I don’t know whether to laugh myself silly or quake in my boots: former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton getting together to promote education reform?
That’s exactly what this Tom-and-Jerry duo is planning. They’ll be touring the nation, talking about the need to reform public schools. Sharpton was on television a week ago promoting the tour on … the World Wrestling Entertainment show “Raw”?
I wish I were making a bad joke, but there Sharpton was, acting as the guest celebrity “general manager” for the show.
Some knocked WWE honchos for selecting Sharpton (full disclosure: I was one of them), but others might point out that Sharpton made a perfect choice. After all, he is as fake and phony as pro “wrestling” is.
At several points during the show, Sharpton took the opportunity to plug the need for education reform. I do wish the good revvum and Gingrich all the luck.
There are four major things wrong with public education, and I’d love to hear Sharpton’s and Gingrich’s proposals for reforming any one or all four of them.
Lack of preparation: If there’s one thing I’ve heard repeatedly as a columnist, it’s the complaint of teachers, principals and other educators that children enter kindergarten woefully unprepared.
They get behind, and they never catch up. And yes, children MUST be prepared for kindergarten. They should be able to count to 10, know colors and shapes, recognize some alphabet letters, copy some letters and numbers, and be able to sit quietly and listen to a story.
Children beginning kindergarten should also have a working vocabulary that makes them reading-ready. But a director of one Baltimore day care center once told me parents of some 3- and 4-year-olds were so out of it their children didn’t know what a fork, knife or plate were.
It’s not the job of either federal, state or local government to make children kindergarten-ready. That is the job of parents.
How do we reform parents who can’t or won’t do this? Pass laws compelling them to do it? Doesn’t that inch us ever closer toward totalitarianism?
» Lack of discipline in the classroom: This would be complaint No. 2 of educators, who say they can’t effectively teach because they spend most of their time just getting order in their classrooms.
» Lack of safety for students and teachers: This is probably linked to No. 2 on this list. Teachers and students who want to learn frequently find themselves victims of assault and/or battery. One student beating down a Baltimore teacher was actually shown on YouTube; the principal of the school, and ultimately the juvenile judge, blamed the teacher.
In the recent Black Entertainment Television documentary about Detroit schools, the principal of Henry Ford High School said there were 300 gang members there.
Let me make this clear: If I were a high school student, I would not, under any circumstances, attend a school with 300 gang members.
If I were a parent, I wouldn’t send my child to a school with 300 gang members. I’d simply homeschool my child and have the state cut me a check for the per-pupil expenditure.
Sharpton said when he hosted “Raw” that he wanted to lower the dropout rate. Schools with 300 gang members should have high dropout rates.
» The Stalinist model is used for public school teachers: This is a true story. A wrestling coach at a Baltimore high school known for academic achievement once told me parents yanked their sons off the team if their grades dropped.
Before that he had coached at another school not known for academic achievement. He never heard from a parent, no matter how low a wrestler’s grades may have fallen. But he cautioned me not to print what he said or mention his name because he feared for his job.
Firing teachers who tell a simple, innocuous and true story is what I call “the Stalinist approach” to public education. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin had people shot for stepping out of line.
Nikita Kruschev, a Soviet premier who lived during the Stalin era, once noted with classic understatement that “people didn’t do their best work” under such a regime.
Public school jefes figuratively shoot teachers who speak up. How can such a system be “reformed”?
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
