I’ve been gradually reading back over my old journals to stoke my increasingly fading memory and in my journal that covered the month of July in 1986, came across that period of time when Mom and Dad went to visit Dad’s remaining family in Wicomico Church, Virginia and, we (Lora, Maya, Eli, and I ) went down to pick him up.
During the time that he stayed with us, Dad told me bits about his time growing up and this is one of the paragraphs I have recorded in my journal:
"My dad said that he started his schooling at 8 and was placed in second grade. The way schooling worked (it was all mixed grades in one building)) was that at the end of each year you took a test to see if you passed to the next grade. If you didn’t you stayed in the grade that you were in. Dad said there were grown men 16-18 years old in the sixth grade. Most boys only went to school in winter and very few graduated. There were no compulsory attendance laws, so whenever there was work to be done, school stopped."
It is interesting to think about how different the American education system from that time and in some ways you it is the same. Take our “No child Left Behind” policy in which the only thing that counted. Just this weekend there was a cartoon in the Philadelphia Inquirer where a young couple was pushing a stroller up to a school and the cartoon showed the weeks class schedule: Monday – testing; Tuesday – testing; Wednesday – testing; Thursday – testing; Friday – testing. The cartoon said, “We were going to try to send him to school in the city, but I think we’ve hit a roadblock.” I can still remember teaching in Georgia and having a 16 year old in the seventh grade who could have passed for a man in any bar or college campus. I guess we haven’t come all that far from the day as when Dad was in school. The results back then that out of eght kids in the family, my Dad, his younger brother Colvin, and his sister Elizabeth were the only ones that graduated from high school
During the time that he stayed with us, Dad told me bits about his time growing up and this is one of the paragraphs I have recorded in my journal:
"My dad said that he started his schooling at 8 and was placed in second grade. The way schooling worked (it was all mixed grades in one building)) was that at the end of each year you took a test to see if you passed to the next grade. If you didn’t you stayed in the grade that you were in. Dad said there were grown men 16-18 years old in the sixth grade. Most boys only went to school in winter and very few graduated. There were no compulsory attendance laws, so whenever there was work to be done, school stopped."
It is interesting to think about how different the American education system from that time and in some ways you it is the same. Take our “No child Left Behind” policy in which the only thing that counted. Just this weekend there was a cartoon in the Philadelphia Inquirer where a young couple was pushing a stroller up to a school and the cartoon showed the weeks class schedule: Monday – testing; Tuesday – testing; Wednesday – testing; Thursday – testing; Friday – testing. The cartoon said, “We were going to try to send him to school in the city, but I think we’ve hit a roadblock.” I can still remember teaching in Georgia and having a 16 year old in the seventh grade who could have passed for a man in any bar or college campus. I guess we haven’t come all that far from the day as when Dad was in school. The results back then that out of eght kids in the family, my Dad, his younger brother Colvin, and his sister Elizabeth were the only ones that graduated from high school
2 comments:
The challenges to education are staggering. No longer do we have one room school houses, but trillions of dollars annually are spent in the education system throughout the country and we seem to be failing.
In the poorer communities Public Schools it seems have become institutions where children are sent off to to be raised. Many get their meals at the schools, Stay for after school child care programs until parents return home from work, if they have a job. Teaching is no longer the essential educational elements of the one room school house. Schools have moved beyond education to becoming a social parent caring for many diverse needs. Is it the fault of the teachers that students fail? I don't believe so, most teachers are committed caring individuals who care deeply about their students and put in extra time trying to help them. but the system is broken, complicated and we need a fresh approach along with a social and personal commitment from all parent to education for it to be successful.
Ed, in the current economy with the growing bifurcation between the "haves" and "have nots" and most families need both parents to work just to make ends meet, I think it is a good thing that the schools can provide hot meals and safe places for kids to be rather than having to hang out on streets. It is not the larger role of the schools that bothers me but the fact that "testing" and making teachers spend their efforts on getting kids to pass the test is not education. Now with the age of electronics in full force, though, its quite possible schools will once again decentralize. Should be interesting.
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