The Avocado Jungle » education

Poverty + U.S

Joanna Lord — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 06:49:05 +0000

The reasons for why poverty exists are widely contrastable. In casual conversations that I’ve had about the issue, I’ve found that more than a few times, my conversational counterpart’s perspective is that those who are impoverished are “lazy”. I won’t speak for the entirety of the middle class, but I have found that this outlook appears to rule the roost when it comes to the few friendly debates I have with friends, members who identify themselves with the middle class. I cannot, and would not, presume that this belief at large populates the class itself, and I have virtually no concrete evidence that indicates that it does. But I do wonder. I have heard all types of things, from simple statements like, “I work hard for my money. Why don’t ‘they’ just get a job?” to, “’They’ shouldn’t have kids they can’t afford” to prideful accounts of yelling obscenities at the homeless, and other passionate points of view about the subject.

From an economic standpoint, some of the statements I have heard from people hold water, though they are lacking in their understanding of other associated facts, and quite honestly, some of these statements surprise me merely based on the fact that attending a basic course in sociology is an educational requirement as one is on his/her way to obtaining a college degree. A basic book in sociology fully explains why “they” do what they do and is chock full of statistics, factors, and charts, so I do not understand why educated people (of all people) utilize ignorance or racism when participating in what should be an educated discussion. Unless they were not paying any attention in sociology class.

If in fact this is how poverty is viewed by the average American, then the issue at hand is related more to a lack of knowledge or education. Perhaps poverty itself is not to blame, but the state of our educational facilities. To break it down, “they” are impoverished for a variety of reasons, some which include mental health issues, addiction problems, domestic abuse factors, single-parenting, and deeper cultural obligations that result in an inability to generate enough income to support the members of a family. At this point, we do not have the social programs or governmental support needed to gain a full sense of awareness about the issue of poverty or, better yet, who it affects culturally and socially and why.

There is virtually little to no attempt to educate the public at large and shed light on the topic besides our spare college courses in sociology (unless of course we chose sociology as a field of study), and modern-day mainstream media offers us little more than titillating stories about sex, violence, and French fries. To gain real perspective on the topic we unfortunately have to bother ourselves, open up our web-browsers, and type in “poverty + U.S”, preferably utilizing the common search engine we all know and love, “Google”.

The Educational System Failing Itself

Tharuna Devchand — Sat, 01 May 2010 16:45:35 +0000

Thinking back, my education feels like a sham: most lectures were monotonous, unidirectional recitations of prescribed textbooks or readings with many examinations and assignments requiring a simple regurgitation of the lectures in order to pass. Most educational institutions in South Africa and around the world incorporate this method of teaching which Paulo Freire termed the ‘banking system of education’.

In Freire’s work Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), he claims that the ‘banking system’, in which learners are treated as empty bank accounts that are filled by their all-knowing educators, learning is passive. Such education ill-equips students for the real world, leaving them unable to truly think for themselves. At the same time, this method is outdated in contemporary society, educators are no longer like Carol Beach York’s ‘Miss Know it all’; technological advancements (computers, mobile phones and iPads) allow an affordable and easy access to information which enables students to fill their own ‘banks’. Moreover, according to recent results, this ‘banking system of education’ is no longer working.

While high failure rates may be linked to apathetic, lazy or wayward learners, there also exists a responsibility on the teachers. A new salary dispensation for educators has been implemented in South Africa; with this system, educators are evaluated in terms of their students’ performance and this should reflect in their salaries. While this approach may be problematic in that teachers may implement ‘cheap tricks’ to strengthen the grades of their students or that students in a particular class may be unusually raucous, it does imply that the students are not solely responsible for their grades and that educators have a huge role to play.

South Africa is a uniquely diverse country and education systems should therefore incorporate such diversity. Freire’s preferred system involves active learning that is reciprocal, in which the teacher is also the learner and the learner is also the teacher. This approach instills active thinking and confidence through participation and involves teaching through dialog rather than dictation. While there are efforts made to encourage such participation, these efforts are never fully incorporated and learning remains an act of repeat and remember.

