Monday, February 28, 2005

Schools: What we're doing isn't working

And it's not me saying it:

Virginia Governor Mark Warner:
""We can't keep explaining to our nation's parents or business leaders or college faculties why these kids can't do the work,"

Bill Gates
""America's high schools are obsolete," Gates said. "By obsolete, I don't just mean that they're broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools _ even when they're working as designed _ cannot teach all our students what they need to know today."

Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee:
""This is an issue that transcends all those typical things that cause people to split in different directions"

These quotes are from an AP story published by Yahoo! News. Schools aren't ready to prepare today's students for tomorrow's workplace. But the biggest problem is so few people realize this, so most are content with just trying to patch the current system. What I think is particularly funny is that everyone's answer for improving schools is to give them more money--where is the data that money equates better instruction? It's helpful to have money, of course, but this is a false assumption of causality. The reason this happens is because it's easier to simply tax and spend than actually think about what good instruction means, what the world is becoming and what our children need to learn, and then having the guts to suggest the kind of radical overhaul needed.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

RIck, you need to enable trackbacks (assuming blogger can do that).

Another reason that people think that money will fix our schools is that almost none of the people making the laws have any expertise in education so they go with what they know which is finance. . .