[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> The problems facing the Minneapolis public schools doesn't take a rocket
> scientist to figure out. Too often proposals for reform--or simply carping
> about the "failure" of the MPS--miss the forest for the trees.
> Recent census data has revealed an exponential increase in the number of
> homeless people. The data also demonstrates a huge influx in the number of
> immigrants coming to the city. Critics like Mike Atherton can talk all they
> want about new techniques and methods, but the bottom line is that you are
> not going to be able to educate people who can't speak English and/or don't
> have a stable place to live as effectively as you are the students who know
> the language and have a stable environment.
Maybe the problems don't take a rocket scientist to identify, but
it does seem as though that it takes a neuroscientist to figure out the
solutions. BTW, I think it would be more helpful if people would attack
my proposals, rather than me. Let me give you some additional targets by
suggesting solutions for the problems above. California has had these
same problems, compounded many times over, for years. There are
solutions. It is becoming evident that the solution for ESL students is
language immersion, not bilingual education. Think about it. If you
were going to go to China to study at a university what would you
want to do, fool around by taking courses in English? Not if you
planned to become fluent in Mandarin. So... I'm sure someone out there
will argue that bilingual classes are better. Ok, let's test our
assumptions. Find two schools in Mpls that are closely matched and do
immersion in one and bilingual classes in the other.
California has also had homeless and migrants going back 50 or
60 years; remember "The Grapes of Wrath?" There are
solutions to this problem as well. A statewide lockstep
curriculum is one approach. The second is to design courses
so that you give these kids as much as you can in the short
time that you have them. If done correctly, school maybe
the most stable environment these kids are exposed to.
> The stress and deficiencies that
> are endemic to poverty and addiction and familial abuse also come into play.
> We can argue all day over whether people bring these problems on themselves
> or are victimized by the way our society operates, but the children growing
> up in these families have no control over it and are not to blame. They do,
> however, bear the brunt of what their parents and guardians are experiencing
> and that drastically affects their ability to learn, or even care about
> education.
Before we try to assign blame, why don't we figure out what percentage
of students come from abusive home or drug addicted parents. BTW,
I thought that it was the responsibility of social workers to remove kids
from homes where hard drugs are used. If kids can learn in war zones
(albeit not optionally), why can't we educate intercity kids?
> But when you're dealing
> with a significant percent of student who are consistently transient, another
> significant percentage who don't know the language and who have spent the
> last ten years watching civil war kill off the families before being sent to
> refugee camps, another significant percent whose parents beat on each other
> or grapple with addictions--does anybody really think that expanding school
> choice options and supposedly "weeding out the bad schools" is going to make
> that much of a difference in the education of these children?
Just an aside, many Vietnamese refuges in L.A. did very well with the same types
of backgrounds.
>
> My child, currently in the 7th grade, has been enrolled in the Minneapolis
> schools since the age of 4. I know the deficiencies and problems within the
> system. But I know that it has much less to do with the way things are
> administered than with the way things are in our society today. Dennis is
> right--this is bigger than schools and encompasses the way we operate our
> democracy. More socialistic systems tend to help those from the middle to the
> bottom of the economic ladder more than the capitalistic system under which
> we operate.
Or maybe it's just that the schools aren't doing it right. How will we know
if we don't test alternative solutions?
> But capitalism is Darwinian by nature--good
> businesses know to cut their losses, and a company's stock price goes up when
> massive layoffs are announced. Atherton and others reflect this viewpoint
> when they advocate tossing problem students out of the system, for
> misbehaviors and disruptions, without a meaningful, realistic proposal of how
> these kids get rescued.
I think that I've been misinterpreted here. I never suggested that we
throw kids out of the system. I suggested that we place them in
specialized schools, where teachers are especially trained to work
with them. What did you think that "continuation schools" were?
> Most middle class people in this society don't want
> to look at this "cut our losses" mentality quite so bluntly, but tacitly go
> along with it, so long as they can keep their kids away from the carnage.
> Fine. But don't call the MPS a failure when they are the system left to try
> and pick up the pieces.
I think that parents (politicians or otherwise) who pull their kids out of
a failing school system are fulfilling their responsibility to their children.
Lord knows, as long as I have the financial ability I'm not putting my
child in a school with a 30% passing rate on the basic skills test. I
would do what it took to provide my child with a possibility of a
future: move to the suburbs, private school, or home school, whatever
it took.
I hope that my critics and others who claim that the problems facing
the public schools are insurmountable, would at least, consider testing
possible solutions.
Michael Atherton
Prospect Park
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