Another flaw in the educational system is its method of assessment. In my 17 years as a pupil, I have always found assessments to be subjective in one way or another regardless of the subject; in some cases, a simple change of lecturer would guarantee a pass or fail. Some educators may provide method marks in mathematical or scientific courses, some may not; some educators may incorporate negative marking for multiple choice questions, some may not; some educators may prepare their students to the extent that they practically provided their students with the model answers, some may not. Some schools also focus more on their overall pass rates than their students – in my old school, my teacher only taught us half the required syllabus since she knew that we would only have to answer four of the ten questions in the provincial examination. The overall result that marks the student’s ability and, in some cases, their future in the form or either a number or symbol is never universally objective but is universally understood. In other words, a Fail to anyone in the world indicates that the student is either incompetent or let the balls drop; however, the student may have received an A with the same amount of effort in a different institution.

Provincial or national assessments may decrease the level of subjectivity involved in marking but may prove to be disadvantageous to some due to a lack of available resources for the impoverished and the huge digital divide in South Africa.

In order for South Africa to improve as a country, the educational system needs to be revised from its lowest level all the way through to tertiary since one of the major problems that universities are currently facing is that students lack basic education. Implementing a better educational system will not only increase the matriculant pass rate and better equip students for the work world but will also aid in decreasing poverty and crime and improving health issues. It will also provide a greater sense of pride in students who achieve degrees and diplomas in higher education. I currently am sitting rather uselessly on two university degrees and am unable to find employment. I feel like the approximate R100 000 spent on my education could have been used to start my own business and the four years wasted to achieve two certificates could have afforded me with usable practical knowledge and experience.

IS KIRK CAMERON ANTI-EDUCATION?

David P. Kronmiller — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:28:28 +0000

I don’t wish to bash Kirk Cameron’s religious beliefs – he is entitled to them after all. I am, however, often weary of anyone who pushes their religious beliefs on others – to me faith and spirituality is a private quest that takes a lifetime to discover.

And there are far too many different points of view on any single religion for any one of them to be 100% right about everything. Heck there are over 35,000 different sects to Christianity alone – that’s 35,000 different interpretations of the same Bible, same history. So I tend to have more respect for those who practice their spirituality by the manner in which they live, not the actions they purposefully take to win more souls.

I do take issue with Kirk Cameron’s smearing of secondary education. Perhaps had he gone to college (he could afford it) he’d understand that college has nothing to do with someone’s religious beliefs and that every real university has room for people of all religious faiths. In fact it is this coming together that creates tolerance and understanding – we fear and suspect that which we do not know or understand. Kirk Cameron is a prime example.

He says in a quote in People magazine:
“We have a situation in our country where young people are entering college with a belief in God and exiting with that faith being stripped and shredded. What we want to do is have student make an informed, educated decision before they chuck their faith.”

What he dosesn’t understand is in order to make an informed, educated decision on any subject, let alone religion, college is the perfect place to do that research. There you can investigate the origins of any number of religions, speak to experts from all faiths and if you’re so inclined, join up with one in the process of learning about it. And the religion instructors at the college level do in fact have their own religious beliefs and often are ministers in their respective faiths.

You see their faith is stronger than any questions about it and they don’t have to create suspicion or fear about other points of view.

Too bad Kirk Cameron thinks education is a bad thing but then again that’s a standard cry from the far right.

As for Darwinism – I wonder if Kirk realizes that you can be a Darwinist and a Christian if you so choose – Darwinism only deals with the scientific nature of animals mutating and adapting over time – something you can even track in humans from this country during the last century (ever had to duck a doorway in Boston or wonder why your great-grandparents appear to have been Hobbits?) There is nothing to say the Christian God didn’t plan and create this evolution and it baffles me why some don’t see that – especially someone as bright as Kirk – maybe if he had gone to college…

Well Educated People

Jeremy Olsen — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:00:11 +0000

I took this week’s theme for The Avocado Jungle and styled it into the question, “Is education part of the solution to almost every problem the world faces?” Then I began asking teachers and former teachers. Last time I wrote it was middle school music teacher Ria Kubota. This entry I’m sharing two strikingly similar responses from two more of my friends, Frank Perez and Patrick Clark. Frank’s answer is several minutes long and can be found here. Patrick’s lasts a minute and a half and you can hear it here.

