Education in a Changing World - four factors influencing the nature of schools

I actually wrote this as a discussion post for my Nature of Schools class but, I liked it so much that I want to post it here.

This post is going to include my thoughts on the four factors affecting the nature of schools - political, cultural, social, and economic.

I personally feel that political pressures have the biggest affect on what is going on in schools - the two biggest topics being federal mandates and standardized testing. Through the courses I have taken thus far at the Mount, I have heard that NCLB and standardized testing are the "hot topics" in education and are basically what drive instruction. Although NCLB was designed to help all children succeed, it has basically be used (or misused) to blame teachers for poor performance. This puts added pressure on teachers to make sure that there students do well. This goes hand in hand with standardized testing because that is what is used to determine if the school is "on par" with the established standards and other schools. This causes educators to teach to the test and so students don't get that love for learning because they feel like they are always being prepped for an exam.

Culturally, schools and the nation need to find a way to bring tolerance into the classroom, dissolve any stereotypes, and make students open-minded and accepting to all people. The two factors I find the most disturbing are the fact that textbooks are riddled with stereotypes. Invisibility is a major one. How often are women and minorities highlighted in a textbook? The sad fact is that they are still very underrepresented in many texts, although that has been getting better recently, but that depends on what texts the districts adopt. A hot topic for me specifically is the stereotype of women in mathematics and the sciences, or just the perpetuation of "mathophobia." Starting in elementary school where, unfortunately, the majority of teachers are still women, teachers that do not like math make their feelings known and students pick up on it. This turns them off to math from the beginning and it gives them the perception that women are bad at math. It is also a sad fact that some questions on standardized tests are culturally biased. If there is something about an American nursury rhyme, for example, how are students raised in different cultures supposed to answer that question? There are some things that we just assume everyone will know, but not everyone does.

With regard to social influences on education, I think that the breakdown of the nuclear family is the biggest issue. Now, I realize that there are economic reasons for this - often, both parents have work today in order to make ends meet - but, the value of education has been going downhill. Students are being sent to school not being able to read or even write their full name. Parents don't check their children's homework. Many parents can't even be reached (or don't want to). There of course, is another extreme to this - the parents that are TOO involved in their children's lives. I think our culture has changed and, instead of parents working with and putting onus on their children, they are really only there to bail their children out or make excuses for them. (This is not all inclusive, of course, just a generalization.)

I think the economic issues affecting education are obvious, especially with today's economy. School funds have been cut, teachers are being let go due to these cuts, and, because of the cost of higher education, the quality of educators going into the workforce is often not at a high enough standard. There is also a big discrepancy in the resources available to students depending on how rich or poor the surrounding community and the school districts are. For example, I live and my husband works in the Wappingers school district. They have often talked about splitting the district because it is WAY too large. However, a big reason that they won't do it is because the "rich" part of town would have better resources than the "poor" part of town and so the students will not get the same quality of education.

It is important to note that I have only picked out topics that I find the most important. There are many other issues that fall under these categories which I did not mention. Also, one must realize that ALL of these factors affect each other and there really is no way to pull them apart. In order for change to occur, this block of issues needs to be considered as one and we will have to settle for only chipping off small pieces at a time.