How can the school fuse all these diverse elements so as to produce the unity essential to a democracy? . . That end can only be attained by spreading intelligence and a sense of responsibility for the social whole.
Ella Flagg Young, 1916
“Charter” schools were established in the US a decade or two ago to try out an idea – could schools free of the regulations imposed on public schools by states and localities and teachers’ associations develop better ways to use tax dollars? The idea was that parents, teachers, and other educators could be free to innovate and experiment, and perhaps discover some novel, successful approaches, unhampered by restrictions traditional public schools must deal with. Some, such as the nationwide KIPP (for Knowledge Is Power) schools started by Teach for America veterans, appear to be doing what they were intended to do. But whether they, or other charter schools, are any more successful academically than public schools appears to depend upon who is sponsoring the study. Whether all charter schools are more successful educating citizens we probably will not know for some time, but that’s my chief concern here.
A few years ago, before coming to Romania to teach, I attended a charter school fair in Chicago and met representatives of several organizations – mainly arts and ethnic culture groups – who had started charter schools. I even visited a few, including one that was highly regarded. Though I was not impressed by what I saw – unruly students, lackadaisical organization -- I tended to give them credit for taking on a challenging task, and trying to do something new.
While at the fair, I also spoke with a representative of a chain of charter schools operating in several Midwestern cities. A brief conversation with him revealed that his organization was founded and largely staffed by a group of Russian immigrants. Okay, I thought, or maybe not so okay. Here’s why.
After two years of teaching in a Romanian high school, I’ve developed a renewed sense of respect for the lessons, both academic and civic, inculcated in us by the American public school system. As the renowned Chicago educator Ella Flagg Young (1845-1918) noted, reflecting on 50 years of leading schools to accommodate themselves to the rush of immigrants, one of the school’s functions is to create unity from this diversity. And to do it not only by stressing academic performance, but by spreading “a sense of responsibility for the social whole.”
The school I teach in has competent teachers and talented students; many are dedicated to academic accomplishment and are delightful to work with. But the students’ sense of civic responsibility is negligible – they engage in few community service projects, copy each others’ work with impunity, destroy school property, and have little faith in the future of their country. They lack what Young regarded as essential – a sense of responsibility toward the society that has made their education possible.
Recently, I came upon a comment by Alexis de Tocqueville, the young French aristocrat who visited the United States in the 1830s, seeking to understand what enabled our young republic to maintain a democratic form of government. One of the essentials, he claimed, was our investment in public education. Further, it was a sort of education that aimed at a different purpose than the schools of Europe – in the U.S., schools rear the “political” man; in Europe, the “private” man.
In Romania, as I have argued in a previous blog, the schools do a good job preparing dedicated students for higher education, but they do not necessarily prepare them for their lives as responsible citizens in a democracy. In Tocqueville’s terms, they are educated for their private lives, not their political lives. Test scores are stressed – and subject to manipulation -- not extracurricular activities or service projects. Learning is theoretical, not practical; students think about the jobs they can get, not the companies they might establish or the new products or inventions they might develop.
Hence, when I read the headline of a recent article in The New York Times -- “Charter Schools Tied to Turkey Grow in Texas” -- it caught my attention. I found this disquieting, and not only for the concerns detailed in the article – school construction and school lunch contracts tend to go to firms owned by Turkish immigrants. Further, the leadership in this charter school organization – funded by U.S. tax dollars – has distressingly close ties to a religious movement in Turkey. Their students’ math and science scores may be admirable, they appear to import teachers from Turkey, claiming that they cannot find competent ones among U.S.-trained teachers.
All these concerns, well-documented in the Times’ article, are worrisome enough. But what distresses me more is whether organizations owned by Turkish (or Russian, etc.) immigrants have sufficient respect for, or understanding of, the essential function schools serve in inculcating a democratic mindset. Their countries of origin are still struggling to establish the democratic institutions that Americans have developed over the past 250 years.
American public schools are, to borrow from a well-known history of their early development, “pillars of our republic.” Might inadequate oversight of charter schools – which even their proponents admit to being a problem – be knocking some of those pillars from their foundation? Charter schools run by local parents wanting to do something different are one thing; those run by large, foreign-affiliated organizations -- whatever their intentions -- are something else. I worry that by overheated concern over test scores, and ignoring the public schools’ many other functions, we are threatening the very foundation, not only of American democracy, but of our multicultural society and its extraordinary productivity.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Saturday, June 4, 2011
BEGININGS AND RELEASES -- Comparing graduation traditions in Romania and in the United States
One of the more delightful things about living in Romania is that any occasion can be turned into a festive and flower-filled event. And graduation day is no exception. Forget robes and mortar boards, an inspiring address from a local luminary, or the celebratory distribution of diplomas. There’s none of that here, and solemnity is not on the order of business. Instead, graduates pass under an arch of flowers and perform something they have written for the occasion.