Frank is a talented trombonist and former successful high school music teacher who is back in the student role himself, pursuing a doctoral degree—a pursuit that does still include some teaching assigments, but that also entails lots of music performance, conducting, studying and research. He’s also married and a proud father of a little girl. When I asked him this question his answer began, “Yes and no.” And as I didn’t define “education” for any of my interviewees, he (like Ria) took it to mean formal schooling. He spoke of the benefits of school. “We need to know where we have been so we know where we’re going,” he said, going on to also mention needing the skills needed to function in society and be productive. But then he gets right to the point, explaining that, “Just because we have schools in place and teachers teaching doesn’t guarantee that the information is going to get to the students. … Fundamentally what parents are doing with their kids is more important than the actual educating. I think parents hold the key.” And he flips to the reverse angle, reminding us that “Somebody can have so much education that the next thing you know they’re building bombs out of their garage,” also citing the more common problem of insider trading and other so-called white collar crime.

Patrick is another good friend and a fantastic thinker who taught middle school social science about fifteen years ago before leaving to pursue a career in Hollywood. He seems to agree with Frank and Ria that formal education is only a part of the equation. “It’s kind of like baking a cake. Flour is an important ingredient but it’s not the only one.” White collar crime comes up in his answer, as with Frank, as an example of well educated people who are using their presumably excellent educational backgrounds for selifsh, unethical, and arguably evil ends. Clearly they are missing something. “It comes down to getting a good rounded education as well as watching life examples of people who live their life with integrity.” In other words, “teaching morality as well. So in that sense, it’s teaching.” Though as Frank points out, even if schools were to institutionalize the teaching of morals, there’s no guarantee the information gets to the students.

As Patrick finishes up his answer, I really start to regret not providing a broader definition of education to my interviewees. I expect that instead of, “Yes and no,” their answers would generally be, “Probably.” To various degrees all three express that formal schooling is not everything and cannot solve everything—frankly, a sensible and realistic and comforting thing to hear from any teacher. And all three touch on the need to learn social and life skills that aren’t formally written into the public school curriculum. They use words that include morality, integrity, dignity, and compassion.

Common sense and tradition have it that these are the things you learn by example. As a child you learn to be compassionate because you see your parents acting that way. It may not sink in fully for decades, but eventually you realize you, too, are a reasonably compassionate person. You may learn the importance of compassion if punishment succeeds in helping you realize the extent to which you hurt another person. You do not learn compassion because somebody talks about it, defines it, or assigns you reading about it. As far as formal education goes, our youth (who we must never forget were us not so long ago) do not need a morality curriculum. Holding classes on it won’t do any good. I do feel, however, that our teachers-in-training ought to learn how to weave morals into their instruction as the fountain from which all decisions and discipline spring. I know that it was not made clear to me, as a 22-year-old about to take on a high school band director position, either that this was of enormous importance or how to achieve it. It’s not that I never thought about fairness, for example, it’s that I rarely had my limited definition challenged by older, wiser people than me. In our training, my peers and I learned about musical instrument performance and maintenance, the latest research on language and cognitive development, and age-appropriate musical literature selection. We did not learn, as young people just out of our teenage years, how to be exemplary models of ethical and moral goodness and fairness while handling the daily stress of being a school teacher.

It sounds to me like Ria, Frank and Patrick would all agree that creating this type of role model, and creating lots and lots of them, would be a fantastic solution to many of the world’s problems. I’ll blog again soon and wrap up by venturing a guess about how we might do this and how, along with many other forms of education, it could go a long way toward addressing some of the biggest issues we face.

Many thanks to both Frank and Patrick for their time, for their thoughts, and for the years each of them spent aiming to be superb role models for their students.

Teaching the Right Things

Jeremy Olsen — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:00:00 +0000

I took this week’s theme for The Avocado Jungle and styled it into the question, “Is education part of the solution to almost every problem the world faces?” Then I asked a great friend and great teacher, Ria Kubota, that very question. I got a wonderfully unexpected and insightful answer, even with a restless infant wriggling in her arms. It’s under two minutes long and you can listen to the audio here.

