An Education Fable
Two puppies, we'll call them A and B, need to go to obedience training. Puppy A is a pure-bred designer mutt, a labradoodle. She goes to the First Class Puppy Training Academy for training.
The course is three weeks long and she finishes with flying colors. Puppy A has a brilliant future at Dog Shows across the land, maybe even a TV appearance.
Puppy B is a plain ole mutt, obtained from the city animal shelter. Puppy B is sent to the Public Puppy and Doggie Training Facility.
The course is three weeks long and she pees on the floor, does not obey any commands, and is deemed untrainable and sent back to the animal shelter for an unknown fate.
Looking at the two puppies, we make a judgement that A is just a smart dog and B is a stupid mutt. What did you expect?
But stop! Lets take a look at what happens at the First Class Puppy Training Academy. The instructors are bright, cheerful, and happy to be there. The course involves drill, positive rewards for achievement and negative reinforcement of misbehavior.
The puppies are kept engaged and respond to the positive rewards and the wagging tails prove that its a positive experience.
On the other hand, the Public Puppy and Doggie Training Facility's instructors drag
themselves in, wishing that they were somewhere else, doing something exciting, just not here with a bunch of smelly dogs.
The dogs are tolerated, since they interrupt the personal conversations and other important tasks the instructors do. The instructors feel they are just babysitters and make little or no effort to guide the puppies at all. The dogs are listless, fight amongst one another and end up being caged most of the time they are there. At the end of three weeks they are discharged -- "What a bunch of untrainable mutts we had again!"; is the comment amongst the trainers.
Now I ask you; Which puppies were smart and which puppies were just a bunch of dumb mutts? If you answered anything other than, "They are all smart"; you probably think that public education is wonderful and that there is nothing broken.
ALL children are smart. What we do with them in school makes the difference between success and failure. Public education is broken big time. We need to listen to the Jean Claudes and Michelle Rhees of this world and change to bring education out of the 18th and into the 21st century. It is not going to be cheap!
We need relevant, digital infrastructure, we need enthusiastic, eager teachers and supportive parents, business leaders and politicians to make this happen.
We can no longer rely on that nasty racist mentality that says the kids "over there" or "those kids" are less educable than "our kids", that the economically disadvantaged are necessarily less intelligent or less educable than our middle and upper class kids.
Or we could just sit on our hands and wait...
-Mike Otto,