The education debate Wisconsin deserves
This could be a great year for education in Wisconsin. Democrat Tony Evers, the state superintendent of public instruction, is challenging Republican incumbent Gov. Scott Walker, the self-described “education governor.” You would think the candidates would be anxious to punch it out in public over their opposing visions for kids.
But that is not happening. What we have is attack ads, complaints about Act 10, questions about the value of standardized testing. There are arguments over oversight and improving the quality of “education,” although we haven’t agreed on a definition of what education is.
Let’s look at the aims of publicly funded schooling in Wisconsin and debate what the public can have, not what the state wants to dispense.
Is the aim of education to bring about intelligence; to provide a safe space, resources and support for a child to blossom intellectually; to overcome impediments to understanding? Should all funding be from the state, so all kids have the same opportunity?
Is the aim of public education to encourage questions that challenge conventional wisdom?
Is the aim of education to equip children with the tools to function with others in society, and to embrace change; to have the capacity to expand as the state moves into an unknown technological and robotic future?
Are we getting it done? Is the investment paying off?
We have questions. We don’t just want to hear what you think. We want to have a discussion with you.
By many measures, Wisconsin’s commitment of resources to education is mediocre. The Badger State ranks 22nd in per-student expenditures, 23rd in average salary of teachers, and 18th in students enrolled per teacher, according to the National Education Association. And the outcomes are mediocre. Even if Wisconsin were No. 1 nationally, education in this country is not even in the top 10 worldwide. According to the Pew Research Center, 15-year-old students from 17 countries do significantly better in science than their U.S. counterparts; in math, kids from 35 countries do better, and students from 14 other nations can out read ours.
In 2016, the graduation rate for white students in the state was 92.7%, the third highest in the country, while the rate for black students was 64%. And graduation rates are not a measure of intelligence. In some places, preparing kids for a TV quiz show would be a better education than what they get in public schools.
Last week the Texas Board of Education voted to “streamline” social studies by removing Hillary Clinton and Helen Keller from the mandatory curriculum. Not long ago in Texas, 5 million students learned from their geography textbooks that the Atlantic slave trade brought “millions of workers” to plantations in the American South, and they were treated well by slaveowners who wanted to protect their investments.
Can we discuss how to prepare students for the future, in ways other than reinforcing their parents’ religious affiliation in “faith-based” private schools? Can facts be more important than beliefs?
Wisconsin makes education compulsory for children — eight hours a day, five days a week, nine months a year for 12 years. That is a significant investment by the state and by taxpayers, but also by the child. According to McKinsey Global Institute, by 2030 about 23% of current work activity hours in the United States will be automated. The demand for some jobs will decrease, some will increase, and the largest increase will be new jobs that we can’t even conceive. Will today’s students be ready?
Governor Walker and Dr. Evers: What are your ideas about creativity and intelligence? Can education prepare students for a future we cannot predict?
In Russia, Aleg Nikolaiovich Kikilo went to graduate school to study the Science of Communism with a specialization in Paraguay. But with the demise of the Communist state, Kikilo found himself having to teach the idea of the development of the world from a human, rather than economic, perspective.
“I am trying to understand this myself, but I don’t,” Kikilo confessed. The textbooks quoted “Grandfather Lenin’s” pronouncements on the virtues of scientific knowledge, math and history. He wondered whether teachers could overcome the biases of their professors and the authoritarian Soviet regimes that ruled and controlled the content of what they were taught as they attempt to teach the current students?
Only if new teachers come in, he said.
How free is our thought when we are taught what to think?
We don’t want our average test scores compared to Mississippi or Arizona. We want intelligent, creative, imaginative and free-thinking people who will benefit personally from learning.