It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything to my blog. OK, a while might be a bit under-stated – it’s been half a decade. Looking at my past posts, I’ve made a couple of observations about the field of education.
First, issues in education never really seem to change no matter what the decade is. It wouldn’t be education if we didn’t have major concerns centered on money. There’s the sky rocketing cost of education in public, private and higher education to worry about, as well as the lack of money needed to fund those institutions. There are continued concerns revolving around preparing our students: preparing them for the next grade level of school, preparing them to take standardized tests, and preparing them to get into college. And then there are the concerns about insuring that we produce the world’s best students – which we seem to think we should be the best at in everything. This has led to schools and colleges competing to see who ranks as the best – you guessed it – in everything. This infernal quest to be the best and get in to the best schools and colleges now has become a plague on our youth driving every action they take- or at least driving their parents to fuel this driving quest for them if they haven’t discovered it on their own.
And as we strive to be the best, we struggle with the costs to create that environment, which fuels the fury to prepare students to enter that environment which enables educators to create a frenzy within students so that they desire to obtain entrance to said environment. Wow, I’m tired just writing that sentence.
So as I reinstate this blog, I’ve decided not to focus on those pressing issues that come up every year, as after all, you can just read my old posts, but instead, focus on what is happening now and relevant with today’s youth. I’m sure as I go along I’ll come up with a catchy name for my blog, but for right now, it’s nice to start writing again without an agenda and talk about that which I’ve always loved – educating kids.