I agree we need to overhaul American Education. I face the achievement gap daily. I know we need great leaders to take our nation into a successful position in the 21st century and beyond. Yes, we need innovators, and we need people to do the work. We need a new system one that is rooted in great change.
But really, I just see this idea as another way of keeping the privileged rich and the poor in prison (and everyone should read Reinman's book on the topic http://www.amazon.com/Rich-Get-Richer-Poor-Prison/dp/0205305571). We need to remember Brown V Board of Ed. Separate will never be equal. We will help no one by setting up a system that puts students into different tracks.
I'm not naive. I know right now we're not creating a system that meets all needs, but by separating systems we'll still end up with all the rich in one system and the poor in another. We need a system that brings them all together. We need to rich and poor to go to school together. I know the rich parents won't like it, but we need to make these radical changes happen. We need to have real diversity in the classroom.
I can only imagine how greatly I would have benefited from meeting people like my students at my age, and how they would have benefited as well. I would have seen a world that was so different than mine. It would have been so hard to handle. But I would have learned at a young age how to make it work. Youth are amazing, and they are they ones we need to most expose to diversity. They are the ones who will be most willing to make changes in a world, because they see the most possibility.
Also I can imagine how my students would benefit from having the great resources and involvement from families like mine. My parents would have never stood for of the things that happen in our low income schools. This is not to say anything against my students' families. Their families are wonderful and involved. Yet they are not always aware of their own rights and that is a problem. My students need more advocates fighting for them.
I don't think this blog post will solve all problems. I know full diversity has its own set of issues. But I'd argue for fully inclusive bused from all over town classrooms before I'd ever say it was okay to have separate schools.
Just read this by John Gardner and thought it goes with the general thought that we need a change in our system...just not the one Kiyosaki proposes.
ReplyDeleteI think that all human systems require continuous renewal. They rigidify. They get stiff in the joints. They forget what they cared about. The forces against it are nostalgia and the enormous appeal
of having things the way they always have been, appeals to
a supposedly happy past. But we've got to move on.