Embracing Education
What’s Wrong with Education
Today?
Education is fundamental to everything that is important to American vitality and growth. Most can agree on that matter. On most other issues, though, education is exceedingly contentious and polarizing. Diversity Journal has gathered renowned education experts from across the country to speak on some of the most pressing issues in the state of education today.
students and know they are welleducated by the kind of tests they design. I’m not sure it’s getting us to the question as to whether our kids are learning and producing at the Bena Kallick: At the very heart of it all, level we are looking for. we are in a time of transition in which Gerry Wheeler: We must ensure that we are moving from a more industrialized every child has a quality teacher. A model of education to a more global, inquality teacher is both an expert in formation-age, technology-age education. Bena Kallick is a what to teach and skilled at how to And although we see this as something we private consultant, providing services teach it, and receives sustained protalk about in society and the workplace, to school districts, fessional development for continued it’s not that easy to make those shifts in departments of learning. We must do a better job schools because it means a rethinking of education, and proto attract, prepare, and retain wellthe way school is designed, the school fessional organizaeducated, effective pre-K–12 science day is designed, and what we expect from tions. She has taught teachers. Strong, performance-based kids to be able to know and do. The stabs at Yale University, science teacher education programs we take at it keep pushing us back to old the University of and science teacher licensor standards forms as opposed to new forms. So rather Massachusetts, and are essential for all science teachers Union Graduate School, than thinking of it as school reform, I and is the co-author of and will provide a foundation upon would think of it as school “new-form,” Habits of Mind Across which teachers may build throughby really understanding what’s required out their professional lives. We need in the 21st century for skills for students. the Curriculum. to focus on science education at the I think also the government has made elementary level. Student understanding of science many missteps in terms of No Child Left Behind. concepts build cumulatively. A solid foundation in Based on that, making all kinds of restraints science during the elementary school years gives stuand stipulations that have faulty assumptions, dents a better grasp of science at the secondary level for example, that we would be able to test
What are some of the paramount problems with education in America? And on the global level?
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PROFILES IN DIVERSITY JOURNAL
September/October 2012