Last week, I had the opportunity to see the film titled “Waiting For Superman.” The documentary, directed by David Guggenheim of “An Inconvenient Truth,” takes an in-depth and concerned look at the American public school system and the unfortunate consequences for the future of our nation therein. While the film mainly focuses on the performance of public schools in inner city and urban areas, most of the disturbing, yet, very real truths the film analyzes remain applicable to school systems across the country.
While there are many controversial topics addressed in the film, I will only discuss one of them here. Topics such as teachers unions, tenure and race relations in inner city environments constitute some fairly incendiary subjects, and require not only a more thorough and educated approach, but also an approach that lasts longer than 1,000 words. However, there is one very simple fact about American public schools that is very easy to identify and dissect despite its tremendously negative impact on the young generations and the future of America. Our public school systems are painfully and overwhelmingly outdated.
In “Waiting For Superman,” the film brings up the obvious yet sometimes overlooked point that while kids in America are living in and preparing for a fast-moving and ever-growing modern world, millions of them are being educated in public school systems that were devised and created over a century ago. Needless to say, since the earliest days of the 20th century, the paradigm has clearly shifted. But many of the tendencies of our public schools haven’t.
Education is not only suppose to teach children about the world around them, but also prepare them for that world, show them how to make a meaningful contribution to it, as well as demonstrate how to succeed and make a dignified living in it. In the world that our public school systems were born into, it was very possible for high school graduates to find sustainable careers without necessarily needing a post-secondary education.
Now, a century later, finding an occupation with good pay and avoiding unemployment is largely tied to obtaining a college degree. Unfortunately, our public school systems haven’t yet caught up to this reality. According to the US Census Bureau, while about 85 percent of Americans between 25 and 29 years old have achieved the educational attainment of at least high school graduation, less than 30 percent of this same demographic have at least received a bachelor’s degree. According to a 2003 study by the Bureau of Labor Services, those who have at least a bachelor’s degree are not only less likely to be unemployed (4.8 percent national unemployment rate vs. 3.3 percent unemployment rate of bachelor’s degree holders, as of 2003), but on average their median weekly earnings surpass the national average by nearly 50 percent with $622/week as the national average vs $900/week average amongst bachelor’s degree holders.
Some may be of the opinion that an increase in funds is a simple yet effective answer to the growing problem and underwhelming performance of American public schools. However, as “Waiting For Superman” clearly demonstrates, this cannot be the case, at least not on its very own. Since the Reagan administration, government spending per student in America has doubled, and yet test scores in reading and math have not improved at all. The massive increase in taxpayers’ dollars isn’t really helping at all.
Once again, let us analyze how the public school system is not necessarily underfunded, but simply operating in an extremely outdated fashion. When a primary education schedule was first conceived, it was done so in a day and age when the U.S. economy was far more agrarian than it is now in the age of digital information. The school day was crafted as to allow adequate time for the student to aid his or her family in various ways. A vacation during the summer was established in order to allow for families to have children around helping on the farms and plantations to bolster productivity during the busy summer months.
Clearly the days in which school children had to help out with the family farm are a thing of the relatively distant past. So, why do we our schools still run on an archaic schedule when it could run on a far more productive one? In Massachusetts, several different schools, both charter and public, have taken part in experiments to extend the school day by at about 25 percent, lengthening the time in class per day from six hours to around seven or eight hours. As a result of this extra time, the performance of the least proficient students (the ones whom improvement programs always try to target) greatly increased on the next year’s MCAS (by 7.2, 4.7 and 10.8 percentage points in math, science and English, respectively). Similar studies have shown links between doing away with the three-month summer vacation and improvements on in schools as well.
As the title of “Waiting For Superman” implies, public education is not simply going to improve upon itself while we wait around for it to do so. There are many factors as to why many public schools perform poorly in addition to the fact that they operate on archaic and outdated terms. One thing that you can do to help is to educate yourself on education. How is taxpayer money being spent on it? What are its trends? What social factors have great effects on it? And, most importantly, what is it doing? In an increasingly global economy, education is key to individual and national success. Let’s make it work for us, not against us.
Dave Coffey is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at [email protected].
