Education and Democracy
July 30th, 2006Congratulations, Congo, you just had an election! Unfortunately, a demagogue political is boycotting it, an ex-”rebel” fighter is on the ballot, and your militias still rage. However, that doesn’t take away the importance of your Democratic progress, so remember: America didn’t stop killing Indians for a hundred years, didn’t quit slavery for a hundred years, and didn’t stop tolerating miltias for a hundred years. Two lessons to be learned from that: one, progress is slow, but good; two, you should probably work harder at being peaceful, because, when your country is in shambles and your continent’s society needs leadership, it’s better to take the dove by the beak and place her on a pedastal than it is to charge the bull by the horns and shoot it when it fights back. Value Democracy and feed it its rice, and things’ll go from there.
In the LA Times today, there’s a piece about Bill Gates and his funding of education. It’s, overall, a positive look at Bill Gates’ contributions, but there’s a bit I found interesting and disagreeable.
The Gates Foundation’s plan to promote small high schools has also run into unexpected obstacles. The foundation aims to promote higher standards and closer relationships between students and teachers, and indeed, according to the foundation’s own evaluations, students in the new mini-schools have better relationships with teachers, do somewhat better in English and have better graduation rates than those in large schools. However, the same evaluations also show that students in the small schools are learning significantly less math than their peers in the big schools.
Some districts that took Gates’ money to downsize their schools are now backtracking. The Denver school district, a pioneer recipient of Gates funding, got $1 million to convert its 1,100-student Manual High School into three mini-schools in 2001. As a consequence, electives were cut back, as were advanced placement courses, foreign language courses, choir, debate and athletic teams. As college-bound students, athletes and other disgruntled pupils transferred out, enrollments at the Manual mini-schools plunged by nearly 50%, along with student achievement and the graduation rate. Denver closed the small schools this year, and Manual High School is being reconsolidated.
In light of its experiences, the Gates Foundation seems chastened and apparently has recognized that curriculum (what students are taught) and instruction (the quality of teachers) may be no less important than school size. Perhaps, with its deep expertise in technology, the foundation will think about investing in the development of innovative, interactive software to transform the teaching of mathematics and science in the nation’s classrooms, from kindergarten through grade 12. And, by establishing an endowment fund, the foundation could safeguard the future of urban Catholic schools, which have been a gateway to the middle class for so many poor and working-class children.
I think it’s foolish to say that every large school should be broken up, and that’s the only qualm I have with Gates. There’s nothing wrong with small schools, but not every school has to be to be successful. Otherwise, Bill Gates is a hero for devoting his funds to academia.