Fifty years from now, America will be governed by today’s youth. Their thoughts and actions will be shaped by what they know and have experienced, making education, in many ways, one of the best predictors of a nation’s future success.
This is a scary fact, given that only 70 percent of students in the United States are receiving a high school diploma and that 1.2 million students are dropping out of high school annually.
This reality is underscored by Greenfield Community College President Bob Pura in a Sept. 17 My Turn essay; “I have become increasingly concerned that education is not held in as high regard as it once was here in the United States. That,” Pura continues, “is a dangerous trend for our social and economic well-being, and especially so for the future of democracy.”
“The dumbing down of this democracy has been gradual,” Pura writes, and he cites the examples of the continual decline in the nature and quality of presidential debates, which have reached a cultural and rational nadir this year.
In my view, the dumbing down of democracy, while dangerous and critical to our future as a governed nation, cannot compare to the consequences of our culture’s general indifference and unwillingness to acknowledge climate change and its continuing destruction of our planet as we have known it.
If parents want their children to survive and somehow repair the damage that we, the older generation, have wreaked upon this earth, then, I assume, they will search out the best possible, affordable educational options for their children.
Which brings me to what appears to be the most divisive issue in public education these days: that public charter schools are the primary cause of diminishing financial support to local school districts.
“Since the beginning of charter schools (and private schools),” GCC teacher Doug Wilkins writes in his Sept. 19 My Turn article, “there is one absolute fact: the students go there because either the student or the parent (or both) wants the student there. Also remember,” he writes, “that when students who care about their education leave a public school, it diminishes the school they leave.”
If you happen to have enough money, you can move, Wilkins writes, to “wealthy suburbs” where traditional public education is good.
If you have even more money, you can send your kids to a private school.
“Maybe,” he concludes, “we don’t have a ‘free and equal public education for all,’ after all.”
For concerned parents who are not wealthy and care about education, the cost of attending a public charter school is no different than attending a traditional public school.
I have been trying to comprehend and come to grips with the intense pro and con charter school arguments in Massachusetts, as they pertain to the Nov. 8 ballot question, which would raise the current cap on charter schools by 12 new charters each year. I have not yet reached a decision about how I will vote on the issue, because I think there are legitimate criticisms about the selling of both the “for” and “against” vote campaigns. There’s not enough space in this article to detail them.
Nancy Grossman, in her Sept. 14 My Turn argument against charter schools, writes that “the majority of the costs of running a (traditional public) school remain essentially fixed: maintenance, administration, nursing, utilities, advising.” In other words, traditional public schools have little flexibility to adjust to declining enrollments and the state’s failure to meet promised funding levels, such as transportation costs.
Public charter schools, on the other hand, must raise the funds above and beyond state tuition income that are necessary to operate their school. Or go out of business as some have.
Should parents have a choice of what school to send their kids to?
Public education in the United States, as has been pointed out, was strongest back in the day when most people agreed that children educated together within public-funded, community-based schools was in the best interests of the individual child and society at large.
But that shared value is now in jeopardy. Many politicians and policy wonks on both sides of the political aisle now support public policies that create a competitive market of schools, where parents are given choices that fulfill their individual educational aspirations more than common purpose.
My question to parents with respect to the future of our society and the world is this: What primary outcome do you want for your kids from their education? To learn the skills necessary to get a job?
Or to think, really think, on their own? To think outside the box of conventional beliefs and assumptions? To be able to escape the world of electronic distraction, to look up in the real world to the stars and to dream of a better world?
And to find a school that might offer that potential?
Shelburne resident John Bos has served as facilitator of planning retreats for the Mary Lyon Foundation, the Gill-Montague Regional School District, the Foundation for Educational Excellence in Northfield and the Holliston Education Foundation. In 2000, he served as facilitator for the NEASC accreditation process for Mohawk Regional High School. He has served on the board of the Four Rivers Educational Foundation since the charter school’s inception in 2003. He invites dialogue at john01370@gmail.com.