GREG KESICH: Decades of school reform, but not much has changed
My eldest had managed to avoid taking gym class through three years of high school. Now as a senior, running into a graduation requirement, she’s taking it twice this year.
The other day, I asked her how it was going.
“OK,” she said. “We had a substitute, so we just played dodge ball.”
Dodge ball? Really?
The game we played back in the Nixon era? Where the strongest kids heaved a red rubber ball at the weakest, picking them off one by one, forcing them to stand on the sidelines in humiliation?
“Basically,” she said.
Through every stage of my kids’ education, teachers and administrators have tried to impress on me how different schools are from when I was a student, and every time I’ve peeked in, I’m always impressed by how little has really changed.
Blackboards turned green and then white in the intervening years, and I don’t think little