Bird Droppings July 30, 2025
Why do we have public education? To educate all our Children.

For all teachers, over the next few weeks, a new school year. Perhaps today is a day of action. Stand up for what you believe in. I read an article that references children as others yesterday. The way a profiteer looks at children is as entities, simply others, consumers, and I have seen the world capital used in state documents as well. In a short note yesterday, I wrote sarcastically that I was about to retire and considering homeschooling my grandchildren over the craziness in education brought about by corporate profiteers. However, I chose to fight this insanity in any way I can. We, as teachers, need to stand up. First, be a great teacher, not just an average teacher. The difference between a teacher and a great teacher to kids is amazing. When kids engage in a class, they learn.

“Instead of seeing these children for their blessings, we are measuring them only by the standard of whether they will be future deficits or assets for our nation’s competitive needs.” Jonathan Kozol

On the front page of our main local paper recently, several articles all related to education and all discussing the impact of cuts to funding and how we are now adding to costs through constantly increased evaluations, but not providing funds. Of course, the added costs of social distancing and COVID-19 are still floating around and combined in there. One is based on a popular scholarship program funded through Georgia State Lottery funds, which the scholarship committee is chaired by a Representative who opposed the lottery to begin with, back in the How ironic is that. More ironic is that this representative just resigned amid investigations into his former employer. Our governor, who hit the ground running with education in his sights for funding cuts, and in the same article proposed cutting corporate taxes. Somewhere in this ridiculous thinking, logic seems lost.

As I read the article, it is interesting how the arguments of college tuition rising and the costs of education increasing for college students seemed to be, in a way, misrepresented. The state cut funding to state colleges over the past eight years, which forced state colleges to raise tuition, which led to increases in Hope scholarship funding, which was set up to cover the cost of tuition for state colleges. Funny, I recall a similar pattern in Florida, where the lottery was billed as a saving grace to education in the beginning, and as the years went on, state funding to education was cut, and eventually lottery funding was cut, and many fantastic educational programs once lauded nationwide were gone.

While a staunch supporter of public education, there are times when I raise the question, should we even have it? Why not be a nation of an educated elite and a subservient, uneducated mass who can then run the industrial complex, which we no longer have, and work at minimum wage in what service industry jobs are available? So quickly we forget there is little industry left in US, Wal-Mart and Amazon are the leading employers in the nation, so everyone can now work in service and retail, taking care of the educated elite. I am being caustic about our educational situation and so many other attitudes towards it. I believe in the public education system in the US. It might need some tweaking, but it has produced many great individuals, and it is still one of the greatest in the world, contrary to popular thinking and test results. We are still the only country with mandatory and free education for ALL children.

“Many of the productivity and numbers specialists who have rigidified and codified school policy in recent years do not seem to recognize much preexisting value in the young mentalities of children and children of the poor. Few of these people seem to be acquainted closely with the lives of children and, to be blunt as possible about this, many would be dreadful teachers because, in my own experience at least, they tend to be rather grim-natured people who do not have lovable or interesting personalities and, frankly would not be much fun for kids to be with.” Jonathan Kozol, Letters to a Young Teacher

I think where I am having difficulty is we so often grasp at very thin straws and the loudest, brightest new idea that comes down the pike, at least this is how it seems in education. Talk to any teacher with experience, and they will joke about the cycles in education. We have a new math curriculum in Georgia that is wreaking havoc on students. One of the previous texts we were using had no explanations in it, only problems. So, when a student goes home to do homework, say fifty problems, and if the student does not know how to do the problems and asks a parent, unless the parent knows how, there is no way to help the student.

“I am more and more convinced that we in the schooling game have no idea what real learning is about. It is no wonder that we embrace every so-called new idea that comes down the pike, and yet nothing changes. We are the proverbial dog chasing its tail.” Dr. Grant Bennett

I thank Dr. Bennett, a former professor and friend, again for a morning quote that I could use. I started on an idea the other day as I finished up my Bird Dropping about perhaps looking at the bottom end of the spectrum rather than always looking at the top in education. How do we help those who always seem to fail or not succeed in school? Within our school, we have added graduation coaches and other supplemental staff to work with high-risk students. But still, we are working to attain a goal based on the best students and not on potential or rationale that has mired this or that student at the bottom end of the educational barrel. We never look at the bottom outliers of the bell-shaped curve.

“I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.” John F. Kennedy

I think there are issues with semantics and understanding as to what we deem success in education or politics, battle, or the gaining and or lack of wealth. At our state level, we continue to talk about raising the bar even though many are still failing. Raising the bar does nothing to improve those who cannot attain the bar to begin with, let alone those who will self-defeat as standards and challenges get more strenuous. So often, the test scores of various countries are compared, and we are somewhere not near the top, and politicians want to be at the top.

