Preface to the Second Edition
When I first wrote this book in 1982, I thought that education in America was about as bad as it could be. However, in the past eight years I have had many opportunities to observe schools throughout the country, and I have found that the situation is worse than I realized. What I once assumed to be inferior education for the poor and underprivileged has become a nationwide malady that afflicts the middle and upper classes as well. I have found bad education in the placed I least expected to find it.
America faces an education crisis of frightening proportions. Only recently, in the spring of 1990, Education Secretary Lauro F. Cavazos deplored the nation’s “indifference, complacency, and passivity.” Responding to a survey of test scores and dropout rates, Secretary Cavazos called for radical reforms of the educational system.
One prestigious study after another has documented the sad facts with alarming statistics. One of every four American students drop out before entering the work force, as compared to japan, where 96% graduate from high school. The project on Adult Literacy estimates that twenty to thirty million Americans are unable to “read, write, calculate, solve problems or communicate well enough to function effectively on the job or in their everyday lives.
The Educational Testing Service concludes that about 1.25 million young adults between the ages of 21 and 25 cannot read at the fourth-grade level. Another six million (nearly one third of those measured) were unable to write a letter to a store about a billing error or to command enough simple arithmetic to balance a checkbook. Worse, 440,000 youngsters in that age bracket could not even read well enough to be tested. Most alarming, projections indicate that these problems will get worse as today’s students enter the work force.
In addition to the lamentable decline in literacy and test scores, educators have also pointed out that the average student’s grasp of simple geography (such as the location of familiar countries), history (such as when the Civil War occurred), and fundamental math and science is woefully inadequate. U.S. students consistently score near the bottom in mathematical achievement when compared to students in other developed countries. One study showed that elite twelfth graders in America understand math on the same level as their average Japanese counterparts.
When one considers that the future of our nation is being forged in today’s classrooms, it is clear that our education crisis is the single greatest issue we face. America can no longer tolerate failure, rampant mediocrity and the tragic loss of potential brain power. Where will we be in twenty-five years when today’s students are adult citizens who can barely read and compute? No wonder that responsible leaders from the President and Mrs. Bush to the Secretary of Education to corporate executives and local parent groups are all searching for solutions.
Although we hear a great deal about educational reform today, we are still not doing enough about it. It seems to me that we have been trying to improve our schools with the equivalent of using a toothbrush to clean up after an earthquake. It is as though we expect our schools to improve through some sort of magic. As Robert C. Winters, Chairman of Prudential Insurance, states, “The time has come for systematic … education reform. In fact, what we really need is not just reform, but a revolution.”
Our children are not the culprits; they are the victims. My twenty years of experience in education have convinced me that children want to learn and can learn. Provide them with the right environment, the right motivation and the right materiel, and children will demonstrate their natural ability to excel. Nor is this merely one woman’s opinion. Dr. Jerome Bruner, the eminent educator and author of the influential book, The Process of Education, cites studies showing that the way a school is run makes a difference in the students’ performance. “Where the school shows that it cares,” says Dr. Bruner. “They respond with regular attendance, better behavior, and higher academic achievement.”
No one, not professional educators, politicians, or parents, in to blame for the current predicament. No classroom teacher, principal, or the school superintendent wants to the part of a bad school system; no politician wants inferior schools in his or her district; no parent wants to see his or her children grow up illiterate and undereducated. Unfortunately, we have all become quagmired in a system that fails more children than it helps.
Who is blame then? Everyone. To solve our education crisis, we need to work on improving the entire system and every cog in the wheel. We need skilled, creative, persistent leadership at the top on both the local and national levels. We need a much higher degree of parental involvement, not just in the home but in volunteer capacities at every school in the country. We need strong principals who care more about children than about personality polls, politics, or job preservation. And, most important of all, we need dedicated, well-trained, highly respected, well-compensated teachers in front of our classrooms at every level and in every strata of society.
In the eight years since this book was written, I have found that the convictions expressed in it have been strengthened by experience. Students do not need to be labeled or measured any more than they are. They don’t need more Federal funds, grants and gimmicks. What they need from us is common sense, dedication, and bright, energetic teachers who believe that all children are achievers and who take personally the failure of any one child.
Such teachers are the key to the success of the Westside Preparatory School, whose founding and development is documented in this book. It has been most gratifying to see our approach validated by the hundreds of teachers from around the world who visit us each year or attend our teacher-training workshops.
Naturally, Westside Preparatory has no monopoly on quality teaching. There are thousands of excellent teachers in the country with valuable techniques of their own. What all good teachers have in common, however, is that they set high standards for their children and do not settle for anything less. The academic program at my school consists simply of the three Rs in the context of a total program that teaches each child that he or she is unique, special, and much too bright ever to be less than he or she can be. My teachers live by the credo, “I will never let you fail.”
We must begin focusing on our children again. We must reevaluate our perceptions of them and learn to recognize that they can be motivated to achieve their potential, whatever it may be. It is too easy and too convenient to conclude that bad students are poorly motivated or stupid. This conclusion is a poor excuse, and it runs counter to the truth. A good teacher can always make a poor student good and a good student superior. The word teacher has its roots in the Latin word meaning to lead or to draw out. Good teachers draw out the best in every student; they are willing to polish and shine until the true luster of each student comes through.
Over the years, some of my ideas have become controversial, some have been hotly criticized, and some have been recognized for what they are: effective common sense. What is indisputable is the success of the program we have created at Westside Preparatory School. The school remains at full capacity – 244 students – and we have to turn applicants away. Most gratifying, every one of our former students, most of whom were drawn from inner city Chicago, is now either employed or attending high school or college. Not one of our graduates has subsequently dropped out. And, since we taught them all that responsible citizens should give something back to their communities, most of them now spend time helping out at the school, tutoring the current students.
I wrote this book because I believed that others can benefit from my failures and successes. I stand behind everything in these pages. In fact, I believe the book is as relevant for the nineties as it was for the eighties. There is nothing we do at Westside Preparatory School that cannot be duplicated in any school in the country. This fact has been demonstrated by the hundreds of educators who have taken our workshops and returned to their schools with a fresh attitude and an arsenal of simple but effective techniques.
When my publisher and I discussed the preparation of this new edition, we tried to think of ways to update it. I was surprised (and relieved) when he suggested that we let most of it stand as is, since, to my gratification, it has come to be considered a classic in the education field. Therefore, apart from this new preface, the only updating is the material at the back of book: two appendices – one addressed to parents, the other to teachers – with practical suggestions for how to foster quality education and create a brighter, more successful future for all children in America.
I sometimes wish that the whole world could see what I have seen in my classrooms: all children are born achievers. All they need is someone special to believe in them and draw out the best in them. Just today, when my class of three- and four-years-old read the classic Greek myth of Daedelus and Icarus, one child said, “Mrs. Collins, if we do not learn and work hard, we will take an Icarian flight to nowhere.”
In that child’s observation is not only a lesson for each of us to live by, but a message to everyone concerned about the education of future generations.