Introduction
The basic problem is that the conservative movement has not only the support of industry and the wealthy, but of most areas outside of cities. This is a problem because suburban and exurban areas are growing rapidly, while urban centers are still experiencing overall decline. Even California is not immune to the exurban trend. While the San Francisco Bay Area remains overwhelmingly progressive, the Central Valley trends more and more conservative. Who cares about the Central Valley? Well considering the fact that the Central Valley is a source of massive amounts of cheap housing for commuters into the Bay Area, I’d say there is a problem. The problem, simply put, is that the conservative movement has managed to surround the cities from the countryside. Perhaps they have been reading Mao.
Yet conservatives have established this activist base in the form of evangelical churches all across America. What is the right counter? The right counter is education. And not an avowedly atheist education either. The goal should be an education that teaches people to think for themselves and respects that fact that people can come from many faith traditions, including no faith at all. The reason is that the progressive movement must build for the future, and that starts with bringing in new people.
Even outside of California, the dominance of the suburban, exurban and rural areas by the conservative movement is a problem. Since even sparsely populated states such as Idaho send two Senators to Congress, rural areas can wield power disproportionate to their population. The problem with the top down strategies is that none of them address gaining an activist base for progressive change. Too many progressives are quick to hide out on the coasts and condemn the rest of America to conservative domination.
In communities across America we are seeing an unprecedented attack on scientific reasoning. We see it every time a local school board decides that it must teach creationism in place of or side by side with evolutionary theory. For progressives in these communities it is a struggle to educate their children. Progressives are on a back foot as far as social organization. In small towns and recently developed exurbs, churches form the backbone of social life. They provide social services (day care, pre-school, debt counseling) in places where local government is thin on the ground. Progressives in these communities can find themselves isolated, especially so since the decline of the labor movement. What’s more, their children face an essentially hostile environment where they can count on the local school curriculums driven by conservative movement dominated school boards. Most importantly, those who are not self-described progressives, but who are questioning the conservative-dominated local system have no established local organization to look to for support.
Solution
What I propose is a network of private schools across exurban and rural America. These Freedom Schools (for who could be against freedom?) would exist to teach a secular, progressive, science-based curriculum. The purpose of the schools is first to provide a future generation of progressive minded citizens, and second to provide a support network to progressive parents, and other community members. The Freedom Schools would serve as a focal point for progressive organizing in the local community. Freedom Schools could offer their facilities as a meeting place for anti-racist, environmental, labor organizers and other groups.
Freedom Schools could exist as stand alone institutions, or as a group of affiliated schools. There should be a wide variety of curricula and teaching styles available. Setting one standard and trying to push it across the board would be antithetical to our goal of freedom.
Funding
Although the Democrats lost the last election, what was apparent was that they raised a lot of money. Millions, much of it done through micro-donations over the internet. MoveOn, Democracy for American and many other groups did their part to raise money from ordinary Americans to pay for TV, print and internet advertising. I propose to tap that same grassroots funding support to pay for the Freedom Schools. There could be a mixture of organizations raising money. Larger umbrella groups could raise money directly, and then the schools could apply for grants. Or, alternatively, the organizations could work along the “adopt a school” model. Namely, they could highlight the different schools and then encourage donors to adopt a particular school or even a particular child. The schools should operate on a sliding scale, so that people pay what they can afford. In extreme cases, the schools should offer full scholarships. What this plan would do is effectively transfer wealth from the coastal, progressive, areas into the poorer interior. I spent a few days on the East Coast last month. The contrast between the extraordinary wealth of Manhattan and the blight of New Jersey and the Pennsylvania Rust Belt was extraordinary. If progressives could harness only a fraction of the wealth in the cities we could go a long way towards building a new base.
Since we know that the government isn’t going to step up, this plan has progressives doing it themselves. While spending money on advertising and pressure campaigns is an important stop-gap measure, donations to Freedom Schools are a long term investment in the future.
Staffing
Schools could of course hire teachers from the local community. However there are two ideas that could potentially add to effectiveness. The first would be fellowships (paid for by our Freedom School umbrella groups) for recent college and professional school graduates. The second would be to draw from the students themselves.
