The Challenge of Education in the 21st Century

By Ken Wibecan . The American educational system is falling apart and throwing money at it, as most proposals would have it, is not going to make it better. Simply speaking, it needs to be torn apart and rebuilt to meet modern-day demands. That is not just my opinion; it is the consensus of many influential professionals who have been studying this problem for some time. . The biggest obstacle to progress is that the necessary changes are large and severe, and step on the toes of much of the current educational establishment. Redesigning the system means many jobs will be in jeopardy, most teachers will have to be retrained, and bruised egos will pile up like leaves in autumn. It will be a painful process, sort of like tearing your house down and rebuilding it from the basement up. . A partial list of possible changes includes removing the control of American education from amateurs and empowering school districts to sign contracts with companies and teachers to run the schools, change education funding from a property tax basis to state and federal funding, pay top teachers more money in exchange for reduced pension benefits, retrain or get rid of ineffective teachers, insist that all students learn a second language (which means teachers also), have year-round classes, eliminate tenure and long summer vacations, put less emphasis on testing and memorization and more emphasis on creative and innovative skills, and teach students to work in groups and think across disciplines. . Right now "kids spend much of their day as their great-grandparents once did: sitting in rows, listening to teachers lecture, scribbling notes by hand, reading from textbooks that are out of date by the time they are printed. A yawning chasm (with an emphasis on yawning) separates the world inside the schoolhouse from the world outside," says Claudia Wallis and Sonia Steptoe in "How To Bring Our Schools Out Of The 20th Century," Time magazine 12/18/2006 [highly interesting article!] . "In an age of overflowing information and proliferating media, kids need to rapidly process what's coming at them and distinguish between what's reliable and what isn't. 'It's important that students know how to manage it, interpret it, validate it and how to act on it,' says Dell executive Karen Bruett, who serves on the board of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a group of corporate and education leaders focused on upgrading American education." (ibid) . Change is threatening to a large number of people, especially when egos and jobs are involved. But for mostly selfish reasons our educational system has been permitted to fall far behind the times we live in. The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, "a bipartisan panel that included former Cabinet secretaries and governors in addition to federal and state officials and business and civic leaders.....warned that unless improvements are made in the nation's public schools and colleges by 2021, a large number of jobs would be lost to countries including India and China, where workers are better educated," V. Dion Haynes, Washington Post 12/15/06. . A few months ago I saw a television discussion of education around the world. One of the biggest differences between the attitudes of European and American students was that Europeans thought school was fun--and this despite having a more difficult curriculum than Americans. . It won't be easy, and there will be lots of sore toes and former "teachers" looking for different jobs. But there are many excellent educators around, and innovative changes in school curriculums, plus a chance to use their creative muscles will permit them to shine—and earn more money to boot. Schools that fail in their mission—both private and public--will disappear, and the good ones will flourish. There are no viable alternatives. Either we make the necessary changes or we fall behind the rest of the world and complain about why Americans have so much trouble finding good jobs. Stay on top of what's going on around you. From Hip Hop to world and national news--stay informed about those things that impact both the Black community and the entire world, as interpreted by Dr. Boyce Watkins, and some of the nation's top Black writers. Stay in touch with Your Black World www.yourblackworld.com/. It's our piece of the net.