When I was in kindergarten, something happened that profoundly affected education in the entire nation. The Soviet Union launched a little beeping 180-pound aluminum ball called Sputnik into orbit. Kids my age were taken into the backyard, where our daddies pretended to see it in the night sky.
And that freaked America out, though nobody was using those terms quite yet. The Russians seemed to be ahead of us in science!
When we tried to launch a satellite a few weeks later, our missile blew up on the launch pad. We seemed to be technologically behind our mortal enemies! Suddenly, massive federal dollars were available for education.
That was why and how many of us were able to go to college. Within a few years we caught up with and surpassed the Russians in space. With a few decades, the Soviet Union collapsed. Today, our enemies tend to be fanatic guerrilla bands or developing nations that are fiercely anti-intellectual. We may feel threatened, but we don't feel that the Iraqi insurgents are apt to build a super bomb.
And frankly, I wonder if we might all be better off if we thought al-Qaeda was on the verge of inventing a better mousetrap. This nation devoted massive resources to education when we felt we had to, during World War II and the Cold War that followed.
That helped us evolve into the technological and cultural powerhouse we became. Today, we don?t worry about being surpassed, and as a result, we may be losing our edge.
After all, the first principle of capitalism is that competition leads to higher quality. If you are driving an American car and are happy with it, you should thank the Japanese.
Mike Flanagan is exactly right when he says that Michigan students both can, and must, perform at a higher level.
But to ask the schools to meet the new standards without giving them more resources is self-destructive. At the upper-middle-class school where my wife teaches, they've gone from a semester to a trimester system, in order to try to squeeze in more in less time.
The teachers are exhausted, and overstressed. Imagine how they are trying to enforce these standards at schools with less money.
Peter McPherson, the former president of Michigan State, once told me that the key to success is knowing who you serve and what you want to deliver. Our present education funding policy was, frankly, based not on the best needs of our students or society.
Instead, it was designed to produce property tax relief. What Michigan needs to do is figure out what we want and need to achieve in education. Then, we come up with whatever policies are needed to fund it. There was a time when America believed in its future.
If we still do, and if we want a brighter future for our kids, we need to pour whatever resources we need into education.
Otherwise, the fanatics in the desert may win, after all.
Jack:
All well reasoned commentary but education infrastructure issues such as teacher retirement and post-retirement health benefits need an objective review. Public sector defined benefit plan and health plan liabilities are an astounding 40% of some school budgets? When will policymakers wake up? Do they think that taxpayers(who largely don't have access to such public largess) will stand for such fiscal irresponsibility? Could it be that dreadful "entitlement" mentality". I think it is and perhaps a classic example.
My wife teaches in a Catholic school-twice mastered and all the certifications in the world. She's paid about 45% of what a public school teacher makes and yet there doesn't seem to be the complaining over lack of resources. And by the way-the student population is about 40% non-Catholic. There's about 20% minority many of whom attend with a significant subsidy or no tuition at all. The rest of the families make up the difference.
Here's one taxpayer who thinks that public school finances need very serious scrutiny-not just "figure out what we want to do and fund it". Yikes.
Posted by: Jose Santiago | June 01, 2008 at 08:54 PM
The "fanatics in the desert may win" what a misplaced xenophobia driven incentive mantra..
I don't doubt finances are a critical aspect of our public school system which could be fixed without any other taxation if we nationalized the oil companies and deflected 50% of our tax revenues pledged to the defense budget. This will pay for the administration of public education and make us a kinder , gentler nation as well..
However a focus soley on the finances of education is a dead end road and it will not at the end the day get us the results we need so much now as a country..Beating the Soviet Union was a hollow prize at best...
Education is obviously much more than about dollars but truly about senses... There is no magic bullet or federal mandate from the government messiah we should wait for...
The key to urban educational sucess is to alter the paradigm of public education and incorporate a educational system driven by real life interactive models..
Students need to spend designated hours everyday at work family models, work models, university models,protege models all interactive modules..
The daily class room has multiple venues ..the daily schedule begins with 2 hours of family training, 2 hours career work, 2 hours of textbook/lectures, 2 hours protege learning total instructional day: 8 hours..
The former president of MSU was partially correct in his notion about education... I haved filled in the blanks and made it fit for urban students/family/social reality of urban venues...
Posted by: Thrasher | June 02, 2008 at 02:07 PM