As to the recent college graduates, the foundations could attract them by appealing to idealism and offering payments for loan forgiveness. The benefit to the progressive movement is that this program will draw progressives out of the cities into the rural and exurban areas. That does two things. First, it exposes progressives to the actual reality of life on the ground in Red State America. This is important to understanding what is actually going on. Second, it brings progressive ideals into rural or exurban areas. For those who do a few years and then return to the coasts, it gives them background and understanding that will help in future political endeavors. Those who stay help with the movement to wrest control of the interior from the conservative movement.
Drawing from the student population is a little trickier. Many students who graduate from a Freedom School may want to attend college on the coasts and leave home for good. One way to induce students to return is for foundations or umbrella organizations to offer full college scholarships in return for the student’s agreement to return and teach at the school from which he or she graduated for a set period of years. This is important because we want other people in the community to see a success story. There will doubtlessly be those who doubt that Freedom School-type education can lead anywhere. Having bright, young instructors return to teach dispels that notion. the other advantage is that the returning students will have a better feel for the needs of the local community than someone brought in from the outside.
Potential Problems
The largest problem with Freedom Schools would be local community opposition. It might be difficult to induce parents to send their children to an avowedly progressive institution because it might expose a family to ridicule. The answer to that problem is funding, the other is track record. Free scholarships are going to draw in both the value minded and the desperate. We should target the most down-on-their luck families, both because it is the right thing to do, and because it exposes the hypocrisy of the conservative “values” movement. What we would offer people would be a way for their children to escape the desperate economic circumstances in which they find themselves. Establishing a strong track record for Freedom School students will draw in community members who want a top-notch education at a cut rate price.
There can be other community attempts to block out and harass Freedom School sites, but as the schools are funded with 100 percent private money, there is not much that a local government can do to control them.
Another potential problem is that this approach focuses on rural and exurban areas, and not on urban areas. Schools in urban areas are experiencing problems with underfunding and difficult teaching environments. There is nothing to stop anyone from setting up a similar network for urban schools. This program focuses on rural areas because those are the areas where currently the conservative movement is solidifying its grip on power.
Conclusion
The best reason to implement this strategy is not simply because it will help build a progressive politics in America. The best reason to implement this strategy is because it is fundamentally unfair for children in rural and exurban areas to live in a situation where they have no access to quality education. Just as it is wrong for conservatives to write off minority children in the cities, it is fundamentally unfair for progressives to abandon those who live in the interior of America as worthless, backward hicks. As Dr. Martin Luther King once said, “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.”
This strategy is a rough draft. I’m no educational expert, so it’s light on details. I put it out there in hopes that someone may find it useful. Please feel free to use it for your own purposes, but please, give me credit if you do, and maybe drop me a line and let me know.
Posted by Tim at April 29, 2005 12:39 AMHey Tim. Welcome back!
The idea of progressive citizens taking it upon themselves to penetrate areas where conservatives hold sway over young minds by building "Freedom Schools" is compelling on many levels. However, as you know, building schools and maintaining them would be very costly. Do you think voluntary donations, such as we've seen in the political compaigns of Howard Dean and John Kerry, could be counted on to finance a project of this magnitude on a sustained basis? As always, money is the problem, and this is where conservatives continually have us beat.
Still, I think the idea of progressives investing in schools and communities in order to grapple with the great social, religious, political and educational disparities between "red" and "blue" states, or urban and rural-suburban areas, is very worthwhile. Your thesis is the most cogent attempt at bridging the great educational divide I've read thus far.
Great work!
Diana,
Definitely funding is an issue. However, three quick points.
1. In rural areas, each dollar goes much further than it would in Manhattan or San Francisco. For example, in Nebraska one can buy a very nice single family home for around 150k. So I think that obviates a lot of problems right there.
2. The movement would need to secure some big backers as seed money. The biggest task is to fund a public policy study to cost out a "typical" school in, say, 5 or 6 different regions of the USA. Then from there we could set some kinds of fundraising targets.
