Re: TownHall.com – 5/14/2008 – “The Way of the Future in American Schooling” – Matthew Ladner

Inter school competition, private or charter schools, or home schooling are not the solution to our educational system problems --- none address what is really the major problem with education in the US today. The main problem with our educational system is parents who do not value education themselves and/or are unwilling and/or unable to transmit to their children the importance, enjoyment, and effort involved in getting an education. Schools (of any kind) can do relatively little when the majority of their students have no interest in learning and enter school without the drive or discipline to learn.

Don’t get me wrong --- good schools and good teachers can make a difference. But even the best schools and teachers have a point where they will be overloaded with unwilling and/or hostile students, and like any system stressed past its design limits, will fail.

Charter schooled, private schooled, and home schooled students are all indicators of parents who actually care enough about their children’s education that they actively invest their time and/or financial resources. It’s no wonder that these schools might look more successful than public schools --- if they didn’t they’d have to be really bad schools, given the advantage they have in family support for the education of the student who are enrolled there.

Segregating the committed family students to those “special” schools and leaving the public schools to deal with the disinterested family students is hardly a solution when well over half the student population is from disinterested families. The result will be future populations that will be dominated by people who do not respect education and, because they are unfamiliar with the educated, do not trust them. Surprisingly (to me at least), many conservatives who favor home, private, and charter schools, are most likely to distrust many well educated people, who they accuse of being “elitist”. Go figure.

I do not know how to get the “masses” to value education and recognize that students can’t really be taught but can only to be led to learn, that learning is hard but enjoyable work, and that the ultimate responsibility for education is the student and family and not the “educational system”, either public or private. The educational system is at best an incredibly powerful tool for students to use in helping them learn, but a tool neither necessary nor sufficient to get an education.

I do know that the dismantling of public education by redirecting limited funds to students with interested parents will make getting an education for students with disinterested families much, much more difficult then it already is.