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Rev. Joey N. Welsh: Historic Anniversaries, Part III ANOTHER ANGLE: the occasional musings of a Kentucky pastor.HISTORIC ANNIVERSARIES AND UNFINISHED AGENDAS - Part IIIContinued sad state of education in The South is a legacy of the Civil War. This essay first printed in The Hart County News-Herald, 25 September, 2005. The next earlier Another Angle: HISTORIC ANNIVERSARIES AND UNFINISHED AGENDAS - Part II By The Rev. Joey N. Welsh I found it interesting that as the U. S. Mint continued issuing commemorative quarters (five new coins per year), with each new coin representing a state on the reverse side, the Iowa quarter in 2004 portrayed a schoolhouse scene by the painter Grant Wood. The wording imprinted next to the schoolhouse to represent Iowa was, "Foundation in Education." This is a fitting phrase, because Iowa has a long history of placing education as the state priority. Could any state in the South have used that phrase on its commemorative quarter without eliciting derisive laughter? The continuing sad state of educational attainment and practical literacy in the South is yet another legacy of the Civil War. The Confederate and border states spent their education money and emotional energy after the Civil War in a vain attempt at holding back the unstoppable tide of change. For generations they defended the indefensible system of segregated education. They kept public education a low priority, allowing many school systems to languish under the burdens of inequitable taxation systems. By the time courts forced the states to get real about integration and funding, the South discovered that it had dug itself into a very deep educational hole. This deficit in education is another unfinished agenda item from the Civil War. Before such a deficit can be erased, people must stop viewing education as an intrusive bother and see it as the crucial ingredient for progress toward a whole and hopeful future for all of us. Earlier in the summer [June 2005] the Toyota Corporation announced the selection of a site for its next plant in North America. Canadians had put together a $125 million incentive package. Several southern states were offering more than twice that in their financial offers. Still, Toyota decided to build in Canada. Why did they pass up the better financial bids? They went north because it has been the experience of Toyota and other car manufacturers that the big southern financial offers are quickly eaten up in the costs of educating workers who show up for work functionally illiterate. In the long run, Toyota decided, it made more sense to take the smaller financial bundle in Canada than to fool around with retraining workers who cannot comprehend written instructions. Nissan and Honda have discovered that their plants are running well behind projected productivity because employees have to be educated intensively before they can begin to understand technical information. This requirement for additional basic education gums up the process of replacing departing personnel with new workers. In Alabama it became clear that job recruits were incapable of taking home and reading basic lessons on their equipment. Trainers resorted to using "pictorials" to explain various pieces of factory apparatus; workers who had a high school education needed to be taught by the use of cartoons because they couldn't handle printed words. I find it abysmally sad that some states that are willing to come up with a $500 million (losing) incentive package to lure in a car manufacturer would never be willing to pour a similar supplemental amount into basic education. Some of our efforts at reform in education are only intermittently successful. Many states have discovered that the federal requirements of the so-called No Child Left Behind program are burdensomely underfunded. Over 40 states are grappling with changing or overturning some requirements. In our state, court decisions and KERA (Kentucky Educational Reform Act) have provided a start, but the journey ahead is destined to be arduous still. The hazards in our new education system and our myopic focus on the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS) test results were brought home to me when a good friend who is a high school chemistry teacher described her dilemma to me. When she arrived at her new school to teach, she discovered that her labs were largely non-functional. Bunsen burners had no gas, and sinks were unusable. When she asked her principal when she could expect the necessary repairs, she was told that they would never be made. Why? Because the CATS test doesn't require a chemistry lab work background, so a functional lab is not a priority at the school. She went on to another school the next year, but the students were left behind (despite what federal legislation supposedly decrees). That same high school offers no hands-on experiences in shop class, vocational technical training, family and consumer sciences, drama or speech and debate. There is no intentional effort to integrate basic core curriculum and language skills into any manual skills. And this is in a school that annually sends only 25% of its students to college. Most of its students will graduate and seek employment working with their hands without ever being prepared for that reality. Still, since everything is geared to the CATS test, the school will be evaluated on test results rather than on usable practical results. We have a long way to go before we finish dealing with the educational agenda item. The Civil War will continue to cast a gloomy shadow over education in the South until the opportunity presented by public education becomes the public's unassailable priority. The task will require the interest, support, and best efforts of us all. Do you know what your schools need you to do? E-mail: joey_n_welsh@hotmail.com This story was posted on 2010-09-27 06:17:59
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