Change We Should Believe In
It's of course one of those things that gets to me, that although I support Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States of America, I will not be able to vote for him in November. That's because I'm (according to various authorities) a citizen of the European Union, for one.
But I'm also a citizen of the world, and a teacher. And as a teacher, I find myself reflecting a lot on what the big nations get up to when they publicly take up positions on education. Senator Obama's position on education, as on November 2007, is something that I can believe in: a well-rounded education, proper support for teachers and schools, accountability of teachers, accountability to the future of all our children, specifics which he occasionally elaborates on in other speeches. He has obviously thought about what educational outcomes ought to be, not just the first-stage and second-stage arguments about what education is and how it should be carried out.
Even if, as some cynics charge, this is all a pipe-dream, it is a good thing to dream about. And it is certainly a better thing to work towards in the long term. I wish the Senator all the best, especially in the face of cynicism masquerading as experiential wisdom. I can just imagine what some of my previous superiors in many different institutions might have said; I am fairly certain most of them are McCain types, and at least one is very much a William Jefferson Clinton person in both good and not-so-good ways.
But as my grandfather used to say, "Everybody has something good about them; it's just that for some people you have to look harder."
But I'm also a citizen of the world, and a teacher. And as a teacher, I find myself reflecting a lot on what the big nations get up to when they publicly take up positions on education. Senator Obama's position on education, as on November 2007, is something that I can believe in: a well-rounded education, proper support for teachers and schools, accountability of teachers, accountability to the future of all our children, specifics which he occasionally elaborates on in other speeches. He has obviously thought about what educational outcomes ought to be, not just the first-stage and second-stage arguments about what education is and how it should be carried out.
Even if, as some cynics charge, this is all a pipe-dream, it is a good thing to dream about. And it is certainly a better thing to work towards in the long term. I wish the Senator all the best, especially in the face of cynicism masquerading as experiential wisdom. I can just imagine what some of my previous superiors in many different institutions might have said; I am fairly certain most of them are McCain types, and at least one is very much a William Jefferson Clinton person in both good and not-so-good ways.
But as my grandfather used to say, "Everybody has something good about them; it's just that for some people you have to look harder."
etched with acid at 2:23:00 pm
2 Comments:
While I am sympathetic to Obama, and would vote for him if not for SG's dual citizenship restrictions (;-)), I remain somewhat unenthused by the US presidential elections. Even the most foresighted individual I believe, at this stage of development, cannot do much more specific than outlining several goals and plans that may not necessarily be fulfilled. For even the best President has to be assured of -- for the good reason of the Constitution -- with a supportive legislatures and state and local governments.
But future significant change I believe is not going to come from presidents, from citizen organisations. If we treat "attainable ideal governance" as the Oregon of our Oregon Trail, then we have forded many rivers already. Back then, presidents' actions had greater "marginal impact" because much of their actions involved creating institutions that have not been in place yet. Much amusement is made out of poking amusement at the supposedly simplistic knowledge of the common man (X% of citizens can't locate country Y on a map, P% thinks the Fifth Amendment guarantees your right to have a car), but that's because standards have risen faster than performance; the population is the most informed that it has been since (I daresay) the beginning of time. I mean, try asking random individuals in the Shay's Rebellion era what they thought of economic liberty?
Obama's belief in change makes him the most attractive of the candidates (well, especially now that there are only two). But the president should not be the person to solve every single social ill, or even every major social ill, and the technique used to ford past rivers on the plains is not necessarily usable to trek mountains.
Imposition of centralised federal control of all primary and secondary education, overriding state and local education policy, does seem like a tempting thing to do -- something many presidents have attempted in some form or other. Yet I also note that autonomous and charter schools seem to have the knack of prospering when they are free of government meddling.
One of the most clear-cut educational reforms I can think of is not additional educational funding (though I am not opposed to it), or badly-designed national/state standardised-testing policy, but a larger-scale transition to a school voucher system. While, I doubt most school administrators are lazy or uninspired individuals who won't have an incentive to improve if money flow is always constant, allocative efficiency would drastically improve.
Note that ironically for example, the average per-pupil spending in private/autonomous schools in the US is a much lower than in general public schools, and yet students in the first category do much better. Ah, "fallacious!" one might say -- after all, those from much more privileged backgrounds will have better chances of doing well than the underprivileged. But yet a charter school aimed at low-income/disadvantaged students performs much better with less than half the per-pupil-spending (10,000 USD / pupil / year) of a rich suburban public school district (22,000 USD / pupil / year).
This makes sense, when school administrators realise the libertarian way means that spending on ridiculously expensive "smart boards" for every classroom, things with rather low marginal utility per marginal cost ratios, or millions on implementing bad Glencoe curricula, should take a backseat to things with the most MB/MC (such as sensible non-constructivist math curricula).
Well, funding ain't always it. In bad systems, the funding goes astray. And bottom-up organisation is fine too.
*grin* your comment is longer than my post. tsk tsk.
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