I've been giving thought to District 150's truancy problem and started wondering, "Why don't kids WANT to go to school?" I loved college but hated everything that came before. College was great because you got to study subjects you were interested in, especially after getting all the general education requirements out of the way. Professors were truly interested in their fields and were interested in what their students had to contribute.
If I had to sum up my elementary, junior high and high school experience with one word it would be BORING. I spent a great deal of my time looking at the clock, counting off the minutes until it was time to bolt out of my chair to go home and... Read. That's right. Read. My parents didn't allow us kids to watch T.V. We didn't even own one until I was in the third grade, when a horrified uncle bought us one.
So, I don't expect education to be entertainment. I don't think it should attempt to mirror Disney World. I do think schools have largely become inefficient bureaucracies with meaningless rules on top of rules, filled with unhappy, bored educators and administrators biding their time until retirement and even unhappier bored students biding their time until graduation.
Of course, there are exceptions. There are teachers who love kids and truly enjoy their work. In my high school, these teachers could be found teaching the best and brightest -and obviously college bound- students, those taking advanced placement classes. However, if you were an average kid, on the mainstream track, you were treated more or less like a nuisance.
Maybe we shouldn't just be looking at increasing teacher pay, increasing truancy fines, decreasing class size and studying economic factors that keep some kids out of class. Maybe we should be looking at the class itself. Would you be looking forward to going to work every day if you were treated like the enemy? What if you were a social outcast? What if you were subjected to the same lectures over and over and had to endure a curriculum that never advanced? What if you were written off as "average" and no one ever bothered to reevaluate your potential as you matured?
Perhaps it is time to make sure that we are providing an education to kids and not just warehousing them until parents get home from work. Perhaps a policy of "Tough Love" and "Like or Lump It" isn't working. We are talking about kids after all. Education should be intrinsically rewarding. School shouldn't feel like prison. Learning something new, accomplishment, and conquering something that you didn't think you were capable of is one of life's greatest joys. Why are so many of our kids missing out?
I don't know who said the following, but I think it deserves a lot of thought... If children don't learn the way we teach, we must teach the way they learn.
If your mind is too open, your brain will fall out. Warning: Names, identities, descriptions, and pictures have been changed and/or used to protect the innocent as well as the guilty. PollyPeoria should not be used or quoted as a source for your senior college thesis.
Thursday, August 18
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7 comments:
By and large the truants in 150 are also truant from society in general. Your point has merit, but will need tax dollars, a lot of tax dollars to be successful. Peoria doesn't think its children are a good investment. That is where the problem must be addressed.
It puzzles me that not once has anyone floated the idea of better funding for 150 instead of the thoughtless cut and destroy philosophy. A budget should be balanced, not just monetarily but academically as well.
Why is there money for ballparks, rec plexes, riverfront strip malls, museums for corporations,the list goes on, but not even a thought for our children's education?
Perhaps if we really valued our children they might pickup on that, they are the best judges of honesty, and feel valued and go to that place where it originates.
Its the school board that hasn't the faintest idea plain and simple.
Why do we keep them ??
I am equally disgusted by the money thrown at the ball park, rec plex, riverfront, museums, parking garages, un-needed grocery stores and other pork. However, I don't agree that money is the primary tool needed to turn things around for Dist. 150. I think an attitude adjustment is in order. We need to TREAT kids better, not just throw money at education. (Afterall, lots of parents throw money at their kids and it only creates a truant brat equipped with a new i-pod.) We need teachers that enjoy students. We need to make kids feel valued with actual effort as well as dollars. Kids should WANT to come to school. It should be a positive experience. It seems like a lot of 150 students and staff are cynical, deflated and haggard. There are school districts that get a lot less money per student than 150 and they have lower truancy and higher test scores.
Would like to know more about these teachers. Easy to go along and parrot the uninformed population, but how about some proof? You'd be hard pressed to find better teachers than here in 150.
A difficult population to teach along with indifferent parents. Yet most spend their own money for supplies and put in more time than the regular 9 to 5.
They get results. Too easy to carp about the failures and the successes go unnoticed. Graduates have done far better than those from the surrounding homoginized areas. Test scores of the top shame the outlying districts.
More money per student? Well, yeah. A diverse population with unfunded mandates from Washington (No Child Left Behind, Americans With Disabilities Act, the list is long) saddles the public schools. Let's compare apples to apples. It takes money. Its how its utilized that makes the difference. This is and has been an administrative problem.
And they are all college educated as are the teachers so that argument doesn't wash. Further I can name some home schooled children whose parents did not attend college who are going to top universities and scored in excess of 33 on the ACT.
As John Lennon said, "Just give me some truth, all I want is the truth."
Look at some data and then form an opinion. We have enough opinion pushers who start with a conclusion and manufacture data to support it already. Close to 2000 dead because of it today.
Its time to live up to the high standards and knock down this partisan ignorance.
Sure the schools suck. But more funding just means they'll suck on a grander scale. It's a management (and to a certain degree, culture) issue.
So gimme a break with the "don't spend moneys on anything but basic services" mantra.
You want good healthcare? Guess what. Top quality docs live in cities with quality-of-life offerings (i.e., the museums and ballparks and concert venues) -- not because they have a fire station on every corner. And this town has some pretty amazing docs for a town our size.
New jobs? Companies move into (and stay in) communities that have quality workers -- and I'm not talking about factory workers. Blue collar workers populate every town in the country. I'm talking about knowledge workers. And those folks live and work in communities -- again -- that offer the better quality of life stuff.
A stat I saw recently showed that for every "white coat" job created in community, eight other jobs exist to service them. In other words, those kinds of "pros" (and I'm not one) are the dogs we fleas need in order to survive. The old-school, blue-collar approach doesn't stack up anymore (dollar for dollar) with our rice-collar competitors. What we saw at LR Nelson is just going to keep happening. Factory jobs are going bye-bye.
Now try to imagine our future as a community without those other options. THAT's the kind of town your myopic thinking is going to create. No entertainment. No museums. Poor options for shopping or dining. Average (at best) healthcare. No new jobs. And no tax money to pay for our (granted) necessary basic services. Why? Because the property taxes paid by the middle and upper tax bracket folks will dry up when they move to more "progressive" towns.
Every been to downtown Detroit?
Bread and circuses again? Learn some history and quit buying the emporor clothes, toady.
I call bullshit. People are not running to Dunlap for their fine cultural offerings. White collar workers are not attracted by museums and ball parks. Good schools, decent cost of living, low crime, less traffic. These are todays quality of life standards. I can watch baseball on my plasma t.v and be more comfy and spend less on better and more beer than at the ball field. Great restaurants? Americans think Olive Garden is haute cuisine. Museums? Puhleeeze! Unless it has an IMAX or a children's museum with a flying trapeze, it isn't going to pull anyone away from the Discovery and Hitler/History channel. On those rare occassions I crave "culture" and want to see an off Broadway show or tour ancient artifacts, I go to Chicago. After a weekend of traffic, crime, and expensive culture I'm ready to come home to the lovely isolated hamlet that is Peoria. I just wish my hamlet had fewer thugs and better public schools.
Polly, its never been better said!
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