science & technology
Leadership
1) Promote and implement character education for all students. 2) Teach critical thinking skills in K-post graduate schooling. 3) Actively groom students for leadership positions who demonstrate talent and skills in that area. 4) Recognize and reward honesty, creative thinking, and integrity of leaders and potential leaders. 5) Return to the teaching of history and the patterns of success and failure we have learned from the past.
This post was submitted by Carolyn A. Stewart.
Cheaper higher ed & more career/tech ed in high school
I’ve worked as both a teacher and counselor (elementary and high school) and would advise a few things.
1) More career and technical education in middle/high schools: A large percentage of our students aren’t seeing the connection between the “core” subjects (especially math) and the world of work. In most schools, kids simply memorize enough of the material to earn a grade and pass to the next level, never truly grasping the important concepts–what a crime! Education should be exciting! Meeting kids where they’re at by speaking to their interests and tying learning into career and technical programs they might want to enter is one way to hold their attention and get them passionate about learning. The obvious side-effect is that these students are also more prepared for either the world of work or for post-secondary education after they graduate. Programs like “Project Lead the Way” and co-ops between high schools and career/tech colleges need to be an option in EVERY school!
2) A college or university education simply needs to be more affordable. A large number of highly developed nations make higher education FREE (or extremely cheap in comparison to rates in the US). They see education as an investment in their country, both because a highly educated citizen pays more taxes over their lifetime than they would had they not attended college, and because these citizens are the future innovators and creative thinkers who will push the envelope and come up with solutions to the toughest problems facing their nation. It only makes sense that every young person who is able should have the opportunity to attend college at NO or LOW cost.
3) We need to look to the highly successful school districts in our nation as a model of how to educate. I believe the DOE should actively engaged in identifying these districts and analyzing what it is that makes them successful. They should then be sharing these success stories with our state DOE’s in an attempt to see that these “best practices” are shared with other districts who have similar demographics and face similar challenges.
4) In some cases, we need to look outside our own nation to see how/why other countries are so successful at educating their citizenry. I have lived abroad and can tell you that attitudes towards educators and education in general are vastly different. In my opinion, the US is stuck in an industrial/agricultural model of education and absolutely needs to look at the systems being used by other highly developed nations in an attempt to learn from them. Our pride sometimes prevents us from doing things such as this, but the challenges facing us in educating our children are just too important for us to ignore.
This post was submitted by Nick.
