What Christians can do to help our schools
The Political Pulpit
Object:
In the first weeks of September and October many members in your congregation will
have their minds on "back to school." At least three of the Sundays during these months
have assigned lectionary texts that refer to the nurturing, status, or plight of children, and
so lend themselves to sermons on the present state of American education as well as what
Christians might do about it. Consider such sermons for September 16, as the first lesson
from Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28, refers to the people of Israel as like stupid children,
knowing nothing but skilled in doing evil (an insight which as we shall see is most
relevant for critiquing today's dominant educational theories); October 7, when the first
lesson is Lamentations 1:1-6 and refers to the children of the nation going into captivity;
and October 21, as the second lesson from 2 Timothy 3:14-15 refers to being taught holy
scripture from childhood. For reasons on which I will elaborate, two assigned texts for
September 30, Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15 and 1 Timothy 6:6-19, make references to business
relevant to the current plight of American education.
What can we say about our public school system? You, and most of your parishioners, know that the prognosis is not good. In UNICEF's most recent (2003) study of international education, researchers ranked the US eighteenth out of 24 nations in terms of relative effectiveness of its educational system. We rank behind various European nations, with South Korea, Japan, and Singapore taking the first three slots. A similar 2006 report by the US Department of Education's National Center of Educational statistics indicated that little has improved in our schools in the last three years.
Other disturbing data emerged in another 2003 study, the "Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study." It showed that while in fourth grade, American children perform at average levels internationally, by eighth grade they slip a bit in the rankings, and slide even further back by twelfth grade. There is hard data to demonstrate that our schools are not working.
What we need to do from the pulpit is not to convince our parishioners of the failure of public education, but to help them to recognize that a lot of the common "truisms" that our politicians, the media, American business, and even the educational establishment espouse as solutions to our problems are likely to make things worse. From that point on, we can proceed to help them see that they really can do something themselves to make the situation better.
It seems that everybody says what we need to do with our educational problems is to throw money at the schools and reduce class sizes. But the UNICEF study seems to refute those solutions. Compared to the national school systems that rank ahead of us, the American educational system spends a lot of money and our class sizes are smaller than most of these nations (see http://kapio.kcc.hawaii.edu for details).
Others point to accountability and competition as the way to reform the system. This is the philosophy of much of the Bush administration's controversial No Child Left Behind legislation. But in fact, all sorts of challenges have been issued to the standardized testing mania of the new educational ethos. Most educators (53%) report that the tests used in their districts are "seriously flawed" (Public Agenda Survey, 2003, at www.publicagenda.org/press/press-release-detail). Many are inclined to regard such instruction as stifling student creativity, and most economists agree that such creativity will be a sine qua non for success in the new economy (Claudia Wallis and Sonja Steptoe, "How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century," Time, December 18, 2006: esp. pp. 52-53; Robert Sternberg and Fareed Zakaria, as quoted in Gerald Bracey "Believing the Worst," Stanford magazine, July/August, 2006). Besides, the outcomes on standardized tests by no means measure the success of schools, since, according to a 2003 PIRLS Survey, schools with a high percentage of students in poverty typically achieve lower standardized test scores (reported in Bracey).
No Child Left Behind's openness to transferring large sums of public money to the private sector through educational vouchers for private education operates with at least one other false assumption. Statistics suggest that the perception that private schools are more successful than American public schools needs to be challenged. A 2006 Study of the National Center for Education Statistics of the US Department of Education revealed that when factors of race and economics are taken into account, public school test results were comparable to those of private school students for all ages and subjects except eighth grade reading. In fact, public school students did better than students attending conservative Christian schools. Only in Lutheran parochial schools did private school students notably outscore public-school students. (Diana J. Schemo, "Public Schools Perform Near Private Ones in Study," The New York Times, July 15, 2006).
Given the facts, why have we been so blind about the reasons for the decline of our schools? Here is where our preaching can make a difference. The decline of our schools has to do with a decline in our social fabric and our caving in to contemporary society's scenario that we can always have things our own way. We are much like the people of Israel depicted in the first lessons of September 16 and October 7 noted previously.