Ria is a creative and thoughtful woman who has been inspiring young music students for ten years now, first in public middle schools and elementary schools and now in private schools. She’s also a mother of two—one school age girl and one baby girl (the one you can hear fussing in the background from time to time). And Ria says, yes, education is the answer. More specifically, she says, “It can be the solution to the world’s problems, but only if you choose to teach the right things.”

“First and most important you have use and teach compassion and treating others with dignity.” Whoa. Not the first words I expect to hear. “If people started from that,” she adds, “I think a lot of our problems wouldn’t be problems.” Now, we can’t just head into the tribal areas of Afghanistan and teach the future terrorists of the world our version of compassion and dignity. But of course, that’s not what Ria is arguing. She’s talking about school education, and I think it applies to that familial and generational and community kind of education, too, where parents and family and neighbors and church members function as role models who can teach things like compassion and dignity to the youth around them. Compassion and dignity are concepts that grownups may have an easier time describing in words, but that children learn about everyday and come to recognize and understand at a very young age. Those who don’t learn to recognize it early tend to grow up with a pessimistic view of the world at least, and sometimes emotional and psychological problems beyond that. There’s research to suggest that (as with almost anything) one can have a
genetic predisposition to these sorts of issues, but there’s also lots of evidence that children simply learn empathy and compassion by watching and interacting with adults (see Van Hasselt and Hersen’s dry and academic but thorough “Handbook of Social Development” around page 235). So I can’t help but agree with Ria. I also can’t help but wonder how we go about doing this systematically, nationally, even globally. I think it starts with training teachers well, hiring teachers intelligently, and providing parents with knowledge and resources.

Ria continues on with some more broad commandments. Each one, as I hear it sounds so worthwhile and even crucial, and each challenges me to even begin to describe how American schools, for starters, ought to achieve these things. Teach children to listen. (So incredibly important… almost on par with the compassion and the dignity.) Teach them to work together. Teach them history with the goal that they learn to ask good questions that help them think about the future. Teach them to write so they can learn to reflect on their own lives. (I wonder what the world would be like if we all took
a few minutes a day to reflect and to work through our problems on paper.)

And lastly, being a music teacher, Ria knows the power of art. “You don’t even have to speak another language, but you can communicate with others,” she remarks. It made me think of the significance of moments like the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s landmark 1956 visit to the Soviet Union. This and other huge moments of artistic (in this case musical) diplomacy are highlighted in this
article on Boston.com. Art conveys so much, connects us instantly to our emotions and sensory perceptions, and grounds us in our own humanity. This connection truly can overcome obstacles like language, race, class, and nationality. I know Ria is not alone in believing that raising a nation of artists—or at least of men and women who understand and deeply appreciate art—could go a long way toward solving the issues we’re struggling with, especially when an initial connection like the one art can achieve breaks down barriers like fear, mistrust, isolation and hopelessness.

Thank you, Ria, for your thoughts. I know you are doing your part to teach the importance of dignity, compassion, reflection, learning from the past, and of course, art.

Teachers Are Ready

Jeremy Olsen — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:00:17 +0000

The Avocado Jungle this week is asking the question, “Can education solve all the world’s problems?” I’m not a fan of absolutes, but I think this is as close to an absolute as you can find. If I may posit an answer: Education is part of the solution to nearly every problem the world faces. I blogged on this last summer in a entry aptly titled, “Education Is The Answer.” (I am one creative dude.)