3. Sustainability, I agree is the key to the whole effort. I think that we can draw parallels from other charity efforts. What I'm thinking of are the "feed the children" style campaigns. We should make sure that donors see direct results, and can directly witness the impact of their donations.
Thanks for the criticism, and for giving me a platform =)
Posted by: tim at May 2, 2005 03:16 AMIt just occurred to me to ask, do you think the Montessori schools could be a model, as far as funding?
Maybe their site offers some insights:
Posted by: diana at May 2, 2005 08:30 AM
Diana,
Well it looks like the Montessori foundation is actually earning money by providing consulting services to member schools, and multi-school groups. I think that's a viable model for one type of consulting foundation. That would work well because it would help the independent school operators, in a decentralized kind of way. That is, the schools would retain a high degree of autonomy.
Still, I think there will be a need for foundations to collect money from donors, then direct it to the schools in a grant based model. No reason one organziation couldn't do both functions (consulting AND grant giving), or some organizations could just specialize. in one or the other. The grant writing function could even extenda as far as giving grants of money to people to start a school. There is room for it all I think.
I like this model because it emphasizes local control, and also accounts for the variety of POV's in the progressive movements. We are a movement that is very diverse in terms of outlook. We should start seeing that as a strength and not a weakness.
Tim: I'm not sure your idea is at all practical for achieving your goals, but in general I'm always in favor of more private and less public education.
Posted by: Michael Williams at May 4, 2005 07:58 PMHm, the link I attempted to insert is:
http://www.mwilliams.info/archives/005650.php
A couple of thought:
1. There are already schools that do the leftist indoctrination that you want throughout the heartland. They are called public schools. Even here in Idaho, the teachers are definitely out on the left--conservative teachers are distinctly the exception. As an example, my son's math teacher last semester was openly lesbian.
2. Your biggest problem is that the left made a conscious decision some years ago to stop having kids. Now you want to bribe the heartland to let you brainwash their kids. I don't think this is going to work. The religiously inclined already pay hundreds of dollars a month (and being conservatives, they aren't rich) to put their kids in private Christian schools because the public schools are already too far to the left for them. You can make your "Freedom Schools" absolutely free and it isn't going to lure many private school students. About the only students that you are going to get are those who are currently in absolutely crummy public schools--and guess what? In places like Idaho, we don't have many public schools like that. The worst public high schools here in Boise compare favorably with the best private high schools in "progressive" Sonoma County, California.
3. You make the assumption that there is an attack on scientific reasoning going on. This simply shows that you haven't examined the fight about Creationism very carefully. I would agree that there are some pretty ignorant and foolish people out there arguing for a Young Earth and the related nonsense. There are also a lot of people like myself who want evolution taught as proper science (assumptions, Occam's Razor, experimental evidence), and less like Revealed Truth. There is a lot more dogma in the way that many secondary school science teachers teach evolution than you would like to think.
4. You assume that the heartland is some sort of mass of knuckle-dragging racists. Try again. I've seen far less racism expressed here in Boise than I saw in the San Francisco Bay Area.
5. You assume that local governments would attempt to prevent Freedom Schools from opening up. Try again. We aren't progressives; we can handle some ideological competition. We aren't the crowd that passes speech codes on college campuses.
Posted by: Clayton E. Cramer at May 4, 2005 09:36 PMMichael, it is easier to be a naysayer and knock an idea than it is to propose one, as Tim has done. Of course, the practical details would need to be worked out, but if an idea were to be dismissed on the basis of its sheer practicality at the onset, Maria Montessori's idea would have never taken root, as it has all over the world.
Tim, I think what made it possible to launch the Montessori school idea was the fact that its founder first created a model that others could emulate. Perhaps, if you're really committed to this idea, you could try to get a grant to create that first success model.
Posted by: diana at May 5, 2005 07:34 AM
Here's an interesting fact about the development of Montessori Schools in America, from one small model to many:
"The first Montessori School in the United States was opened in Tarrytown, New York, in October 1911, by Anne George. By 1913 there were nearly one hundred Montessori schools in America."
http://www.ruffingeast.org/webpages/montessori_history.htm
Posted by: diana at May 5, 2005 07:45 AMTim,
I commend your proposal; education truly is the key to prevailing over narrow-mindedness of any sort. However, I also agree with Clayton in one respect: the framework for your plan already exists in the public schools.
