Kevin wrote: > I'm hearing a radio commercial; don't know if it's local or national. The > woman says "I want a house with good schools. Schools that will make my > sons smart. Like Socrates...but without the toga. Smart enough to get into > the best schools on the east or west coasts." I can miss the gender bias, > assuming the woman has no daughters. First questions: can a school make a > kid smart?
The best schools and best teachers don't teach facts. They teach kids how to gather and understand facts, or in short, how to learn. So schools can't necessarily make a kid smart, but they can certainly help a kid to become a successful adult (not necessarily a financially successful adult, but an adult who contributes positively to society). But the motivation for that learning has to come from the kids themselves, which in great part stems from how the parents prepare the kids for school. If a child sees his or her parents reading, they will be more receptive to learning to read. If they see that their parents value learning, they will be more likely to want to learn. Money does have an affect on this, of course, since it's hard to learn how to learn when your stomache is growling because the only meals you eat are at school, and it's hard for working parents, especially parent working more than one job, to teach their kids the things they need to know to be ready for school. Babysitters aren't exactly famous for modelling good learning behaviors. > I think if she's a good enough parent the school shouldn't > matter. Yes and no. A really bad school can make learning more difficult. But for schools that aren't at the low end of the spectrum, I would agree that good parenting will make much more of a difference than the difference between an ok school and a great school. >I'm sure we could come up with a 3 x 3 truth table with > good/medium/bad parents vs good/medium/bad schools and have percentages to > see what matters more. Good parents and good schools won't also produce a > smart kid but it will happen more often than bad parents and bad schools. > It just sounded like she expected the school to do the work. Therein lies the problem. Many parents, especially busy parents, think that they have no responsibility for how well their kids do at school, when in fact they have the primary responsibility. That's not to say that a self-motivated kid can't overcome bad parenting and an indiferent quality of schooling. Just look at JMS, the Babylon 5 guy. In various interviews he has given, he has stated that his family life was pretty bad growing up, and he changed schools as often as every six months. Yet despite that, he is still a person who, as I said above, is a positive contributor to society. But folks like JMS are the exception, not the rule. There is a strong correlation between how educated and successful a parent is and how educated and successful a child is. But even parents with bad educations can still have a positive impact on their kids by demonstrating how important education is to them. I wish I had the time right now to pull up citations for these things. > And are we missing the great colleges not on the coasts? The coasts are where most of the big money is. The pay for educators is higher, and many of the best educators will want to work where they get the best pay and have the best resources for their teaching and their research. But there are plenty of great colleges across the country and plenty of great teachers in those colleges. William Jewel College just north of Kansas City was recently named one of the top small liberal arts colleges in the country by Newsweek or US News and World Report, whichever magazine it is that does the college rankings. And many universities that are otherwise pretty good have one or two schools within that university that are fantastic. For example, my alma mater is the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC). UMKC has a great conservatory of music (a recent Van Cliburn competition winner is a UMKC student, one of the most sought-after choral clinicians and teachers in the country recently retired from the vocal music staff, and the music composition teaching staff now includes three or four nationally prominent composers), and a nationally-renowned graduate theater program. The rest of UMKC is pretty good, but the conservatory and theater program are excellent. So to be a bit nitpicky about your question, there are certainly a lot of great colleges not on the coasts, but I don't think as many of them are clustered into great universities as on the coasts. Reggie Bautista _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
