Re: Public education

From: Paul H.Dillon (illonph@pacbell.net)
Date: Mon Mar 26 2001 - 12:17:47 PST


Eric.

Although I did read your entire post, I was responding to the following
lines:

"it scares me what education will be like
in 15 years if educators don't start addressing some of the problems with
the
current system. Such as no accountability for tenured teachers, 10 month
salaries in a 12 month world, and above all splintered methodologies."

Since the "problems" you indicated here all involve teachers, I didn't see
how you were addressing the need for changing the "entire system of
Education". It sounds as though you think that teachers should be paid less
or made to work more and that they should all be required to teach the same
way (in city and country, among yankees in New England and native new
mexicans in the Sangre de Cristo mountains). It sounds as though the onus
falls on the teacher. I didn't see any proposals for changing the entire
system.

I'd like to hear how you'd go about doing that. It seems of such topical
interest with everyone from every side calling for something to be done
about the system of education. Witness NPR's lengthy segments on the issue
each day for the last two weeks.

My point, however, is that the system of education can't be changed without
changing other fundamental relations in the society as a whole. Is it
merely coincidental that the most recent vital "new" proposals in education
(already eighty to one hundred years old) came at a time when progressive
forces were strong and were restructuring the societies (Dewey in America
during the "progressive era", Vygotsky (sheltered and nurtured by Krupskaya)
in Russia during the halcyon days of the Bolshevik revolution?

Paul H. Dillon



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