I’m Worried – And You Don’t Usually Hear Me Say That!

Worrying is not my thing.  That’s my wife’s department.  And she’s really good at it.  She tells me I am a Pollyanna, an unrealistically optimistic person, and for the most part, she’s right.  But, I’m worried!

I’m worried about our country.  I don’t like to believe that people deliberately do things that will cause other people harm.  In fact, I refuse to believe that most people in America are bad.  But I have begun to realize that it doesn’t take most people to mess things up for the rest of us.  All it takes is a few powerful people manipulating the system.  I am not a conspiracy theorist, so please help me out here.  Why are so many powerful people in national leadership positions doing things that appear to be heading the country in a bad direction?  Greed seems to be at the heart of the problem.  Over the past few decades, the people with money have cleverly rewritten the rules, or in some cases, simply corrupted the system to the point where the rules no longer apply to them.  A major bank recently was found guilty of laundering drug money – hundreds of millions of dollars.  The bank paid a fine but not one bank executive went to jail.  Meanwhile, street-level drug dealers are going to jail every day – contributing to the statistic that makes the United States number one in the world at incarcerating our citizens. 

I don’t claim to know much about banking or jailing, but I do know a lot about education; and that’s what has me worried.  Our Founding Fathers had it right when they realized the importance of a quality public education for creating an informed electorate.   The better informed the people are, the more they are able to think rationally about important issues and the better they are able to pick people to represent them who will make decisions in the best interest of the country.  But thinking rationally is being gradually, and apparently deliberately, eliminated from what is being taught in our schools.  Our schools are being forced to focus on lower order intellectual skills like memorization and recall.  Public schools are being replaced with charter schools.  Public schools are usually governed by an elected school board that represents the local community.  Charter schools are governed by a group of people chosen by the owners of the school – with no accountability to the community – and apparently more interested in profits than academic progress.  Experienced teachers are being replaced by young teachers whose concerns for their financial stability allow them to be coerced into following the high-stakes testing dogma and lower the intellectually challenging classroom activities and expectations that the more experienced teachers demand. 

The most frightening part is that we have been heading down this path long enough to know where it is going; and it is not a good place.  Despite the evidence, the people in power are doubling down on failed ideas like testing, charter schools, and value-added metrics.   The people in power send their children to private schools where the failed practices are never seen.  (Don’t confuse charter schools with private schools – totally different animals.)  This is not a partisan political issue.  Both political parties share the blame.  The present administration is a major proponent of testing and charter schools – both proven failures at fixing the problems. 

So, help me out here.  Should I be worried?  Am I wrong about the way I see things?  How can we stop them from continuing to degrade our schools?  How can we rebuild our middle class and restore the kind of thoughtful, informed society that made the country great?  How do we ensure that every citizen plays by the same rules – and is subject to the same punishments?  If it doesn’t start with our schools, where does it start?  I’m listening…..

For more go to: Unleashing the minds of Our Children

Allan Jones is a career technology leader and educator with a history for management and innovation, Allan has designed and implemented education programs that received national recognition and validation by the U.S. Department of Education. He was one of the founders of an online high school that at one point was providing more than 80% of the State of New Mexico’s distance learning content. He has taught high school math, established and managed a district Information Technology infrastructure, taught college courses, served on a school board, and consulted with schools, districts and states on their technology planning and implementation. He is presently President of Emaginos, Inc., a company dedicated to transforming K-12 education by improving public schools – not replacing them with charters.

Photo credit via shutterstock shutterstock_173960609.jpg

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