A Few Good Books

I've just finished two books dealing with education and I'm about two-thirds of the way through with another one. Even though they are all dealing with education, they don't all address the same topics, but at the same time, they do, which is how to make the system better. 

Walden on Wheels by Ken Ilgunas is his story of graduating from college with $32,000 worth of debt, not being able to find a job in his field of study and going back to school to get a graduate degree and coming out of it all being debt free.

Reign of Error by Diane Ravitch is the book to read if you want to know what's wrong with public education and how to fix it. Really fix it. Not the way most of the politicians are proposing to or have actually started implementing.

The third book, The Art of Freedom by Earl Shorris, is the story of the development of the Clemente Course in the Humanities. Even though I haven't read the whole book yet, I feel I've got enough of it under my belt to comment on the content (Plus, I peeked at the last chapter).

Reign of Error is the book that everyone who has even a passing involvement in public education should read -  teachers, parents, school administrators, politicians (especially politicians) - everyone. The book addresses all the current problems of public education, whether real or perceived and offers not only a workable solution to the problems but explains why many of the political solutions such as merit pay, won't work as intended. It's truly a great book. It says a lot of the things I've been saying the last few years but Ravitch says it much better and has the data to back it up. Read it!

Much of the problem of educating the general populous is poverty. Maybe the politicians coming up with all the union busting rules, Rise to The Top, Common Core, etc., don't agree with that, but most everyone with a grasp on reality does. Ravitch explains the role poverty plays in education and offers solutions but Earl Shorris tackles the problem from another angle - through the humanities. How he gets to his solution is a rather long story - the book that I'm reading - but the condensed version can be found at the website for the Clemente Course. In a nutshell, poor people are poor because they don't have a grasp on the humanities. By teaching the great works of literature and philosophy to poor people, it's possible to break the cycle of poverty. Certainly it's an interesting hypothesis and in this case it's been proven by the thousands of people who've improved their lives as a result of the course. And we're talking some hard cases here - drug addicts, convicted felons - not the easiest people to educate. 

Ken Ilgunas in Walden on Wheels, on the other hand, is a middle class guy who wants more education but just doesn't want to go any deeper into debt to get it. His story is more entertainment than solution when it comes to addressing the high cost of a college education but it's a good story and a clever solution - not everyone is willing to live in a van for a couple of years to get through graduate school - but it works for him and it does create the opening for a dialogue on how to bring costs under control.

Real educational reform needs a blueprint. Diane Ravitch offers just that in The Reign of Error. Plus, rather than all the high stakes testing in math and English, we should set aside some time to incorporate the great works of literature and philosophy as suggested by the success of the Clemente Course in Humanities. And perhaps we should look at Ken Ilgunas and his outside the box but inside the van thinking of how to make it affordable. A good plan is always valuable but there is always room for creative thinking when tackling tough problems. 

The problems of public education are not going to go away anytime soon. There is currently an ad running for an Illinois politician plugging his involvement in starting charter schools and the need for merit pay for teachers. Rise to The Top and Common Core are going to be with us for years. This is the year we were supposed to get the big pay off from No Child Left Behind with everyone finally being at grade level, like that was going to happen.  And to put the icing on the cake, the state of Indiana is going to try and further destroy school unions and teacher's retirement benefits with this craziness. They've already changed the multiplier for the teachers retirement fund so those retiring after this school year will receive less money. Now they want the teachers and public employees to pay for administrative costs of the pension plan and prevent the union from discussing traditional union business under the guise of protecting the individual rights of the union members. 

Maybe if the politicians would just come out and say they're not interested in educational reform but rather, privatization, then it would make more sense to me. Get rid of the public schools through charters or private and then convert the pension fund to a 401K and then all they would have to do is set aside "X" number of dollars per student every year and they could wash their hands of all of it. If the students don't get a decent education or the teachers don't have decent working conditions, wages or retirement they can place the blame somewhere else. They're good at that. Don't forget the police and fire are going to be battling some of this as well.  

Hopefully, one of these days, those in charge will start looking for educational solutions, rather than political solutions. Maybe they'll come to accept the fact that good education is expensive but the alternative is even more so. Reading a few good books would be a good place to start.