A Rising Tide of Mediocrity

A Rising Tide of Mediocrity 

This is one of the first lines to a report called, A Nation at Risk, written by the Reagan administration in 1983. In senior project tonight we talked about this report and also watched a video about education thirty years later.

Depressing. 

That's the word I would use to describe the report, video, and where our public school system is at the moment. I just felt really sad after class tonight and my brain is in a tumbled mess.

I watch my roommate and people in my major stress about the credential program, all the components of it and the application and I can just feel all of the anxieties they have. It's a lot. And in a way I feel so glad that I don't have to worry about any of that right now.

But I'll tell ya, I don't even know how to describe my feelings right now. This quarter, this year, school, I'm just over it. I have the most beautiful picture in my mind of what elementary schools could be and I have a picture in my mind of what it is today. I mean the article is right in that it's not perfect and it needs a lot of work.

Public schools need to be drastically changed in order for it to get any better. 

The video said that within the last thirty years not much as changed in schools. The public school system has been the same way for years and years and years. Little change is not going to change schools for the better.

Administrators stand up and say we need better teachers or we need students to learn better or we need this or that. But I don't think those things are the actual problem.

Being a Liberal Studies major for the past four years I feel like professors and teachers have constantly told us that we need to be strong in all areas, especially science and math. I feel like they expect us to be experts in all of these areas, but what they do not understand is that it is not always humanly possible. Take an engineer or a business major for example, when they move throughout college they dive into their subject and dig deeper and deeper and deeper for understanding. Until they become experts in their field. For Liberal Studies majors we take a whole bunch of different subjects and only go so deep in each one and then we are told to teach all of them to students. Now if a parent were asked to have their kids learn each subject from an expert versus just from one teacher, they would probably choose the expert.

I am not saying it is totally capable right now to have public elementary schools to just have math teachers, science teachers, etc. But what I am saying is how much more do you think the child would get out of the subject if it were that way. If each teacher focused on their one subject. I know this happens in some elementary schools today by splitting older grades up in science/math and history/language arts.

I don't mean to sit here and complain or write a depressing blog post, but I am writing because I think it's sad that administrators and people higher up think that schools are so so so bad. Because I'll tell ya you walk into a kindergarten class in San Luis Obispo and I bet you anything their teacher loves them, they are learning, and grasping new ideas every day. I don't doubt that this is not happening. I know that there are a lot of places where this is also not happening. But you can't measure everything from a test. I feel like so much of why people are worried is because of test scores, but there can also be a lot of learning happening that can't be measured by a test.

Sometimes I get nervous because I think, "Am I only not getting my credential because I don't believe that i can actually do it. That I wouldn't make a strong teacher?" But then I have to reassure myself that I made the right decision and deciding to stay away from the public school sector right now is okay. And focusing on kids in another type of environment is okay. Because I agree, I don't agree with the majority of the public school system and I know there are a lot of issues, but maybe that's why I need to stay away right now.

When I graduate in June, I want to be able to stand up and say, "My name is Whitney Rose Lockman, I am graduating from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a Bachelor's of Science and Math in Liberal Studies and for the past four years worked my tail off to be where I am today and I am not perfect by any means, but I sure learned for the sake of learning and for that, I am so proud."

What I mean by all of this is that as a Liberal Studies student it is okay to say, I am not perfect at everything and there are some subjects that I am better at than others, but at the end of the day, I will make the best teacher that I can possibly be and know that even if I make a difference in one child's life, that's all that matters. We need to not feel guilty when people can be overly critical. It's gonna be hard, but we can do it.

Love, that Lib Stud who admits that it's okay to be mediocre sometimes.