We want things our own way, and when we do that we become vulnerable to manipulation by the powers that be in society. Though not himself an orthodox Christian, James Madison well represented the Christian understanding of human nature when he wrote in The Federalist Papers (No. 63) about how there are moments when people are "misled by the artful representations of interested men…." That is our situation in American society today, to the detriment of our schools and our public life.
We can see this mad dash for customizing things "my way." This is what the push for vouchers and private-school education is all about. (Talk about encouraging competition in American education is just a cover.) We say we need to get our kids away from all the bad influences. But in fact, what we are effectively doing is denying our children opportunities to interact with and experience the diversity that is America, which will characterize the global economy in which they will need to function. It is as my immigrant mother repeatedly said: "Public school forces you to deal with all kinds of people, and if you never learn to do that you can never get along in this country." No, self-seeking parents looking to "manage" their children's lives with private education run a bigger risk of stifling their children's emotional IQ and coping mechanisms than parents who keep their kids in "failing schools." Students in a (private) educational system, which sends the message to them that we can rearrange the environment to suit them, will grow up expecting such catering. Instead of producing good citizens, an educational ethos with these assumptions is likely to nurture narcissists and nihilists. When we hear the music of today's youth and consider the breakdown in traditional morality in American society, it seems like our present educational ethos is doing an all-too-effective successful job on that score.
As James Madison reminded us, individuals seeking to have their needs met above all other priorities are easily co-opted by the establishment. That is evident in our present educational ethos' embrace of standardized testing, and other avant-garde educational theories like performance-based instruction. These particular theories are rooted in business models. No question about it, our schools have been co-opted by American business so that they can produce good workers for the twenty-first century. Likewise, the present stress on math and science and the craze with computers in our public schools is a product of the influence of business-based influences on American education.
All this stress on preparing the labor force for the next generations is fine, right? Wait a minute. Some learning is just useless (practically speaking). It teaches you how to think and to look at life. But, you have nothing to think about if you don't have something to think with -- some things you have memorized, not just accessed on the net.
The experts who say that we need to spend more time with children on computer literacy and less time learning the state and national capitals are condemning our youth to becoming mere tools of the economy, to lives bereft of the yearning that comes with intense study of exotic places, times, and ideas. And, when the economy changes, we will have prepared these students only for the past. You might get at this range of issues about how our schools have been co-opted by the business establishment to the detriment of our youth with sermons on the assigned texts for September 30, especially Timothy 6:6-19 and its reference to money as the root of all evil. In this connection, the new nationwide interest in classes on the Bible in our schools is a promising trend, for what could seem less useful to business than such classes? A sermon on the second lesson for October 21 with its reference to learning the scripture since childhood opens the door to that range of issues.
In the final analysis, the curriculum of our schools is less important than the attitudes of today's parents. The media and the educational gurus call for more parental involvement. That is only part of the truth. In fact, many parents, with their demands for less homework, complaints about teachers who discipline their "well-behaved" children, and demands that their children be awarded good grades are the schools' worst headaches.
At least to some extent in response to these dynamics, American education has focused more on a therapeutic model of learning (making the kids feel good) than on hard knowledge (see E. D. Hirsch, The Schools We Need: Why We Don't Have Them), and grade inflation in our schools is rampant, as revealed in a recent ACT Research Report (at http://erc.ed.gove). Sometimes teachers and administrators will do anything to get meddling parents off their backs. In such a climate, the decline of standards is no surprise. This is why the first lessons of September 16 and October 7, with their references to what we are doing to our children and teaching them nothing but evil skills (like taking the easy way out) afford wonderful opportunities to call attention to parishioners about how much their support of teachers could mean to our educational system. It will take that kind of support to end grade inflation and to raise standards in our schools.
