Joe Kraynak

Schools and Teachers: America’s Scapegoat

September 5, 2008 on 2:31 pm | In Education | 1 Comment

For at least the past 20 years, I’ve heard more griping over our “failing schools” and supposedly broken education system than I can stand. I hear it from both political parties, read about in the editorial columns, and watch the pundits blast our schools and teachers on every TV station and online news outlet almost on a daily basis.

I don’t disagree that (overall) today’s students are not as educated as they need to be for today’s world. That’s patently obvious. What I disagree on are the reasons why.

Everyone is quick to blame the teachers and the schools. Politicians constantly rant about holding teachers and schools accountable. I just heard one of the presidential hopefuls talk about making schools and teachers “answerable” to parents and students!

What a crock of bull-loney.

Our society is broken. We have a divorce rate of about 50%. Kids are spending far too much time watching TV, playing video games, and surfing the Web and far too little time playing outside, interacting with one another (in reality rather than “texting”), exploring their environment, and reading. Parents are afraid to send their kids outside, afraid they’ll fall victim to a child molester or drug dealer or other miscreant. And kids’ access to porn and violence via TV, movies, the Internet, and other media is appalling.

Instead of doing something to turn our society around, we take the easy route – blame somebody. Whose fault is it? The schools, the teachers, of course. After all, aren’t they the ones responsible for educating our children?

People, wake up. Our kids are failing because we’re failing our kids. It’s not the schools and the teachers. It’s us – the rest of us who are supposed to care for our children for all that time they’re not in school. We’re too afraid or lazy to turn off the TV; enforce restrictions on video games and bedtimes; make our neighborhoods safer; and encourage our kids to spend some time reading on their own. It’s too difficult to fix a sick society that considers torture movies like Saw as entertainment and easy access to porn as a first amendment right. It’s much easier to just blame someone else.