Sent to the Bergen County Record (New Jersey)
Hat-tip: Jim Trelease
"We are likely to find that the problems of
housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will
themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.” (Martin Luther King,
1967, Final Words of Advice).
Readers
of The Record might be interesting in knowing that Christoper de Vinck's
column, "Key to student success lies in the home" (June 11) is going
viral, as they say these days. It is a
clear statement of the insanity gripping education, and points clearly to the
most important issues: Poverty and parent-child relationships.
A great
of evidence supports Mr. de Vinck's argument: Study after study confirms that
middle-class American children in well-funded schools outperform nearly every
country in the world on international tests: As de Vinck states, the problem is
not teachers, unions, or lack of technology, it is poverty. Poverty means insufficent nutrition, lack of
health care, and lack of access to books, all of which are associated with poor
school performance. It is also likely
that poverty and the stress it places on parents contributes to what Mr. de
Vinck calls "chaos in the home."
The
billions we are cheerfully spending on "rigorous" standards and
massive testing needs to be spent on protecting children from poverty and
working toward full employment at a living wage.
Stephen
Krashen
De Vinck
column:
Opinion:
Key to student success lies in the home
http://www.northjersey.com/opinion/opinion-key-to-student-success-lies-in-the-home-1.1032741
June 10, 2014
By CHRISTOPHER DE VINCK
The Bergen Record
Christopher de Vinck is the language
arts supervisor at Clifton High School in New Jersey. His 13th book is “Moments
of Grace” (Paulist Press).
LET’S CREATE a national program called
“No Child Left behind,” and flood the schools with standardized tests. Let’s
change the name and call it “Race to the Top.” Let’s put kids in uniforms.
Let’s increase the school day. Let’s pay teachers less money. Let’s pay
teachers more money. Let’s create charter schools. Let’s create schools just
for boys. Let’s create schools just for girls. Let’s have kids pray in school.
Let’s create common core standards. Let’s blame the college teacher-education
programs. Let’s blame the teachers. Let’s blame the parents. Let’s give the
governors and the business community the keys to the schools. Let’s flood the
schools with technology. Let’s call schools boring. Let’s blame the curriculum.
Don’t you see how foolish we have been?
Don’t you see that all of these initiatives are focused on the politics of
education and not education? Don’t you realize that none of these attempts has
made any difference in the education of children for the past 40 years?
Based on the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (the nation’s report card), the average reading scores for
17-year-olds today is not significantly different from the scores in 1971.
For the past 43 years our nation has
been dodging the real reasons why our system of education has been stagnant.
Stable homes
I have worked in public education for my
entire career, 38 years of tending to high school students as a teacher and as
an administrator day after day, month after month, year after year. I can say
with certitude why many students are doing poorly in school: Kids from
financially stable homes are more successful students than kids from
financially chaotic homes. Kids who come from homes with socially stable adults
stay in school and succeed, and kids who live with socially chaotic adults
don’t succeed in school and drop out at a significantly high rate.
Poor education in this country has
nothing to do with the quality of the teachers, curriculum, computers,
buildings, race, uniforms and ideology. The problems in our system of education
stem from children who are not nourished intellectually, emotionally,
physically and spiritually at home each day.
The problem in our education system is
that we are working with the ideal as to what schools should be with our
blatant, national refusal to tend to the realities of what many children’s
homes are truly like.
Children who live in chaos at home are
the very same children who look nice in uniforms, look angelic with their hands
folded in prayer and who ache inside to be loved.
Reading and
love
The children who are read to each night
are the children who succeed in school. The children who are kissed each night
with the words “I love you” whispered into their hearts are the children who
are confident. The children who wake up to eggs and juice in the morning are
the successful children with physical energy. Children who limit their exposure
to social media are the children who are dazzled with the school’s teachers and
curriculum. The children who sit at the dinner table and talk about their day
are the children who love school.
Vision of
their future
Helen Keller wrote that “knowledge is
love and light and vision.” Children gain that love at home. The school turns
the lights on in the classroom, and the teachers guide the children to the
vision of their future.
Without love at home, there is no
education.
As Plato wrote more than 2,000 years
ago, “Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the
mind.”
Education reform is not hiding in the
tests. Education reform is hiding in the home.
