Robert Rubinstein´s Writings & Ideas

THE STATE OF EDUCATION:
A CLASSROOM TEACHER´S VIEW

By Robert Rubinstein (Published in the THE WORLD & I, August 2001)

"The western mind has been programmed very narrowly: Define problems, seek solutions, set goals, make decisions, fix things. Fix your spouse, fix yourself, fix your children. When we see something we don´t like, we judge it and want to change it rather than understand it. We look for the immediate solution rather than to seek to understand why the problem arose."
- Dr. Jordan Paul and Dr. Margaret Paul (DO I HAVE TO GIVE UP ME TO BE LOVED BY YOU?)

Children are America´s future - our future. Helping those children learn and preparing them for adulthood is vital to our continuing success as a society. The public constantly cites teachers and teaching as one of the most important and critical jobs in our society.

Yet, the public, government, school officials seem bent on undermining teachers and making their jobs increasingly difficult . . . As a result, America is beginning to experience a growing and a critical teacher shortage.

In the State of Oregon alone, within the next five years, nearly half the teachers presently in the classrooms will be eligible for retirement. Colleges of education project that they will only have enough teacher candidates to fill a little more than half the openings expected. School district representatives now travel to other states to try to recruit teachers. Kentucky now lets districts hire long-term substitutes as long as that person has a high school diploma. California schools are so desperate they have people without any educational classes or experience with young people in inner-city schools.

We can´t find teachers who are qualified to teach science and math, or have knowledge and understanding of writing, literature and history. Schools can´t find qualified teachers who will teach in the inner city or in rural areas. Students have few teachers through their school years who are experienced, successful and interested in children and their success in life.

Instead of encouraging and offering added incentives to attract quality people to teaching, the public and government seem bent on the opposite by cutting salaries and benefits, enlarging classrooms, instituting policies telling teachers how they must teach, judging teachers by how many students pass information tests, allowing schools and materials to deteriorate, and micromanaging classroom education.

Consider, too, the nature of a teacher´s job. A football coach takes a boy aside and spends an hour instructing that boy, one-on-one, how to throw a football better. If that boy comes back a week later, having practiced throwing, and has improved the way he throws a football, the conclusion is that the boy must have the ability, the talent, the drive to succeed. If the boy doesn=t practice and doesn=t improve, then it´s obviously the boy´s fault that his skill hasn=t improved.

A teacher in a class of 35 or 40 students in a 50-minute period teaches basic skills about how to read or how to write better. The teacher also must teach a myriad of other facts and skills, too. If that teacher could -- ideally -- meet with each student, one-on-one without taking attendance, dealing with behavior, giving general class instructions, then the teacher might have less than a minute and a half to spend instructing each student how to improve his/her reading or writing. This teacher, attempting to teach one-on-one with 34 other students in the room, must consider, too, each student=s personal needs, skill levels, and behavior.

Does the student have books at home to read? Does that student practice writing in any of a variety of ways? Are there parents at home to encourage and help the student with developing these reading and writing skills? Are there aides in school who have the skills and time to work individually with a student?

If that student, a few weeks later, doesn´t do well on a test -- maybe a state mandated test -- then the conclusion is that the teacher has not taught the students well. Yet, these tests are not based on life-skills, but on parroting back information. Forty-eight hours after taking a major information test, eighty percent of the information will be forgotten.

While other professionals usually deal with clients one-on-one, or in small groups, the secondary school teacher meets with over 200 students a day. Frightening numbers of students come to school damaged emotionally, by drugs, by abuse or neglect, and with profound learning disabilities. In addition, if teachers don´t manage to teach effectively under all these conditions, they are subject to lawsuits.

Now, add to this that during the 1996-97 school-year, there were over 400,000 incidents of crime reported in the public schools, including 10,950 fights with weapons and 122,000 thefts and robberies, and thousands of bomb threats.. Who´s going to teach? Why would qualified, intelligent and personably attractive people want to invest -- and go into debt -- $80,000 to $100,000 in college and graduate school costs for this type of career and under these circumstances? . . . . If we don´t attract such people, then what happens to our children, our schools and all of our futures?

WHO´S IN CHARGE AND WHY?

What qualifies the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education to be in that powerful position and to decide education policy? Does he or she have extensive experience working with young people? Does he or she have expertise and experience teaching in a public school classroom? . . . No. Very little -- if any. The person in this position usually has held a university presidency or is another politician. What does this have to do with understanding young people and their needs, personally and educationally? What does this have to do with comprehending what it´s like to teach in a classroom, and the skill and resources needed to effectively help students learn?

In the same way, people in legislatures pass laws and rules about schools, students and teaching. Often, their intent is to use kids and education as another political football to kick around, no matter how much harm they do. State superintendents, those serving on local school boards, school administrators seldom have recent, if any experience, working with young people or teaching in a public school classroom.

