By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
Perhaps we’ll see a bit of this issue discussed locally. In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg will soon clash with teachers by professing that student achievement scores will factor into decisions about teacher tenure.
Students can take charge of their learning, and own their scores. More revolutionary may be a philosophy that students do not need teachers after all.
Students often complain about their teachers. Teachers naturally critique students as that is part of their job description, I suppose. Many American classrooms are teacher-centric, we know. Life in the room revolves around the teacher’s agenda and lesson plan. This is the norm. Much talk about the “student-centric” approach and it’s great when it works. But it’s a resource choice, in the end. Not all schools can afford to do it…
Students need not adopt an “I don’t need you attitude”, but students can balance their teacher-centered blues with a more self-centered approach. Self-centered sounds negative, but consider that no one can take your test but you. Parents can tuck you in, but you sleep alone. Mom, Dad, and teacher will not fit into your cubicle someday.
When is it a good time to instill a genuine sense of self-sustaining independence? Graduate school? Fourth grade, maybe? It’s a struggle because teachers will not sign up for this approach and parents are busy shining their hovering helicopters. It is an American phenomenon, for sure. The struggle resides in everyone’s varied opinions about school and it depends upon how we’ve learned and where we sit in the reality of it. Some of us have grown children and observe, participating merely with our checkbook.
The silent voices belong to students. It’s a no child left untested country, and they know it. It’s a country where money can buy you a great seat and where despite all the testing, test scores, good ones, rarely get a student a pass to a competitive school. Testing is all about the adults, here. There is no meritocracy in education, really, unless you get a country club membership.
Smart students and parents are figuring this out quietly though. Home-schooling is popular. Rich parents hire the tutors. Great parents help their children learn at home. We’re all getting nervous about these school budget cuts and the looming even larger classroom settings. Teachers worry about their jobs, even without all this test score tenure union confrontation discussion. The money will be tight. Even with smart approaches, education is a struggle and really expensive.
Tight times invite finger pointing and blame fests…parents need to do this, the administration should do that, the teachers fail at this, the taxpayers won’t spend more, the government is clueless, the principals are the key, the superintendent can’t do this or that. Meanwhile the students observe, quietly.
I went to schools without parents and that’s my problem I guess and recently returned from living in England where schools are quite institutional and very pragmatic, where tests scores grade schools and more dramatically assess and track students. You cannot purchase a seat in Oxford. Critiques may abound here, but America appears to be on a very heavy glide-path with huge momentum toward an educational crisis that will not get better before it gets a bit worse.
Here, the adults are arguing over resources and dispensing budgets. It is after all, when all is discussed and “curriculum’d”, budgeted and repainted, a matter of money. We cannot afford to educate our children these days. And then there’s college.
While the adults wrangle and thrash about, students could adopt a simple approach to learn. Good students, you know who they are, do the homework and more. They're three lessons ahead of the Algebra teacher, two novels ahead of the reading schedule, and they practice their instrument, and practice their sport. They do the work and practice, practice, practice.
You are your best teacher. You can’t solve these adult resource issues right now, but you can be more of a master with your time and what you do with it.
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