B.O.E?

 

                                            

                Business Over Education?

        THE BOTTOM LINE should be that educational institutions prioritize the quality of learning offered to tomorrow's future. It seems that wherever money is put up against moral action, there is always an obvious winner. The system written about in textbooks prioritizes funding over actually preparing the crowd of learners within an institution, and I think this is where the system fails. On page 178, the author writes:

    "The final assumption was that although schools, unlike business, show no profits and losses-no bottom line-at the end of the year, standardized test scores measure what has been learned and can roughly predict how future employees will perform in the workplace."

However,  schools and all educational institutions pose a bigger risk than the losses of big businesses. the wins and losses of a school isn't measured in money, but in the success and failures of its students. essentially setting up the nation for its biggest boast, or mightiest downfall. If we fill a country with students educated to their fullest ability, offering chances of interest paving the path to jobs that students will wake up to love to attend everyday for the next 50 to 60 years of their lives, it builds strength in economic structure and the business will do itself. Isn’t that the WIN america needs? Focusing on the money behind institutions in place of the quality the institutes put out sets back all of that possible success. The countries leading the world in economic thriving all have one thing in common; making sure the population has outlets to knowledge by any means necessary. These nations don't make education a competition of the fittest, but rather assess each individual’s skills and specialties to progress the country as a whole. 

On page 187, it reads:

“Injecting competition into america’s urban school systems was the strategy behind an experiment already under way in East Harlem, a school district of 14,000 mostly low-income students in New York City in the mid 1970’s, East Harlem ranked last among New York’s thirty two school districts.”

This only highlights that the action of treating schooling systems like businesses in competition only hurts the population and sets up the final product for failure. How is the future of the country supposed to look up if we are more focused on money, and not what they are being taught? History that goes untaught is only bound to repeat itself. Which brings me to my following argument, 

What a lot of funding organizations, and educators aren’t asking themselves is the million dollar question:

What can WE as educators/leaders do to benefit education?

(below i have inserted a clip i recorded on my phone during the NJPAC education zoom seminar last night that really stood out to me.)

Instead of asking what the oppressed audience is going to do, we need to start asking what the people in position of power can do! What Charity Haygood mentioned at the end was the Amistad Legislation as an example of what can be done when the concept of educating the future comes into conversation. The Amistad Bill (A1301), which became law in 2002, calls on New Jersey schools to incorporate African-American history into their social studies curriculum. The Amistad Commission ensures that the Department of Education and public schools of New Jersey implement materials and texts which integrate the history and contributions of African-Americans and the descendants of the African Diaspora. With the intent to create and coordinate workshops, seminars, institutes, memorials and events which raise public awareness about the importance of the history of African-Americans to the growth and development of American society in global context. It raises awareness of the ever-growing culture in a country that has no choice but to immersive itself in it rather than fight against it, embrace it with open arms rather than discriminate against its people.