As an educator, one of the things I am constantly striving for is innovation and improvement in my classroom. As such, I attended a literacy workshop today aimed at improving reading strategies and reading skills within my room as well as within my building.
While the workshop was well done and provided me with several new and innovative ways to bring literacy into my history class, there was one thing that struck me from the opening statements of the presenter. She made the claim that because China and India are increasingly dominating us through their education, then we must not throw away any of our children. According to her we must educate all of our children in order to compete with these countries and that it requires increased literacy.
I see her point given that the population advantage China and India have means they have more HONOR students than we have students but I think there is a problem we must address in the United States. China and India and a whole host of other countries DO NOT educate all of their children to the degree that we do in this country.
We may need to address this belief and come to the conclusion that equity in education is great but if we really want to compete there will need to be division of education into those that truly want to succeed and those that choose to fail. I may lose my liberal membership over this idea but it is clear to me that the kids that fail in this current system are those that need and want to be challenged.
While the workshop was well done and provided me with several new and innovative ways to bring literacy into my history class, there was one thing that struck me from the opening statements of the presenter. She made the claim that because China and India are increasingly dominating us through their education, then we must not throw away any of our children. According to her we must educate all of our children in order to compete with these countries and that it requires increased literacy.
I see her point given that the population advantage China and India have means they have more HONOR students than we have students but I think there is a problem we must address in the United States. China and India and a whole host of other countries DO NOT educate all of their children to the degree that we do in this country.
We may need to address this belief and come to the conclusion that equity in education is great but if we really want to compete there will need to be division of education into those that truly want to succeed and those that choose to fail. I may lose my liberal membership over this idea but it is clear to me that the kids that fail in this current system are those that need and want to be challenged.
