One Good Answer to the Education Problem

Vouchers for non-public schools are in the news again, and the only word I can use to describe my feelings about them is horrified. My husband and I were talking about teachers and certification. It occurred to me that there are private schools that hire uncertified teachers. Are these schools included in the voucher program? My discussion got me thinking about the whole idea behind vouchers.

Vouchers do not solve any problems except, perhaps, for those wealthy enough to take advantage of them. What they do is move the problem around. A pile of garbage is still a pile of garbage no matter where it is or how many times you move it. In fact, it smells more the more often you move it around and the longer you let it exist. Vouchers don't change the problem. The problem is the children who do not have the tools to attend school and who live in environments which are, at best, not kid friendly.

When my younger child entered kindergarten, his teacher made the comment that she had to completely redo her lesson plans. She did not have one child who was that low in skills. She was totally unprepared for a group of children who already knew their alphabet and could count reasonably well. My son was beginning to read and could count to 100 by 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s. As a teacher I knew that there were classrooms full of children who would have found her original plans far above their ability and experience. That is the problem or, at least, one of the significant problems.

So what is the solution? Well, knowing children, as I do both through personal experience and educational instruction, I would suggest extremely early intervention. I would like to see programs directed at pregnant women who, themselves, might not have the education and experience to provide a beneficial educational environment for their children. By the time these children are three, it is late. So much has been lost. It isn't that children learn so much during their first years, it is that they set up a pattern of learning that gets more difficult to change as time passes.

What I am saying is that we have to change the environment for those children who are growing up in places that will not allow them to effectively participate in the world of the future. When I went to school to become a teacher more than 20 years ago, we were explicitly told that the students who could not succeed academically were to be directed to such professions as automotive repair and carpentry. Now, automobiles are technically advanced and building codes and requirements require extensive education in their own right. No longer can we dump the uneducable in these areas. They can't succeed there either. So what are we to do? ...build more prisons?

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