Education at the Crossroads
by William "Bill" Bonville
A massive, world-wide experiment is under way, reaching its tentacles right down into our own school district. Experts say the goals are to educate our children for world peace and a sustainable environment within a global economy that is advantageous to all the peoples of the Earth. And to be qualified to enter the work force. Very noble, indeed.
I have a problem with the experiment. As it involves education, it uses our children and grandchildren as subjects. Call them gunea pigs. It is based on unproved theories (some critics call it outright quackery) that demonstrably weaken education and make short shrift of the Constitutional protection given children and families by the founding fathers.
Worst example: 59 eleven and twelve year old girls are, without warning, marched into a room, stripped to their underwear, then one by one, many in tears and crying out for their mothers, laid on a table and told to "bend your legs like a frog" so that their genitals could be probed and examined. And the State Police, District Attorney, and Sheriff all agreed no laws were broken. The school, under federal Goals 2000 provisions for "one-stop shopping" social services adopted by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, had every right to invade the privacy of the children without parental notification or consent.
The interests of the state, that is to say, override all traditional family rights and authority.
Less traumatic but worse are the destructive processes being visited upon children in the classroom. The methods of direct instruction that we older folks knew (and often hated) have been replaced. The method: Children now instruct themselves. The teacher only facilitates. They call it Constructivism. Worse, schools of education teach these weird processes and ignore substance. We have block scheduling, blended "thematic" classes (e.g.,math, English and Science taught in a single block by a teacher who has not necessarily mastered those subjects. All he/she knows how to do is to facilitate.). In elementary grades children are taught to use calculators instead of to do math in their heads; when reading, to guess and make up their own words based on pictures when they don't recognize the actual word. And forget spelling accuracy. It's OK to invent your own way of spelling. And they wonder why sixty percent of fourth graders can't read or do grade-level math.
To compensate for the resulting drop in academic competence, the SAT tests were dumbed down. But that was not enough. Recently they "gave" as many as a hundred extra points to all test takers so they would not lose self esteem compared to kids of past years. They called it recentering the test. Thus most school administrators felt able to crow about how much improved were their schools, based on these fine but phony results. Then there are the testing services that explain, straight faced, that three fourths of all schools achieved above average test scores.
Forget academics. Schools say that they want most of all to teach character and life skills. You know, honesty, integrity, perseverance, hard work and the like. But what about being educated? Many teachers and administrators are as frustrated by events as you are. Needed are more teachrs and administrators with guts and smarts enough to stand up and tell the social engineers: "Not with my kids you don't. "
What is a School Board member to do? Tell it like it is,
first of all. Take back local control where we can, stand behind the administrators
and teachers who are trying to make the best of a bad situation, and resist
all moves to downplay academics.