What's good for the goose is evidently not so good for the gander. In America's current educational environment, the disparity of experience is bad and getting worse.
This week, my school screened the excellent documentary, Race to Nowhere. Audience members, primarily parents of our students, were terrified and relieved in alternating waves. They were terrified because of the stark realization that alarming numbers of American children are losing their childhoods, their opportunities and, most tragically, their lives to unremitting stress. They were relieved because their children are partially insulated from this debilitating stress because the Calhoun School is not crazy.
The discussion following the film was enlivened by several panel members, including Sara Bennett, co-author of The Case Against Homework, Jerri Dodds, Dean of Sarah Lawrence College and Laura Prince, a Manhattan child therapist.
While the discussion was wide-ranging and fascinating, one deeply ironic observation was unavoidable: As the most privileged communities are finally waking up to the devastating consequences of a system gone mad, the "system gone mad" is unleashing mayhem on the least privileged communities.
In privileged schools, parents, child development experts and thoughtful educators are moving briskly away from unrealistic and arguably damaging academic emphasis in early childhood education. In the least privileged schools, early "academic" work is forced on young children in developmentally inappropriate ways and pressure to perform is elevated.
In privileged schools, the importance of play in the social and cognitive development of young children is widely embraced. In the least privileged schools, play is seen as a frivolous. There isn't much time for play when Racing to the Top.
Privileged schools are reducing homework, responding to the unambiguous research that shows the inefficacy of homework. As Ms. Bennett reminds us, more than an hour for younger children results in diminishing returns. More than two hours, even for high school students, is counterproductive. Yet children in the least privileged schools are expected to do more and more homework, despite this abundant evidence.
Privileged schools recognize the critical importance of the arts, not only as a means of sustaining beauty and culture, but as a powerful component of neurobiological development. The least privileged schools have neither time nor money to offer these life and brain altering experiences.
The most privileged schools recognize the critical importance of unstructured time for students of all ages. Unstructured time is when many of the most powerful social skills and creative capacities are nurtured. The least privileged schools "program" children all day, forced by externally mandated standards or seduced by the false and dangerous idea that learning is supposed to be "hard work."
Many of the most privileged schools are abandoning things like the AP curriculum, recognizing it as frenetic, unimaginative transcript-padding and are working to dissuade their students from killing themselves striving for meaningless "perfection." The least privileged schools are falling for the hype, mindlessly parroting the conventional "wisdom" that taking many AP courses represents "excellent" education.
Privileged schools recognize that a full school day, a sports or arts activity, and an hour or two of homework add up to more time than a full work week for many adults. The least privileged schools are extending the school day, moving toward Saturday classes and long hours of tutoring outside class. Many small children are living lives that would violate child labor laws (not to mention what Newt Gingrich would have them do!).
Privileged schools are trying, albeit imperfectly, to preserve childhood, recognizing that children's lives are important now and that they need time to daydream and play. Politicians and bureaucrats in the least privileged communities talk as though children are faceless raw material to be formed into an economic commodity for some future productive use.
Much of contemporary educational policy is condescending and, arguably, racist and/or classist. Urban public schools and most charter schools are designed for the "other." They are schools that think-tank economists, charter school architects and wealthy politicians would never choose for their own children.
While lip service is given the notion of equal opportunity, the evidence tells another story. These wildly differing educational practices promise to exacerbate, not heal, the deep rifts in American education.
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In the past, Jim Crow laws enforced segregated public education to ensure low-level labor forces, while protecting upper-class employment, access to business opportunities and residential proximity to quality schools. Today, schools for privileged students, located in more affluent neighborhoods, are more likely to have advanced equipment and modern facilities, to practice the most effective teaching methods and to provide access to higher education, better employment and financial security.
After the Civil War, Freedman schools--intended to teach black children of former slaves and white children of displaced former Confederates, deliberately unequal under Jim Crow laws--instilled fallacious notions that being white was superior. In 1890, the Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862 to build public colleges by selling public lands was expanded to include black colleges. In 1896, however, "Plessy vs. Ferguson" sanctioned educational inequities, of which today's U.S. educational inequities--accidental or not--are the remnants. http://sunnynash.blogspot.com/2011/02/justin-morrill-land-grant-college-acts.html
My 14 year old daughter is taking a 6 course load of AP/IB/College credit courses in high school. Her homework / study time is far in excess of 30 hours a week (particularly if you include her robotics club effort ?10+ hours a week?). Her study levels, while high, are not atypical among the focused academic students at her school.
She will be off to college next year and will probably earn at least one quarter of credit via AP exams. She is saving herself time and money.
Your daughter may manage all of this work with good cheer and good health. That's not true for all young women. You might read some of Denise Pope's (Stanford faculty) work on girls "doing school" to get a sense of the downside of the achievement race, especially for young women.
It is sort of a grim march right now. She has 4 more months to go (early admission college application in the next few weeks, robotics competition in a month, 4 AP's in May) and then she can take it relatively easy over the summer - enjoying herself and working on either Ukrainian or Russian so she can pass the university language placement exam. I will make sure she gets more exercise over the summer.
Then it is off to engineering college, followed either by graduate work in engineering or medical school.
Does she fit into the American popular culture? No she does not. She probably never will. She may fit a bit better than I do.
Nothing she memorizes for stem will be useful in a few years. The data they have students memorize is more accurately stored in a computer or a book.
I have told both of my kids - I will provide 3 years of tuition, fees, and books/class charges to the state university. The rest is up to them. Hence I am pointing them both at Running Start (2 years of education free) + AP exams (a quarter or more of credit).
If she earns early admission into the honors program then I will have to provide more support, but both of them should have a reasonable chance of getting paying internships (there are advantages to engineering) by their junior year, which will help as well.
I don't care about the detailed fact memorization, but you need to know the framework of the field well so you know what needs to be looked in what context. Learning the problem solving material is critical.
The younger the students, I definitely agree the less hmk or no hmk even in math.
You know what is really sad is when a teacher actually uses learning activities as punishments or threats especially in the early grades and tell the students they will have hmk if they don't behave.
Students in those "priveleged schools" start in an environment far ahead of those in the less than priveleged schools. It is simply the world in which they exist. It is the conversations they overhear at home. It is the vacation trips they take. It's the simple fact that there are books in the house and a stable environment to allow them the security to be children.
All too many students from those other schools speak a foreign language at home. They have parents who cannot help with homework. The parents or parent is on public assistance or scrambling for work. Countless are even homeless and living in cars or shelters. A lot of these kids spend so much time with school work to keep them inside... and away from harm.
That's the real difference between "privelege" and the "other".