On the subject of school reform, Marty asks us to read "The Manufactured Crisis"
by D. Berliner. It is well worth reading, and his information is, wherever I
have been able to compare, accurate.
He points out, for example, that what is actually changed is that we now expect
that most kids will graduate from high school, if not from college, whereas 40
years ago, it was a small minority who would do this. We have in fact, raised
the standard, and then declared education to be flawed for not meeting the new,
higher standard.
Precisely. We used to expect a few white males to go to college, and that would
meet our total need for engineers, lawyers, accountants, doctors, and dentists.
No one else whent to college. People have written books about the few blacks
who went to college before the 50's, and female grandparents who went to college
are amazing in my (white) family.
Unfortunately, this is pretty much irrelevant. It is true that most other
school systems in the world have improved pretty substantially in the last 50
years. Japan is only one of many that have equalled or surpassed the US in
quality and quantity of graduates. While we have stood still, others have
surpassed us.
It is also true that most of these other countries have populations that are not
nearly as diverse as ours. Whether we like it or not, we cannot any longer
cater only to the white males, and be satisfied. We need to teach women, we
need to teach blacks, we need to teach Hispanics, we need to teach poor kids.
These are all areas where we do less well than we should. We need to do this
partly because it is right. We also need to do it because the diversity of our
nation requires it. The demographics are such that we will not have adequate
white, well-to-do college grads by approximately 2020 to fill all the
professional ranks neeeded. We either learn to train non-whites (and to some
extent, especially in the Sciences, women), or we go without.
So the national need means that we better learn to teach some of these people,
and stop pretending that it is ok to fail a large part of the population.
On the other hand, many other countries use 'tracking' mechanisms to shunt
people in certain directions. You can get tracked as a technician, for example,
and never get out. So they simplify at the upper levels their educational
process by not leaving it open to everyone. Do we want to do that? Good
question.
While agree wholeheartedly with Marty that the educational issue is raised
especially by the changing nature of work, I do not for a minute agree that just
because we have always failed poor kids that it is still ok to do so.
--Rol Fessenden LL Bean, Inc. 76234.3636@compuserve.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>