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In a recent essay, columnist George Will provides a perfect example of how paternalism in education can actually be a positive development. Conservatives usually reject the idea of the state becoming our parent—telling us what to do, when to do it and meeting our perceived needs. But Will’s example is one which views paternalism differently— through a different lens, namely education. He focuses on the American Indian Public Charter School (AIPCS) in Oakland, California. It is led by Ben Chavis, who runs the school in a rather uncompromising manner. Let me explain.
Ben Chavis is a remarkable individual. A Native-American (from the Lumbee tribe) born in North Carolina, Chavis earned his PhD from the University of Arizona and made a fortune in real estate. He then made the decision to try and influence the development of the next generation of leaders, especially those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. For that reason, he became the head of the AIPCS in Oakland. Because Charter schools are not unionized, he was able to remove the poor teachers and develop his faculty. [Parenthetically, David Whitman’s book on inner–city schools (Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism) reports that “in Chicago from 2003 through 2006, just three of every 1,000 teachers received an ‘unsatisfactory’ rating in annual evaluations; of 87 ‘failing schools’—with below-average and declining test scores—67 had no teachers rated unsatisfactory; in all of Chicago, just nine teachers received more than one unsatisfactory rating, and none of them was dismissed.] Chavis hired his faculty from Harvard, Dartmouth, Oberlin, Columbia, Berkeley, Brown and Wesleyan. Chavis perceptively comments that “Everyone says we should ‘preserve our culture.’ There is a lot of our culture we should wipe out.” At AIPCS there is a strong and relentless emphasis on self-discipline and cooperativeness. Will reports that at AIPCS, “students are taught to sit properly—no slumping—and keep their eyes on the teacher. No makeup, no jewelry, no electronic devices. AIPCS’s pupils take just 20 minutes for lunch and are with the same teacher in the same classroom all day. Rotating would consume at least 10 minutes, seven times a day. Seventy minutes a day in AIPCS’s extra-long 196-day school year would be a lot of lost instruction. The school does not close for Columbus Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day or Cesar Chavez Day. Every student takes four pre-AP (Advanced Placement) classes. There are three hours of homework a night, three weeks of summer math instruction. Seventh-graders take the SAT. College is assumed.”
Chavis sees AIPCS as a school that completely envelops the student, one that combats the culture of poverty and the “street.” Chavez and AIPCS are showing the educational system of the US something it needs to see. “We know how to close the achievement gap that often separates minorities from whites before kindergarten and widens through high school. A growing cohort of people possess the pedagogic skills to make ‘no excuses’ schools flourish.”
Why are we not embracing this kind of education, which so obviously works and is powerfully changing the lives of children locked in the cycle of welfare, poverty and underachievement? There are powerful factions that do not want to embrace the obvious. Will comments that “among them are education schools with their romantic progressivism—teachers should be mere ‘enablers’ of group learning; self-esteem is a prerequisite for accomplishment, not a consequence thereof. Other opponents are the teachers unions and their handmaiden, the Democratic Party. Today’s liberals favor paternalism—you cannot eat trans fats; you must buy health insurance—for everyone except children.”
It is an amazing situation, is it not? We know how to do education better. AIPCS in Oakland, California, and several others that Whitman mentions in his book, are showing the US how to do it. If we truly want to combat poverty and break the cycle of welfare children, Charter schools like AIPCS are pointing the way. Instead, the incredibly powerful teacher unions like the NEA and the AFT are lobbying the Democratic majority Congress and Barack Obama to prevent that from occurring. And do you know who is really suffering because of this short-sightedness and this pervasive selfishness? The children are. I repeat: We know how to fix this problem. We know what kind of education children need. Discipline, accountability, focus and passionate teachers who care will successfully challenge the hopeless, enslaved cycle in which so many of these kids are trapped. Charter schools point the way! But the narrow-minded, selfish factions that control public education are saying no to the obvious. May God have mercy on us as a nation. We have spent trillions of dollars on public education and we are graduating (if they ever graduate) students who cannot read or write. That is not only a tragedy; it is an ethical wrong. We as a nation should be ashamed of ourselves. We know how to fix the problem but do not have the leaders or the temerity to go ahead and fix it. History will not look kindly on our nation for failing our children so miserably!
See George Will in the Washington Post (21 August 2008). |
