**Steps Toward Improving Public Education

Article appeared in the Benicia Herald June 8, 2010

My partner and I just ended the first semester of a very rewarding experience mentoring primary grade children in a Solano County elementary school. The genesis of our journey started about a year ago with our concern about the number of children, who were dropping out of, or finishing high school without an adequate education. These students who lack the necessary critical thinking, mathematical, and verbal and written communication skills to integrate themselves into adult society sometimes become tangled up in penal, welfare, and sub-economic social systems. Employers in the U.S. have to sometimes bring in better qualified employees from abroad, because we lack properly educated and qualified candidates within our country.
Approximately one year ago I contacted several schools in order to setup a schedule where we could regularly volunteer our time to mentor students who were finding difficulty in the system. I never received any call backs from any of these schools. My next step was to contact a friend who had entrée to a school board member. Our friend contacted this school board member on several occasions with no feedback. One day at our local coffee shop I struck up a conversation with a person who was a child psychologist and mentioned that my partner and I wanted to help children succeed. He was delighted with my request and said that there was a major need for support, and that he would try to make some inroads for us. About two months later I received a call from an elementary school principal asking that I talk to her about volunteering. We subsequently started mentoring in the class room on a once a week basis. This “Hands on” mentoring experience gave us a realistic view of the teaching system, and the obstacles that many children face in their learning process.
We were fortunate in being placed in a classroom with a very bright dedicated teacher, who was very passionate about the children’s learning success. My assignment was to support a classroom of approximately thirty children who were having difficulty with addition and subtraction problems. My partners challenge was to mentor children who had difficulty in reading and comprehension. A few of these children appeared to be somewhat learning disabled. Other children were from families where English was not the primary language. All of these children seemed appreciative that we were trying to help them improve scholastically, and were eager to have us help them. At the end of the semester we noticed that our mentoring made the difference between many children grasping the knowledge, as opposed to being lost in the system.
There are no simple, one size fits all solutions to improving the quality of education. “No child left behind”, is just a somewhat empty slogan. There are many stakeholders who can participate positively in the improvement of our public educational system. I see the solution as a team effort of: Improved Financial Commitment, Increased Passion and Effort, and a Caring Positive “Can Do” Attitude from the entire community. Our financial priorities are out of sync when we spend far too much money incarcerating drug offenders and non-violent criminals that could be in treatment, or performing useful community services
I want to focus on volunteerism and community participation, from many stakeholders, as an option in this article. Children from affluent families usually have the liberty of well educated parents, money available for private tutoring, and public schools that receive outside private money for art, music, and sports programs that work to improve a child’s self esteem, creativity, physical health, and passion to learn.
There are many educated, caring retired people, persons in between jobs, and upper level students who could be participating in a mentoring program. There is adage that says, “Giving is receiving”. We have found that community service volunteerism is a very rewarding use of our energy and time. With little academic support at home, learning disabilities, a lack of educational focus, and other obstacles; many of these children need the extra attention and support so that they can grasp the educational materials. This extra attention may well lay the foundation for a child’s basic knowledge skills that will later enable them to be passionate about learning, complete high school, and possibly go on to a well paying professional career.
Unfortunately it is the poor and working class children who receive the brunt of our underperforming educational system. Public systems should be a support and safety system for the masses, not a financial bread basket for the rich and powerful to gain even more wealth to detriment of general society. Unfortunately public systems can become inefficient and ridden with bureaucratic administrative costs and political influence that add such burdens as, expensive outdated school books, underperforming teachers, and labor lobbies that unnecessarily increase public costs. I will address the details of how we can financially hone our educational system in a future article.
Everything in our society is interconnected, but I sometimes hear people say, “I have no children, my children go to private school, my children are grown, or I am not interested”. I say to their statement, “What is the cost of penal incarceration, drug abuse, unemployment claims, welfare, and a society that will not be able to compete in the world economy”. A well educated society provides the greatest financial and social “Return on investment” of any money and time that we may ever invest.
We have no problem allocating our passion and financial resources for military spending, corporate subsidies, non exiting entitlement programs, and a massive criminal justice system, but we seem to sometimes lack the long term thinking to realize that an educated and informed population is the “Brick’s and Mortar” that will enable our society to survive and progress.
We look forward to volunteering this coming semester, and hopefully meeting up with some of you new volunteers.