Failing Students:
How We Fail Our Students
could just scream when I read about downward trends in California, let alone nationwide, when it comes to student-readiness for post-high school life. Not to be too simplistic, it seems to me that these latest dire predictions should be relatively easy to rebut and reverse.
Perhaps, first and foremost, let’s throw out altogether a majority of the “new-fangled” programs and strategies (with all their bells and whistles) and get back to the basics from which most of us benefitted a generation ago. I think a lot of the coursework today has been created only to justify the existence of a program or a person’s position in it and not, in the long run, for the common good of our children (the unfortunate results which we witness every day as our young people emerge from our currently imperfect, unevenly applied, dismally inadequate, and somewhat myopic educational system).
I consider myself a successful product of the broad foundation I acquired during the early days of my education, the basis from which I have ever since benefitted. However, I have also been a teacher for nearly four decades and understand how the contrast between former and current strategies produces vastly and dramatically different results–outcomes that do not generally fulfill our reasonable hopes and expectations.
To be honest, as a teacher I did my best to skirt many State and District mandates which essentially wanted educators to teach to the tests—something which occurred so frequently that those incessant (and rather useless) exams often interrupted and, thus, prevented the natural flow of the curricular process. Consequentially, those testing regimens generally created constant setbacks to achieving, in a timely manner, the benchmarks that had been set.
What I tried to do was to review curricula from the previous grades and to create a foundation early in the school year in an attempt to get all my students up to speed. Thus, from day one of each new school year, I would begin (regardless of class level or academic ability—remedial to advanced) with a review of the basics [almost as if the students knew nothing—like the blank slates (tabula rasa) that they are, waiting to be imprinted with the skills that can and will inevitably lead to success].
Following those chiefly productive efforts, I would proceed in a systematic way. My methods would not only incorporate the skills that were necessary to be acquired in a sequential way but, in so doing, would also wind up addressing the subject matter covered on the many standardized tests that faced us.
Too many educators today are reticent about teaching the fundamentals that the natural progression of education-acquisition requires—in large part, because they avoided taking the classes which would teach those necessary skills.
Too many educators today are reticent about teaching the fundamentals that the natural progression of education-acquisition requires—in large part, because (for somewhat specious reasons) they avoided taking the classes which would teach those necessary skills. And, often, if they did select such classes to complete their degree requirements, many professors (inscrutably) were negligent by not teaching those skills.
In today’s search to find answers to all our current educational problems, too many have forgotten about what worked in the past. Yes, we are faced with many problems that overall were not an issue before, but such reality does not preclude us from working through those challenges.
Yes, we do have a large immigrant population whose needs must be addressed (but recall that only two generations ago, America witnessed a large influx of people from around the world who were able to assimilate more easily because that was the expectation held by both educators and parents–for themselves and for the children being schooled). Considering this circumstance, there
Failing Students:
