wants and needs of the individual students are secondary to filling seats.
In 2030 Betsy DeVos says, the 10 week hiatus from learning, known as Summer Break, should be eliminated. She’s right! The current system is based on getting kids out to help with the harvest. That need has been out-dated for some decades now. The future of education is a more flexible system of lifelong learning.
In 2030, Mrs. DeVos says, your child’s learning opportunities need not be confined to the local schoolhouse. Right again! With today’s technology, your child, should he or she wish, could take classes from gifted instructors all over the globe.
One very gifted instructor in the future could provide instruction to countless multitudes of eager students instead of thirty per hour for an eight-hour day. There could still be classrooms with a local instructor providing guidance and tutoring and grading and assessing the quality of the work. The best teachers would set the pace. Local teachers would provide the personal assistance and take care of the paperwork.
As Mrs. DeVos suggests, the classes could easily be much more hands on and way less theoretical based on fairly meaningless and seemingly endless examples coming from a textbook. She gives the illustrative concept of students programming a robot instead.
Mrs. DeVos envisions a future in which the need for expensive and elite private schools will be eliminated. In 2030, she says, all schools could offer an elite curriculum and all students could attend.
Instead of attending economics, history, and government for an hour each, students could, as Mrs. DeVos points out, integrate those disciplines. For example, they could be running “a simulation on how tax-rates impact new business start-ups.”
In the future, students in rural areas could, she says, be learning while driving the family tractor. They could even earn money and school credits by working in internship programs.
Another important innovation mentioned is obvious. Teaching and learning no longer must take place exclusively from 9 AM to 5. The learning can work around the parent’s schedule!
All good stuff!
DeVos was appointed by Trump!
National Review is a rat’s nest of reactionary false consciousness. Hate speech!
There is good reason that free public schooling is prescribed in the Manifesto. Dictatorship of the proletariat is essential to continue the revolution and for that we need to produce more proletarians.
Progressives unite! Oppose and defeat all vouchers, charter schools, and home schooling. Abolish all private schools along with private property. Beliefs and attitudes must support the People, not profits.
Calm down, Leon! I think we all want to cooperate to create the best learning environment we can.
You retired from Duval County Public Schools in 2013. When you were hired in 1980, you signed a document stating that you were not a communist; Duval was that kind of district, but you may remember having to attend one or more multicultural sessions for teachers. Your personal experience in one district does not give you the authority to proclaim, “false fire” and to deny recent indoctrination in many districts. Another article in that same issue of National Review has egregious examples. Sample size matters.
The late John Taylor Gatto, who taught 30 years and was 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year and New York City Teacher of the Year in 1989, 1990, and 1991, wrote, “We need less schooling, not more.” He had much else to say about the business.
An honest analysis of history shows that free markets and free minds produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people. If a service can be found in the Yellow Pages, then government should not provide it. Expel government from the schooling business.
Charter schools and vouchers are a good step in the right direction. States should ease restrictions on home schooling. Reform child labor laws to encourage apprenticeship.
Children are powerful learners. Get them out of the boxes called classrooms.
I would sign such a document today, but I would ask for definitive definitions and clarifications. It seems that some are once again falsely seeing communists hiding behind every rock and tree. I would want assurances that by asking me to delimit myself from the communist party they were not asking me to oppose any and all forms of social reform.
Richard, you favor private over public, and I agree that competition can produce good quality. We also agree that apprenticeships in the trades is a good alternative. One of the CBS non-news programs did a profile on a successful plumber’s trade program with paid apprenticeships.
You also advocate to get learners “out of the boxes called classrooms.” In a classroom or online, it matters not to me.