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By Phil Krinkie
Whenever our friends on the left are confronted with thoughts they don’t like, their first reaction is not to engage in discussion but rather attack the person expressing a differing view.
On September 14th I was invited to address about 100 school board members and administrators brought together by Schools for Equity in Education. First let me give executive director Brad Lundell some kudos for asking me to speak and offering his membership a different view of public education. That’s what I provided the group – some out-of-the-box thinking about education.
John Fitzgerald of the progressive “think” tank Minnesota 20/20 echoed the “thinking” of the left on my remarks in a piece “thoughtfully” titled, “The Ugly Truth.”
“The contrast is stark: Progressives want to help children get the education they deserve while conservatives would throw students overboard to save a few pennies on their taxes.” In his words, I “bared the heartless, ugly truth about conservative thought.”
Unfortunately, according to Fitzgerald, the “ugly truth” boils down to trying to prove I am not a nice guy. In fact, in nothing I’ve read or heard from the left, has there been any substantive discussion of my remarks. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have gotten beyond calling my remarks “heartless and ugly” and actually addressed the points that I tried to make.
I asked why if the University of Minnesota can provide quality education with class sizes of 100-200, why can’t high schools? Of course, the left immediately extrapolated that remark into “Krinkie wants ALL school classes to be 200 kids.” You’d expect more from thoughtful educators.
Think about it. Teachers and administrators are complaining about class sizes of 40 kids. But in virtually any subject, there is introductory and factual material that can be delivered in lecture format and more difficult and subtle material that requires personal involvement of a teacher and class discussion. If you look at the data from international comparisons of student achievement, the United States has some of the smallest class sizes and some of the poorest test results.
Reducing class sizes is by far THE most expensive school reform we can engage in, and it might be worth it if it produced results. But the evidence suggests just the opposite. A Hoover Institution study actually showed a negative effect of reducing class size. International comparisons back that conclusion up. Teacher quality, not quantity is a much better predictor of student performance, and yet the education establishment fights every attempt to reward better teachers.
The bigger land mine I set off was openly discussing the failure of our current special education policies, which are too focused on “mainstreaming” kids with severe disabilities that make it nearly impossible to adequately educate them in a normal classroom setting. This hurts both the special needs child and in some situations impedes progress of other students.
Instead, shouldn’t special education be “special”—actually aimed at improving the performance of the students it is intended to help? Mainstreaming children with severe disabilities or tendencies toward disrupting the classroom setting is not improving anyone’s educational opportunities. Students, who require around the clock nursing care, should not be placed in a regular class setting.
One music teacher described to me her anguish at having to keep a severely autistic child in her classroom, despite the fact that the child was so distraught that she screamed throughout the hour. Such a policy serves nobody well; neither the autistic child who is in genuine distress, nor the other students who cannot learn music with one of their classmates screaming nonstop.
I grew up with a brother who had severe physical disabilities. Everyday, my mother and father had to make difficult decisions about his care and education based on reality and practicality – Mom and Dad were not “ugly and heartless.” They were making decisions based upon the best interests of all their children. It just didn’t make sense to pretend that my brother’s needs were no different than anyone else’s, because in fact they were.
The point of all this is that when discussing education, the left will inevitably defend a broken system before it considers what might really be best for all students. The “ugly truth” is education left would rather continue to spend more or your tax money than invest its own time in out-of-the-box thinking connected to the reality of providing quality education in the context of competing resources. |