There’s no printed program either, listing the order of events and the names of all the graduates. Though Romanians are fond of distributing certificates of participation for all sorts of events, they don’t print programs (perhaps because it is seldom set until the last minute). However, as tradition governs this event, and all participants know pretty much what will happen, why waste expensive paper? (Teachers have to supply their own for making copies.)
The different words we use for graduation offer a clue to other differences. In the U.S., we often call it commencement, for the beginning of something new. In Romanian, the word for graduation is “absolvare,” which is related the English absolve and means release or exoneration – as in, you are no longer required to attend school. Today, that’s hardly the case here; most students in my high school are headed to university in the fall, even if they are not yet sure which one.
Another difference is who attends – no grandparents flown in from across the country. In fact, there were few parents in attendance, though there was an awning erected for them on the concrete soccer field, as a shield from the sun. Some younger students came to observe, or not; plus some students and teachers from the neighboring grade school watched from the other side of the fence – though their school was not dismissed until noon and graduation was at 10, Romanians are not necessarily bound by school hours if there is something more interesting to do.
The actual ceremony itself began with a delightful tradition. Each profile – roughly the equivalent of a homeroom – walks onto the soccer field under a column of long-stemmed flowers held aloft by 11th graders. Each diriginte heads his or her class accompanied by two students of the opposite sex. All are dressed somewhat alike; the diriginte for the green class wore a sea-green suit, for example. (For more information on profiles, dirigintes, and color-coding, see previous blog.) The profiles proceed, one by one, through the floral portal to their place in a large semicircle surrounding a speakers’ table, amplification equipment, and rows of chairs, formally covered in white with bright red sashes. The mayor is there, a representative parent, and the school’s director and assistant. (For the school opening ceremony in the fall, a priest from the town’s Orthodox biserica attended to offer a prayer, but he was not here for graduation.)
After brief remarks from the school director – alas, my Romanian is not up to understanding much of what was said – the dirigintes come, one by one, to introduce their groups of students and distribute awards to those with the highest total averages. On a 10-point scale, all the winners were in the mid-to high 9s; no surprise, equivalent to strong As. These were accompanied by a Romanian tradition I am not impressed by – as students come forward, they present their diriginte, and sometimes the school director, with a florist-shop produced bouquet. No simple arrangements, these, but a bunch of blooms wrapped with elaborate ribbons. My guess is they cost 20 to 30 lei apiece. So with roughly five-dozen bouquets presented, the total expenditure amounts to considerably more than the teachers’ salaries of roughly 800 lei per month. For my money, the home-grown blooms local gardens abound with would be a far-wiser substitute. (And the investment would be far better used to purchase trees and plantings for the rather barren school yard.)
A tradition I was far more impressed with is that each group of graduates performs something, usually a song they have written lyrics for. Whatever the performance, gaiety was the result, as indicated by lots of applause. Near the ceremony’s end, a representative of the graduates came forward to present next year’s 12th graders with a symbol of the school – a vastly oversized brass key sitting on a bright red pillow. It was accepted by the elected head of the student council – a young man whose fluent contributions to our classes together have amused and occasionally challenged me for two years. He was dressed for the occasion in a bright red-plaid shirt, jeans, and red high tops. He intends to be a lawyer, and I’d bet he’ll be successful at whatever he does.
The last part of the ceremony I took a personal interest in. A few months ago, I’d been inspired by discovering that a few other English-speaking countries had their own set of lyrics to Woody Guthrie’s classic “This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land.” Why not do one about Romania, I thought? So with help from groups of students, we chose several beautiful Romanian places and composed our own set of lyrics. On graduation day, it was ready for performance, accompanied by one of the school’s talented guitarists. Even those in attendance who knew no English could recognize the famous places we sang about – and enjoy Guthrie’s infectious melody.
By noon, the ceremony was over. As we all moved off the field, someone released bags of brightly colored confetti – an appropriate ending. But the day was not over – the graduates had a party to attend that evening. And getting ready for it would take some of the girls much of the afternoon; the party is a local equivalent of prom – but no one needs a date to attend. Interestingly, though the girls dressed up for the event, some of the boys dressed down, arriving (late) in black shirts and jeans.
As with similar events I’ve attended here, the four-course meal, held in a banquet hall usually reserved for weddings, took several hours to serve. The dancing began slowly, to mainly American imports – but soon the music became traditional Romanian, and the pace of the dancing more than I could keep up with. At 11:30, with the main course not yet served, I decided to head home, absolved of further responsibility for partying. Weddings here can last until dawn; this party probably did, too. Congratulations to all!
