Look past the myths
By: GENE VITAMANTI - For The Californian | ∞
How many times have you read about a poll conducted of Americans who couldn't identify important national historical facts? You probably nodded your head and thought, "It's those lousy public schools; everyone knows that they do a crummy job. Every other country in the world has better schools than we have."
How about this poll conducted by a United Kingdom television channel? The purpose was to test the nation's general knowledge about historical figures, mainly British. It covered all age groups. They found that more than one-fourth, yes ---- 25 five percent ---- of the British population believe that Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Sir Walter Raleigh, Charles Dickens and Cleopatra never existed. They also believed that Sherlock Holmes, Robinson Crusoe and King Arthur were real historical people.
When the poll was broken down by age groups, it showed that the "under 20" youngsters scored the lowest. In the analysis, the pollsters pointed to two main factors for this display of ignorance. One was the failure of the school system ---- the report was a little vague on this ---- and the second was "... the excessive interest in celebrity and popular culture." Does this sound familiar?
They then zeroed in on a specific television ad about a talking bulldog named Churchill. Many of us older folk remember how Winston Churchill was regarded as tough and tenacious as a British bulldog. The youngsters, however, believed that Churchill was actually the TV bulldog they were watching. They never heard of the real Churchill ---- that he was a famous British prime minister during WW II.
Many of these Englishmen (and women) had seen the outstanding film about Mahatma Gandhi and thought he was fictional. They had no conception of his important place in the history of Britain as well as India.
I wonder how the critics of American education will try to twist this poll to "prove" that our schools are still inferior.
Maybe someone out there can help me with a detail that has always bothered me.
When pollsters question American youngsters, which supposedly shows how deficient our schools are, they never disclose whether those kids are from public or private schools. Now that statistic would be interesting.
In their book, The Manufactured Crisis, educational psychiatrist David Berliner and social psychologist Bruce Biddle debunk a whole slew of "myths" and statistics used to malign public schools. They also demonstrate that private schools are not superior to public school.
They take statistics that are used by school detractors and demonstrate how the statistics can be deliberately misused. For instance, federal and state governments mandate special education but provide inadequate funds to run these programs, which are extremely costly. They run from two to 10 times more per student over the regular students and the number of special education students is rising.
As educational allocations rise, about 30 percent of that new money goes to special education. In some states, immigrant students have flooded our schools, creating a need for special attention. All this translates to more money being diverted away from our regular students.
We must stop playing politics with our public schools. We should also stop smearing all schools with the brush of a few bad schools.
Gene Vitamanti is a freelance columnist who lives in Murrieta. E-mail genevit1@verizon.net.
More Stories
Advertisement
Here we go again wrote on Feb 11, 2008 8:41 AM:Could you please STOP tying to pit parents against each other in a fight over scarce resources? As the parent of what you may call an "irregular student," I find your remarks offensive. Using your arguments, I guess we could also include children from low income families & those who are legal citizens in this counrty who's parents may not speak English fluently. Oh & let's not forget about those children of parents who may not be as well educated as yourself & even maybe those from single parent homes (because we know they may not provide the support for learning that's needed at home). One could make the arguement that those populations of students also take more than their fair share of the resources. Now, let's also talk about what's "unfunded." I can think of a few things.....PE, the arts, extra curricular sports & transportation. Should we eliminate all of these things or just require students & their parents who use or need these services to pay the FULL cost for these programs over what's funded?
Please stop instigating this fight over resources and start looking toward solutions for ALL. NCLB is currently in the reauthorization process. There are MANY things the different groups do NOT agree to but, you know what.....ONE thing they ALL agree on is adding, in the language of the law, the term "Universal Design for Learning." My suggestion is that everyone become knowledgeable regarding this so we can move toward REFORMING our education system. We've already started this process by agreeing to use RTI - Response to Intervention to help students earlier rather than waiting for them to fail & then qualify for special education services. We can began to look for solutions or people like you can contact your legislators to lobby for a change in our Federal and State Laws. You could explain to them why it's NOT fair that the students you've targeted above (and others) divert funds away from the "regular" kids. Perhaps you should lobby for schools that would just have "regular" students in them but then you'd have to deal with that nasty Supreme Court Decision "Brown Vs the Board of Education."
I don't get it. wrote on Feb 11, 2008 12:18 PM:Maybe I missed something, but what does the funding for special education have to do with the rest of your article on stats and polls?
Myths wrote on Feb 11, 2008 5:22 PM:First part of the article was interesting, but the remainder of the article was jibberish.
Reviso wrote on Feb 12, 2008 6:29 PM:Hey Gene, for a retired teacher, your arguments are not logically sequenced and create confusion and makes one want to scratch his/her head. Generally, you write some good things but this piece is definitely not one of your better ones. Always review your work, write several drafts, and do some peer editing.
First name only. Comments including last names, contact addresses, e-mail addresses or phone numbers will be deleted. Attempts to misrepresent your identity or impersonate any person will not be approved. All comments are screened before they appear online, so please keep them brief. Comments reflect the views of those commenting and not necessarily those of the North County Times or its staff writers. Click here to view additional comment policies.
Today's Stories
Advertisement