Posted by
John R. LaPlante on Thursday, October 19, 2006 2:24:01 PM
Note: This is one of a series of observations from the Education Reform Summit / Annual Meeting of the State Policy Network, held in Milwaukee during the week of October 2.
The dinner speaker one night was Howard Fuller, who is a professor of education at Marquette University, and a passionate advocate for reforming education.
“People ask me,” he said, “why do I do this?”
Why? Because children are our most precious possession; and it is our responsibility to see that every one of them is educated. There’s a tribe in Africa. Their common greeting is “And how are the children?” That’s a question that we should ask every day.
The answer in America is that come children are doing well. But many others, especially those of color and from poor families, are not doing well. This is true in many areas of life, including their education. “I believe that … all of them can learn.” Today, many are not learning.
Some teachers are very good. Too often, they work well in spite of the system, not because of it. That’s because the adults who work in schools face the wrong incentives: whether or not students learn has no effect on the paychecks of the adults running the system. That’s just wrong.
We don’t have the will to change the institutions that are not serving the children well.
The question is, who are we supposed to be standing up for, the system or the kids? “I’m standing up for the kids.”