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We started getting a subscription to Newsweek Magazine about 6 months ago. One of the neighborhood kids came selling subscriptions and because I already had subscriptions to most of what she was offering, I settled on Newsweek. I figured I could now not only see pictures of all the latest terrorists as I do on the evening news but now I could learn their names as they peek at me from the cover of Newsweek as it takes it’s rightful place next to the throne. I find overall that its views are far more conservative than what I normally read but I’ve been keeping an open mind.

As I was perusing the January 16th issue enjoying the short, sound bite like stories, I landed on the back page. This is the page that George Will owns. And until now, I would read him with “mostly” and objective eye knowing that his conservative bias’ are generally antithetical to my views. But after reading his opinion on the education system I’m now fired up about George! Why you ask? Because I’m convinced now that his “old school” attitude leaves him without a clue about what it takes for a child to learn and exist in the culture of 2006 and beyond. In his article entitled, “Ed Schools vs. Education,” he spews a diatribe about the lack of rigor in our primary and secondary schools because teachers are overly focused on developing skills around social responsibility and multiculturalism along side academic excellence. He advocates replacing recess with spelling tests, PE with math. What’s truly distressing about George’s point of view about what our children are supposed to be learning in school is that he dismisses completely the idea of a child learning core “values” in school. Our children, once they are of school age, are at school almost more of their waking hours during the week than they are with us. We entrust our children, their minds and their souls to teachers. And as a parent I expect more than ABC’s and 123’s. I expect our teachers to be progressive and help my children learn to think independently, creatively, critically. In our complex culture our children will need to not only be smart in the most traditional sense, but also be able to work collaboratively with many different people of diverse cultures and backgrounds and they need to be able to use their skills to analyze complex scenarios. Maybe it used to be good enough to get 1200 on the SAT’s, to know the right answers—now it’s not. Moreover, I think our teachers need not have a “teacher” centered classroom but rather a “child” centered philosophy. When children are actively engaged in their own learning the sky’s the limit. When they are taught, drill and repeat, they drift.

I was raised in a mostly homogeneous environment. The people around me were mostly white, upper middle class, well educated. Therefore, I never needed to think critically because my belief system and what was all around me was never challenged. But that world of my youth scarcely exists anymore. Even in Seattle where we live, which on the surface appears mostly white, there exists economic, racial, ethnic and religious diversity. The school our children attend focuses on this aspect of diversity and anti-bias helping to foster academic excellence through critical thinking. None of the teachers at Giddens School would subscribe to George’s thinking and I like that. That there can not be rigor where there is progressive thinking is ludicrous. At Giddens, the standards are high but their measurement and assessment need not be the WASL. I agree that many of today’s schools are failing to teach our young people the skills they need but lets figure out why that is rather than blaming it on a system that teaches teachers to embrace the “whole” child.

Posted on March 11th, 2006 by Sam
Filed under: Uncategorized