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War has nothing on our failing education system when it comes to extinguishing the futures of our young. Last month's report by America's Promise Alliance concluded that nationwide, nearly 1.2 million students drop out of school every year and that about seven out of ten of students graduate on time. While these alarming statistics may only seem a problem for failing schools and the children they affect, the loss of potential along with the economic burden on society as a whole should be of immense concern for all of us. The Alliance along with the Bill Gates Foundation has announced its support for summits to be held across the country to "increase awareness, encourage collaboration and facilitate action" to improve graduation rates. But will any of these summits deliver anything different than the same ole-same ole? A Philadelphia Inquirer editorial (Leaving School 4-23) addressed the drop out problem, stating, "The problems are complex and not entirely the schools' fault. In fact, the most effective solutions to reducing the dropout rates start at home." In a perfect world, that may be, but home is only the solution where there is no dropout problem. It's a Catch 22. If the home solution premise was applicable to the kids dropping out, we would have no such problem. You'd be better calling for a wholesale change in society than expect the families of drop outs to be able to get the kids back at their desks. You can have as many educators' symposium's and "dropout summits" as you like. But no matter how hard you work it, continuing the same approach and expecting a different result, is not a description of success. It's the definition of insanity. It doesn't start in the home, nor with the student. It starts with the attitude of the educational system towards the student. And that will need a complete overhaul. That might sound expensive, but it really isn't. When a child drops out of school we not only lose revenues derived is they had remained, but we're also losing their futures and everything they could have contributed to society. We're losing the taxes from work income and the potential their creativity could have generated, if only we showed them how to access it. Instead we end up with welfare and criminal drains on our taxes and well-being. An overhaul done right becomes a revenue producer, not an expense. And the recipe for the turnaround just might be as basic as implementing a lemons to lemonade principle; transforming tart to sweet, only more. We need to remind children, repeatedly, how adversity, mistakes and failure can be key ingredients to cooking up a tasty pot of success. Pushing ahead in spite of the obstacles we all face not only turns many defeats into victories, but more importantly, reveals a passion or hidden talent that otherwise would have remained buried; something so unique to the child alone, something so vital to his or her happiness, that no one else but they could have discovered it. But it all starts by removing the negative implication of the word "failure." In sports we call it practice. In entertainment, rehearsal. In science, research. In education...failure. Bad, bad failure. That needs to be changed. And it will - the moment we choose to start using the tools that failure provides; not to smash, but to shape possibilities. It's is not about embracing incompetence, but about students recognizing their own strengths, NO MATTER WHAT THEY ARE, and using them as a jumping off point. Failure should never be where we stop, but where we begin; not a place of loss, but one of discovery. In most cases our present educational process makes an effort to teach the same thing to in the same way to every individual student, using the same techniques and expecting the same result. But with each student's individual experience and level of expertise, how in the world would we ever expect any diverse group of children to learn on an equal level? Not everyone learns in the same way nor at the same speed. Rather than a negative, that diversity in the capacity to absorb information is what makes us all unique. It's not about how quickly or what road we take to get where we're going, it's about making sure we all get there to reap the benefits. We all trip up or fail at some point - most of us, at many points. With a willingness to persevere despite the obstacles, we can see our stumbles not as rock-hard barriers but as rest stops where we pause to reassess and recharge, continuing our journey stronger, smarter, and with a greater sense of purpose. To do that we need a new pair of glasses. If a student scores a 40 out of a 100. We don't start teaching where we want him to be, we begin where he is. Before we try to teach them 100, we need to teach them 41. Most important in any teaching proposition is establishing the proper place to start. In failure, there is actually a place of knowledge, a place of comfort, and therefore a viable learning tool. And what is comfortable for the student may be an uncomfortable place for a system now encumbered with a teaching to the test mentality based on standard academics. Today we may need to tap into music, sports, video games, the street, even sex, to reach some students. But once you build a mechanism around their comprehension, learning other subject, even those academic, becomes possible. It is on that foundation that we can begin to construct a complete education. www.greatfailure.com A talk show host, author, columnist,award-winning television writer and filmmaker, his inspiring book, "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful" (Tallfellow Press) has been published internationally and has become required reading in the Wharton School of Business Masters Program. His "All The News That's Fit To Spoof " column appears every Sunday on the L.A. Daily News Oped Page.
