tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5879518805424540712.post4100498268355663262..comments2023-09-16T01:57:17.749-07:00Comments on Respice Finem: Fixing the Education SystemWalton Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144446762817380418noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5879518805424540712.post-70803728404125623842010-12-20T07:23:26.956-08:002010-12-20T07:23:26.956-08:00Mr. Brown, thanks for your thought provoking artic...Mr. Brown, thanks for your thought provoking article. It follows along very common lines of logic that I have heard espoused in political circles quite freely. I offer several key ideas, which I didn't read in your viewpoint.<br /><br />The key to improving any education system around the world lies in improving teacher quality and effectiveness. While performance management addresses people not fit for a system, it doesn't address the quintessential problem in Bermuda education -- increasing the professional capacity of our teaching force. This is precisely why the Bermuda Education Review team employed the call, "reprofessionalization". We must build the capacity of our current school leaders to 'reprofessionalize' instruction in their buildings. It is all well and good to refer to 1980s education but one has to recognize the 2010 education paradigms have thrust higher expectations for both content and what students can do with that content. Leaving principals alone sounds powerful but is not sound educational practice, by itself, in any high performing country. Autonomy should not be confused with collaboration. Principals desire collaboration with fellow principals and fellow professionals to grow professionally. Remember, capacity is the key. We need to increase collaboration in every conceivable way, but around a common goal: increasing the quality of instruction in every classroom. <br /><br />I would suggest that education reform has always come at the impetus of political changes and shifts in policy -top down, rather than from ground up movements of people. In short we have a tendency in this country to want to restructure (the word reprofessionalization is very different from this). In your comments you mentioned qualities of the Minister and Board. No doubt because of your vantage point. I humbly suggest that this is a topdown look at change. What happens if we consider what change experts see as more impactful -- ground up change. The key to educational change in this country lies in moving teachers, moving classrooms. It will require us to think more differently than our history has suggested. It is the one reason I argue that we have seen little movement and public involvement in Public education. After the review the focus was on changing law and policy, and restructuring power. I suggest that your OpED has the same focus: It sees changes as happening only when we restructure from the top down. It reflects trickle-down reform, which has not worked in this country, any more than trickle down economics has. Yet in other countries, this doesn't automatically equate to shrinking budgets. While I would agree in being financially prudent. We should increase "targeted" funds in areas like science and mathematics, the currencies of the 21st century. Our economic partners around the world understand this. While you get no argument from me around careful financial management, we must be careful while we are lamenting about the past and current, that we forget to envision the future for Bermudians. <br /><br />Which brings me to my last point. The biggest concern of the mid-1990s was not simply elitism. This is far too oversimplistic. Rather it was the marginalization of too many Bermudians. In the mid-1990s we were in the beginning throes of a housing crisis, the 1994 Newman report detailed the marginalization of Black men in the country and the country had only just begun to see itself past the 1990/91 recession in the US. So on one hand we look back and romanticize the past, but we can't call and education system excellent if so little of our population is experiencing that excellence. Whose child do we recommend to be in that group that doesn't make it? mine? yours?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com