The state of our country, with regards especially to the more recent presidencies, has shown that the first thing to go when budgets are to be cut is education. Educators are forced to take lower salaries and a higher number of children per class. Our daughter is in 5th grade this year, and she is in a class with 39 other kids! If you believe that a teacher can effectively teach 40 kids simultaneously, then I'll show you a person who is getting paid per child to teach at a private school.
So what do we do instead? The answer is hard to reach at this point because technology isn't quite at a place where everyone can do their jobs from home. However, there are certainly many careers that can take place from your house. Long gone are the days where everyone must show up at a building for work, and the same is beginning to happen with children too. We just haven't reached that critical point where the majority of people can stay at home with their kids and do their jobs at the same time. That's what we'll need in order to make this transition to virtual schooling.
In the meantime, there is plenty that we can do to start kicking kids into higher gear when it comes to making good grades. For starters, we need to bring the same gamification that is apparently the next big thing into education.Why is it that schools are still the only place in life where we are not publicly being compared to the rest of the world? For all the people out there with a million Twitter followers, or a house in the Hamptons, or the Call of Duty kill champion, we still treat a child's grades like they were national classified secrets?
Kids these days don't feel the need to do well in school. I don't blame them. Every day we see a new billionaire that got to where they were by applying ZERO of what they learned from kindergarten through high school. The economy is in the dump, but we don't teach a mandatory economics class. We don't teach debt management, our computer classes are glorified typing courses, and where, for the love of God are the high school business classes? We expect kids to get out of school, where in the next 10 years they will most likely have to start their own business just to HAVE a job, and we don't teach them how to start one. It's pathetic.
Right now, my stepdaughters go to Chocachatti Elementary in Spring Hill. It's nice and all, and one of the more interesting things about the school is a thing they call "micro" in which all the kids have to apply for a "job" like creating clay sculptures or hall monitor or whatever, and they earn "micro dollars" that they can spend during the fairs that happen I think twice a year. I'll admit it's better than most public schools in that regard, but it still doesn't teach them the real thing they need to know: that they'll be fighting tooth and nail just to GET a job when they get out of high school. All of the kids are given jobs, none of them are turned down. There is no "micro unemployment". It's essentially the 80's all over again for kids.
The solution, therefore, is to create an atmosphere of competition that will force the kids into bettering themselves so that they can capture the jobs that they want. At Chocachatti, the application process is a good start, it makes the kids list why they should be picked, but it doesn't really require any previous experience or qualifications. I mean why would it? These are 1st to 5th graders after all. They don't have any.
And that is where the problem is. We need to start treating grades like we would treat a mayorship in Foursquare with badges and awards, and make them public for the school to see. Hell, make them public for the entire web to see. It's time we stop treating these kids like they are all special little snowflakes. We need to make them determined to beat out their fellow students. With the way we have it now, the kids only need to be worried about what their parents are going to think when the report cards come home. How would they do if they had to answer to the whole school? Or the whole world? Maybe they would try a little harder.
I know what many of you are going to say: that doing this will cause more kids to feel rejected or embarrassed or dumb. But that's the point, nobody got anywhere in life without a little public pressure, and kids are going to be teased anyway by other kids, it doesn't matter whether it's their grades, or their skin color, or their way with confrontation. One way or another, bullies will find ways to be bullies. We're not giving them any more ammo than they would already have.
We're at a definite crossroads here in America, and it's time we start treating our children like they really are our future. If you want to put the future into the hands of a bunch of self-reliant, responsible, ambitious Americans, then start treating them like they are. Otherwise, you'll end up with a bunch of whiny, entitled slackers. My generation, and certainly the generation that is coming after us is a good indicator of the fact that this is already happening. Let's get back to having standards again, we've got technology now for that, we don't need the government to tell us what a smart person is.
And hey, maybe if it means that your kid will end up looking like a complete dumbass, you'll spend a little more time helping him with his homework now. It can't hurt.
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