IGNORANCE IS BLISS?
By: Ilona Middleton
Date: May 17, 2005
I have never been ashamed of this country, but I have been ashamed of some of the leaders of the country, local, state, and national, and what they’ve done under the guise of democracy, particularly in the area of human rights. In this, many of our government leaders and their followers have let us, and the world, down.
Education, a basic human right and a necessity in order to sustain a good democratic institution, true to the philosophy of Democracy, is one of the areas going begging in our country. It's been that way for quite some time. Thus, we are reaping the whirlwind of democratic destruction.
Let’s look at the facts. According to a United Nations report and the BBC news; out of the 22 richest countries in the world, the United States ranks dead last in the amount of money spent on education. If it makes you feel any better, we are tied with Austria. To add insult to injury, girls are still discriminated against, educationally, many unable to go to school and/or short-changed across the board in dollars spent on education by gender.
Here are more facts to make you feel just dandy; there is a distinct correlation between literary reading, or reading in general, and democracy. In a recent study, it was reported that, within a ten-year period, there was a major decline in the amount of people in this country, between 18 and 75 years of age, reading literature. The major decline in the percent of those reading occurred toward the end of the ten-year study. The decline was more severe in the male population and more severe in the 18-24 age level.
So, you ask, what does this have to do with democracy? Simple; reading stimulates the brain. It makes you think. It makes you think critically and evaluate not only what you read, but what you see and the choices you make in your life. Those who read have a tendency to make judgments based on research and by utilizing a variety of sources.
More importantly, the people who are readers are the ones most involved with their community and most involved in maintaining a truly “democratic” society, in all its aspects. They tend to be pro-children, pro-education, and pro-humanity. They have a tendency to expand boundaries, not set limits.
It appears that the less you read, and understand what you’re reading, the more you can be taken advantage of, the more you can be controlled, and the more you might make incorrect judgment calls. It’s simply that you’ve not been taught to find information, analyze it, compare it with conflicting points of view, and make “logical, informed, and critically valid” conclusions or decisions. This is the key; this is the core of maintaining a democracy. It doesn’t work without it.
If you haven’t been taught to do this, if you haven’t practiced this kind of logical progression of thought, you are at a disadvantage, your community is at a disadvantage, your country is at a disadvantage and it puts your, no, our children and their future in jeopardy.
So, how do we turn this around, particularly in the Buffalo educational system? Let’s look at what educators have found works best:
• The smaller the class size, the more students learn. This is imperative for success!
• The wider the variety of subjects offered, the more students learn. “Back to Basics” and “Teaching to Test” do not develop critical thinkers or expert readers.
• Adapting teaching and curriculum to accommodate students’ learning stages and styles, produces greater learning outcomes, for instance; we are better equipped to learn languages at an early age and, yet, schools offer these subjects, if at all, to students much later in their educational career.
• “Holistic” learning/teaching strategies in which the student is physically and mentally involved produces greater and more effective learning.
I’ve named some of the most effective ways to successfully educate students, all involving reading as the key but in tandem with other skills.
There are certainly many more successful learning concepts but let’s now turn to the Buffalo issue and how we can affect some of these changes. It won’t be easy.
First and foremost, we, as citizens, must stop complaining about how much money goes to education and to teachers’ salaries. In a country that spends the least on education of all the highly “industrialized” nations, we better get our priorities straight right now. That includes our government’s priorities, local, state and federal.
Ok, here’s a list we can work on:
• Demand that the State and Federal government reconsider its priorities and put much more of our tax dollars into education. Right now, Pataki is sitting on a multi- million dollar grant to the Buffalo schools to rebuild their infra-structure. He’s been sitting on it for quite some time.
• Insist on a comprehensive and revolutionary strategic educational plan with “outcomes assessment tools” built in. Insist that they, not only build or renovate schools, but create curriculum and teaching delivery systems based on successful educational concepts. I’d like to see a focus group comprised of, for instance, Buffalo school teachers and students, college teachers, educational/learning specialists, anthropologists, parents, etc.
• Really do some research into the background of people running for the School Board or considered for hire as administrators. Try to support those enlightened critical thinkers (people who base their decisions on research and reasoning and are leaders in progressive education).
• Raise the bar for hiring teachers. Hire only the best and the brightest and offer higher salaries, equal to, or higher than, the best suburban schools. For those who would balk at this, and there are many, I say there is too much at stake. The status quo of undervaluing education and the professionals who deliver it must end if we are to succeed as a democratic nation. Besides, you try teaching in a classroom for a day. That will change your mind!
• Insure that the plan cuts the number of students in each class in half.
If we can make these things happen, we will have lived up to the promise of democracy. Want another benefit? Watch the families flock back to Buffalo because of its schools.
Ilona Middleton, a librarian at Medaille College, resides in Silver Creek, New York
© Ilona Middleton, 2005.
The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not represent those of the WNY Coalition for Progress.
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