The biggest Education debates so far this year has been about two things: Opening schools before Labor Day, and how much money school systems will get.
This is what happens when the major voices in education are lobbyists, unions (oops, sorry, “professional organizations”) and government.
I don’t believe for a second that opening schools before Labor Day helps any student take a test in May. I didn’t see a single education proponent lobbying to end Spring Break “for the children” but they sure wanted to extend their work year one week longer.
Which begs the question – Why would extra days before Labor Day be soooooo beneficial but taking a week off for “Spring Break” has no negative impact whatsoever?
Of course, it’s all about money now that the proposals for early school starts have all but died. It’s about how many teachers jobs can be saved and how less money can be spent on classroom learning compared to administration, buses and other unsexy items.
Meanwhile we still have an educational system much less interested in learning. Granted, Virginia is better than most, but Virginia still sends a giant percentage of students to college who walk right into remedial Math or English classes. Most students are placed into grades by what age they are, not by what aptitude they demonstrate. We have seventh grade students who test at 12th grade levels (ya knew I’d work my daughter into this post), and guess what? They stay in 7th grade.
At its core, our education is still based on a guild-era model which was more concerned with keeping children out of sweatshop labor and preserving adult union work than it was about learning.
Thomas Jefferson graduated from William and Mary at the age of 18 with full honors after only 2 years. John Adams entered Harvard at the age of 16, and became a lawyer without attending law school. His son, John Quincy Adams, attended Leiden University at 13 and worked for the US Ambassador to Russia before he was 16.
Ben Franklin never took a class after the age of 10, and became one of the wealthiest men of his time through writing, publishing, printing and inventing.
Today, even the best and brightest are caught up until age 22 in the 13-year general education curriculum and 4-year college standard that is more about protecting the education industry then it is about actual student learning.
We are in an age where the average 12-year old has more information through his cell phone than any university in the World had a few centuries ago. Governments pay significant dollars to house books in libraries that a 6-year old could download onto a Kindle for a few dollars.
And our education lobbies are concerned with the money teachers make, the number of students in a classroom (which is akin to saying “hire more teachers”) and what day on the calender does everyone get to start working.
If we were honestly interested in student learning, we would cater education to individual student aptitude. If a student is at an 11th grade math level, a 9th grade science level and a 6th grade reading level, and he is in 7th grade, guess what? He’ll be bored most of the day, and struggling to keep pace the rest. It’s stupid.
So we’ll continue to squabble about a composite index and whether school should start August 31st or September 1, and we’ll debate which order and row all the chairs should be arranged on the deck, what size they should be, and whether they should be painted or lacquered.
Until someone looks ahead and yells, “Iceburg!,” that’ll have to do.
