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  Kruel Skules

  One thing that seems to escape the "how do we improve public schools" question is the question of how did it get so bad in the first place?  It got so bad by creating a bloated, self-serving, top-heavy beaurocracy which resembles, to my best observation, an old-style Soviet Military Agency!  All the Generals got Mercedes and the front-line soldiers got rusted-out, non-working pop-guns and threadbare uniforms!  One of the most informative books I have ever read was Jonathan Kozol's "Death at an Early Age", a book precisely about the decrepit Boston Public School System.  Mr. Kozol also wrote a follow-up book several years ago. I believe that he basically stated that to improve public schools, school funding must be totally divorced from the local tax base, and must be funded equally throughout the country.  A very unpopular idea with the upper middle class, whom he angered quite a bit.  Also, he claimed that the quality of the actual teaching must be divorced from the beaurocratic ideology presently running it.  Putting parents in control of hiring and firing teachers would be a good first step.  One of my most beloved mentors was a junior high public school teacher, whom I knew not as a teacher but as a friend.  I was amazed at how he could hold the attention of a class full of deliquents and keep them all interested and entertained with MATH of all things.  His philosophy was that he had to hold their interest at all times. something hard to do in this day of electronic videogames, etc.  To improve schools we must be able to get rid of bad teachers!  These boring old codgers who could bore bread mold to death!  That is where parents come in.  Each parent is usually an expert on how their child is doing in school.  The parent is the first to know if the child has a problem. (At least I was.)  The teacher's opinion of why the student is having trouble presently is codified into law!  The parent and the student have zero input into this!  This situation must be reversed in order for any school to be improved.  No child should be enslaved to a teacher who is rigid and unresponsive to the student's learning style.  (People have different learning styles.)  As it is now, the only choice the parent has is to pick up and move to another district or zone and try their luck with another school and another teacher!  Talk about lack of choice!  We all know what happens to parents who can't afford to move!  Why should they have to?  Why should a parent have to pick up and move to get their child out of an intolerable school situation?  What in the HELL is wrong with this picture?  Don't even get me going on my own school experiences, OK?On School choice could be an answer to sprawl posted 4 years, 1 month ago 24 Responses