American Education and Beating the Bell Curve

If you want to feel good about yourself, if you want to hear someone say, “You’re fine, I’m fine, all God’s children are fine.  Life is good, and all we need is love…” move on.  If, on the other hand, you are worried, frustrated, and angry or confused about education in America, you have come to the right place.  I want you (not the schools, not the unions and not the politicians) to learn how your child can beat the odds, and the bell curve, and become the kind of student that no school can ignore.

Too often in this country instruction has been slowed down, watered down, and stripped bare of anything that doesn’t sound like survival skills—all with disastrous results.  Now we have the Common Core Curriculum which should be a guidepost for education and instead is being used as tool of social engineering.   The bar of academic success can (and should) be lifted if we recognize four things.

1.               The only thing our students are, “at risk” of is being underestimated.

After a lifetime of working in the public schools, I am convinced that the students from impoverished urban districts; those from blue-collar suburban districts; and students in the wealthiest districts all face the same, “at-risk” situations.  Drugs, weapons, and dysfunctional homes are as prevalent in the wealthiest suburbs as they are in the heart of the city.  It is not the problems, but how the adults in charge react to these situations that make the difference between success and failure.  Schools are supposed to teach the curriculum, not diagnose the failure. 

2.   Our students don’t need, “less,” “slower,” or, “remedial.”  They need,

“more,” “faster,” and, “enrichment” because they have more ground to make up.

Our students need more content knowledge, and they need to start developing the, “habits of mind” required of the higher level thinking skills.  They need to be taught reading through phonetic instruction and then turned loose on the library.  Technology needs to be their servant, not their babysitter.

3. You don’t make students more competitive in a free market economy by teaching them survival skills.  You make them more competitive by teaching them superlative skills so they have something unique to offer in the market place.

In today’s economy, success means knowing how to think as well as what to think.  It means having analytical skills, problem solving skills, team thinking and technological savvy.  This is not an either or situation.  We must not talk about substituting thinking skills for a good background in fact.  Our students need content knowledge, but they also need process knowledge.  That is how they will become life-long learners.

4.    Finally, you hit what you aim for!

Only by having an eye on both the big picture and the details can we see how important education is to our children, our future and our country.  Only then, will they be able to beat the bell curve and become a student who can not be ignored.

You have just read the opening of my book, Beating the Bell Curve.  This book was first published in 2001 and the second edition has just been completed.  The rest of this blog is a blatant advertisement.  The second edition of Beating the Bell Curve is available at Amazon on both Kindle (the least expensive way to buy it), or in paperback, also from Amazon. 

I will be featuring excerpts from the book for a few days, partly because I am a good capitalist and like to make money, and partly because now, not when school starts in the fall is when we should start looking at our children’s educational opportunities. 

Teach the children and keep the faith.