What do we want: Schools or Armed Camps?
by BrendaBee | Published on April 28th, 2008, 5:42 pm | Life
Undisciplined behavior in our public schools is finally being acknowledged as a problem. Just this week I have read several articles from all over the country (including our own N&R) about school violence. Of course lack of discipline at home and/or at school is the root cause of this violence in the school setting. Busy involved students who are in school to learn aren't the ones fighting, rioting, attacking teachers and other students or bringing weapons to school. Everyone finally acknowledges that our public schools are in trouble. Everyone is asking the same question: what can be done about it?Unfortunately everyone but classroom teachers appears to be taken by surprise at this "new" phenomena. Whereas it has been the hope of classroom teachers for years that the administration would listen to their pleas for help. They didn't, and haven't, and now the situation is totally out of hand.
They are finally listening but the remedies offered by the administrations and school boards to alleviate the problem in most cases is much like that imposed on classroom teacher and students who are in school to learn here in Guilford County : No more suspensions! In other words, if the problem can be ignored by the office then it can continue to be denied, and god help the teacher who sends students to the office because he/she will be judged lacking in ability.
When the numbers of "couldn't care less" and therefore disruptive students were much smaller is when the problem should have been addressed. But somewhere along in the 1970's it was decided by parents and administrations alike that students were "to be understood". When dealing with a disruptive student one must consider if the child had a decent breakfast, or any breakfast at all, before coming to school. The child's home life had to be taken into consideration. There was not one standard of behavior that was expected of the students regardless of their personal background or problems. No longer was the school staff limited to a principal, secretary, janitor, cafeteria workers and teachers. All sorts of councilors and social workers had to be brought in to "help" students adjust to their life outside of school so they could function in school. The result is that the administrative and support staff in most school systems is now larger than the teaching staff. Any yet it is this teaching staff on whom the burden falls to council, discipline, inspire, encourage, understand, be counseled endlessly by the "experts" on how to handle students and, oh yes by the way, teach so the test scores measure up to the national standards or you will be held responsible.
While all sorts of remedies have been proposed by "experts" ( who probably have never been near a classroom except to walk in for a few minutes to observe in order to get data for their "research") have been tried and at great expense to the tax payers, none have worked. While those proposed by the teachers, students and parents are acknowledged with smilingly condescending attitudes by administrations and boards at education forums and then promptly forgotten in most cases.
It is a fact that students perform better in neighborhood schools. When the schools are a part of the community and parents who couldn't care less (the leading cause of students who couldn't careless) are known and made aware of the problems their children are causing their neighbor's children some problems are controlled where they should be, at home. Also in neighborhood schools parents feel included and become involved with the schools whereas a school across town is remote and parents hesitate to intrude on unfamiliar territory. And since most of the students are also from out of the community where the school is located the parents who do try to become involved are simply a group of strangers with nothing really in common but their own child education. There is no common ground on which to base a community wide action towards easing the problems both students and teacher are having in the school, so again the burden to deal with the problems are placed by individual parents on the teacher.
All this we know and have known about neighborhood schools and yet we continue to drag children all over counties even when parents have gone so far as to demand their children remain in the community. In recent years parents (especially Black parents) have turned their backs on the civil rights movement of "integration" in the schools. They want an education for their children and have found thru years of effort and forced busing that sitting together does not necessarily bring about color blindness among the students. In most cases separate groups are formed around ethnicity when out of the classroom regardless of how well they cooperate in the classroom. Even less has sitting next to each other in classrooms added one iota to the child's ability to read, write and cipher. But administrations and school boards continue to ignore the known facts and will not permit neighborhood schools.
Evidence is also building that Charter Schools are out performing public schools. So what are the Charter Schools doing. Well for one thing they are individually administered and they do not come under the public school's administration or the school board's influence. Their mandate is to teach and not be bothered with the experimental programs such as after school classes for the "special" (read disruptive) students. They are required in most cases to have a counselor on staff and that is what they have "a" counselor. Money is more limited than in the regular public schools and if they wish to continue they are required to out produce the public schools so staffing is concentrated on teaching personnel and teacher's aids.
Charter schools are most easily defined as publicly funded schools that act as private schools. Most Charter Schools have long waiting lists of students begging to get in. And contrary to what some critics like to claim is the basis of their success, they do not pick and choose what students are enrolled so they "don't have to take problems student". All students are free to apply and are taken as space allows in most cases. Only if there is some logistics problem can a student be denied enrollment. It is true however that usually the "problem" students don't apply to go to the Charter Schools because they have the reputation of actually being schools where learning takes place. It would seem that more charter schools to get those who want to learn out of the public school zoos would to be one solution to the educating of our children. However states under pressure by public schools teachers unions and administrations have limited the number of charter schools there may be in each state. North Carolina at present allows 100 Charter Schools in the entire state.
It is also a fact that Black males are the majority of the "couldn't care less" students. So do we build more prison's? Or does the Black community finally realize that their own behavior of accepting one parent families with no father figure in site is the problem? Study after study has been done and children with two parent families do better in school regardless of any other factors taken into consideration. Many more studies have shown beyond a doubt that female head of household families are the most likely to foster male children who are angry and disruptive and who join gangs and ultimately end up in prisons. The female children of these homes are more likely to follow in the footsteps of their mothers and in turn become unmarried mothers. But Black leaders and ministers are reluctant to accept this fact and work to try changing the moral dilemma destroying the Black underclass. The number of illegitimate Black babies born increases every year. Neither do they encourage doing anything as a community to help these children because the real problems are not acknowledged.
Recently I have heard and read more and more people of some authority suggesting the more drastic overhaul of our public schools system of having two types of public schools: one for the learners that are run like charter schools and the other type for the "problem" students run more on the military school model. This may work. A well disciplined military school model is certainly better than the armed camp we are quickly approaching even here in Greensboro/Guilford and all over the country. It would however take a major shift in the thoughts of the huge bloated school administrations and school boards in that they would have to relinquish their iron fisted control, so I really have no hopes for any solution to this problem in the near, or even distant, future. BB
