chelidon

This whole rant comes out of the simple fact that it is "Silly Hat Day" for my son at school today. More on that later.

I'm a believer in the theory of public education -- that there should be a "free," easily accessible way for every kid in this country (ideally, in the world) to get a good basic education. A well-educated populace being necessary for a free society, and all that. The reality at this point, however, is that often U.S. public schools are terrible places for kids to learn, for a large number of reasons, most, but not all, related to funding -- crowding, crumbling facilities, low pay for teachers, and so on.

Almost anything which is made into an "industry," following the dehumanizing industrial-age model and mentality, turns out terribly. Farming turns into the agricultural industry, and you get animals force-fed hormones and antibiotics, cruel and horrible treatment and killing, (aka "processing") of animals, a relentless push for bioengineered products, overuse of fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals, factory farms, seed companies suing farmers for using "their" genetically engineered and patented seeds, and so on. Similarly, entertainment becomes the entertainment industry, and you get American Gladiators, endess mind-numbing reality shows and similar least-common-denominator crap. And education becomes the educational industry, leading to a similar least-common-denominator mass-produced dumbed-down, dehumanizing experience for kids still stuck in a 200-year-old industrial model. Incidentally, I highly, highly recommend this book: In Praise of Slowness. The industrial model, which includes total buy-in to the Cult of Speed, is directly opposed to much of the essence of living a meaningful human life. And our industrial-model educational systems show this. We're not machines, and life isn't about maximizing efficiency. So many important things about being human -- good food, good sex, good art, good *living*, take *time*, take an investment in wanting to do it right, doing it well, not just as quickly and cheaply as possible.

For a couple of years I was involved with helping to run one of the largest, best-funded public school systems in the country ($1.6 Billion/year budget, 180,000 kids), and what I saw from the inside convinced me that even in the supposedly best systems, what I would consider a "good" education is the exception, not the norm. I knew good teachers, who were innovative, creative, motivated, and who really did well for each of their kids...but even in one of the "best" school systems in the country, they were constantly fighting against "the system" to do their jobs well, and not sink into apathy and just shuffling way too many kids through the overcrowded, boring, cookie-cutter industrial mazes that have been created for them. A lot of it is funding -- if as a country we funded education with even 2% of the funding that goes to the military, we could almost instantly solve every single one of the issues of poor facilities, low teacher pay, large class size, and so on.

One of the interesting things about New Hampshire is that almost all of the school budget comes from local property taxes, not county or state taxes (because the tax base is local, there are almost no state taxes -- no state income tax, no state sales tax, "Live Free or Die," eh? ). So each town can basically vote to decide whether they want a well-funded or a poorly-funded school system, and consequently, how much they want to pay in taxes...in other words, how important education is to them as a community. That kind of direct local democracy appeals to me, though it does leave some sticky issues. For instance, since the State constitution guarantees a certain mininum level of educational opportunity for each child, and since it's in the best interest of the state, and the larger community, to have a well-educated populace, what about towns that just chronically underfund their schools?

In any case, over the last couple of years, I've been surprised and impressed by the quality of our local village school. It's not perfect, but it's pretty darn good, especially compared to what I've seen in some of the "best" school systems in the country, which are all still organized along the industrial model. Part of why the local school is good is that the local community funds it well -- we've decided as a community that the education of our kids is a priority for us, and we're willing to pay for it. But the other reason the school experience is good here has more to do with attitude. Maybe in part because the community tangibly supports the school, the people involved with running the school feel valued, and the school is better able to attract and keep good, dedicated, creative, motivated teachers and administrators.

One simple example. Today at my son's school, it is "silly hat day." For the whole school. All of the kids in the entire school come to school wearing a silly hat. My son picked his big pointy wizard's hat (that's my boy...) Next Friday is "weird/mismatched clothes day." And the Friday after that is "bad hair day." We're planning to send our boy to school with a bright green spiked mohawk. I'm debating whether to suggest to him that sometime during the day he jump up on his desk and shout "Anarchy! Anarchy! Anarchy!" ;> Probably not. We're surely already going to have enough cases over the coming years of having to go in and explain things to his teachers...

