Shouldn't Every Child Have an Education Like the President's Daughters'?

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wants a longer school day, a longer school week, and a longer school year and national subject standards, which will inevitably lead to one national test. Duncan wants to institute merit pay, which is a euphemism for paying teachers to produce higher test scores. Such merit pay, combined with national academic standards and one national test, will inevitably continue to transform our public schools into test prep factories. Thus, more and more of the same old industrialist factory model of education. All we need to do to improve schools, says Duncan, is intensify the command-and-control model of education.

Arne Duncan does not understand that the most effective organizations in our society, both for-profit corporations and nonprofits, have evolved beyond command-and-control cultures. Peter Senge describes these new entities as learning organizations, which are built on the foundation of systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning.

Senge explains why Duncan approach is destined for failure. "Today's problems come from yesterday's 'solutions,'" he notes. Our factory model schools, have become the problem, not the solution.

President Obama's two daughters, Malia and Sasha Obama do not attend a school that is part of the problem. They attend the Sidwell Friends School in the District of Columbia, a school profoundly defined both by the values that it rejects -- and by those that it embodies.
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Sidwell embraces a post-modernist paradigm of schooling defined by the following elements:

• "A rich and rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum designed to stimulate creative inquiry, intellectual achievement and independent thinking in a world increasingly without borders."
• Encouragement to its students"...to give expression to their artistic abilities." It does not cut the arts out of the curriculum to focus only on math and reading.
• A community that values "the power of individual and collective reflection..." Sidwell values not only knowledge that is outside the child and teen but also what children and teens know within themselves. Sidwell encourages reflection and inner knowing, neither of which are acknowledged in any state's academic standards.
• "An understanding of how diversity enriches us;" it recruits a diverse student body -- 39 percent of its students are persons of color -- and offers a global and multicultural curriculum.
• Emphasis on "stewardship of the natural world;" it engages its students both in learning ecology and in developing the ethics that are at the core of the concept of stewardship: that every individual has a personal responsibility for ecological health and sustainability.
• Promotion of service, and a curriculum and communal life that engage its students in understanding why "service to others enhances life."
• Use of multiple forms of accessing knowledge and truth: "through scientific investigation, through creative expression, through conversation...through service within the school community and beyond."
• A recognition that schooling is both about individual learning and about young people learning how to work together well with others. "Work on individual skills and knowledge is balanced with group learning, in which each person's unique insights contribute to a collective understanding."
• Personalization of learning and education of the whole person. "Above all, we seek to be a school that nurtures a genuine love of learning and teaches students 'to let their lives speak.'" Sidwell 's central ambition is "to recognize and nurture each person's unique gifts."

Sidwell is expensive, but Sidwell's commitment to implementing a post-modern paradigm of schooling focused on personalization of learning, a global and multicultural curriculum, an emphasis on ecology and environmental stewardship, service to others, multiple forms of knowledge, and personal responsibility and excellence have little to do with money. The commitment is driven primarily by the values of educating the whole person, and any school in America could enact a program founded on those same values.

Barack and Michelle Obama have abandoned industrial paradigm, modernist schooling to send Malia and Sasha to a post-modern school focused on the personalization of learning in the context of a caring, responsible school community. Isn't it time that every family in the nation has the same opportunity?

Most puzzling, if the president and First Lady Michelle Obama send their children to a post-modern, personalized school, why are the president and Arne Duncan advocating policies that would intensify the most defective features of industrial,factory model schools rather than trying to transform schools to make them more like Sidwell Friends?

I condensed this from a more expansive version at the online site of Education Week. www.edweek.org, search on "Marshak."

Follow Gerald Bracey on Twitter: www.twitter.com/gbracey123

Comments

[pondoora]

President Obama attended parochial schools and then an elite private school in Hawaii when he was older. He attended college at Occidental and Colombia, and law school at Harvard. Michelle Obama was enrolled in academically accelerated public school programs and attended an academic public magnet high school in Chicago, Whitney M. Young. She attended Princeton and then Harvard.

Before the Obama children were anywhere on the radar for needing secret service to protect them, the Obama's were already sending them to a private school for kids of the elite (Chicago Lab School, tuition currently at $20+K/year).

Arne Duncan attended the Chicago Lab School his entire life, and then earned his bachelor's degree at Harvard. He tutored at his mother's center because she made him. Duncan connected with the Obama's via John Rogers (a school and basketball buddy via the Chicago Lab School). Rogers was longtime friends with Michelle's brother, Craig, because they were on Princeton's basketball team together. Rogers is a wealthy Chicago businessman who employed Duncan at his ed-non-profit because his friend needed a job after he finished playing basketball in Australia. Rogers is Mr. Moneybags and was a supporter of Obama at the very beginning of his political days. This bunch from Chicago is one big happy family.