Steve has appeared all over national TV and radio with his unique brand of satirical punditry and social observations appearing in national periodicals from the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, to his own weekly Internet column "The Lords Of Loud," at AlbionMonitor.net and The Huffington Post.
Every child left as road kill... Bush's 'Every child left as road kill' legislation was designed, in part, to make Silverado S&L bandit Bush brother, Neil and his fledging, Dubai-funded computer company - Ignite! Learning - a means of making a living now that he is permanently barred from working in the financial industry after costing the taxpayers over $1 billion in 'bail-outs' in the 1980s. In fact, when George I and Barbara donated money to Katrina victims, they specified that it be spent on Neil's Ignite! As of October 2006, over 13 U.S. school districts (out of over 14,000 school districts nation-wide have used federal funds made available through the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 in order to buy Ignite's products at $3,800 apiece. Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Bush Former first lady Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/3742329.html The Bush family openly, blantantly, and unabashedly live off the public titty - always have, and looks like they always will. Watch "Bush Family Fortunes" for free here: http://freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=42 by
Amanda Lang (22 articles, 12488 quicklinks, 406 diaries, 402 comments)
on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 4:27:23 PM
I am a homeopath. I have a doctorate in Naturopathic medicine, with a dissertaion on spina bifida; preventive, and maintenance protocols that do not discount mainstream medical practices.
bush and plagiarism* You know bush "borrowed" the no child left behind phrase without permission from the Children's Defense Fund where Marion Wright Edelman reports that it was her phrase, he never asked permission, and she had to go find another phrase; now Leave No Child Behind....go figure... *synonyms for plagiarism: copying, lifting, stealing, illegal use, bootlegging by
jaine benson (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 16 comments)
on Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 7:45:58 PM
i am a stay at home mommy of the best baby in the world. i love God, my husband and my son, America, and freedom. i like to read, work out, and shoot guns.
let's leave the union behind! You wrote: "It doesn't start in the home, nor with the student. It starts with the attitude of the educational system towards the student. And that will need a complete overhaul." You're right: get rid of the no-good teachers' Union, who work only for the teachers and don't give a crap about the kids, and we'll see improvement! by
shielah jones (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 25 comments)
on Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 12:57:17 PM
Cam Salisbury is a an epidemiologist living in Jacksonville.
What short sighted comments. Do you all remember when there was no drop out scandal? Who do you think was responsible for that? Do you think the educational system and teachers have changed so much that it is now responsible for massive dropout rates and inadequate education of those students who stay? Well, there are poor teachers, often located in minority areas where parents don't pay attention. I can tell you that my kids got a decent education - in Georgia! - because we and other parents in my relatively affluent area made sure they did and that included monitoring teachers. These days, as a substitute teacher, I see daily what happens in a variety of classrooms. I'm impressed, most days, with the care and hard work of teachers, and with the insurmountable odds they face. I've learned that no one can force a child to be educated if they don't want an education. And why would a child decide to drop out while occupying a public school desk? Because they don't value education, an attitude that comes from home and neighborhood. In the Atlanta area, three teachers in various parts of suburbia have been physically assaulted by unhappy parents in league with their underachieving kids in the past year, and injured seriously enough to be a medical emergency. I've learned that the legions of non-or poor-English-speaking children, who occupy and overwhelm many classrooms, are an incredible drain on the teacher, the classroom, and other students who are educationally shortchanged while the teacher tries to explain concepts to the linguistically lost. Each and every marginal English speaking child in the classroom is in a taxpayer financed ESOL class. Those classes should be studied to find out if they make any difference or if we can just save the money, which is my guess. The real drop out rate that you folks should be concerned with is among teachers. After you finish blaming them for your faililngs with your kids, after you drive them out of the profession with your myopia and your demands, who will teach them? You? www.opedinfo.com by
Cameron Salisbury (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 14 comments)
on Friday, May 9, 2008 at 9:32:09 AM
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