by Michael Andoscia

Created on: June 27, 2008

Have public schools failed us? Wow, I bristle whenever I hear this question. Whenever we have an idea of pass and fail there should be some criterion from which to make this statement. Usually this criterion is some false nostalgia about how good schools used to be, or they are categorical errors based on how we think students in other countries are doing in comparison. I hear a lot of comments about "when I was in school..." "We had to think when I was in school." Yet if you read the journals from when "you were in school," the same criticisms existed as are offered today.

So here it is. What do we want schools to do? Now as an educator and a parent, my answer to that question is, to help children maximize their skilled and/or academic potential. Now that might be a radical liberal idea, and thus is ignored or de-legitimized as radical balderdash. The standard acceptable response is that we want schools to prepare kids for success as adults.

Success as adults? What does that mean? Well, the ability to earn a living.

A living? What about happiness, self fulfillment, the desire and ability to better oneself every day?

Be quite Mr. Liberal Pollyanna. All of that can come from a good living. We want all of our kids to have high quality jobs with great pay and benefits.

OK. High quality jobs with great pay and benefits. How many such jobs are out there? Well, only about twenty percent of the jobs being created in the United States right now fit such a definition. The other eighty percent of the jobs are low wage, dead end, low benefit jobs in the tertiary sector that really don't require much education.

So what happens if schools start "passing" as opposed to "failing?" What if they start doing what they are intended to do and put out students who are all qualified for the high end jobs? Well, eighty percent of those students are just going to have to find another country to live in, because there just aren't any jobs for them.

It seems to me that the public schools are doing just what they are supposed to do. Sort kids on 1:5 ratio of educated elite to tertiary sector skills. So what's the problem?

The problem is that we as parents and teachers and human beings want more for our children than the qualifications to work customer service at Wal-mart. We want schools that maximize our children's potential.

Wait! Didn't I just say that somewhere at the top of this essay?

Yet policies regarding education are based on "success" not "maximum potential" with the understanding

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