What the right wants to do (for instance, the governor of NJ) is establish Charter schools in poor neighborhoods. Charter schools operate as public schools with government funding. This type of system attracts the best and brightest of the poor and puts them in the top Charter Schools, which makes these students as competitive as their suburban counterparts. They go on to competitive universities. Students that do not enter these top performing schools go to other schools (vocational schools, which NCLB took away).

I agree with both points of views. Paulo Freire’s ideas sound great… but in practice it has been abused to the point where now teachers are forced to pass students to keep lower performing students “at par” with higher performing ones. Charter Schools are great in that they identify the best and brightest among the disadvantaged and give them the opportunity to be among the best of the best. However, I imagine that it is very difficult to move up from a vocational or lower track school up into a higher track. Tracking determines student ability at an early age and it can be comparable to an Indian Caste system where it is virtually impossible to move up.

So, what is the answer? I mean, from an Educator’s point of view, perhaps Paulo Freire’s idea is the way to go. It gives everyone an equal opportunity. From a parent with a child in the school system, one would want the best and if they really cared, would do everything possible to get their child into the best school. I would also imagine that the tracking method would also limit bullying because it would automatically group the “brainy” kids together, the lower performers in another group, etc. Like-minded people with similar ambitions would be grouped together. But is tracking fair?

On a slight tangent: This day and age, I would say that it is lack of parental involvement starting at a young age that is the #1 inhibitor of student success. Across the board, regardless of socioeconomic status, students *generally* do well and want to learn when there is encouragement at home. Then, there is the question of the media – specifically MTV and its brand of pop culture – and how that negatively influences impressionable children and adolescents. They have the power to do the most good and in reality do the most evil. Where else do you find a group of talentless young adults famous for not having any talent at all? What about their reality shows where people engage in stupid, amoral, degrading behavior that brings out the very worst in everyone? (Jackass, The Jersey Shore, and other reality shows among others.)
All of this reminds me of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”. People are ceasing to do thinking for themselves. People rely on prescription drugs to forget problems. It is becoming acceptable for young adolescents to use sex as a means of controlling others or gaining something material. Everyone blames each other for problems and no one stops to look within themselves and acknowledge that they are the source of their own problems. Few seem to question what’s really going on.

I think that Education solves these issues. I think that it is everything: it is birth control, it is a better quality of life, a better standard of living, and the list goes on. What bigger threat could people pose to its government than having an educated public?

Sometimes I want to give up, but I still see hope in our society. I see a handful of teens who care and who will do well. (I try to keep in touch with them after HS.) If we can get young people to think more for themselves and give more value in their education, then when they grow up and become the decision makers, things will begin to fix themselves….. or will they?

The main difference between early college and secondary education, I would say, is that people in college (most than secondary students anyway) *chose* to be there. And that makes all the difference. In my personal opinion, a very important step towards fixing secondary education, radical as it may sound, is more or less the *opposite* of “not leaving anyone behind” or anything like that, but instead to *stop making it mandatory*. Those who don’t want it, feel free to walk out and deal with the result. And for those who argue that having uneducated people hurts society as a whole (a point with which by the way I agree), notice that these people who would rather walk out are already not only not learning anything but they are also breaking the system and preventing others from learning. The fact is, it’s impossible to force people to learn anything. This totalitarian mentality of “let’s impose education on people because it’s good for them” has to go. Brainwashing is brainwashing regardless of how well meaning one is. If you are giving something for free and still people don’t want it, maybe you have to rethink what you’re doing. The best quality control that we can hope to have is not imposing artificial standardized measures of quality or progress, but actually opening the doors and letting people choose if what you’re offering is worth their time. If one can’t engage them enough that they would *choose* to stay and listen, dude, coercing them to stay and “listen” is not going to help. Now, I am all for trying to *convince* those people who would walk out to stay, and trying to reach out to them, and trying to create special programs or classes or methods that would maybe have more appeal to them, but simply legislating that getting an education is mandatory and thinking that this is a solution is turning the whole thing upside down and doesn’t actually solve anything. It’s like trying to solve the problem of hunger by making not eating illegal. Providing *access* to education to all those who want it might be a very worthy cause. Trying to reach out to those who don’t realize that education is crucial too. But the proposition that “we’re going to educate you mercilessly whether you want it or not” can only end up in the things we see every day.

Best,
Sergio

Now here is the flip side of the coin (I speak from experience in Secondary education). What if you work your heart out and many students really don’t appreciate what you do for them? What if a student said “give me a 0, I don’t care.” or “What do I need to do to pass with a D”? The first reaction might be “ok, fine. it’s your grade, not mine.” But deep down inside it hurts because you really want to help this student learn. You really want to make things relevant in order to motivate them into learning. You want them to put in an effort in order to help them see that it’s not so much about content but about important skills that one takes with them later on in life? It hurts because you care and because the age-old saying is clear: You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. What to do then?

Nevertheless, be it very discouraging and disheartening as it may, I think that I would rather be the educator that feels hurt by apathy than feel like a god with an ego.