Innovation and Renovation in Education

I read two interesting articles in the Buffalo News today. The first covers a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) program in Buffalo that deliberately targets under-performing schools and targets minorities (African Americans, Hispanics, and First Nations peoples) and females. These groups have been historically low in the STEM areas , both in numbers and in achievement.

The program, a collaboration with SUNY Buffalo, brings public school teachers together with college professors with the intention of creating more interesting and hands on lessons for the students. As stated, this program targets those that capitalism leaves behind in the educational world. They are the manual laborers that populate the “reserve army of labor” (more simply called “the unemployed” and sometimes “the unemployable.”) These students often are falling behind in the K-8 levels. If they are behind in those grades, it becomes more difficult to catch up in the higher levels. This leads to the infamous problem of absenteeism and high drop out rates.

By creating these “real world,” and interesting sounding, projects teachers hop e to be able to keep the students in school, interested, and caught up on the classes and skills that they will need in order to be employable in the “new economy” that is springing up in Buffalo and surrounding areas.

Problem – It is running out of money.

This money problem ties to another problem in the Buffalo city school district, and I suspect some of the suburbs, and rural districts as well. After school programs in the city are inconsistent. They don't run Monday through Friday and they don't run long enough. Most stop at 4:30 PM. Many parents get out of work at 5 PM. This makes it difficult to guarantee that students are getting home safely (or can even get in their homes) or that they are being safely monitored (probably outside the school) while waiting for their parents to come and pick them up.

Also of concern is the quality of the programs. Different schools can run different programs and they can be of differing quality. Teachers can be tied up in meetings, have to grade work quickly in order to have it back to students in a meaningful (read short) amount of time so that it is useful for instruction and evaluation. Sometimes community groups are involved (and they mean well) but the activities planned don't always support classroom instruction or, for upper level students, are just glorified “baby sitting sessions.”

The after school program would be a great opportunity to collaborate with the Education Departments of SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo State, Canisius, Niagara University, and other colleges. Even the child care programs at the various community coleges could be involved. This, like the STEM program mentioned above, could link current teachers with teachers in training and help build up necessary skills that the two short practicums (8 weeks and 6 weeks) do not develop. (As an aside, in Finland, the practicum is ONE YEAR long and done with only one teacher, to my understanding.)

This idea sounds great and runs into a problem – money.

And there is plenty of it. It is just being wasted.

Where?

The military.

The United States spends more money on its war machine than the next 11-15 (depends upon the report) countries combined. And at that, the weapons systems are overpriced and under perform. Think of the Patriot Missile System. When did it ever work. There was the F-22, which was canceled after $800 million was spent on it. And it was never put into production because Lockheed-Martin could not get it to work. Then there's the F-35. If I recall correctly, the Air Force said that it doesn't even want this plane. It has no mission for it and (believe it or not), lower priced aircraft from Russia, China, and a few other countries out perform it. Final nail in the coffin, they still can't fly it in combat. Like its sibling, the F-22, there are problems with it.

And then there is the monster money muncher, the M-1 tank, with its cancer causing depleted uranium armor and munitions. Yes – you read that correctly. Radioactive depleted uranium is in the armor and ammunition used in the tank. And when the soldiers get cancer, we pay for everything. And also the birth defects that the children suffer from. Soldiers that served in Fallujah have high rates of birth defects in their children because the soldiers were exposed to depleted uranium in the battlefield. It's our generation's “Agent Orange.”

So the solution here is obvious – stop wasting money on useless munitions and military waste and redirect it towards our children. Children need quality schools, teachers, classroom materials, support staff (aides, secretaries, custodians, lunch personnel) so that they can learn, grow, and have a hope for a future.

It takes approximately $10 million to run the STEM program in Buffalo for 5 years. That's less than 2 M-1 tanks according to Richard Trotsky's recent article on war spending.

One kills. One gives hope.

Make a choice.

The future depends on it.