Facebook friends can view an album of photographs on my FB page.
There’s no printed program either, listing the order of events and the names of all the graduates. Though Romanians are fond of distributing certificates of participation for all sorts of events, they don’t print programs (perhaps because it is seldom set until the last minute). However, as tradition governs this event, and all participants know pretty much what will happen, why waste expensive paper? (Teachers have to supply their own for making copies.)
The different words we use for graduation offer a clue to other differences. In the U.S., we often call it commencement, for the beginning of something new. In Romanian, the word for graduation is “absolvare,” which is related the English absolve and means release or exoneration – as in, you are no longer required to attend school. Today, that’s hardly the case here; most students in my high school are headed to university in the fall, even if they are not yet sure which one.
Another difference is who attends – no grandparents flown in from across the country. In fact, there were few parents in attendance, though there was an awning erected for them on the concrete soccer field, as a shield from the sun. Some younger students came to observe, or not; plus some students and teachers from the neighboring grade school watched from the other side of the fence – though their school was not dismissed until noon and graduation was at 10, Romanians are not necessarily bound by school hours if there is something more interesting to do.
The actual ceremony itself began with a delightful tradition. Each profile – roughly the equivalent of a homeroom – walks onto the soccer field under a column of long-stemmed flowers held aloft by 11th graders. Each diriginte heads his or her class accompanied by two students of the opposite sex. All are dressed somewhat alike; the diriginte for the green class wore a sea-green suit, for example. (For more information on profiles, dirigintes, and color-coding, see previous blog.) The profiles proceed, one by one, through the floral portal to their place in a large semicircle surrounding a speakers’ table, amplification equipment, and rows of chairs, formally covered in white with bright red sashes. The mayor is there, a representative parent, and the school’s director and assistant. (For the school opening ceremony in the fall, a priest from the town’s Orthodox biserica attended to offer a prayer, but he was not here for graduation.)
After brief remarks from the school director – alas, my Romanian is not up to understanding much of what was said – the dirigintes come, one by one, to introduce their groups of students and distribute awards to those with the highest total averages. On a 10-point scale, all the winners were in the mid-to high 9s; no surprise, equivalent to strong As. These were accompanied by a Romanian tradition I am not impressed by – as students come forward, they present their diriginte, and sometimes the school director, with a florist-shop produced bouquet. No simple arrangements, these, but a bunch of blooms wrapped with elaborate ribbons. My guess is they cost 20 to 30 lei apiece. So with roughly five-dozen bouquets presented, the total expenditure amounts to considerably more than the teachers’ salaries of roughly 800 lei per month. For my money, the home-grown blooms local gardens abound with would be a far-wiser substitute. (And the investment would be far better used to purchase trees and plantings for the rather barren school yard.)
A tradition I was far more impressed with is that each group of graduates performs something, usually a song they have written lyrics for. Whatever the performance, gaiety was the result, as indicated by lots of applause. Near the ceremony’s end, a representative of the graduates came forward to present next year’s 12th graders with a symbol of the school – a vastly oversized brass key sitting on a bright red pillow. It was accepted by the elected head of the student council – a young man whose fluent contributions to our classes together have amused and occasionally challenged me for two years. He was dressed for the occasion in a bright red-plaid shirt, jeans, and red high tops. He intends to be a lawyer, and I’d bet he’ll be successful at whatever he does.
The last part of the ceremony I took a personal interest in. A few months ago, I’d been inspired by discovering that a few other English-speaking countries had their own set of lyrics to Woody Guthrie’s classic “This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land.” Why not do one about Romania, I thought? So with help from groups of students, we chose several beautiful Romanian places and composed our own set of lyrics. On graduation day, it was ready for performance, accompanied by one of the school’s talented guitarists. Even those in attendance who knew no English could recognize the famous places we sang about – and enjoy Guthrie’s infectious melody.
By noon, the ceremony was over. As we all moved off the field, someone released bags of brightly colored confetti – an appropriate ending. But the day was not over – the graduates had a party to attend that evening. And getting ready for it would take some of the girls much of the afternoon; the party is a local equivalent of prom – but no one needs a date to attend. Interestingly, though the girls dressed up for the event, some of the boys dressed down, arriving (late) in black shirts and jeans.
As with similar events I’ve attended here, the four-course meal, held in a banquet hall usually reserved for weddings, took several hours to serve. The dancing began slowly, to mainly American imports – but soon the music became traditional Romanian, and the pace of the dancing more than I could keep up with. At 11:30, with the main course not yet served, I decided to head home, absolved of further responsibility for partying. Weddings here can last until dawn; this party probably did, too. Congratulations to all!
Facebook friends can view an album of photographs on my FB page.
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