Free public education has been the backbone of egalitarian America since the Founding Fathers, who believed that an informed, educated populace was the key to a well-run democracy. American tradition has always favored (although admittedly not always achieved) creating a common national culture through universal public-funded education. Private institutions have historically tended toward the elitist, doctrinaire, racist or separatist (unAmerican values all if you think about it).
Your ideas are sound, Tim, but let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. Re-investing in the public schools and reaffirming the American values they were created to teach (egalitarian democracy, separation of church and state, merit over connections, the right to be an individual along with a dedication to the common good, "one nation, with liberty and justice for all") is the answer. I remember the California school system at its peak in the '60s under the first Gov. Brown. It was possible to get a free quality education from Kindergarten through Junior College (at that time, there were more Junior Colleges in California than in the rest of the nation combined). Every Californian who wanted could attend. For very small tuition fees, additional higher education could be pursued in the Cal State College (now CSU) and UC systems (including Berkeley and UCLA!) The system worked beautifully until it was hamstrung by Gov. Ronald Reagan in the '70s.
I like your ideas, Tim, but let's do it the American way--free, universal education through the public school systems (that public schools can deliver quality education if properly funded is amply illustrated by the Beverly Hills school district, LAUSD schools in affluent suburbs, UCLA and UC Berkeley). Paying for education leads to elitism, exclusion, separatism, cults, indoctrination and a host of other problems that run counter to the creation of a national culture.
Posted by: blast at May 5, 2005 09:20 AMBlast says: "I remember the California school system at its peak in the '60s under the first Gov. Brown. It was possible to get a free quality education from Kindergarten through Junior College (at that time, there were more Junior Colleges in California than in the rest of the nation combined)."
I remember it too. I attended Santa Monica public schools from 2nd grade through 12th grade. You would have had a hard time interesting anyone (except a few Catholics) in a private education. But it wasn't that money was that much more available. When I was in high school, our district was spending about $1200 a year per pupil--a good but not spectacular amount. You are missing out on the other factors that have degraded public education in California.
1. About 1975, Congress passed a well-intentioned law to mainstream, whenever possible, children with serious disabilities. I can understand why parents of these children didn't want them warehoused and ignored--but the costs of educating such children in a conventional classroom are much higher than kids in the mainstream.
In the mid-1990s, the San Francisco Chronicle carried a series of stories about a school district in Marin County that was spending $15,000 per pupil per year on education--in spite of the Serrano decision's requirement for equal funding. How were they doing this? Because this particular district included Marin City (a housing project slum) with vast numbers of retarded children, and the white population of the district was almost entirely too old to have kids in school. Not surprisingly, all this money wasn't doing much in terms of test scores, because the kids (many of them crack babies and fetal alcohol syndrome) were so damaged.
2. Collapse of discipline. When I was in elementary school, there was usually one kid, sometimes two, who had problems staying on task and behaving. The situation by the 1990s had changed dramatically for the worse. My wife was a substitute teacher, and she tells me that nearly all the boys and many of the girls were simply unable to remain calm enough for any learning to happen. My son tells me similar stories--that in some of his sixth grade classes, the teacher would spend almost the entire class session screaming at kids to sit down and stop talking--no teaching going on. There are a variety of causes for this: collapse of traditional families; a generation raised on video games; parents unwilling or unable to discipline kids at home; and a whole generation that grew up in day care.
Blast also writes: "I like your ideas, Tim, but let's do it the American way--free, universal education through the public school systems (that public schools can deliver quality education if properly funded is amply illustrated by the Beverly Hills school district, LAUSD schools in affluent suburbs, UCLA and UC Berkeley)."
The major differences aren't the funding--they are the values of the parents that get transmitted to the kids. Santa Monica schools were spectacular--not because they were that much better funded, but because education was regarded as a positive thing. The historic problem in ghetto schools in Los Angeles was only partly inferior funding; it was also the problem that education was considered "acting white." There are historic reasons for this dating back to the antebellum laws that made it unlawful to teach a slave to read or write, but the left has glorified ghetto culture as "authentic" rather than recognizing that it is broken--and that brokenness has spread into firmly white middle class communities.
