Visiting Little Rock Central High School

It was a dark time in the history of our nation, when the civil rights movement was just gathering steam and across the country, American citizens were learning about racial inequality in the South. In 1957, the battleground was a public high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. What the world saw in the newspapers and in film footage shown around the world was that it took 11,500 US soldiers from the 101^st Airborne Division to insure that nine African- American high school students could attend a previously all white public high school. Alabama Governor Faubus ordered the National Guard to bar the “Little Rock Nine” from entering the school. A crowd of several hundred angry residents and students cursed and hurled other epithets at the students. They spat at them and even when the students entered the school, students pushed them, tripped them, and threw food at them and exacted many other humiliations.  Despite the fact the United States Supreme Court had ruled segregation unconstitutional in the Brown v. Board of Education (Topeka, Kansas), Governor Faubus and other segregationists believed that the court overstepped its bounds and violated the states’ rights clause in the Constitution.  Since the US Constitution did not address public education, under Article 10, how schools are run are the purview of the individual states. Interestingly enough, since the Brown case, the federal government has gotten more involved in public education enacting, for example, National Defense Education Act, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

Visiting Little Rock High School was a sobering reminder to me of what has been wrong with American public education.  Having an up close and personal tour with a US Park Ranger ( Little Rock Central High School is a National Historic Site), enabled me to  visit the auditorium  and the  cafeteria and wander the halls. The school is still a functioning high school with over 2000 students. Visiting this school is a field trip that every teacher and future teacher should take as a reminder of what equality in public education was, is, and still needs to be. Of course if you teach in that part5 of the country and field trip for your students is doable, then by all means go. For more information, please check out this web site

http://www.nps.gov/chsc/index.htm

                        

c.2014

J. Margolis

School’s out –Learning Isn’t

For many students and teachers across the country the school year has ended. For many others who are making up snow days from a brutal winter, the end of the academic year will arrive soon. Yet for students, teachers and parents an annual dilemma exists. How can we prevent a loss of knowledge during the next two months so that time is not wasted during the first part of the next school in re-teaching the prior year’s material? There is a need for ongoing stimulation and creativity during the summer months to help students along. Here are some suggestions to help parents and students make the most of summer.

1)      Take children to the library.  While number public libraries have summer programs, a trip to the local library where students can choose books that interest them is a convenient and low cost way to keep students in the education loop.

2)      Family field trip. When planning summer vacations, try to include educational activities. Most major cities have history and art museums and many have science museums as well. Many battlefields are also parks where families can combine education activities with fun activities and picnics.

3)      Flash cards and work books. Inexpensive student workbooks and flash cards are available at most bookstores and other retail outlets. Students can spend an hour or two a day working in m their books before heading to the ball field or the beach.

4)      Virtual field trip. The internet can be a vast resource for activities during the summer. The web site eschoolnews.com has a section of its ten best virtual field trips. The most recommended adventure is to Colonial Williamsburg (http://www.history.org/history/teaching/eft/index.cfm). Other sites include a trip to the Louvre Museum in Paris and The Hershey Chocolate Factory.  You can even take a tour of the White House or travel to Mt. Everest. Another site fieldtripzoom.com. Offers activities for classes and does charge for their services.

5)       Create a blog. Allow a student to be creative and start his or her own on line “newspaper” reporting on their summer educational activities. Google makes it fast and easy to set up a basic no cost blog. 

Note to teachers. Please take an opportunity to look at the web site of Education World (http://www.educationworld.com/holidays/archives/summer.shtml). If your students haven’t left yet or if you stay in contact with the through the summer, you will find useful ideas and activities from this site.

HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!

c.2014 J. Margolis

Does Money Make a Difference?

In an entrepreneurial society where money drives the economic engine, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that throwing large sums of cash at a social problem does not always lead to a solution. There are way too many variables that cannot be readily controlled. Such may be the case with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s generous grant of $100 million to the school district of the City of Newark, New Jersey. Four years ago Zuckerberg’s donation along with then mayor (now US Senator) Cory Booker, established the Foundation for Newark’s future. The goal of the project was to turn the poor performing school system intro a “symbol of excellence.” But now four years later, students are still below their national peers in reading and according to a report in New Yorker magazine, $20 million of those funds went to consultants. What has not helped matters was that the state of New Jersey cut its aid to Newark’s schools by millions of dollars.

In analyzing this and other generous philanthropies we come to the conclusion that everyone in the community has to participate in a project and be a vested stakeholder in its success. That includes parents, teachers and community leaders. A community wide oversight committee should decide on how the funds will be spent and while some professional guidance needs to be sought, throwing 20% of your budget at high priced consultants does not help a first grader learn how to read.

Mr. Zuckerberg is not the only business mogul to spread his largess for societal good. One of the most notable programs focused on improving education (among other initiatives) is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This foundation, which has been up and running since 1994, is one of the largest private foundations in the world, with assets in excess of $36 billion. It has a more formal infrastructure and in- house employees both in Washington DC and Seattle, WA. This construct helps the foundation to invest in projects wisely and monitor success. We hope that other business and professional people will continue to lend their financial support to worthwhile projects. Yet we also must be mindful that money by itself will not solve social problems. It takes a village.

C.2014 J. Margolis