Committees of lay people constantly subject teachers to programs, requirements and restrictions. These are imposed by people who, in general, have never taught in a classroom. I know of no other profession subjected to such arbitrary scrutiny.

Colleges of Education responsible for training our future teachers have instructor staffs usually composed of people who have never taught in the classroom, have left the public school because they don´t want to teach young people, or have been asked to leave teaching. Yet, these people teach our future teachers to teach? Perhaps, that´s why experienced classroom teachers feel so negative towards the education classes. They quickly understand that most of these classes have little relevance to what´s actually happening with children in schools.

Teachers, ironically, are often kept from serving on committees when the decisions on the national, state and local levels define education policies. Classroom teachers seldom teach future teachers in the teacher-training curriculum, nor, do they have significant influence on the relevance of teacher-training programs. Teachers have remarkably little impact on designing and implementing school testing and teacher licensing. Politicians want to further reduce teacher input, making licensing and legislation even more political.

Yet, teachers, more than anyone else in the education system, have the knowledge, the experience, the personal investment to work best with students. As Stephen Stolp, assistant professor in academic advising at the University of Oregon, writes: " . . .we can start by letting teachers do their jobs. They are highly trained professionals who certainly know better than most voters and politicians how to educate our youth. . . . Most teachers aren´t in the profession ti get rich and retire early. They=re in the profession because they care about kids." (REGISTER GUARD, 2/18/98)

HOW DO WE TEACH STUDENTS?

Learning and education are the future, not the past. Teachers and schools must have the materials and technology at hand to prepare our children to succeed in the world fifteen or twenty years from the time they begin school. We know that they must be able to use computers because computers will be important in nearly every job. We know that they will change careers five to seven times, and jobs ten or more times. So, they need to learn flexibility, how to teach themselves, and how to locate essential information and tools for their future success. Businesses, in their surveys, have found, while reading--writing--math are certainly important in the world of work, that a person=s ability to communicate clearly, to follow directions, to ask questions, to be able to work well with others, and to think independently are even more essential for success.

We adults easily forget our childhood history and feelings. Often, adults want schools to be the same as they had when they attended school. That was the time when business and factory people designed schools to produce a steady supply of factory workers, already trained in routine. That´s the main reason students sat in rows, stood and answered when called, rarely questioned what they learned or the teacher´s accuracy, but rather parroted back information. We went to science, math, English, social studies, P.E., some type of shop or art, and maybe foreign language or music classes. Few of these classes ever related to the other. We, as students still do today, had three - five minutes to rush from one class to the next, and put aside what we had just learned to suddenly focus on another topic that had no relation. How many adults do this in their working life? Little of this era of schooling concerned itself with the student´s perspective or the student=s interest in learning. Today, American students still follow the same hectic, disjointed routine.

Now, too, we teach several week classes about drug education or AIDS or sex or a people´s culture, and it may be years or never that students study this subject again. But that doesn´t really matter because they´ve passed the test given. . . . In a seminar on sex education several years ago, they had a panel of students from middle school and high school who were to comment on their school´s sex education programs. We seriously wonder why students don´t learn effectively? As I watched, I could see the anger and frustration building in one of the high school panelists. Finally, he interrupted:" None of you care what we think or feel or want or need to know. All you do is give us this information, make us read the textbook and give us a test. Whether we really learned anything or have the understanding we need doesn´t matter to any of you!" . . . What can you say to this? He´s right! This is the way most teachers and schools present materials, and treat students.

The teacher needs to capture students´ interest and imagination, to open up channels for learning and understanding, to show them ways to grow and succeed.

Rules! Certainly guidelines are needed for student expectations, responsibilities, and behavior. "Discipline" refers to learning, knowledge and self-control: all positive attributes. However, "discipline" in school refers to restrictions, reactions to negative or potentially negative behaviors, committed by maybe five percent of the students, that will be imposed on all students. This, in turn, encourages more behavior problems. For ninety to ninety-five percent of the students, if provided with the atmosphere and trust to do so, handle themselves well and want to learn. Schools make up discipline rules to hinder this and to show lack of trust. The old adage rings true: if you expect people to fail or to be bad, they will fulfill your expectations. Teachers, schools, the public, the media have repeatedly re-enforced this adage.

More than ever, today, each student needs the positive guidance and attention of at least one adult in that child´s life. Yet, in school, we throw the child into a room of 30-40 children, each with his or her own special needs and characteristics. Then, we´re amazed when behavior and learning problems increase. Over many years, scientific studies have shown that the more animals you crowd into a given space, the more withdrawn, antisocial and violent each animal becomes. Why do we think young people with their complex problems and fears wouldn´t at least behave the same way?