Posted by: Clayton E. Cramer at May 5, 2005 04:41 PMBlast writes: "The system worked beautifully until it was hamstrung by Gov. Ronald Reagan in the '70s." Odd.
It was still working great when I graduated high school in 1974--the year Governor Reagan left office, replaced by Governor Moonbeam.
You better look for some other explanations.
Posted by: Clayton E. Cramer at May 5, 2005 07:43 PMHi Clayton,
I'm glad this thread has finally gotten some critical discussion. I also want to let you know that I've read some of your pro-gun writing over the years, and agreed with a lot of it.
That said, let me reply to your points as best I can in the limited time I have. I'm in the middle of finals.
I want to make it clear that I am not looking for, as you put it "leftist indoctrination." What I am advocating is teaching people to think. Therein lies the contradiction of education, which the Daoists recognized centuries ago. Laozi wrote that people are corrupted by education because it prevents them from seeing the reality of existence. The contradiction was that Daoism was a philosophy of the educated, those who could read. Addressing this contradiction can lead some people to the pure relativist viewpoint, but I think that's missing the point. To paraphrase John Searle, Mt. Everest isn't socially constructed, it exists completely independent of human consciousness. The point is that we are all struggling to see the nature of reality, and probably we're going to fail in some way or another. Yet it is the process of trying to see what is really occurring that lets us get closer. And for some things, close really is good enough.
So my hope would be that a significant number of Freedom School students would in fact have severe disagreements with what they were learning, and decide, as adults, that it did not fit their world-view. In my mind, that would be a sign of success. There is always going to be a fixed world view presented in education--the goal is to present it in a way that lets students see its flaws. And to my mind, what I am seeing in terms of the Creationist/Fundamentalist agenda is not doing that.
I can't speak to your experience in Boise, Idaho public schools. But I can say that my cousins who live in the Mississippi Delta are finding good public schooling hard to find. And again, to your point about "brainwashing," see above. I'll talk more about Mississippi in a minute.
As to the dogma of evolution--I have a long post (found on slashdot) up on my personal blog about Karl Popper, empiricism and Intelligent Design. http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?user=edg176&tab=weblogs&uid=254436918 Briefly, I have examined the debate, and ID/Creationism isn't science at all because it does not present a testable hypothesis. Again, this is a case of relativism run amok.
As to racism in the heartland, Clayton, I speak from personal experience. I have spent a lot of time in the South, from Mississippi, to Louisiana to Texas, with some time in Tennessee. I'm of Chinese descent, so I stick out some. And I, and my family have experienced plenty of racism. I have experienced the hair-standing-up on the back of the neck feeling at gas stations, restaurants and elsewhere where it is clear my presence is unwanted. And, to speak frankly, it is those experiences that have been the basis for my pro-gun stance.
Let me be as clear as I can be--there is racism everywhere. And I have certainly felt the sting of passive agressive "liberal" condescension as well, in urban centers from NYC to San Francisco. There's lots of racism in this world, and lots of racists aren't white. That's a whole separate article in itself. But I have never felt racism in urban areas in quite the same way as I have in rural America. Never.
Despite the racism I have felt in rural areas, nonetheless I also want to emphasize that I have met a great many decent, accepting and unbiased folks in the South as well. And I have seen firsthand the depressed economic conditions in Mississippi that have gutted traditional farming activity and small businesses. My relatives tell me the only thing left is Wal Mart, the casinos and a thriving meth trade. Regardless of race, having few opportunities and living in a depressed economy is a terrible thing. And it angers me that so many well intentioned progressives have chosen to ignore the very real problem of rural poverty. I still remember, as a kid in the early 80s, that local stores in the Delta sold hurricane lamp oil. Because, as my uncle told me, some folks didn't have electricity. I remember driving down dirt roads, past the shacks lined up by the fields. Now I'm told that Canton, site of the new Nissan plant, is doing well. But in Drew and Ruleville, it's pretty bad. Trent Lott may be a powerful man, but from where I sit, he hasn't done jack shit for the state Mississippi. He should worry less about judges and more about poverty. We can argue about a lot of things that Jesus may have or may not have said, but no one can dispute that He was most concerned with the plight of the poor, the sick and the hungry. As far as I'm concerned, if the Honorable Senator from Mississippi wants to get right with Jesus, he should try dialing that national spotlight on to the poverty problems in his home state. But that's just me.
