Man, what's up with @%#$! public schools?


The Detroit News

Poll: Parent, teacher contact limited

...The poll found a wide gap in how parents and teachers perceive school involvement. Parents say they want to be included, but don’t always have the chance. And teachers — uniformly, across all grades — said they want more direct interaction with parents.

Of parents with children in the first or second grade, 40 percent said they communicate directly with the teacher at least once per week. That number dropped to 38 percent for parents of fifth- and six- graders, and to 26 percent for parents of seventh- and eighth- graders. Just 20 percent of parents of ninth- and 10th-graders interact weekly with teachers. And by 11th and 12th grade, just 17 percent of parents said they communicate with teachers regularly.

So, 6 of 10 parents don't communicate directly with the teacher at least once per week for grades 1-6. (Same for 3 & 4 presumably). By 9th grade, it's down to 2 in 10. Can you say Pareto's Law?

I wonder how I would feel if I was forced to hire every applicant that approached me for a job? No critical evaluation allowed, no screening, no firing. Then, as the recipient of that bell-curved bundle of pathologies, bad habits, poor parenting, ethnic tension, sub-par nutrition and health, I was also required to attempt to ameliorate all those deficits while still trying to maintain a profit. ("Growth" seems a tad optimistic in this scenario.) In addition, once a month, my boardroom gets filled to overflowing with hordes of people--parents, workers, interested parties and social gadflies, government types, other business people--all come to tell me what I'm doing wrong. While noshing my hors d'oeurves and O.J., they scream at me: You're a leech. A cultural reprobate and a failure. Do it better for less money. Luckily, once all the free food is gone, they leave. But not before they toss me an additional list of things to tackle when I'm done handling the last 600 monthly lists they left me.

Why 600? 50 years X 12 months. Read on:

The Challenge of Change, [PDF] from Ian Jukes and Anita Dosaj, InfoSavvy Group

Our schools have tried to adapt to massive social change over the course of the past 50 years, and in doing so, they have become very confused. For hundreds of years all that our schools were responsible for was teaching reading, writing and arithmetic. Then we began to add things to the list

1900
* reading
* writing
* arithmetic

1900-1910
* immunization
* nutrition
* health

1910-1920
* citizenship

1920-1940
* vocational arts
* practical arts
* physical education
* school lunch

1950‘s
* safety education
* driver’s education
* foreign language education
* sex education

1960‘s
* consumer education
* career education
* peace education
* traffic safety education
* leisure education

1970‘s
* special education mandated
* drug & alcohol abuse education
* electrical safety education
* parent education
* character education
* environmental education
* school breakfasts

1980‘s
* keyboarding
* computer education
* global education, ethnic education
* multicultural education
* non-sexist education
* ESL education
* full day kindergarten
* pre-school programs for at-risk students
* after school programs for children of working parents
* stranger danger education
* sexual abuse prevention education
* child abuse monitoring.....

1990‘s
* state standards
· career education
· HIV AIDS education
* bus safety education
* gang education
· death education

2000+ ?

Yet it’s the same school day and school year as 1950. When America had the longest school day and school year in the entire Industrial World – now in the new millennium, we have the shortest. We’ve not added a single minute to the school day or school year in decades. Consequently schools can’t do it. Schools were not designed to rear America’s children.

And yet, in even our best towns, we know that there are parents who are parenting by remote control. They drop them off for Pre-K or Kindergarten and expect to pick up 13 years later and find fully developed human beings. But they didn’t play a role in the process.

What’s the problem?

The system is trying to be all things to all people and it can’t work. It must be changed. And if you say to me "change to what?" we suggest that part of the conversation with the community is just that question:

What is the role of school in the new millennium?

Indeed. Please submit your answer in 25 words or less.