[WestSeattleDan]

http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com/2009/07/federal-control-expands-despite-rules.html

The federal government is taking over public education. It has no legal authority to do this, but it’s doing it anyway. This is not change I believe in.

[JRsNana]

What did you think of "No Child Left Behind"? Now THAT was a government takeover of public education. And underfunded takeover, but a takeover nonetheless. I'll bet you liked that though. It was brought to us by a Republican so it must have been fine with you. Now, a Democrat is in office and EVERYTHING is a government takeover. You guys are really starting to sound silly.

[Endersdragon]

Since, when is Ted Kennedy a Republican? But yes, sadly, both parties ignore The Constitution way too much, sadly Obama loves NCLB way too much. In fact he does that with a lot of Bush policies... wonder why...

[offred]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there a hint that the author considers the Obamas elitist in their choice of school for the Obama girls? The Obamas are limited as to where their daughters can go to school. It needs to be contained, easily secured, and approved by the Secret Service.

Besides, Obama has a full plate right now. The U.S. and the Republicans can only handle so much advanced thinking at one time.

[JRsNana]

Could "daughters" in the heading have been spelled correctly in an article on education? One would hope so.

[Fred Hood]

I am 60 and have been hearing about better education for as many years. But every budget crunch where do they cut first education. Then they say if you want better education we have to raise taxes. Over and over and we still have a racist and poor education system. When I say racist its not a black white thing its a poor and rich thing. The rich get the education the poor do not and by poor I mean can you afford to send your kid to Harvard? Then you are poor sorry.

[Endersdragon]

Since when is being poor a race. I mean I agree with you to a point (in some states the poor schools get a lot more the rich schools, Iowa for example, and yes this is coming from a graduate of a poor Iowa school) but don't see the word racist when there are no races involved in the rest of your arguement. There is not a more inflamatory word in the English language I think.

[NFS]

I wholeheartedly disagree..the President has mandated that ensuring inner city and/or surburban public school's are up to par or even exceed the average necessary for the students attending public schools to achieve. He also said that it wasn't just up to the students, but their parents that their children succeed...certainly not their teachers or the "system." The arts (and the preservation of it) are very important to the Obama's and by example are helping inner city families want to share some of that with their children.

Not everyone can afford the type of school the Obama's (or weathier Americans) daughters attend, but that doesn't mean that public education has to be sub standard, and in most cases, when the schools have what they need to do their jobs, the educators and those being educated excel. Many extremely bright, creative and successful people came out of the public school system and those "tests" that are administered and taken, have been done like that a long time. President Obama is only trying to make sure students are aptly prepared to take them, by improving the schools these young people attend.

[JustThisGuy]

There seems to be a lot of work done to find the one best way to teach something.

That assumes it exists.

I know a number of smart and successful people with dramatically different learning styles.

Sidwell sounds like it gets this, and is willing to work to teach individuals based on how they learn. Any industrial cookbook of education will not be able to do this.

[tnkeating]

So true, our current system of institutional education can only turn out institutional thinking, they teach you what to think, not how to think.

[Gary Stager - Huffpost Blogger]

Your readers might also be interested in a related Huffington Post article I wrote about Obama and Duncan last December, Obama Practices Social Promotion, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-stager/obama-practices-social-pr_b_151620.html

[Gary Stager - Huffpost Blogger]

Nicely done (as usual),

I wrote a similar story last November.

http://stager.tv/blog/?p=275

Incidentally, The Sidwell Friends School just hired a new Headmaster. I read the advertisement for the position and realized that US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan would have been unqualified to even apply for the job.

That's right, the top "educator" in the nation is unqualified to lead the school his boss' kids attend.

[offred]

Sloppy argument.

Duncan is an administrator, which has different requirements than a headmaster position. Can the new headmaster function effectively as the U.S. Secretary of Education?

[jmpurser]

Good point. Like his health care system Obama has no intention of inflicting the educational changes he wants for the nation upon his own family.

This nation needs a REAL class war and the sooner the better.

[PaxEterna]

Agreed.

How many members of Congress enroll their children in public schools?

There's a story.

[FeloniusMonk]

Professor Bracey sits in the middle of a state where both public and private education has a lot of gaps and alternate education forms have often been as much a sham as a solution.

If everyone could afford a school such as the Presidential daughters attend, and were willing to work with the school and the children as much as all parents who send their children there are obliged to do, then, we would see better education. Many parents do work with their children and the schools, and many don't. Many kids just don't get it, and some have parents who don't get it either.

In Arizona, school funding is often one of the first things cut when things get rough.

[edwcorey]

"Shouldn't Every Child Have an Education Like the President's Dauhgters'?"

Shouldn't a story about education have crucial words in the headline spelled correctly?

[BocaMom]

Great story!