Kerry had a good point

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Kerry had a good point				November 11, 2006

Just before the election, Sen. John Kerry coughed up what he later referred to as a “botched joke” and promptly set GOP politicos atwitter at the prospect of making hay out of the senator’s foot-in-mouth malady once again. Heaven only knows what Kerry’s speech writers wanted him to say. What clearly came out was the pronouncement that our educational discards wind up stuck in Iraq. If you don’t study hard and get good grades, you might find yourself patrolling the streets of Baghdad.

Despite the political howls about Kerry demeaning those serving in the military and the subsequent inferences that military personnel are mental misfits, the fact is that the senator was not far off the mark. Let’s face it. The military is not swamped with Ph.D.s. Or those holding any advanced degree. According to August’s Department of Defense figures, of the over 1.3 million active duty personnel, 71% have a high school diploma or its equivalent. Only 11% hold bachelor’s degrees.

What we can infer from Kerry’s remarks is not that we have a military plagued by a plethora of lamebrains, but rather that those who do well in high school tend to go to college rather than into the military. This is confirmed by the General Accounting Office, which finds that enlistments are suffering because those with the intellectual and economic wherewithal to go to college are choosing that route over a trip to Iraq.

Instead of putting Kerry out to pasture for not following the script, what we should be asking is why Jamestown’s Ralph goes to college with the same diploma that Lafayette’s Henry goes to Iraq.

The fact is that our educational system has become so inflexible that it has lost sight of its mission completely. We worry more about the size of gymnasiums than we do about core curriculums that not only cannot adjust to contemporary conditions or individual needs but also leave issues of civic responsibility gasping for air.

Acceding to our one-size-fits-all graduation requirements and the monstrosities of block scheduling, we force students into educational niches involving dubious required courses that produce smatterings of knowledge leading nowhere but to multiple choice questions on SOL tests. Thanks to vicissitudes of block scheduling, course selection all too often involves more a luck of the draw than logical sequences.

While we insist that all students suffer the rigors of algebra, we abjure vocational training for those who have no interest in mathematical esoterica. Does anyone but the mathematical purist use algebra after he graduates? Hardly. But so rigid is the system that everyone must pass through the doors of x plus y and emerge mathematically sound.

The problem is that the educational bureaucracy is so entrenched that things are not likely to change soon. As a result, we shall continue to find ourselves confronted with those who adapt to narrow requirements and scurry off to college and those who wearily plod through core curriculums in which they have little interest and are destined for Iraq. Both groups graduate with the same diploma.

Yet, those who go to college and those who go to Iraq will, thanks to curricular restrictions and scheduling torpor, know very little about Iraq or any other place in the Middle East. They won’t know Arabic, they won’t know a Baathist from a Hashemite, and, like Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-1^st), they probably won’t have any idea what the difference is between a Sunni and Shiite.

But they will know algebra.

In a recent speech to educators, Bill Moyers sent a strong message to school boards and superintendents. “Go home from here and revise your core curriculums, “ he urged. “The kids in your schools have been made to feel as victims, powerless, ashamed, inferior and disenfranchised. Tell them it’s a great lie – despite the long odds they’ve been handed. They have the power to make the world over again, in their image.”

What should be emphasized here is “in their image.” Somehow schools need to revive the flexibility that will allow for individual images to be accommodated. While all images should involve the ability to read critically and communicate forcefully, they will necessarily be framed by the sociological, economic and historical context in which they develop.

Perhaps it’s time, as Moyers suggests, to review the whole concept of the core curriculum and its telos, the SOL tests. One suggestion would be to consign core curriculums to elementary and middle schools, thus giving high schools more leeway to develop tracks in the arts, sciences, business and vocational education. Perhaps then one out of every four high school students wouldn’t be dropping out, and Ralph and Henry would both be getting diplomas that are more indicative of their individual intellectual abilities.

Whatever we do, we should never allow our students to become dissociated from their civic responsibilities in and the knowledge of the contemporary world in which they must live.

Otherwise, Kerry’s remarks become much more serious than a botched joke.