So anyway, it's not all about money -- a little levity, a little creativity, a little mischievous fun goes a long way to escaping the stultifying, brain-deadening trap of the industrial model. If I get dissatisfied with the school here, I can either get more involved with the school board (which I may do anyway, I've already been sniffed out for a planning committee, ugh ;>), or, I can always home school, something which does tempt me. And we do home school, in that all of our son's home hours are part of his learning, of course. But all things considered, unless the local school system is just simply bad, I think it's probably a greater good to help create a good school which teaches all of the kids in the village good things, rather than drop out of it.

I've become a real believer in the power of community, when that community is of a *certain size*. Too big, and it's almost impossible to avoid the industrial model. Humans were made to live in clans, tribes, bands and villages. Yes, we can and do live in cities and mega-suburbs, but to do that, some of the trade-offs are pretty horrendous. Is there a third way? I hope so.

In the meantime, I know at least part of the answer -- it's simply, and with intention, refusing to succumb to dehumanizing, cookie-cutter, industrial-age models. That *is* subversive, and it is essential. And a big part of manifesting that wickedly subversive intent is having fun. Fun is our birthright. May we all be blessed with Silly Hat Days.

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From:

draiguisge.livejournal.com

The reality at this point, however, is that often U.S. public schools are terrible places for kids to learn

Thank you. Everything you've covered here is exactly why I didn't become a teacher, despite spending four years to get a music education degree. I don't know why they make education students do their student teaching at the END of the four years. If they'd made me do it at the beginning I at least would have learned not to waste the rest of my college days getting a degree I knew I wouldn't use (but then I suppose I would have just got a music performance degree, which is even less useful, lol). At any rate, I found out I just couldn't do it. So much of being a teacher in a public school has absolutely nothing to do with teaching. It's all politics, paperwork, nonsense.

I'm very happy to hear that you've found a decent school, and a good community to be a part of. It must be a wonderful thing. :)

From:

chelidon.livejournal.com

I'm sorry to hear about your experience, which, unfortunately, is pretty typical. The school systems lose so many, probably most, of the really creative, talented, dedicated people like you, because of the industrial-age model they're all stuck in. The very best teachers and administrators already in the schools seem to recognize this, and want to change it, but the problem is that change takes money, and creativity takes money -- not a lot, but some. And if you're always in reactive crisis mode because you're chronically understaffed and your facilities are falling apart, it makes it pretty much impossible to effectively plan and manifest ground-breaking change at the same time.

Then you get Republican administrations who believe the answer isn't more funding, it's pulling money out of the public school system and put it into Christian religious schools, while at the same time setting up mandatory, punitive batteries of rigid standarized tests, while refusing to properly fund these mandates, which drains even more precious resources away from the schools while they try to meet the mandates, which means that even the few creative programs still left get cut in favor of curriculums based largely on rote learning of the specific things on the government-mandated standardized tests. Ugh.

We did a lot of research on the schools in a number of towns out here, particually since so much is done locally, rather than regionally or state-wide. Some of the places around here with good cheap land, for instance, have terrible schools. We hung out in one of the classes for a while, sat outside and watched kids playing in the playground to see how they interacted with one another, checked out the facilities, etc, and were impressed with what we saw in a number of towns, this being one of them. One problem, though, is that the school is only K-6, with grades 7-12 now going to the next largest neighboring town, and the school there is okay, but not great. We may be building a Middle School soon, but that still leaves out grades 9-12. Home schooling may be the answer there, we'll see...

From:

erskine.livejournal.com

I know a good military school in Florida... ;)

From:

chelidon.livejournal.com

So...you're saying he could have the same experience you did? such a deal... ;>

From:

eeedge.livejournal.com

I'm seeing the effects of local funding even within a school system. The surrounding schools are all well below national average for grades, results on bloody standaradized tests, etc., EXCEPT for the one H is attending. This one makes $100,000 from a single fundraiser because the parents are better off themselves, in general.