Finally, the local government angle. I'm not saying all local governments are going to try and block a Freedom School. Just some of them. Regarding ideological competition, I'll agree with you that speech codes are stupid. In all my writing, I've never advocated for one. Ever. Think about this--Berkeley is often pointed to as a bastion of evil progressives. Yet in the time I was there, I never noticed a speech code. People said pretty much whatever the hell they wanted to. Now there was no guarantee that they weren't going to get yelled at, but hey, that's freedom of speech. Adam Sandler aside, having the microphone does not mean you get to say whatever you want without facing criticism.
There are some progressives that love speech codes. I'm not one of them. And neither are any of my friends. And I never heard any of my classmates at Cal advocate for a speech code either. We leave that to the stuck up Ivy Leaguers =)
Oh and one more thing. It looks like the so called "crack babies" weren't "so damaged" after all:
http://www.nida.nih.gov/ResearchReports/Cocaine/cocaine4.html#maternal
Now if you're looking for something that has damaged kids, I'd take a look at mercury. A lot more kids being exposed to that, than to crack.
http://focus.hms.harvard.edu/2004/Feb20_2004/environmental_health.html
This has dragged on longer than expected, so I'll stop here. Clayton, I hope you keep contributing.
Posted by: tim at May 5, 2005 09:38 PMTim writes: "What I am advocating is teaching people to think."
Practically everyone wants to believe that they are teaching people to think. My experience is that where a certain class of fundamentalist says, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it," there is a similar class of leftists who fancy that they are teaching critical thinking--but are just indoctrinating. Perhaps because they are working on a somewhat more educated group--college students--it doesn't work so well.
I remember well walking by a seminar at Sonoma State University one summer where they were holding a Teaching Critical Thinking seminar for secondary school teachers. One memorable line from one of the speakers: "When you return to your schools to teach the TRUTH...." And you could hear the caps in it.
"ID/Creationism isn't science at all because it does not present a testable hypothesis."
I agree that because it is not a testable hypothesis, it is not science (although much the same criticism applies to evolution). This does not prevent Intelligent Design from being a legitimate devil's advocate tool for testing evolutionary theory--and the way that evolution is taught in most schools is more dogma than science. (I'm afraid that most Creationist arguments don't even perform that useful function.)
"Again, this is a case of relativism run amok."
Aren't you in some danger of losing your credentials as a progressive for admitting that relativism can run amok? Look at poor Dr. Sokal and what happened when he exposed his paper as an attempt to see how ignorant the deconstructionists were.
Perhaps the crack babies were more damaged by fetal alcohol syndrome--which I would suspect was at least as common as in utero crack.
I would also look at the problem of lead poisoning. One of the reasons that the Reagan Administration speeded up the removal of lead from motor fuels was because the research on retardation and lead exposure made it clear that this was a big problem. I doubt that this was a factor in the Marin City situation (there's not a lot of housing in California with lead paint--the houses are too new), but it is a very real problem in much of the older parts of America.
Unfortunately, no one is much interested in chasing the lead paint problem, because it is too simple of a solution. It would cost a few tens of billions of dollars a year. It would put vast numbers of unskilled ghetto young men to work--and teach them a useful skill, sanding and painting.
Posted by: Clayton E. Cramer at May 6, 2005 06:01 AMClayton writes: "The major differences aren't the funding--they are the values of the parents that get transmitted to the kids. Santa Monica schools were spectacular--not because they were that much better funded, but because education was regarded as a positive thing."
Not true. All we have to do is to look at the schools the elite send their children to. None of them are underfunded; in fact, they are at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum. None of them have dilapidated facilities, xeroxed copies of outdated textbooks, sparse libraries, etc. Other (societal) factors certainly come into play, but funding is key.