Don't forget poverty's role in putting kids in educational jeopardy. It is no accident that Scandinavian schools outrank ours. They, and other nations whose schools outrank ours, have fewer children in poverty. Their safety net for the poor affords a middle-class lifestyle (see Bracey). Jesus' concern for the poor in the gospel for September 2 (Luke 16:1-13) provides a great opportunity for you to help your parishioners see the connection between education and what we do for children living in poverty. No two ways about it: Our educational system's chances for success are closely tied to parental responsibility, to how much we are willing to let our kids experience a world not always tailored to personal desires, to how willing we are to force children to study and be accountable to high standards even if it seems hard on them, to how much we let business and the latest business trends call the shots, and to how we care for the poor. That's where our work in the pulpit can make a difference.
What can we say about our public school system? You, and most of your parishioners, know that the prognosis is not good. In UNICEF's most recent (2003) study of international education, researchers ranked the US eighteenth out of 24 nations in terms of relative effectiveness of its educational system. We rank behind various European nations, with South Korea, Japan, and Singapore taking the first three slots. A similar 2006 report by the US Department of Education's National Center of Educational statistics indicated that little has improved in our schools in the last three years.
Other disturbing data emerged in another 2003 study, the "Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study." It showed that while in fourth grade, American children perform at average levels internationally, by eighth grade they slip a bit in the rankings, and slide even further back by twelfth grade. There is hard data to demonstrate that our schools are not working.
What we need to do from the pulpit is not to convince our parishioners of the failure of public education, but to help them to recognize that a lot of the common "truisms" that our politicians, the media, American business, and even the educational establishment espouse as solutions to our problems are likely to make things worse. From that point on, we can proceed to help them see that they really can do something themselves to make the situation better.
It seems that everybody says what we need to do with our educational problems is to throw money at the schools and reduce class sizes. But the UNICEF study seems to refute those solutions. Compared to the national school systems that rank ahead of us, the American educational system spends a lot of money and our class sizes are smaller than most of these nations (see http://kapio.kcc.hawaii.edu for details).
Others point to accountability and competition as the way to reform the system. This is the philosophy of much of the Bush administration's controversial No Child Left Behind legislation. But in fact, all sorts of challenges have been issued to the standardized testing mania of the new educational ethos. Most educators (53%) report that the tests used in their districts are "seriously flawed" (Public Agenda Survey, 2003, at www.publicagenda.org/press/press-release-detail). Many are inclined to regard such instruction as stifling student creativity, and most economists agree that such creativity will be a sine qua non for success in the new economy (Claudia Wallis and Sonja Steptoe, "How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century," Time, December 18, 2006: esp. pp. 52-53; Robert Sternberg and Fareed Zakaria, as quoted in Gerald Bracey "Believing the Worst," Stanford magazine, July/August, 2006). Besides, the outcomes on standardized tests by no means measure the success of schools, since, according to a 2003 PIRLS Survey, schools with a high percentage of students in poverty typically achieve lower standardized test scores (reported in Bracey).
No Child Left Behind's openness to transferring large sums of public money to the private sector through educational vouchers for private education operates with at least one other false assumption. Statistics suggest that the perception that private schools are more successful than American public schools needs to be challenged. A 2006 Study of the National Center for Education Statistics of the US Department of Education revealed that when factors of race and economics are taken into account, public school test results were comparable to those of private school students for all ages and subjects except eighth grade reading. In fact, public school students did better than students attending conservative Christian schools. Only in Lutheran parochial schools did private school students notably outscore public-school students. (Diana J. Schemo, "Public Schools Perform Near Private Ones in Study," The New York Times, July 15, 2006).
Given the facts, why have we been so blind about the reasons for the decline of our schools? Here is where our preaching can make a difference. The decline of our schools has to do with a decline in our social fabric and our caving in to contemporary society's scenario that we can always have things our own way. We are much like the people of Israel depicted in the first lessons of September 16 and October 7 noted previously.
We want things our own way, and when we do that we become vulnerable to manipulation by the powers that be in society. Though not himself an orthodox Christian, James Madison well represented the Christian understanding of human nature when he wrote in The Federalist Papers (No. 63) about how there are moments when people are "misled by the artful representations of interested men…." That is our situation in American society today, to the detriment of our schools and our public life.
