Time In

Race to the Top is a race to nowhere unless we prioritize educational relationships and the connection between teachers and students. Professional development is a joke unless teachers and counselors begin to see themselves as the object of improvement. Einstein had a pretty good grasp of physics but he couldn’t get a job because he couldn’t relate to students and their problems. The K-12 students need our attention, and they need to know that we care. They need to know that we understand that we ourselves are all too human. They need teachers, not trainers.

The quality education that will prepare students for the reality of the 21st century is rooted in their ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn information seven or more times during the course of a normal working career. Technology is moving so fast that the jobs we’re preparing them for don’t even exist yet in most cases. Race to the Top and other educational reforms focus on the training aspect of skills acquisition. Training is like memorization. It’s the ability to do a task without even understanding that task’s meaning or purpose. For the adult learner, training is acceptable. But for the young learner, it’s all about meaning and connection.

Consider the very real issues of students who come from poverty and dysfunctional home environments. We know that early childhood trauma negatively affects a child’s ability to attach and bond to people and situations. We know that these students have a hard time trusting others and that they lack the basic skills necessary to function effectively in the classroom.

We also know that these skills aren’t being taught in classrooms. Instead, students are being punished for their lack of skills in ineffective ways, such as removing them from the classroom or sending them home to the very place where the dysfunction often began. One or two of these students in a classroom can easily consume teachable time throughout the day and bring down test scores across the board, so most find it easier just to remove the problem students from the situation and move on.

So what do we do with these students? We offer them up to special education and give them unrealistic accommodations and social promotion without consideration of what this will mean to their future possibilities. The truth is, there’s no special education in the real world. We’re only postponing the problem that we as a society will eventually have to deal with: another generation reliant on the social system or subject to the penal system. It’s tragically ironic that the two strongest labor unions in the state of California are the teachers and the prison guards.