Accelerated Education
Taking Challenging Curriculums
By Daniel Muniz

It is a natural inclination for some parents to want their children to have the best education possible. After all, a good education opens up the doors to more opportunities and the chance to maximize their potential for the future. As a result, there are certain parents who are quite adamant that their children get that chance.

And for many public schools, such challenging curriculums are programs like the Gifted and Talented and Advanced Placement (AP) in high school that allow students to take college level classes. However, the process to get a child enrolled in such programs is often filled with controversy and the subject of heated debates across the country.

Some critics argue that labeling a miniscule number of children as “gifted” smacks of elitism. Other critics pull the race card arguing that blatant discrimination is involved because too many minorities are excluded from these programs although in brazen hypocrisy, students of Asian descent are often classified as “white” in order to make the racism charge sound more plausible.
 

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But what is often missing in the arguments is a dose of reality.

Our public school system is intentionally designed to accommodate the lowest common denominator instead of the pursuit of academic excellence. So in other words, the goal is to have the most kids pass the lowest possible academic standard that is deemed acceptable by the state.

Such a generalization is in no way intended to be an insult to our education system even though it does sound rather brash. Unfortunately, governmental institutions, especially the ones that are monopolies, have a “one size fits all” mentality in their approach. And they have to because in a monopoly everybody has to be accommodated and that is a harsh reality that too many people refuse to accept.

There are plenty of parents who are thrilled that their child is only required to take classes like “math for boneheads” in which only a minimal effort is required to pass it. And to the horror of some parents, there is a perverse incentive to strip down the academic standard to as low as possible so that it doesn’t take much for a huge number of students to pass it with flying colors. Johnny may barely be able to read and write and to add and subtract but as long as he passes his classes, some parents will be ecstatic.

For decades, watered down curriculums has been the norm in so many school districts across the country that politicians enacted legislation that introduced standardized testing to ensure that at least the bare minimum academic requirements are at least being met. However, there are plenty of loopholes to standardized testing in which the bad schools teach to a test instead of to a curriculum. Again, it doesn’t matter if Johnny still cannot read or write as long he is now able to pass his standardized tests.

In addition, teachers are sometimes forced to water down their curriculums even more because they can be severely reprimanded by their principals if too many students refuse to study for tests, neglect to turn in homework, or simply forget to finish assignments. Educators are caught between a rock and a hard place because the burden of good grades rests on them instead of on the student and their parents.

Consequently, there are the parents who don’t want to play those games because they will see to it that their children do study for tests and turn in homework since they are actively involved in their child’s education. However, these kids are not going to be intellectually stimulated if they are in classes that are specifically designed to be easy to pass. And it is not practical for a teacher to segregate the curriculum in the same class for the brighter students.

Sadly, there are abysmally low arbitrary limits to how many students can be in these accelerated programs. Not everybody can be in a Gifted and Talented program or in an AP class although there are too many good students who are not able to able to participate in these programs because of artificially low limits.

The real solution is to reject the government’s “one size fits all” approach to education.

The first step is to remove these arbitrary limits in order to allow anyone who is bright enough to enroll in it. The stipulation is that these kids also have to be responsible enough to be in such a class. That means that homework has to be turned and tests have to be studied for. It also means that teachers can actually be teachers again by ruthlessly penalizing the slackers instead of finding ways to coddle them.

Next, the United States needs a dual education system, much like what is done in Europe. For example, Germany has the gymnasium which is very much a college preparatory school that only teaches the students who are capable of passing a rigorous curriculum.

School districts across the country have begun experimenting with magnet schools but the success has been limited. The emergence of charter schools has provided a partial answer because they escape the bureaucracy although vouchers would be the complete solution. Parents need to have the ability to send their children to any school that best suits their needs whether it is a magnet, charter, or a private school with a voucher.

The brutal truth is that there are too many special interest groups who want things to stay the same even if it is dysfunctional. The result is that too many bright kids are penalized by being stuck in an unforgiving system that will not academically challenge them.

And finally, the race card is an ugly weapon. Our educational leadership has to sit down with community leaders and explain that academic excellence is colorblind. There are too many unrealistic expectations of what our schools can really accomplish when it comes down to the personal responsibility of studying for tests, turning in homework, and not skipping out of school. That burden rests with parents and the community instead of on the education system.

For households where education is not a priority, our public schools are fine the way they are but for everyone else, the students who have the capacity to excel need to be placed in an environment that allows them to do it and a dual education system is the right way to do it.

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