How Patronizing Can You Be?

Well, actually, very.

As teacher Brian Crosby points out in his excellent blog, Learning is Messy, parents, teachers, and children don't have a clue about what works in education. Or, that's what NBC appears to believe; its new show, Education Nation, features ideas from business people, entrepeneurs, and politicians about how to improve our schools. Not a teacher among them. And while perhaps some of the folks presented there ARE, in fact, parents, there are no children here, either.

Ouch!!!!

During my tenure at Instructor magazine, we used to have vehement discussions about Chris Whittle's Edison Project, which attempted to apply a business model to school improvement. My beef was that the board was stacked with people from publishing (my boss at the time ended up there), finance, and politics--but not one person who had taught for any length of time (or at all).

The Edison Project started out with admirable good intentions. Whittle simply wanted to make education better (and do it at a profit). No doubt everyone on board believed in this mission wholeheartedly. But it's foundered over the past ten years (though it's now publicly traded and Whittle has earned millions from it). No doubt some of these problems reference Whittle's naivete about, for instance, the stranglehold of teacher's unions. But if he'd had REAL teachers on board from day one, wouldn't he have figured that out earlier, and found creative ways to work around it?

At any rate, it's pretty obvious that teachers need a lot of input in what happens in their schools. However, I'm particularly interested in how children can have a say in the schools.

No one would argue that young kids can or should be the ultimate deciders when it comes to how they are taught. But their input should be routinely and rigorously solicited, respected, and, when it seems wise, implemented. If nothing else, I believe it would give kids a sense of ownership and power. And I can't help but feel that's half the battle.

Right now, I'm trying to figure out how this could be done and if I can help it happen.