Imagine
Imagine no school busing. I wonder if you can.I grew up in Italy, and many people have asked me what the school system was like there and if my experience with Italian public schools is relevant to what I would like to do as a school board member.
My days in high school started with a ride on public transit. There are no school buses in Italy. Elementary students walk, middle school students walk or get a ride from their parent, high school students take transit or ride a Vespa (no driver's permits until you are 18 in Italy).
School started at 8.30 AM and ended at either 12.30 PM or 1.30 PM. when we all went home for lunch (we also had no cafeteria). We did this six days a week. Yes, Saturdays too. We had no elective classes. I went to a high school with a science focused curriculum, and everyone took exactly the same classes. Math every year, foreign language every year, Latin every year, history every year, one hour of PE every week, plus lots of literature, philosophy, writing, and geography.
When I do door to door talking to people all over the Hillsboro school district, the main concern I hear is class size and funding. But many parents are even more concerned about the quality of the education that their kids are getting. Some see that our schools have become "glorified day care centers" or that we "spend too much time planning the next party or the next extracurricular activity". I hear from business people who are very disappointed (to put it mildly) at the ability of the high school graduates that they hire to do simple math and to talk on the phone correctly, let alone their work ethics.
We have very low expectations of our students. And they tend to match those low expectations. Last week I attended a school board worksession where the board discussed increasing the number of credits required for a high school diploma from the state minimum of 22 to 24.5. It was rather disappointing to hear so little enthusiasm from the current members for a proposal that (in my humble opinion) is still not enough.
I went to public schools in a far away land where schools were lean and had no "frills", but academics were the focus of our days. Why can't we have world-class K-12 education here in our town?
posted by Unknown @ 8:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home