You Can Lead A Horse To Water...

You can lead a horse to water... but you can't make 'em drink.

That saying was a common figure of speech when horses were still very much a part of everyday life.

Today, when it comes to children learning in school, a more appropriate saying would go something like this...

You can send children to school, but there's no guarantee that they will learn, for several reasons.

Those who complain that public schools aren't doing a good job of teaching students today do so from a skewed perspective of the situation. 

They are usually talking about today's schools from their experience of several decades ago, when our society lived under much different social and family circumstances.

Am I saying that there aren't those teachers who are talented to the point of truly inspiring, or motivating their students to excel? No, but as in most other professions, these exceptional ones are rare. When only one teacher is recognized for the year in an entire state, or the nation, each year, it's pretty obvious.

Today there are several key factors that influence the education process in public schools in ways that are quite different when compared to back then.

The most prominent in the equation of learning is the social economic circumstance of the parent(s). 

If the household from which the child comes is within the accepted poverty level, the odds of the child excelling are extremely poor. This is so because the parent(s) of the child themselves have had a limited education. 

However, this factor is not the only one which might impact the child's learning experience.

It is a known fact that there has been an increase in public schools of the number of students (especially at the elementary level) who come to school not having had breakfast. 

This is why most schools more recently have implemented programs which provide students of low income families free or reduced cost breakfast and lunch. Research and common sense tells us that children will not be capable of focusing on learning new concepts if they're distracted by hunger.

Another factor influencing students’ ability to learn is health. Over the past couple of decades there has been an increase in the number of students who have diabetes, asthma, attention deficit disorder (ADA/ADHD) and other conditions which have been included in the schools that simply did not exist several decades ago.

The advent and rapid development of technology has also created a huge distraction to learning. This factor is not so much an impact from school, as it is in the home. 

Video games, cell phones, and cable television have all contributed to distraction for students doing homework today - to the point where many schools no longer even assign homework, knowing students will nott do it. 

Also, teachers in most districts are no longer including homework as part of the student's grade in any subject.

And any students today at most levels of the grade spectrum don't even do the in-class assignments given by their teacher as part of the educational process. Even with the teacher emphasizing to parent(s) the fact that their child is not doing the work given them in class, most of the parents do little to nothing at home to emphasize the importance to their child about doing their best, or encourage their child to try their best.

Consequently many parent(s) are surprised, if not shocked, to learn when report cards are distributed that their child is failing and didn't perform well on many, or most, of the testing categories on the end of year assessment.

Note that I've repeatedly referred to the adult in the family unit as "parent(s)" because of another huge factor in the child's experience:  many households today lack a father. A home where only the mother is present, or a "live-in" boyfriend with little to no interest in the child's learning  sends a subtle message which can affect the child's overall attitude about men in general later in their life.

Yet, much of the nation's public schools are moving towards determining the teacher's worth to the district based on how well their students are doing! That's essentially the same as determining how effective a dentist is based on how many cavities the dentist's clientele have, or how good an auto mechanic is based on how well the cars they work on perform over their lifetime.

So, when anyone speaks in a negative manner about what public schools are doing to educate today's children, just remember... You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. In other words, if the desire by the student and the parent aren't there to apply themselves to the task of taking advantage of the opportunity before them, there's no guarantee of a stellar outcome... no matter how good a teacher a teacher is, or what the teacher does in their effort to educate the child in their care.

How can I say all this? 

A teacher I know has taught in public schools for more than 30 years at the elementary level and has been dedicated and meticulously organized, persistent in her efforts to prepare students to learn the material that has been given by the district.

She has constantly changed her curriculum to meet the trending instructional material of the year - literally exhausted herself by spending hours and hours on weekends and holidays to pore over the work her students have done every week.

What many don't realize is that disciplinary consequences have completely been taken away from teachers and given solely to the principal who follows district prescribed guidelines which often send the subtle message that there are no consequences for making socially unacceptable choices.

She is retiring this month, frustrated and disillusioned at tests that are designed such that the student is unable to understand what the directions are for a problem that uses sentence structure and vocabulary that is designed for a cognitive level of a high school or college student. 

The testing industry has created a battery of contents which are completely ignoring the research on children's cognitive development capabilities at their age, and are touting this as making education more rigorous.

Some believe that this situation is deliberately designed to make the situation worse in order to justify taking greater control of the learning process in public schools. Civics, for instance, in high school has not been taught as a required course since the early 1970s. But that's a whole other post topic.

All the while, the public is being led to believe by their school districts that the whole educational process is improving its instructional delivery system while ignoring the root causes behind its largely failing results.

Is it any mystery why many families have migrated to homeschooling, or elected to pay tuition to private or charter schools?