We Ask Too Much of Schools

 The Boston Herald 

Whenever there's a headline like "World crushes U.S. kids in math, science," and headlines like this are perennials these day, there's an immediate rush to condemn public schools and public school teachers for all that our children are not.

Compared with their counterparts in 20 other countries, U.S. seniors scored fourth from the bottom in the Third International Mathematics and Science study. Only students in Cyprus and South Africa did worse. That's this month's crop of bad news in the education field.

So why are even the best American students falling behind the students of the world?

Because American public schools aren't in the business of education anymore. Oh, sure, they still educate. But they're not the specialty stores they used to be. Reading, writing and arithmetic used to be their forte. That's what was offered and that's what students got. Now public schools are like Kmart. They have a little bit for everyone, but precious little of value for anyone.

Breakfast, lunch, health care, counseling, pre-school and post-school, soccer and basketball and babysitting. Education is what happens between these things.

Public schools have picked up the slack for all of us and are suffering for trying to be all things to all people. Busing for the purpose of achieving some measure of racial integration has been a huge waste of dollars and time, dollars that would be far better spent on paper and books and paint for shabby classrooms and more teachers, not bus drivers and gasoline.

And what a waste of time busing is, precious hours that would be better used on playing on sidewalks. Children walking are better off than children sitting. Exercise and fresh air are things that children need.

Consider kindergarten for 4-year olds. Is this necessary? It wasn't when mothers stayed home with their children. But it is now, because so many mothers have to work and child-care is expensive and kindergarten is free. Public schools have become babysitters, not just educators.

Public schools have become health care providers, too. When children are sick, especially city kids, they're checked out by a school nurse. A school nurse is free. A doctor costs money.

Public schools have clinics for preteens and baby-sitters for teens with babies, and while clinics may provide needed counseling and day care assists teen mothers who wouldn't be able to attend school without them, there's precious little in the way of education going on here.

"Do you have 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens?" a teen who works part-time in a bookstore was asked last Christmas.

"Charles Dickens? Do you know if he's a new author?"

"Ash Wednesday is a day of fasting and abstinence," a college senior was told this week.

"What does abstinence mean?" she asked "That you can't have sex?"

That's what abstinence means to young people today.

Teachers are routinely blamed for all that kids don't know, because it's easy to blame teachers, but they're just doing the best they can with limited resources, limited time and children who have more problems than Sigmund Freud could have imagined.

The mindset is that teachers have it made because they have long school vacations and summers off. The reality is that teachers are underpaid and undervalued and that when they do work, they work non-stop without a lunch hour or a break, unless you consider recess and bus duty time off. Public schools aren't schools anymore. They're the number one child-care provider in this country. Hungry children are fed there. Sick ones are nursed, troubled ones counseled, poor ones clothed, neglected ones loved.

Is it any wonder that an institution that has to meet the diverse needs of a diverse group of people ranging in age from 3 to 21 excels at nothing?