(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . What Would Socrates Say? A Look at America's Education Crisis [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-18 Challenging times Some years ago, when I was an adjunct professor, I taught (in English) for a year at a university in Thailand. It was an amazing and ultimately rewarding experience, both for me and my students, most of whom were Asian. Their education had usually involved being quiet unless called on after the teacher spoke, which happened rarely. In whispered voices students would regurgitate what had been said by the achan (teacher), devoid of conviction, originality, or Aha! moments., That was not my style. I called on students to interpret literature’s plots and themes, to question their classmates and me, to defend their own ideas, to think critically. Slowly I watched them light up, look up, and smile with satisfaction when I agreed with their ideas. Those were my Aha! moments, along with being told by several students that I was the reason they wanted to come to school in the morning. I think about that year now as I watch our education system crumble into something worse than second rate. It’s a system that is being destroyed by political ideologies that influence laws, curricula, teacher qualifications, and students’ futures in profoundly troubling and negative ways. Thanks to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, even the College Board recently caved to his demands. In a revised Advance Placement course curriculum in African American Studies, the Board stripped much of the subject matter from a preceding course curriculum that had upset the governor and other arch conservatives. The changes resulted in the removal of pioneering Black scholars associated with critical race theory (which is actually comprehensive American History), including Kimberlé Crenshaw and many other Black writers and scholars associated not only with critical race theory, but also subjects like Black feminism, Black Lives Matter literature, and more. In a further insult the Board also added “Black conservatism” as a suggested research topic. Interestingly, when Kimberlé Crenshaw, a professor of law at Columbia and UCLA/Los Angeles law schools, coined the term “intersectionality” 30 years ago it was a little understood concept that basically illuminated connections between issue like race, gender, class, and other socially constructed barriers. Now the word is loathed by American conservatives who see it as opening the door to placing nonwhite, non-heterosexual people at the top of a revised caste system. To understand intersectionality requires an understanding of Crenshaw’s extensive body of work. For example, in a 2017 article she explained that critical race theory emerged in the 1980s and ’90s among a group of legal scholars who were responding to what appeared to be a false consensus, i.e., that discrimination and racism in the law were irrational, and that “once the irrational distortions of bias were removed, the underlying legal and socioeconomic order would revert to a neutral, benign state of impersonally apportioned justice.” Crenshaw argued that this was a dangerous delusion. She didn’t believe racism ceased to exist in 1965 with the passage of the Civil Rights Act, or that racism was a multi-century aberration that, once corrected through legislative action, would no longer impact the law or the people who rely upon it. She also identified key issues in the continuation of inequality, including the “school to prison pipeline” for African American children. A looming and perhaps less intellectual crisis in American education is the increasingly troubling teacher shortage which is a large and growing problem. More than half of school districts across the country have already reported worrisome teacher shortages, according to the Learning Policy Institute. "We know that the single most powerful predictor of [student] achievement is the presence of very experienced teachers, especially for students of color," the president and CEO of the Institute told researchers last summer. The shortfall of teachers across the country has become so serious that it is now called a crisis, according to many state education leaders. Despite efforts to fill vacancies, the shortage persists. Further, “when indicators of teacher quality such as certification, relevant training, and experience, are taken into account, the shortage is more acute than currently estimated, with high-poverty schools suffering the most from the shortage of credentialed teachers.” Is it any wonder that the teacher shortage exists given working conditions in schools, concerns about safety and gun violence, ridiculous salaries, banned books, and overall stress elevated by state mandates and laws, disgruntled parents, and depressed students? It should come as no surprise that various states report "critical" shortages, according to the U.S. Department of Education. A survey released by the DOE last summer found that “nationwide, schools have about three unfilled teaching positions on average. More than 200,000 classrooms across the country are left without ”qualified teachers. Some of those teachers aren’t even required to have a college degree or any teacher training. In a country like ours, that is a stunning abrogation of standards, let alone common sense. How many children and older students’ lives will be compromised by the failures of a dysfunctional, politicized education system? How many of our progeny will be unable to pursue the work they aspire to for lack of qualification, whether practical or professional? How many gifted teachers will no longer be in the classrooms of America? What will become of those who require specialized education in order to be happy and productive? How will dumbed down education affect our economy, and our standing in the world? Perhaps the most vital question is how can we fix this so that students want to get up in the morning for school, and where will they experience their Aha moments? # # # Elayne Clift writes and teaches adult students. She lives in Vermont. www.elayne-clift.com [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/18/2153748/-What-Would-Socrates-Say-A-Look-at-America-s-Education-Crisis Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/