It is also a misrepresentation to imply that immigrant children (who form the bulk of the current LAUSD students) do not value education. I have also worked as a substitute teacher. The elementary school children I taught were even more eager to learn than I was at their age. Not only are they eager to learn more about the constantly expanding horizons they find in school, they feel the additional pull of learning English so they can help their parents. I can only admire these children.
As far the role of Gov. Reagan (I will not stoop to your level of childish name-calling) in the decline of the California public education system, the cuts and policies he instituted were just beginning to take hold when he left office. By the time I graduated from (private, expensive and ultraconservative) USC in the early '70s, my annual tuition costs, minus Veterans benefits, were less than many friends paid at UCLA. Over the years, Gov. Reagan's policies were exacerbated by Prop. 13 and further cuts and policies instituted by Republican governors Deukmejian and Wilson.
Also, I find it outrageous that you would blame the decline in test scores and discipline on a few handicapped children. Most of the children "mainstreamed" into public schools were, to use the old terms, "crippled" or "retarded." They were never a significant percentage of the overall school population. For you to blame them is just plain nasty.
Posted by: blast at May 6, 2005 08:30 AMBlast writes: "Not true. All we have to do is to look at the schools the elite send their children to. None of them are underfunded; in fact, they are at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum. None of them have dilapidated facilities, xeroxed copies of outdated textbooks, sparse libraries, etc. Other (societal) factors certainly come into play, but funding is key."
Since the Serrano decision, the only discrepancy in funding between school districts is the result of voluntary contributions by parents. I can tell you that the Cotati-Rohnert Park Unified School District, in spite of being relatively affluent, was constantly short of funding. Keep in mind that money spent on repairing vandalism, security guards, and many of the other characteristics of inner city schools, is money not available for teaching materials.
"It is also a misrepresentation to imply that immigrant children (who form the bulk of the current LAUSD students) do not value education. I have also worked as a substitute teacher. The elementary school children I taught were even more eager to learn than I was at their age. Not only are they eager to learn more about the constantly expanding horizons they find in school, they feel the additional pull of learning English so they can help their parents. I can only admire these children."
Immigrant children? Well, some immigrant children value education very much. But not all immigrant groups value education in the same way. If you insist otherwise, you are blind. In any case, the biggest problem in inner city schools isn't Hispanic kids, it is black ghetto culture.
"By the time I graduated from (private, expensive and ultraconservative) USC in the early '70s, my annual tuition costs, minus Veterans benefits, were less than many friends paid at UCLA."
The Veterans benefits is the important difference here, and this is part of why I know that you are intentionally misrepresenting things. I had to make the choice between UCLA and USC when I graduated high school in 1974. I had attended UCLA part-time while I was a senior. I picked USC because a California State Scholarship paid $2500 towards the $2910 annual tuition, and USC (which was not then even particularly conservative, much less "ultraconservative") came up with the other $410. Had I attended UCLA, the tuition was about $660 a year, and the California State Scholarship would have paid $600 of it. UCLA did not have the funding, apparently, to cover the difference.
There was more than $2000 a year difference in tuition between USC and UCLA--and UCLA was much cheaper. The difference was your Veterans benefits.
"Over the years, Gov. Reagan's policies were exacerbated by Prop. 13 and further cuts and policies instituted by Republican governors Deukmejian and Wilson."
Actually, state funding of public education hasn't been that much impacted by Prop. 13. Prop. 4, the spending limitation initiative adopted a year or two later, has been the limiting factor for many local governments in California. When I last checked several years ago, California was spending about $6000 per year per pupil. When I graduated high school in 1974, our district (one of the wealthier districts in the state) was spending about $1200 per year per pupil. Unless you are suggesting that in 25 years there was a 500% inflation rate, you have some explaining to do.
"Also, I find it outrageous that you would blame the decline in test scores and discipline on a few handicapped children."
Go back and re-read what I wrote. I never suggested that the discipline problem was because of handicapped kids. My point was that what had been a small number of discipline problems when I was in elementary school had become the norm when my wife was teaching. This is not the result of mainstreaming, and I was explicit as to the causes of the discipline problems. Go back and re-read it.
