I am sitting in my office looking at one of my favorite quotes. The quote is attributed to Abraham Lincoln and it is simply eloquent: “My dream is of a place in time where America will once again be seen as the last, best hope on earth.” I am trying to square that statement with the recent economic news released by the Census Bureau today. Currently, 15.1% of our population is living in “poverty”, with poverty being defined as a family of four subsisting on less than $22,113.00 a year. It gets worse. The real median household income decreased by 2.3% in 2010 to $49,400.00 which is down from its high of $53,252.00 in 1999. Adjusted for inflation, a full-time working male makes the same in 2010 as he did in 1973. Ouch. Now, what does this have to with education? Good question.
First, it our moral obligation as educators to help our communities by offering an education to children that will help them lead our society in years to come. George Carlin said that the best thing that we can teach our children is to question; question why things are the way they are and ask the important “why” questions. I hope that students who are graduating from our school district or are currently in our system are asking themselves why the United States allows 46.2 million people to live in poverty. Maybe we live in a community where we do not have outward signs of distress. I posit that we would not have to scratch too far below the surface to find problems. (The report found that in the 25-34 year age group there was a marked increase in “doubling up” in households as people tried to cut costs. Additionally, when parent’s income is taken out of the equation, 45% of these people “doubling up” were living below the poverty line in 2010.) So our education system must become local and help students understand how national and global events affect local families and communities.
Second, education must become about learning; deep, meaningful learning that is centered on student interests and passions not “Common Core Standards” produced by people outside our community. This important type of learning may not be measured by a standardized test. We must focus on learning that betters society and our communities. Our community must decide what is important for students to learn, and more importantly how are students going to learn it. Is it worthwhile for our students to question why there are this many people in poverty? Better yet, will our district continue the factory model of education where we teach “batches” of kids or are we going to expand our thinking and focus on providing the best education for each individual student? After all, if we believe that individuals are important we (as a society) would be aghast at 46.2 million of our fellow citizens living in poverty.
From what I have learned about Penn-Trafford in the short time I have been here, we are up to the challenge of focusing our school system on the learning of individual students so they can leave our schools and better society.
