01/26/09: In my previous journal I did a cursory look into No Child Left Behind and Reading First. In class last Thursday, Venta Silins, librarian at UWB, spoke with us about using the library’s resources. She introduced us to ERIC, an engine for accessing unpublished writings. She finished by encouraging us to use the library’s resources "instead of Google and Wikipedia." Now, I have to laugh at myself as the latter is just what I did. I will admit that I find Wikipedia to be a fair introduction to something or someone unknown to me. But now that I have ERIC, and once I learn to navigate it along with other areas of the library’s web-site, I will try my best to look more deeply into these issues.
But today, I would like to talk about our readings from American Education by Joel Spring. Dr. Spring points out the roll that our business community is playing in our public school system. I was at first put off by what I perceived to be Dr. Spring’s superior attitude toward business. He writes from the perspective of a man who has (I’m assuming) the job security of tenure as well as a business association with a publishing firm which sells his book at $70.00 for a paperback.
I have to first look at my concerns for my own children. An educational goal for my husband and me is that our children will be educated in a way that allows for them to feed themselves. We are no longer farmers. We do not produce the food that we put on our table. We provide for that food by earning an income. We are not wealthy. Our children will not inherit the money to sustain themselves. Neither are we self-employed. We do not have a business that we can pass on to our children. Their only hope for a secure future is through their education.
Furthermore, I believe that the Business Community is justified in going to our schools, informing them with regards to what they are finding. A friend of mine who is employed in Boeing's administration was reading an article (I have asked him for a copy) that stated, when interviewing potential employees coming out of our public high schools, roughly 70% of high school graduates do not have the reading skills, the math skills nor the communication skills required by businesses. I feel that it is not only fair, but wise of our business community to let our schools know that for their purposes a high school diploma from an Amercian public school is not adequate.
What does a high school diploma from an American school represent? Shouldn’t a diploma represent a specific level of mastery that will open doors for the graduate, whether the graduate is seeking employment or further education? I am reminded of Frank McCourt’s experience that he wrote about in Angela’s Ashes when he applied to the teacher’s program at NYU. He did not have the required undergraduate courses but he had a high school diploma from Ireland. The Admissions Officer told him that it was her experience that high school was more rigorous in Ireland than in America and Mr. McCourt was admitted. His Irish diploma represented something to the admissions officer and it opened a door for him, opened a door to a life he might not have had otherwise. Is this not what education is supposed to do for an individual?
This brings me to the issue of Bilingual Education in America. It is perhaps ironic that I would not support a policy requiring bilingual education. As a language major I not only understand the advantages of having another language, I also appreciate the opportunity to study a foreign language in our schools. This is a separate argument, however, from requiring our schools to offer instruction in a student’s native tongue. One reason is obvious; we can not possibly offer every immigrant student the opportunity to be educated in his/her birth language. Nor should we want to. A child will continue to learn his/her birth language at home. Being in our schools is their opportunity to not only learn English as their second language but to master it.
I am, however, in support of schools where instruction in two languages is offered. Perhaps along our Southern border with Mexico, instruction would be in English and Spanish. Perhaps along our Northeastern border with French speaking Canada, instruction would be in English and French. Along our Pacific border, English and Japanese, Korean, Chinese and/or Russian, as a community sees fit. This is different from requiring our public schools to instruct in the birth language of every student in our public schools. In an American school, as well as in American life, mastery of English is vital and a high school diploma should reflect that mastery.
Also in Dr. Spring’s book, a table was displayed showing gender bias in the work place. The assessment was based on income statistics. The table showed that females with a high school diploma earn less than males with a high school diploma, and so on with higher education. It seems that this table, however, is more a reflection of occupations chosen by gender rather than gender bias in the work place. I am not denying/ignoring gender bias but for me, a more useful table would be one showing income-earnings, delineated by gender among occupations. In other words a more accurate assessment would come from looking at how much females and males earn in the same occupation.
And then, if these statistics show that females are selecting occupations that earn for them a lower income, it seems more beneficial to look at the myriad of reasons behind that.
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Lots of points here, so I'll address only some of them!
ReplyDeleteWikipedia and Google are fine for quick looks... and ERIC mainly indexes published material, so read widely!
I don't think that there'd be much disagreement that schools and businesses have to be in very close communication (and I'd like to see that article if you get it).
But is that the same as saying that the main advisers on reforming schools -- down to the level of business leaders strongly recommending a heavy regiment of standardized testing as the best way to change schools quickly --should be people outside of schools and who know little about how children learn?
The main support for all of this testing testing testing has come from businesses. It's not the collaboration and conversation that Spring objects to -- it's that there really isn't conversation that involves educators in substantive ways.
(Just an FYI: as a professor of education, Spring makes a fraction of any of the people on the board of the Business Round Table [the main supporters of early renditions of NCLB], tenure or not, and it's his publisher who sets prices, not Spring, and at best Spring likely about about 5% of the sales price and other profits go to the publisher. He'd make almost half again as much as a business faculty member, though!)
I like the story of McCourt and I'm grateful that he got into NYU, but I really am skeptical that anyone could have evidence for that kind of blanket statement about all the schools in two countries. This is one person's perception, as reported in a literary work, and I think that we should be wary about using stories like this to shape policies about schools.
I think that I'll ask your questions about the value of a diploma in a slightly different way (all the while agreeing that we should make all schools better). You can Google :) data on wages for high school graduates and how they've changed in the past 20 years... they've seriously declined, in part because businesses have decided to boost their profits by shipping jobs previously done by high school graduates overseas. That decision really had nothing to do with the skill level of graduates. It had to do with new communication technologies and falling transportation prices enabling businesses to have low salaried employees in distant places make their products.
So, part of what's happening when we see data like "70% of interviewees" is that the jobs for which those kids are interviewing are -- on average- much lower skill level and pay level than the jobs done by high school grads a generation ago. Good students in my high school went to factories and farms to work. Good students from high schools now have to go into some other kind of training if they're going to make anything above minimum wage. So it's a different population of students now interviewing for jobs that require only a high school diploma. That's a pretty big shift that we don't hear a lot about.
On language: Yes! Teach more languages when kids are young!
You will find really interesting things if you read the research in ERIC about bilingual education. Bilingual programs aren't so much about preserving the home language as about trying to keep up with academics while learning English. Imagine being 8 and having to master the pretty sophisticated vocabulary of math and science and history and literature just to keep your head above water in school. And imagine not having that vocubulary yet and not even being able to understand the langauge in which those concepts are being taught. Not only do you not yet know the word "erosion", but you don't yet understand anything about the processes of erosion and miss the explanations completely in your early years of English language learning.
Schools face the choice of whether to just put all of that science and literature and history and math on the back burner while trying to only teach English (it takes a child about 3 years to learn academic vocabulary), or to try to teach complicated academic concepts to children in language they'll understand, while they're going through the long process of learning a new language.
You can find in ERIC some pretty good studies that kids who learn the complicated processes of reading in their home language -- while they're also learning English -- wind up becoming better readers of English because they don't miss so much of the concepts of reading instruction.
So it gets complicated, doesn't it? It seems that those advocating the most rapid acquisition of English possible and no instruction in home languages really are advocating for practices that in the long run, mean that kids will learn less.
And finally, wages! Google the US Department of Labor data for wage comparisons within the same occupations.
And why would we just accept that work done by equally educated men and women would have such different pay? Isn't that really the problem that Spring is describing? How is that OK, that women can expect less return for their degree than men?
Thanks for all the hard thinking and for tackling such a broad range of things this week!