"Most of the children "mainstreamed" into public schools were, to use the old terms, "crippled" or "retarded." They were never a significant percentage of the overall school population. For you to blame them is just plain nasty."
They were never a significant percentage of the population, and they still aren't--but because their needs are so dramatic, they gobble up a very disproportionate share of resources. I've read that New York City schools spend 25% of the money on 9% of students who are special needs. My wife worked as a substitute with special needs kids as well--and they received much more teaching and tutoring than other kids. I am not "blaming" them--I am pointing out that much of the dramatic increase in education funding since you and I graduated high school (and there has been an actual increase) is being spent on a relatively small percentage of the population. Whether this is a good idea, or a good idea overapplied, is a separate question. The fact is that education spending has increased, but not for the mainstream of kids.
I should also mention that there is a certain level of racket involved in "special needs" as well. My wife was tutoring a sixth grader for a while (separate from her work as a substitute). He was interested in getting his reading skills up enough to pass the Hunter Safety written test, so he could go hunting with his father.
The kid was in a developmentally disabled program at school--and my wife was becoming increasingly confused by it. When they started, the kid was reading at about a second grade level. In six weeks, she had him at a fifth grade reading level (and he was able to pass the test). She couldn't see that the kid was developmentally disabled at all; it appears that the kid was misidentified in first or second grade. (The home was not a particularly education oriented place.) She made several attempts to get hold of the kid's special needs teacher, to try and get some clarification. The teacher would not return her calls.
A friend who taught in the same county finally explained the situation to my wife. "Special needs teachers get paid extra for their work. The district gets extra money for special needs kids. Why would they want him out of the program?"
Posted by: Clayton E. Cramer at May 6, 2005 04:20 PMWell, this is all very interesting but we're not solving any problems, are we. The question remains, what to do about the lack of education in the American heartland. Tim has proposed "Freedom Schools" as a soluton. Thinking in terms of "red" and "blue" or "right" and "left" may be too narrow a frame, and it naturally illicits circular arguments from both political camps, which invariably result in a stalemate.
Maybe we should approach the problem from a larger frame that looks beyond politics, in order to avoid these partisan schisms.
From my perspective, the problems arise from the fact that industrial societies are in the midst of a paradigm shift. Thus, education, along with everything else, is going through a huge transformation. The old system was designed to serve industrialization. It educated the masses to be workers, not to be thinkers, while reserving higher education for the rich elite, presumably to train them to assume leadership roles in government, business, and the professions. The result is that we have a society of workers and consumers, not of educated citizens. We also don't have leaders, because true leadership arises from the people, not from the top of the pyramid. Those are just bosses, who only serve the interests of the status quo. We are seeing the ramifications of the failures of the old system in how people vote, how they spend and overconsume, and how they think or don't think. They are not primed for education. Quite the contrary, they have been indoctrinated to not think for themselves and to reject any attempts to cause them to do so.
As society demassifies, and as government is decentralized, which it must for it is grossly inefficient, new forms will emerge. Some call it "democratic emergence." This is an evolutionary process no one has any control over. One form this will take will be to treat students as individuals, not as cogs in the wheel of a machine culture. I think this is what Maria Montessori had in mind a century ago. As Tim rightly pointed out, the goals of education must change: "The goal should be an education that teaches people to think for themselves." Thinking for oneself is a prerequisite for a democratic society where the people are sovereign.
The world is changing in big and small ways. It is important to watch these changes closely and see how to adjust to them, rather than hold fast to the old paradigm. That means questioning our assumptions about... well, about everything.
So let me ask this question. What makes us think that a new paradigm for education will be confined to the classroom? Consider the Internet, the most powerful educational tool known to man, where the mind can explore beyond the textbook or classroom. Perhaps schools will be online, and socialization will be offline? This would certainly be less costly and far more egalitarian.
I don't think we are at the point to erect new institutions or structures without first fully understanding the fundamental changes that are occuring, and see how they play out.
Posted by: diana at May 8, 2005 04:49 AM