Subject: Bored Students

Posted by Philip Abode on 12/29/2010
In Reply To:Bored Students Posted by Kathy Arizmendi on 12/29/2010

Message:

Kathy Arizmendi asked:

Does public education reflect society's values?
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I know platitudes are not values. What are the core values of our US society? When I visit school districts, I sometimes see statements pasted on walls referred to as “our core values.” Some of then goes like:

We believe in the dignity of man
All children can and will learn
Diversity is embraced
And so on

When you take some time to reflect on the enduring behavior and actions of the administrative leaders of the educational enterprise, you tend to see arbitrarism, nepotism, and politics as the dominant values. Then you begin to wonder why such a huge chasm between advertized values and the actuals that are derivatives of behavior and actions. Are the advertized values simply unattainable ideals, or the actuals are simply the results of a failing system? Or, maybe those enticing statements are weapons or shields that organization leaders use to protect themselves as they mediate the dialectical struggle between the bourgeois class and the proletariat class where majority of the students is destined to belong.

Rationally, if governing board really believe in the catholic values they propound, and they are the drivers of their work, one would expect these to produce a strong and clearly articulate mission for the enterprise; just as they should drive the superintendent’s articulation of his/her vision for the organization (or what is often called the local educational agency) and the strategy for creating the reality that these values represent. All in all, it would seem that money and power positions are our core values in this society and these are well reflected in public education.

In the process, our society looks more like a model of the jungle, a social jungle best suited for ecological analysis than an organism, an integrated social organism that can be increasingly understood by the physiological analysis.

Philip