Reflections: Then and Now
Submitted by Frank Murphy, Oct. 12, 2010
When I first started teaching, I was required to fill out a continuous progress reading file for each student in my classroom. This record looked like a file folder. On all four sides of it were printed the skills and concepts that a student was expected to master at each grade level from grades one to eight. As a sixth grade teacher, I was responsible for checking off the skills that my students had mastered at this grade level before passing the file on to the seventh grade teacher.
Dutifully as I moved through the instructional year, I would check for student understanding of each of the skills listed for my grade level. One concept in particular befuddled me in my beginning years as a teacher. That was “judging the qualifications of an author”. I wasn’t quite sure how my sixth grade students were supposed to accomplish this task. The stories in the basal readers that we used in those days were mainly composed of redacted chapters from children’s fiction books. Every so often a non-fiction passage would be included. I surmised that the students were supposed to look for context clues within those various text selections that would suggest the authors’ expertise about the events and ideas contained in their stories. I gave scant attention to helping my students master this concept. After all, I thought there were more easily accessible skills to tackle, like word decoding.
As I grew in experience and knowledge as a reading teacher, I realized the importance of this higher-level concept to my students’ comprehension of text. Being able to intelligently and critically examine the expertise or qualifications of a person making a claim is essential to determining the validly and reliability of his or her idea. It is certainly a habit of the mind that teachers should help their students to develop.
Occasionally during my time as a principal, I would encounter a central office staff member who lacked the ability to identify an outrageously false claim. When confronted with the complaints of an irate parent or over-zealous activist about a situation at school, these central office individuals were quick to assume that the complainants’ claims were the truth. After my first experience with such a central office staff member, I learned my lesson. From that that time forward, I made sure that I always carefully documented the events, behaviors of the adults involved and actions taken by the school in dealing with these situations. I discovered that being able to provide this form of official correspondence carried much weight with central office officials. When they had written documentation before them, they felt more comfortable to refute unfounded complaints. It was though I had to help them assess the qualifications of the author of the grievance.
After resolving a central office concern about an unfounded parent complaint, I often shook my head in wonderment. How could someone in a position of authority be so unable to recognize nonsense?
Apparently, this deficit in critical thinking is one that holds true for many of the more outspoken critics of public education today. But what is far more distressing to me is the realization that a large number of people actually listen to the preaching of these ill-informed and opinionated individuals.
Among the notable authors of the current story being told about our public schools, are self proclaimed educational experts such as Arne Duncan, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, and a host of other business, political, and entertainment celebrities. Uniformly these nouveau educational experts offer the same narrative to the media: “Our public schools are failing our children and our nation due to the mediocre performance of our public schools. The situation is even more dire in our urban school districts where our most needy students are receiving an inadequate education in the worst of our failing schools”.
As a result, these school reform “experts” claim America is losing its supremacy as a political and economic world power. According to them, a radical restructuring of our public schools is needed. The ready access these folks have to the media has unfortunately allowed them to continuously repeat this message until it has come to be regarded as the truth. The media’s assessment of their claims has more often than not been superficial.
What qualifications do all of these individual possess that would make them experts on how to organize and run a school? Do they have vast experience as classroom teachers? Do they have extensive understanding and knowledge of child development and appropriate instructional practices? Do they have expertise and experience as school leaders?
The answers to these questions are “No”. These reformers would respond however that such qualifying experiences are irrelevant. They would go on to say that they have other more important qualifications. “We are smart. We care. We are distinguished individuals in our fields of work. We know how to fix schools because we know how to be successful. We can do a better job of appropriately spending your tax dollars than your failed educational personnel”.
Given the radical reforms that these nouveau reformers are attempting to force on states and local school districts, a critical analysis of their qualifications is in order. An examination of the resumes of many of the prominent leaders of the free market school reform movement such as Eli Broad, and Bill Gates, suggests that they are more suited to running Wall Street then managing schools. And considering the sad shape of our national economy, why would we want our schools to be managed by business leaders?
Wouldn’t it be more prudent to rely on a group of smart, caring, qualified and successful educators to formulate reform strategies that will provide every child with a quality educational experience? The philanthropic-minded business managers could then assist the educators in securing the necessary funding to make our goals a reality.
In a democratic society, citizens actively participate in the decision-making that determines the governance of the country. It is their responsibility to evaluate the qualifications of their leaders and to determine whether they are navigating them in the right direction. If we allow a small elite group of powerful people to reshape public institutions such as our schools, we put at risk the future of our nation. By doing so, we give up our right to decide what is best for our children. It is a dangerous course for a democracy to take, putting too much power into the hands of a few people who claim they know what is best for everyone.
Perhaps educators need to work harder at supporting all of America’s children to develop the habits of mind that are essential for thoughtful and civil engagement in a robust democratic society. The successful pursuit of this objective will ensure our continuous progress as a nation. More so than rote skill development, I would wager.