The Guidance Counselor’s Tale
20th March 2013
After a year an a half as a “guidance counselor” I am convinced that the education system is not about the children (though there are educators in the system who do genuinely care about the students, but it is the only system we have to work within). In reality, American public education is a government business. It is about politics and power, educators keeping their jobs, and federal and state funding. The bottom line for schools is performance ratings tied to funding. It is about “no dollar left behind”.
The current education system has little to do with the reality of over half of my students’ lives and futures. It is a poorly run circus and my job is to hold the one-sized flaming hoop at one predetermined height and figure out a way to coax them to jump, limp or crawl through it, if they can at all. If they can’t we have to find a way to move them out so their performance doesn’t “ding” our school’s ratings. Education needs not reforming, it needs to be blown up and re-built from the ground up.
March 21st, 2013 at 03:18
In reality, American public education is a government business. It is about politics and power, educators keeping their jobs, and federal and state funding.
He seems a nice enough man from the entry but he can’t be very bright if it took him a year and a half to realize what many people who don’t work in “education” (I think the system as it exists deserves the scare quotes.) have known for years. I was going to say that he should have noticed these things when going through the system himself but per the gray hair in his profile picture the system might not have been as bad when he went to school. It was well on the path when I left in the early 80s (I have a lot more gray than he does.) but nowhere near as bad as it is today.