Abraham Lincoln, arguably one of our nation’s greatest presidents, had less than one full year of formal education in his entire lifetime.
Ted Bundy, arguably one of America’s most feared serial killers, led a highly successful academic career; he earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and completed two years of law school.
History taught me education is what you make of it.
I spent nearly three years as a writing tutor at a college campus. Later at a private learning center, I tutored students who were having trouble in their writing classes.
One eighth-grader made a lasting impression on me.
He was close to failing his English course when he first came to the center and after working with me one-on-one for several weeks, he showed drastic improvement in his writing ability. Together we covered effective sentence structure, how to form a thesis, when and when not to use quotes or paraphrase, correct grammar and punctuation.
All of this occurred within the confines of the center, which made it a policy not to interfere directly with school curriculum. A large part of our instructions depended on the student’s willingness to take their education into their own hands. Rather than turning his work in for a grade at school, everything he did stayed at the center for our evaluation and it became clear he was potentially a very talented writer.
I looked forward to meeting with him and enjoyed drafting reports on his progress, which my boss – an extremely talented and accredited educator and assessor of learning disabilities, psychological disorders and student achievement in general – fully agreed with.
After working with him for nearly a month, we received a progress report from his school informing us he was going to fail not only English, but math and history as well. His mother was close to tears when she delivered the report to us, which resembled exactly how I felt as an educator.
Despite our attempts to “buckle down” with the student before his parents removed him from the center, he went on to receive failing grades just a year before moving on to high school.
“What are you going to do if you fail out of high school?” I asked him at one point. “You know you’ll have to get a job, right?”
He informed me that he had a rich aunt who would take care of him for the rest of his days.
Here was a kid attending one of the state’s best public schools, whose parents could afford to send him to a private learning center – who I had seen write ‘A’ papers in less than 15 minutes – ready to live the life of a stay-at-home nephew.
History and my teaching experience taught me education is what you make of it.
Listening to the Cape Elizabeth High School students who spoke out at a public hearing in support of increasing funding for next year’s school budget made me think about my former student. Would he have cared enough to attend a three-hour long discussion on the school budget, as many of the Cape Elizabeth students did? Would adding money to his school’s budget have helped him? Would a writing tutor allowed to operate within the school system have given him the help he needed? If he had the choice, would he take his education into his own hands by going into the writing center?
I’m not so sure.
Valuing education is a two way street; you can provide as much funding for a school budget as you care to, but some students will still fall behind while others excel. Students will make the most, or the least, of their education regardless of another $200,000 being tossed into the budget. It’s time to see what students do with an education funded with an amount that will still let taxpayers keep their heads above water just a little longer – even a 4.6 percent increase could mean increasing property taxes by more than 5 percent, a tough increase to shoulder knowing that education will still only be what students decide to make of it.
                                                                       –Nate Jones