Education

I've been teaching school in one form or another almost a quarter of a century. I've taught at public and private schools, elementary school, high school, junior college and the university. Math & Science, Public Speaking, Argumentation & Debate, Automotive Restoration and Painting, Music...all of it.

 

And I will tell you that OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM IS TERMINALLY BROKEN.

We are neglecting one of our most valuable assets...the young learner.

 

Schools are underfunded; teachers are undervalued. Students are uninterested. Young people are graduating without being adequately prepared for their futures. They're not being given the tools they need to become effective citizens and a force for growth in society. This is a real problem for their futures and for the future of our great nation.

 

Simply put, our American model for educating our children is outdated and based on a factory model from the industrial revolution. Modern society has accepted the misguided concept of bloated, ineffective school administrations (the CEO model) that drain resources away from the students and make school unbearable.

 

I live in Lake County, the second poorest county in the State of California. A full one-fourth of the citizens here live in poverty. Our district has an annual budget of $75 Million and yet there is not a high-quality food system in place to feed students real, decent food. The Superintendent makes well over a quarter of a million dollars in total compensation each year and yet there is not a reliable bus system to get students to school. The campuses have open perimeters so anyone from the public can access and drive or walk onto campus any time. This isn't safe. On the inside, our schools have become more like jails in many ways with a police presence on campus and an authoritarian atmosphere. This is not an environment conducive to learning. Yet there are two Assistant Superintendents and a CFO who take home nearly three-quarters of a million dollars every year. For what result? This is the example of bloated administrations and the failed CEO model that I'm talking about. We need to change it. We need to take a good, hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves why so many countries in the world are doing it so much better than we are. In America, the first word we associate with "school' is "shooting." That's a red flag. Lock-down drills traumatize new students on a regular basis. Most school boards are still unwilling to remove cell phones and social media from the classroom even given the vast amount of research revealing the staggering negative effects. We need to look inward and see how it is not working and then look outward for fresh, new ideas and be prepared to completely revamp our schools and escape the corporate model. Stop making our children compete for grades and standardized test scores. It's driving them crazy. Design a system that lets them study more of what they want to study, what interests them.  Let the hope of college or vocational school come without a heavy price tag. Let their school-age years become a time of imagination, creation and innovation and we will all be better off in the end.