I think most teachers believe this, too. (That education is the answer, not that I’m creative.) I’ll be asking a few teachers that very question this week. As for me, I do know from my own teaching experiences that the field of education is likely populated with a higher percentage of impassioned dream-followers than almost any other. I don’t think it could be any other way. These days one can make a comfortable living, at best, as a teacher. Teachers earn an average of $50,000/year. Beginning teachers make $24,000 to $40,000 — the poverty line for a family of four is about $22,000. Yet teaching is a highly cognitive career. It is said that a teacher makes thousands of decisions each day. Planning and proactiveness are key to success, as evidenced by studies like this one. “Burnout” is a ubiquitous term in the profession, and it has a strong emotional component as shown by studies like this. What other careers combine mediocre pay, high cognitive demands, and so much emotional stress that a quarter of all beginning teachers leave within four years? (By the way, that tidbit and many others are crammed into this article by Martin Haberman, where you can read that half of beginning urban teachers quit within five years; forty percent of teachers in Great Britain visited a doctor with stress related problems in 1999; and way back in 1933 high an incredible eleven percent of American teachers said they had suffered a nervous breakdown.)

My point in saying all this is that teachers are ready and willing and always have been. They are, on the whole, ready to raise the level of knowledge and rational thought that the next generation of workers and leaders is capable of. And they can do it with relatively little more than what they’ve already got. And it must be done, because our world is changing faster and faster all the time and we must be sure our kids grow up knowing how to cope with it, face it each day, contribute to it meaningfully, and get something meaningful out of it.

This little blog entry might have you believe that I think all education emanates from schools. I know better. I know there are lots of other forces at work, like generational education (“It takes a village…”), coaching and mentorship (like we see in inner city programs like “A Better L.A.“), and public awareness campaigns (such as the ones that taught us the importance of seat belts and the dangers of drunk driving and cigarettes). I’ll try to address those, too. But as someone with the sort of passion for teaching that once drove me to try my hand in front of a class of rambunctious high schoolers, I thought I’d start with what I know.

Education Is The Answer

Jeremy Olsen — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:00:27 +0000

Education, everyone, is the answer. I feel there’s no need to explain, but I’m going to anyways.

To me, it seems clear that education is a crucial part of the solution to any problem we face. And I am referring to education in a very generalized sense that includes both formal schooling and the less institutionalized spreading of information. Consider pollution: a stronger educational system would yield a higher number of bright people working on the science, while effective dissemination of accurate information to the public would help build the understanding and the outlook needed to support good policies while bringing about widespread cultural and lifestyle changes. Consider AIDS: strong science education in schools would produce more talent and brains to apply to the problem, while delivering more thorough and appropriate information to the public would slow down transmission and bring more people in for early diagnosis. Consider any major issue facing our nation now, and education can help in some way.

Which leaves me wondering: why don’t we hear more about it? Why doesn’t every bill include an education component? Why doesn’t every congressional appropriation include money for education? Why doesn’t every newscast help us connect more to education and awareness?

I’m serious. Why?

I don’t have an answer. I honestly can’t say. I have a funny feeling part of the reason is because it’s dangerously ingrained in our cultural DNA now to not invest in the future. Maybe that’s been a part of the equation of America all along, but it does seem to be a particular hallmark of more recent times. We forgo the chance to put any stock in the future because our greed or arrogance or ignorance or even just innocent excitement tells us that today is so much more important. And this makes lots of sense, until tomorrow becomes today and we begin to reap what we have sown throughout many negligent yesterdays.

Education certainly is an investment that sees few immediate returns, and when we do see returns is often hard to correlate them with better education. It is more possible with shorter-term efforts, as when a campaign to increase seat belt use yields a marked reduction in traffic deaths, or when a campaign to educate women about breast cancer causes a sharp increase in visits to the doctor. But we will be suffering the ill effects of our overburdened, underperforming school system for decades, as students emerge less prepared for careers and for life than they have been and should be. We will suffer when we struggle to fill high-tech jobs without importing skilled workers from afar or exporting the jobs overseas. We will suffer when our social services are overused and misused by people who could have benefitted from good information early on. We will suffer in many more ways, and of course, we already are.

I’m not a doom-and-gloom person. There are millions of bright spots in our school system, namely the millions of teachers who are doing a good job—or even a great one—day in and day out. And there are certainly fantastic principals and career counselors and superintendents and librarians making a difference in big and little ways, along with plenty of good procedures and traditions and practices. But there are many, many things to be fixed, and I don’t get the feeling we are collectively convinced of how important it is. I’m not sure we all believe that education really is the answer.

I’ll be blogging more on this in the future in hopes of convincing even a few people that it is.