Leon,
You don't go far enough. Leave Many Children Behind. End compulsory education at any age. Make public education a privilege, not a right based on 18th century thinking.
End in loco parentis today! It's loco. We have destroyed the American family for various and sundry significant reasons, yet put the blame for social ills on teachers.
Every educator knows the numero uno goal for a successful learning experience is to create a safe and nurturing environment. So kick the punks out and let the cops handle 'em. Results? Smaller classes, enthused teachers who no longer have to be cops. No more truant officers, Ass't Prinicipals with walkie-talkies chasing miscreants. And while you're at it, send the so-called Guidance Counselors packing too!
And while I'm on my soapbox, I've never met a teenager who can function before noon. Howzzabout we address these well-known bio-rhythms?
John Franklin
(teaching in Taiwan where my classroom safety is never an issue)
A Second-Rate Secondary Education
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Education for citizenship and the development of civic virtue are best realized by placing the joy and obligation of a serious education onto individuals during the early years of adolescence. The overwhelming and deadening uniformity of mass culture, the thoughtless appropriation of language and opinions through instruments of mass communication, and the increasing inability to distinguish truth from fiction need to be counteracted. The most powerful and egalitarian instrument for counteracting these great dangers to freedom and its voluntary abandonment through elections in mass democracies is a rigorous college-level education that instills pride, ambition and confidence in young adults that can lead them to love, protect and exercise the freedom to dissent and think independently.
Our current approach to the education of adolescents now does the exact opposite. It cultivates passivity, uniformity, imitation and the lowering of aspirations, even among those whom we deem gifted. At minimum, the economic well being of the United States is at risk if we fail to reform how we educate our young adults. What is really at stake, however, are freedom and individuality in a world defined by complexity and interdependency on a global scale—factors that dwarf the importance of liberty and each human life.
Botstein is the president of Bard College and the two Bard High School Early Colleges in the New York City public school system.
© 2008
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