Education is one of the most controversial social issues of our time. From the value-added debate happening in Los Angeles, the teacher assessment war happening across the nation in places such as Rhode Island and D.C., to the battle over school territory–public, charter and private–it appears as if education is in a state of civil war.
Last week, MAT students attended a screening of the film The Lottery, a documentary on the opening up of a charter school in Harlem, New York and four families vying for places for their children in the new school. The film captures the real-life drama and frustration that parents face in trying to give their children an adequate education.
All of the children are kindergarten age and their habits and adorable one-liners are a far throw from their parents fears. The children spend most of their time playing while the parents spend most of the film crying, wringing their hands or lamenting their past. These parents act as if getting their child into the new charter means life or death. And by the end of the film when the school called out the lottery winners, I started to feel the same way.
On the drive home, I was feeling a narrow hopelessness, but began to think more about the film and the intention behind it. The Lottery was not made so that its audience could feel sorry for the people on the screen; it was made to rally a cry for real social reform. It was not made to encourage us to abandon our public schools; it was made to get us to transform them. Parents should not have to put all of their hope into randomly opened slots of chance. They should not have to bank on a school that skirts the crippling bureaucracy of our public school system.
The Need for Reform
Education is a multi-layered living organism. It cannot be kept in chains for the comfort of its captors–unions, politicians and other assorted bureaucrats. This must not be the way it is: education must break free. I think charter schools may be instrumental in bringing freedom to the system along with new assessments of teachers that test the health of our schools. And, of course, new recruits who are prepared to meet the ever growing need of eager minds; the world needs great teachers.
But this problem is not going to be solved by those innovators only willing to make pit stops on the road to equal education. The solution is going to come from mapmakers rather than treasure hunters; initiatives that extend beyond short-term solutions and focus more on truly transforming traditional models of education. In thinking about for-profit universities, online education, and charter schools, I believe that these are just one of many stops or initiatives along the road to reform.
One of the points made in the film is the fact that private prison developers estimate how many spaces they’ll need based on how many African-American boys have dropped out of fifth grade. Schools must not be associated with prisons–in form, philosophy or attendance. We need to stop thinking of education as something that exists in a silo, but rather a system that extends well beyond classrooms and impacts us as asociety.
A Different Mindset
We must no longer compete against one another for limited spaces in prestigious ivory towers; we must collaborate together to build laboratories that encourage creation. We must no longer view teaching and administrative positions as a way to pay the bills and sustain a comfortable lifestyle; we must celebrate educators for the sacrifices they make to inspire and teach our children. We must not allow unions to wield tenure like spiked clubs to secure safety for a select group of people; we must make unions negotiate for the good of the whole through our own participation in this democracy. We must not label students as “low-income” or “at risk” without reserving a right to believe in them; we must expect great instruction from our teachers in the same way that we expect great learning from our students–against all odds. We can no longer segregate ourselves in our schools and our society and pretend that the way we treat others doesn’t matter; we must ask ourselves how to collaborate, support and uplift not only our own children, but the children of our neighbors as well.
And, practically, what does all of this mean? It means trying something new. Don’t think of The Lottery as a foreign film that doesn’t relate to your life. Think of The Lottery as an explanation for why our country is struggling. Stop asking yourself what you deserve; what works best for you and your children, and start asking yourself what it is you have to give. There are more people hoping to win the lottery than people running it. Is that what quality education really means to us? Something left up to chance?
Education doesn’t have to be this way! Education doesn’t only happen in a physical classroom–that’s being proven by the MAT@USC program. Start thinking about education as a state of mind rather than a political problem. What do you have to learn today? And what do you have to teach?
If you’d like to know about MAT@USC and our Masters in Education program, contact our Admissions office at 888.MAT.1USC or email us at matadmit@usc.edu.