We can see this mad dash for customizing things "my way." This is what the push for vouchers and private-school education is all about. (Talk about encouraging competition in American education is just a cover.) We say we need to get our kids away from all the bad influences. But in fact, what we are effectively doing is denying our children opportunities to interact with and experience the diversity that is America, which will characterize the global economy in which they will need to function. It is as my immigrant mother repeatedly said: "Public school forces you to deal with all kinds of people, and if you never learn to do that you can never get along in this country." No, self-seeking parents looking to "manage" their children's lives with private education run a bigger risk of stifling their children's emotional IQ and coping mechanisms than parents who keep their kids in "failing schools." Students in a (private) educational system, which sends the message to them that we can rearrange the environment to suit them, will grow up expecting such catering. Instead of producing good citizens, an educational ethos with these assumptions is likely to nurture narcissists and nihilists. When we hear the music of today's youth and consider the breakdown in traditional morality in American society, it seems like our present educational ethos is doing an all-too-effective successful job on that score.
As James Madison reminded us, individuals seeking to have their needs met above all other priorities are easily co-opted by the establishment. That is evident in our present educational ethos' embrace of standardized testing, and other avant-garde educational theories like performance-based instruction. These particular theories are rooted in business models. No question about it, our schools have been co-opted by American business so that they can produce good workers for the twenty-first century. Likewise, the present stress on math and science and the craze with computers in our public schools is a product of the influence of business-based influences on American education.
All this stress on preparing the labor force for the next generations is fine, right? Wait a minute. Some learning is just useless (practically speaking). It teaches you how to think and to look at life. But, you have nothing to think about if you don't have something to think with -- some things you have memorized, not just accessed on the net.
The experts who say that we need to spend more time with children on computer literacy and less time learning the state and national capitals are condemning our youth to becoming mere tools of the economy, to lives bereft of the yearning that comes with intense study of exotic places, times, and ideas. And, when the economy changes, we will have prepared these students only for the past. You might get at this range of issues about how our schools have been co-opted by the business establishment to the detriment of our youth with sermons on the assigned texts for September 30, especially Timothy 6:6-19 and its reference to money as the root of all evil. In this connection, the new nationwide interest in classes on the Bible in our schools is a promising trend, for what could seem less useful to business than such classes? A sermon on the second lesson for October 21 with its reference to learning the scripture since childhood opens the door to that range of issues.
In the final analysis, the curriculum of our schools is less important than the attitudes of today's parents. The media and the educational gurus call for more parental involvement. That is only part of the truth. In fact, many parents, with their demands for less homework, complaints about teachers who discipline their "well-behaved" children, and demands that their children be awarded good grades are the schools' worst headaches.
At least to some extent in response to these dynamics, American education has focused more on a therapeutic model of learning (making the kids feel good) than on hard knowledge (see E. D. Hirsch, The Schools We Need: Why We Don't Have Them), and grade inflation in our schools is rampant, as revealed in a recent ACT Research Report (at http://erc.ed.gove). Sometimes teachers and administrators will do anything to get meddling parents off their backs. In such a climate, the decline of standards is no surprise. This is why the first lessons of September 16 and October 7, with their references to what we are doing to our children and teaching them nothing but evil skills (like taking the easy way out) afford wonderful opportunities to call attention to parishioners about how much their support of teachers could mean to our educational system. It will take that kind of support to end grade inflation and to raise standards in our schools.
Don't forget poverty's role in putting kids in educational jeopardy. It is no accident that Scandinavian schools outrank ours. They, and other nations whose schools outrank ours, have fewer children in poverty. Their safety net for the poor affords a middle-class lifestyle (see Bracey). Jesus' concern for the poor in the gospel for September 2 (Luke 16:1-13) provides a great opportunity for you to help your parishioners see the connection between education and what we do for children living in poverty. No two ways about it: Our educational system's chances for success are closely tied to parental responsibility, to how much we are willing to let our kids experience a world not always tailored to personal desires, to how willing we are to force children to study and be accountable to high standards even if it seems hard on them, to how much we let business and the latest business trends call the shots, and to how we care for the poor. That's where our work in the pulpit can make a difference.
