Too Fool for School
Jacqueline Wolfert
Issue date: 8/31/05 Section: Commentary
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Besides these pivotal historical events, Chile and the United States share surprisingly similar stances on various policy issues. In his second term, for example, American President George W. Bush has discussed his goal of privatizing social security using a model adopted from the Chilean government under Pinochet. In addition, Chile has continued to follow the globalizing trend of American market capitalism, signing various trade agreements to secure a strong financial partner in the United States government.
In recent years, however, it has become increasingly obvious that one of the major things these two countries have in common is actually a major lack of something. This something is an affordable and effective educational system.
During the six months I spent studying abroad in Santiago, Chile, many peers in my program volunteered by assisting elementary and middle school teachers in English instruction. From their experiences, and the daily testimony I received from my high school-aged Chilean sister, my impression of the primary and secondary education system was one completely lacking of academic resources and individual attention for students, especially those living in the poorest neighborhoods and rural areas. Class sizes are large and the teachers have little to no control over the amount of lessons covered or work accomplished by their students.
While reading any local news source from the Washington, DC area or talking to a friend who participates in the DC Schools or DC Reads organizations, a whole discussion of the issues plaguing the education system in the District will inevitably surface. And that's just one city. The trend these days in the United States is understaffed and unproductive schools churning out uneducated and unmotivated students...if those students can even last long enough to earn their high school diploma.
In his recent Op-Ed for the New York Times, Bob Herbert cites a recent report published by the Program for International Assessment, which found that the United States ranked 24th out of 29 nations surveyed in math literacy. For a country so used to winning everything from military wars to Olympic medals, it's safe to say we're losers, not winners, when it comes to education. And unfortunately for us, it's only a matter of time until our learning deficit causes a deficit in other areas as well.
Herbert adds that only about two-thirds of American teenagers graduate from high school, and only about half of them are equipped with the basic skills to handle the college-level course load. Many of these teenagers view college as being too challenging and choose to pursue generally mindless jobs instead of wasting a daunting amount of time and money with a college education. While politicians and employers alike worry about the future competitiveness of the United States with other countries rapidly developing their research and infrastructure in the fields of math and science, there's little evidence of actual action being taken. Developing countries like Chile, or their worse-off peers in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa, face even greater pressure to get their education systems up to par to compete in today's volatile global market.
This complete disregard of the early levels of education translates directly to the already-elitist university system. For those students that miraculously survive the odds and make it to college, they are punished with annually increasing tuition prices. In Chile, the state-funded public universities are the most prestigious in the country, with thousands of students applying each year to avoid the high costs of private college tuition. But even paying for a public school is difficult for Chilean students, most of whom do not yet have jobs and whose families live on a relatively low income. Students who are not accepted to these universities often have nowhere else to turn and must enter the workforce doing menial labor or remain unemployed.
The most significant event during my semester in Santiago occurred around the halfway point, when the education system was paralyzed by student strikes in most of the public universities throughout the country. The student associations were fighting a new law, the Ley de Financiamiento (or law of finance). Although a complicated issue, the law essentially gave more money in scholarships to students at private universities (and, according to the complaints of the public school students, took it away from the already small amount of financial aid available to the large state universities). More controversially, the law privatized student loans. The government had previously loaned money to students for their education, loans that were seldom paid back even years after the students graduated and entered the work force. With private banks or corporations in charge of these loans, there was increased pressure for students to pay back their debts during an unrealistically small period of time.
While the position taken by the students on this law makes them seem spoiled at best, in that they do not want to shell out the cash for their own education, it more importantly presents the fundamental issue that tuition prices for college are too high for an average person between the ages of 18 and 25 to afford without going into debt for years of their life. Now this is something to which college students in the United States can certainly relate.
'Tis the season of back-to-school, and once again attention turns to the skyrocketing price of college tuition, added to the growing costs of room and board, books, and the practically compulsory post-graduate education. Instead of traveling down this path, many high school students choose to pursue direct training in the occupation of their choice or head to community colleges that offer cheap credits and the flexibility to simultaneously work one or more jobs during the semester. Some of the nation's best and brightest will never go to college, either because their secondary schools have not adequately prepared them or they cannot afford it. For many, it's probably a little of both.
The recent book, My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student, was written by Cathy Small, an anthropology professor at Northern Arizona University. According to CNN, 50-something Small decided to return to college as a freshman as a way of studying the behavior of university students. One of the significant lessons she learned as a student was how to highlight important coursework and skip minimal assignments to focus on extra-curricular activities, jobs or internships. Most students she met usually had some form of part-time employment, and most students felt pressure to pick a career path that would later help them to earn enough money to pay off their student loans.
Many students find that it is easier to skip college for vocational schools that are cheaper and provide almost guaranteed employment. Those that can find the money or the financial aid to attend a four-year college have to balance work and studying, rather than focusing on receiving a well-rounded education and challenging themselves. This is not a study skill that should be taught to any student, regardless of economic background or level of intelligence.
In his Democratic Party radio address this past week, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), spoke about the Democrats' demand for more federal money to finance American education. According to CNN, Kennedy asked for money for "teacher training, small class sizes, early childhood education and college aid." It's an issue that stands little to gain from the clashes of bipartisan politics, but everything to gain from a little pre-school style cooperation.
Wolfert is commentary editor and an international politics senior