RESPONSIVE EDUCATION

16) EDUCATION

(Our educational system is in trouble. Grades given out on courses inadvertedly are used to establish intelligence when what they really determine is the level of interests that a student places on the course being presented to him and the way it is presented. Present courses and their accompanied tests regulate education in a way that imposes a diploma as a standard of excellence for students and employers alike. Though many adults have a tendency to live out their dreams through their children and want for them more then what they themselves had while they were growing up, validating an educational system responsive to those dreams and not those of the students can only serve to perpetuate a system that will always be a generation behind. We adults know that we took classes in high school that has nothing to do with the way we presently make our money. They have since proven to be a waste of our time. There were courses like that for our parents and their parents as well. Tailoring an education to a diploma is like putting a round peg in a square hole. Then you beat on the round peg and tell it that it’s wrong for being round. When you’re young you seek instant gratification. You have little conception of living to becoming old and collecting social security. Hell, he could walk out his door and get shot in a drive- bye, hit by a car, drafted by the military, catch aids, die from lung cancer, get a gal pregnant, choke on a chicken bone, suffer a stroke, locked up in jail for life or end up dunkin’ a basketball better then Jordan. A lot of things could happen to him between then and if he reaches old age. The adults have made it to old age and say you’re gonna need this and you’re gonna need that. Then he comes home with a D in English, a C in biology and a B in music. You tell him that he needs to do better so he can go on to college. But he might not want to run General Motors or be a doctor. He may just want to write music and be a rock star. Have you ever gotten an F in a class that you liked in high school? Have you ever gotten a B in a class that you hated in high school? When you see your kid’s report card, he’s trying to tell you something just like you tried to tell your folks something when you were young. There only needs to be two grades given out in high school, F for fail P for pass. Anything else should be irrelevant.) (I would advocate giving each student an educational achievement identity card with photo and a microchip containing updated accredited achievement hours in various sections of study offered in high school with an ever increasing list of courses and the deletion of the diploma as we know it today. His taking courses would then be a matter of what he likes and specifically required courses by a perspective employer. Employers presently settle on diplomas as a standard because they’re afraid of getting sued by civil rights advocates anyway. If an employer needs someone to drive a forklift, he’s not gonna give a shit whether the guy passed biology 101 or not. After an employer scans a guy’s educational achievement identity card market forces could then decide whether the guy is hired or not.) (In all participating institutions of learning, all sectors should be standardized in both content and degree of difficulty assigned to that content. A student would have to get a Pass in lesser courses in a sector before being allowed to go on to a more difficult course in the same sector of learning. You would have to get a Pass in say algebra before you were allowed to go on to calculus. Achievement Pass hours couldn’t be gained by repeatedly passing the same courses over and over.) (By expanding school course availability to three shifts Monday through Friday with the distribution of students based on a combination of priority for those students having a compelling reason to attend a particular shift and a lottery system for others plus available tutorial classes on the weekend, our educational system would be more flexible to the needs of the student, have smaller class sizes and be more costs effective. Sports would be divided into groups based on age and gender with players being picked in a draft at 14.) (Without regard to age, a Pass on SAT’s would allow an individual access to an ever-expanding list of courses geared towards highly skilled professions of our society. A Fail on the SAT’s would just mean that that individual would have to wait six months before taking the test again. Like our social security system, the educational achievement identification cards would be with us the rest of our lives. When we get a Pass in a course those hours would be credited and updated on our cards. If we did not take courses for an extended period of time, we would not loose any accreditation or be pushed out of the system. There would be no dropouts. Of course, no one could possibly be able in his lifetime to take all the courses either so no one would ever graduate either. (In some cases, social security benefits are paid out to your family even after you die.) The only losers would be the guys who printed the diplomas, sold graduation rings, took graduation photos and those who rented limos, caps, gowns and halls for celebrations. I can live with that, can you?)
Plan (B)
Preamble to the U. S. Constitution
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
None of these can be formed, established, provided for, secured, or obtained without an equal education for all. Only our one federal government, not fifty different states, can make education equal for all. With the nationalization of both our public primary and secondary educational systems; all teachers would get paid the same plus get favorable interests rates on home loans or housing subsides based on a national scale, funding and school buildings would have to meet a national standard. Education of our young future leaders would then not be held hostage to property taxes taken from the rich neighborhoods (who always bitch about it anyway) and distributed to the poorer ones in such a haphazard way. All schools would have adequate football equipment, adequate libraries and other facilities or nobody would have them. Gone would be the need for families to relocate or to be issued school vouchers in search of a better school. Bussing kids around would only be used to equalize student enrollment (names could be drawn my lottery) not because one school is better then another (equal= equal)? A Standardized Educational System (S.E.S.) would then enable the Standardized Aptitude Tests (S.A.T.) to give a truer representational picture of the level of education in our youths then what’s now being presented. Solutions to our educational system are limited only by our imagination and the resources we are willing to commit to it’ problems. Those that are directing the present system should either shit or get up off the pot.