Since I got a sense that some thought we were picking on the Teachers excessively, I want to talk about another favorite book of mine.
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (Stone, D., Patton, B., & Heen, S., 1999) Thankfully some folks wrote up summaries that I have linked to below.
Peace: Difficult Conversations Summary
Frumi: Difficult Conversations Summary
This is another incredible book if you want to work productively with people that see the world differently than you do. The area of interest for me today is the concept of "Contribution Systems". I have found this to be one of the simplest and most profound concepts. Before learning this I may have "blamed" someone or some group for some unfortunate turn of events, and from my viewpoint it was usually pretty clear who was at fault and it typically was not me.
Now when something goes wrong, I take a little time to think about all the factors and people that may have contributed to the event, and often I do carry some of the burden of responsibility. Finally, if it is important I can then attempt to apportion the blame/responsibility amongst the factors/parties. Now I usually do not do this so that I can club someone, though sometimes it may be useful when negotiating a settlement.
I typically apportion the responsibility to the factors and people so that I can learn from the incident. With this information I can change a policy, train someone, give directions differently, add some checks to my list, fix a flaw, etc, etc, etc. The truly bad mistake is one that people do not learn from, and are therefore doomed to repeat over and over.
Now if we were to create a list of contributing factors with regard to why "so many children are left behind?" What would you add to this starting list I have created?
Parents
- Irresponsible, yet they have children
- Do drugs, alcohol, smoking, etc. (ie harm child)
- Have more children than they can afford
- Poor parenting due to laziness or ignorance
- Propogating victim / entitlement mind set
- Can't speak English (Laurie)
- Parents are illiterate (Laurie)
- Working 2 or more jobs (Laurie)
- Single parent household (Laurie)
- Belief systems, behaviors and actions not aligned with "typical American culture"
- ???
Children
- Choose to behave poorly or resist learning
- Child is academically or behaviorally challenged for physical, mental or emotional reasons
- ???
Public K-12 Teacher / Union System
- Protect the time served and education based comp system
- Resist firing of poor performers
- Resist standardized curriculum
- Resist competition / limiting options and availability
- ???
Public K-12 Administration
- Protect the time served and education based comp system
- Resist firing of poor performers
- Resist accountability measures
- Resist competition / limiting options and availability
- ???
Charter and Private K-12 Administration
- Fiscal and Result Reporting scandals that damage reputation
- Cherry picking good determined students and leaving the others for the public schools to deal with
Belief Systems/Philosophy (may apply across categories)
- Soft bigotry of low expectations, expected to fail (JE)
- That universal public education is a public good AND entitlement. (JE)
- That education can not be run as a business. (JE)
- Belief that the Public School model is the only viable model. (JE)
- Education is entitlement and social service (JE / NG)
- ???
State Policies and Laws
- Inadequate funding
- Too many regulations
- Inadequate early childhood education
- ~9 mth school year (ie Summers off)
- Inadequate parent training
- Inadequate health care
- Inadequate social and nutritional systems
- Limit competition
- Too much or little accountability focus
- ???
National Policies and Laws
- Inadequate funding
- Too many regulations
- Too much or little testing and measuring
- ???
American Culture
- Too socialist - coddling lazy people
- Too capitalistic - coddling rich people
- Values Football more than Education
- Self centered with little thought of others
- Too few volunteers to help the unlucky kids
- Rich and Middle Class parents run from Poor neighborhoods and kids. Leaving high density neighborhoods of poor and unlucky students. (ie less funds, fewer volunteers, fewer good role models, more problems, etc)
- ???
Other Countries/Parties
- Foreign infiltration plot (JE)
- ???
Now this one I am going to do a little different. When you give me ideas I will add them to the list, so start brain storming... Additional sub-headings are also welcome.