A point made in an extensive article yesterday was that in international testing, poverty is not considered. When you equate poverty into the mix and separate scores, the USA is on top in every category. Take out children in poverty from test scores, and the USA is on top. Look at comparable countries with similar poverty, and the USA education is the highest scoring. We are being successful when you look at test scores in light of what and who are being tested.

In many countries of the industrialized world, education is number one, and somewhere around twelve years of age, in those countries’ children are going into trades, and those who are going into secondary education part ways. Effectively, we are testing all children in the US while many other countries are only testing those who are going into college. I had a friend who taught in Korea for a year in an exchange program. She commented that Korean children planned on three hours of homework each night. There was no time for TV or video games or phone calls and texting; it was serious and all about education.

“We are the children of this beautiful planet that we have seen photographed from the moon. We were not delivered into it by some god but have come forth from it. And the earth, together with the sun, this light around which it flies like a moth, came forth from a nebula… and that nebula, in turn, from space. So we are the mind, ultimately, of space, each in his way at one with all….and with no horizons…” Joseph Campbell

Over the past fifteen years, I have spent a few mornings in other states attending and participating in the weddings of our children and the births of grandchildren. I am still a bit tired from the driving and nonstop pace of the past few years. I went looking for quotes to use today and found this statement by Campbell. As I thought of Dr. Bennett’s words and those of Jonathan Kozol, it seemed to filter through Campbell’s thought. Education is not a static, closed-ended entity, but vast and limitless, and individually unique to each person and student.

“Life’s a journey, not a destination,” Steven Tyler, Amazing

For several years, I have used this simple quote by Steven Tyler of Aerosmith fame. The song it comes from is one of addiction and pain, and in many ways, this is Steven Tyler’s journey back from addiction. I keep thinking about education and our continued effort to get to the destination without the journey. It is always simply a quick fix.

“You have to learn to crawl before you learn to walk,” Steven Tyler.

Who would have thought Steven Tyler took Human Development? Sort of reminds me of Piaget, and I have always been a big fan of human development, with each aspect of our lives passing through stages, one stage after the other. I keep thinking back to my original thought of education, and whether we should even have public education. Many people want education to be clean and neat, all children learn the same, and no child will be left behind, yet each child is unique, and problems arise. Publishers cannot cost-effectively produce books for each student’s needs, and curriculum people cannot provide the multiple disseminations of a subject in a way that teachers can efficiently teach.

We coined a great word in education diversification. In classes, we are to diversify and teach to every level of student. Technically, that is nearly thirty different levels if we have thirty kids in class. I was pondering a program we have for mentally impaired students, entitled The Georgia Alternative Assessment. The State standards are taken, and tasks that sort of meet that standard are employed to evaluate a student’s capabilities in meeting that standard. So, in effect, a student on GAA might have two standards to have tasks applied to in biology, and is checked at various points during the year to see if there is progression, and a portfolio is compiled and then graded. Several million dollars are spent evaluating these portfolios, and then if the standards are accepted by the evaluator student can receive a high school diploma. Sadly, a student who does not meet MI qualifications has to meet the same standards as a college track student. Quite a bit of differentiation, I would say, and having been involved in GAA formatting, rather ridiculous.

“We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.” Dag Hammarskjold

Sent as a delegate to the United Nations in 1949, he was elected Secretary of the UN in 1951 by a near-unanimous vote. He presided over the UN in its early years and many world tribulations. During his time in office, we had the founding of Israel, the Korean War, and the independence of countries worldwide, along with the spread of communism in Europe. As I read Hammarskjöld’s words this morning, I found this as well.

“Tomorrow we shall meet, Death and I, and he shall thrust his sword into one who is wide awake.” Dag Hammarskjöld

He lived each step on his journey to the fullest, and it was these words that he wrote as a young man that embellish his tombstone.

“No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our guidance.” Henry Miller

So often in life, we come to a place where we walk across the field, and we follow the edge of the field safely. Some will choose to go the shortest distance between two lines and walk abruptly across, never looking at the newly planted field and seedlings sprouting, leaving trampled crops beneath their feet. Others fearful of being in the open choose immediately to walk the edge, staying close to the woods for safety. It is a choice, and we make them daily. The direction of your journey is based on your choices each day.

“It’s not what’s happening to you now or what has happened in your past that determines who you become. Rather, it’s your decisions about what to focus on, what things mean to you, and what you’re going to do about them that will determine your ultimate destiny.” Anthony Robbins

“Nature is at work… Character and destiny are her handiwork. She gives us love and hate, jealousy and reverence. All that is ours is the power to choose which impulse we shall follow.” David Seabury

As a teacher and learner, I travel the pathway, always looking, trying to see all I can in my travels. I am constantly reading on how to improve my own teaching and that of others. I am always trying to understand who and what I see and why. I try to instill that curiosity in my students as they travel their journeys, and for me, it is always about the journey.

“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

I will have to continue another day, looking further at what we should have in public education. Please, my friends, keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts, and always give thanks.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,
Mitakuye Oyasin
(We are all related)
docbird