It's still a public school, but the "PTC" (Parent Teacher Committee) pays for 2 gifted teachers, a PE teacher and a music teacher.

There are still obviously going to be good teachers and bad teachers. Even good teachers that I just disagree with. But it's a big step up from everything else in this area.

From:

chelidon.livejournal.com

Bingo. You've hit one of the other big issues that vexes me. Part of the reason my son has a good school, and gets a good education, is that the area we are in is not desperately poor. I think New Hampshire in general has one of the highest per-capita income levels in the nation. It's cultural, too, of course, there's a long tradition around here of supporting public education, at least in some communities, but the money thing is huge. I'm privileged to be able to have choices around my kid's education. Is it fair that poorer communities have poorer schools? There will always be differences of all kinds between different communities, but where are the lines drawn? How "bad" does a school have to be before some balancing is done, before you start to forceably move money and resources from more affluent with better schools to less affluent communities with poorer schools.

This is a huge issue out here right now, balancing the issues of self-determination and individual freedom and choice, against community obligations and a certain level of societal fairness. Hard choices.

From:

eeedge.livejournal.com

The closest thing my father-in-law and I have ever had to a fight was when he asserted that he didn't want his hard-earned money going to pay for schools for kids other than his own.

Now, he really did work his way from the bottom, so when he says "hard-earned," he means it. I've always heard that people started at the bottom and made it are harder on those who are still down there, but this seemed awfully harsh to me.

That balancing act isn't easy for me to reconcile in my own head, much less to get millions of people to agree with me! Would I be willing to lose one of our gifted teachers so another school could have one? I don't think so. If H were in one of those other schools, though, I would probably feel differently. "They have two and we don't have ANY!"

One of the things that I've seen over and over working where I do is that it isn't ultimately skin color that shapes values and opinions, but SES (Socio-economic status).

From:

chelidon.livejournal.com

One of the things that I've seen over and over working where I do is that it isn't ultimately skin color that shapes values and opinions, but SES (Socio-economic status).

That matches my experience -- not that there aren't cultural differences that fall along racial and ethnic lines, but people of similar SES but different race are much more likely to have similar issues and perspectives than people of the same race and very different SES.

From:

erskine.livejournal.com

Not to venture off-topic too much, but NH isn't all THAT progressive:

http://www.ricksteves.com/news/travelnews/letter.htm

E.

From:

chelidon.livejournal.com

Oh, heck no, every place has its mix of folks, there are no utopias. NH is pretty split politically, and traditionally conservative, but more "old-school" Yankee fiscal conservatives, rather than social conservatives, or gods forbid, neocons. We were one of the only states that went from Red to Blue in the last presidential election, I suspect at least in part because the wild deficit spending turned off a lot of the fiscal conservatives. But it's also swinging much more to the left these days, and I like being in a swing state. We still have some very conservative Republican congressional reps, though we tossed out the Republican governor in the last election.

Bottom-line is that there's a very strong tradition of direct local democracy, of most of the decisions you make being made in your own town, and there's also a very strong cultural tradition of live and let live. You may not like what those folks over there do, but as long as they do it in their own town/house/farm, no worries. That suits me fine.

If you want progressive, Vermont is much more liberal politically. Also much higher taxes, bigger state government, more state services, etc. Trade-offs...

From:

erskine.livejournal.com

Jack Sparrow:

"The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do."

From:

chelidon.livejournal.com

Hmm, is that kinda like Kinsey's comment that the only unnatural sex act is one you can't perform?

From:

contentlove.livejournal.com

Beautifully said. I hope there's a third way, too - I think about this a lot, since I live in an urban area. At the moment, my best guess is in your last paragraph, and it is simple. Keep on smiling, that's key.

From:

chelidon.livejournal.com

Keep on smiling, that's key.

Smiling, laughter, joy , play, yep! Play has always been important to me, but I'm finding more and more that it's often the one single element that can make the difference between something awful and something wonderful. There's something enormously humanizing about play. Io Pan!