Sunday 15th October 2006 4:03 pm
Cathy N. Davidson: Who is really preying on our children?
If we are concerned about predators because of the irreparable harm they do our children, then let’s look at an even greater harm that comes from a thirty percent high school drop out rate.
Because of the internet, kids today can make their own movies, mod games, form complex social networks, and learn how to do just about anything on line. Customization and prosumption (producing and consuming) are the “long tail” of our era (http://www.longtail.typepad.com). But, in the classroom, it’s still pretty much “one size fits all.” New digital abilities and interests are rarely able to be mined in creative and intellectually adventurous ways when teachers have to focus on preparing students for standardized curricula and tests that “Leave No Child Behind.”
Well, we are leaving about 30% of our children behind (http://www2.edtrust.org). That is the current high school drop out rate, making the U.S. #17 in the world. We know level of education correlates with future employment, poverty, crime, violence, incarceration (http://www.prisonuniversityproject.org). If we are concerned about internet predators because of the irreparable harm they do our children, then let’s look at the far more vast harm that comes to children right now in America because of disaffection from our schools.
Even at the most affluent end of the social spectrum, kids are working so hard to earn perfect test scores that will garner them a place in a good college that education is often becoming drudgery--the antithesis of the excitement kids are finding on the internet.
So what can we do, now, to think through the new ways kids are learning to help make more vital, creative forms of education that keep kids (at all social levels) engaged and involved? How can we work together to ensure that “education” and “learning” are not opposites for today’s youth?
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Comments
Posted on October 21 2006 12:03 PM
This is a response to Roberta Dennis good comment. Yes, I have read studies that show that, in some states, where funding is geared to test scores, administrators are put in the position of encouraging students whose grades are low to drop out rather than bring down the aggregate scores, thus punishing all. What a horrible choice for an educator to have to make! No one goes into education for fame and fortune. We have to do everything we can to encourage those teachers who never stop trying to inspire those students and, as a public, we need to be active in ensuring that our teachers and our schools are supported in the best ways possible.
fine arts leader and realtor
Posted on October 17 2007 6:12 PM
Do you fill that things are getting any better since last year about the school administrators stopping their actions of encouraging kids to drop out to make their school scores higher. This is a horrible practice! could you explain how that works?
Roberta L. Dennis
Posted on October 20 2006 1:54 PM
I am in the process of starting up a fine arts center next to a middle school and high school in Roane County, Tennessee. It is not the students that want out of schools; I talk to the kids next door; they say that it is the principal and the guidance counselor telling them that they should quit school and go for a GED. That gets them off the hook for the “No Child Be Left Behind Act”. Neither the “Act” or the school’s respond in appropriate.