One student stated on a paper: "What do I care about school and all this? I figure I´ll be dead by 21. Might as well do what I want." . . . This expresses the feelings of many young people today. They don´t see themselves with much, if any, positive future. A good number of those who might do well academically look at the cost of college and feel it´s beyond what they´d be able to afford. Others not interested in attending college have little left of interest in school. Through tax cuts and the heavy focus on college-bound students, most schools have eliminated business classes, art classes, drama, music, industrial and wood shops, auto mechanics from the curriculum. Our society, unlike those in other industrialized countries, has not developed good technology schools, applied arts programs, or apprenticeship programs. We´ve shown students that we don´t value their learning, skills and interests unless they are "college material." So, then, what future do they have?

BUILDINGS THAT ARE FALLING DOWN

Most of America´s school buildings are thirty or more years old. In many, there´s asbestos concerns as well as poor air quality, heating and lighting. Classrooms meant for 25 students now have 35 to 40 and more crammed into them. Students canāt see the boards, have room to work, or feel comfortable. The general atmosphere in the rooms and hallways is often drab and heavy. Many of these schools do not have the ability to implement computer and other technology that will prepare students for their futures.
If this were a business, adults would rebel against working here. A business that didn´t renovate its building and technology would not be a very productive business with a viable future. Yet, there´s little effort or investment by governments and the public to remedy these conditions to help students learn and teachers teach more effectively. In addition, students must use out-dated and inaccurate school textbooks because the cost of a textbook has become so expensive. Research into the science textbooks used in our schools revealed that they contained some 500 errors. Is this what we´re testing for and want students to learn?

Instead of investing in children and schools, we spend thousands of times the dollars to imprison young people. Over 80 percent of the more than 1 million people in prison today are high school dropouts. They didn´t or couldn´t succeed in school. Each prisoner costs taxpayers more than $50,00 per year -- and this doesn´t include the property damage, personal injury and court costs they are responsible for before even being imprisoned. Within three years, 63 percent who have been released commit other serious crimes and are returned to prison. Others usually live on welfare. "Given the increase in drug-related crime and the get-tough policies now in vogue, it is very likely that the number of inmates in the U.S. prisons could reach 2 million before the decade is over. The cost of prisons is increasing faster than that of any other social service, including education and health. Yet the return on the investment is extraordinarily low." (quote and information from Harold Hodgkinson, director of the Center for Demographic Policy at the Institute of Educational Leadership.)

ADMINISTRATORS

Ironically, as much as politicians, the public and others insist on restrictions and training for classroom teachers, there´s little required of building administrators. Principals, vice principals and counselors usually must earn an "administrative certificate," but what does this have to do with actual learning and teaching within the classroom? Many administrators have not taught in the classroom for years; a few have never taught. What makes these people qualified to evaluate teachers and work with students? The one or two times an administrator, may come -- some don=t come at all -- during the year to observe a class period is to evaluate the teacher. Often, a very threatening, tense time for that teacher. There´s little commitment on the part of most administrators to observing several classes taught by each teacher over the course of the year with the objective of working with each teacher to develop the most positive, effective learning for students in that classroom. Shouldn´t the primary focus be on the students and their needs?

As school boards and state legislatures have given administrators more authority and placed more restrictions on teachers, the administrator-teacher relationship has the potential to become very political and tyrannical. For those administrators who don´t like a particular teacher, or want to force a teacher to teach subjects for which he or she isn´t prepared or qualified is easy. "You will teach science, Spanish, English and physical education, or not have a job here." Of course, the students are well-aware when a teacher=s does not have the background in the area he´s teaching. The students are being cheated -- and act accordingly. If low-skilled students are assigned to a particular teacher´s class and then don´t perform up to the administrator´s expectations, it´s the teacher´s fault, reputation, and, possibly, job lost. So, a teacher had better be careful about voicing opinions, about changing curriculum, about innovating to gain student interest and improve learning.

We have as lot of work to do to save our children, their futures and our society. We are the first generation that does not have the interest, dedication, or willingness to invest in our children and education for the future. Yet, we are, by far, the wealthiest nation in the world with the most resources.

We have become addicted to the quick easy fix of testing or vouchers or, incomprehensibly, cutting school funds so schools will have less resources and fewer quality teachers to accomplish what the public demands. In the long run, in the future, these will do incredible harm to our children and their education.

If teachers and schools are to truly prepare our children for the future to work, live productively and happily, build a positive society, then we must change - and change now. We must have the courage to search for innovative ways to create an education system that meets the needs of our young people today and teaches and guides them in life-skills for theirs and our futures.

"Children are not things to be molded, but people to be unfolded." - Anonymous

"It took me all my life to learn to paint like a child." - Marc Chagall