In my dreams, we pay a whole lot more attention to the academic performance of our colleges than we do to their athletic performance. So, national letter of intent day looks something like this. It's a nice fantasy.
I single out DPS in this cartoon only because it's the largest district around, and as such, is representative of the inability of many school districts to prepare its college-bound students for the rigors of higher education. As the parent of two former DPS students now doing quite well in college, I know that this drawing paints a somewhat inaccurate picture. My kids got a good education in DPS schools. That said, many of their classmates did not, and they went to two of the best-performing high schools in Denver.
I'm guessing that many readers will be only too happy to blame the teachers' union, so-called "educrats," lack of discipline, lax standards, grade inflation, or liberalism in general. Oh, that it were so simple that we could blame one thing or group and be done with it. My kids had all the advantages: a home full of books, computers, two educated parents who read to them, worked with them and demanded high performance, met with teachers and administrators, and had enough time and money to support their speech and debate, choir, theater, sports, National History Day, Model UN, Odyssey Club, newspaper, and whatever else they became interested in doing.
I'm convinced that parents are our children's primary teachers, and that the school is only one of the educational tools that we use. If we don't do our job, the school cannot possibly pick up the slack, no matter how skillful and dedicated the teachers may be.
Newsweek's Jonathan Alter reports that he's betting on Denver Public Schools superintendent as president-elect Obama's choice for Secretary of Education. Bennet, a graduate of Wesleyan University and Yale Law School, would join an impressive cast of appointees hailing from Harvard and Yale, a Kennedyesque collection of the best and brightest. I'm all for brilliance in Washington. Dubya's batch of cronies, scoundrels, zealots and dim-bulb yes-men created the what may be the most incompetent American government in history. I want my leaders to be way smarter than me. A cautionary note, though: we all know how the last group this bright, talented and confident fared--they failed to stop Castro's revolution in Cuba and led us into the quagmire of Viet Nam.
