No Subject

[Douglas <dougwils@moscow.com>]

Dear visionaries,

A thank you to Bill London for a courteous reception.

And a thank you as well to Tim Kinkeade for the question. Pardon my
non-brief reply. Individual deficiencies that result in substandard
service would include, but not be limited to:

1. Rootless experimentalism in teaching methodologies: for example,
private schools that use phonics have one hundred percent literacy coming
out of first grade. Whole language doesn't work well at all in teaching
kids to read, but it does work in creating a class of kids with learning
disabilities. These kids then need a special program. Which,
incidentally, needs to be funded.

2. Underestimating the abilities of students: file this under light a
candle/curse the darkness. In my experience, modern American students
have an outstanding capacity to learn, and I have seen many of them
excel. There is nothing in our air or water that creates poor
performance, but there is something in the schools. We hit where we aim,
but we aim low. To steal a phrase from a politician, this is just the
soft bigotry of low expectations.

3. Confusion of self-esteem and self-respect: self respect comes from
doing a job well. But if everyone gets a participant ribbon regardless of
the job done, this simply teaches the children contempt for the praise
offered by their teachers and parents.

4. Bureaucratized neglect of the bottom line: because the schools are not
in the private sector, they have little or no market pressure to respond
to events in the marketplace. In a private school, if a significant
percentage of the students go to another school, everyone knows where,
when and how it happened within twenty-four hours. But here in Moscow,
twenty years ago, less than five percent of the kids in Moscow were being
educated privately. Now the figure is around thirty percent, and the
government school establishment is speculating that the kids moved to
Thailand or something. This is the "poster child" of lack of
responsiveness.

5. Neglect of discipline: students are disciples, and this means they
flourish under discipline. But since the late sixties, those
characteristics which make for good students -- prompt, clean, obedient,
hard-working, and so on -- have been consistently mocked and rejected in
our culture. Those who see the value in such things have decided that
they can only be inculcated through private association with people who
think the same way. Call this the green hair/nose ring issue.

6. Monopolistic arrogance: every institution that does not have to face
competition for a time gets fat and out of shape. Then when competition
does eventually come, it is not comprehensible to the soon to be
ex-monopoly. I mentioned the figure of thirty percent earlier. If present
trends continue (as I expect them to), within another decade or so, then
government education in our town will fall below fifty percent.
Hand-wringing and name-calling on the part of the establishment won't
keep it from happening, and is part of the reason why it has been
happening as rapidly as it has.

7. Prickliness: when criticism is leveled at the government schools,
particularly when it comes from conservative Christians, the response of
the establishment is consistently shrill and humorless, which is why the
recent set of dust-ups contained as much humor as they did. Are your
schools places where joy is taught? Or are they grim factories
that used to manufacture more knowledge than they do now?

8. Religious nature of education: education is one of the most religious
things we do. A good education addresses the big questions head-on, with
no shilly-shallying. Government education at its best is an attempt to
dodge the big questions, in which case the education is deficient. At its
worst, government education answers the questions in one way, but
pretends that it is not. "No, Suzy, you did evolve from the
primordial goo, but we are not saying that your pastor is wrong when he
says you didn't."

Thanks for the opportunity to post.