“We can whenever and wherever we choose teach all children whose education is of
interest to us. We already know more than we need to know to accomplish that
task. Whether we do it or not must finally depend on the fact that we have not
done it so far…”
Some one said it.
It was an African-American educator as I recall. But I guess it struck a chord
with me and so I committed it to memory because, for me, it sort of encapsulated
the continuing struggle America has had with the education of our children. How
we talk about education and how we teach our kids and challenge our kids when it
comes to a quality education in our neighborhood public schools.
Just recently I read an article about the documentary”Waiting for Superman”. As
I understand it “Waiting for Superman” is a sort of rallying cry for
comprehensive reform in our public schools because, according to WFS (Waiting
for Superman), our American public school system is in crisis. The article goes
on to state the reason our public school system is in crisis is because we’re
failing millions of students, producing as many drop-outs as graduates and these
alarming statistics threaten our economic future.
Some concerned citizens saw our neighborhood public schools being threatened in
this economically-depressed Cincinnati community, Over-the-Rhine, back in the
fall of 2007. We came together and formed a committee we named OTREPS
(Over-the-Rhine for Education in Public Schools). And while we successfully
helped to save our only remaining K-8 neighborhood public school, Rothenberg,
from demolition (renovaton of Rothenberg to begin in January 2011), we are
intensifying our focus. The teachers and administrators redoubled their efforts
to make sure our kids continue to improve in school so they can be successful in
life.
It gives me great joy to state that Cincinnati Public Schools in general and
Rothenberg Academy in particular got high marks from the Ohio Department of
Education recently and we celebrate that. But we also need to now build on that
success.
As a member of a committee trying to effect change, I help out in a third-grade
classroom at Rothenberg. So I see first-hand how critical the need is to help
our young people with things like reading, reading comprehension and math. We
need to continue to raise the level of instruction so our kids can compete on
the global/world and international stage.
WFS has a website and on this website it offers ideas on what you, the
citizen/resident /parent can do to help in this effort. They suggest for example
to “call the school and ask what they need”. Maybe they need people to lend a
hand in the cafeteria or to help with accounting for children at the end of the
school day.
Another idea is to pledge to see the film, “Waiting for Superman”. That sounds
like a good idea to me. And if you like the film, tell members of your family,
your relatives and friends about it. Maybe they will go and see it too.
One of the mistakes people sometimes make is adopting the notion that because
they don’t have kids they don’t need to worry about kids’ education.
Even if you don’t have kids you should care about public education because the
kids are our future. And that is some of what this film / documentary is trying
to say.
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