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June 20, 2005
Restructuring high schools
And speaking of reinventing the high school, here is something I ran into - an excerpt from an interview from the June 1 Lou Dobbs Tonight show, "America's High Schools Lacking":
KITTY PILGRIM, CNN ANCHOR: My guest tonight says America's public high school system is under relentless attack and he says politicians, businesses and the schools themselves are to blame. Well, joining me from Orlando is John Farrendino president of the National Academy Foundation. He's a former superintendent of high schools in New York City.
And thank you very much for joining us. That's quite a badge, former superintendent of high schools in New York City, and certainly you bring with you a wealth of experience. Why are schools failing so badly?
JOHN FARRENDINO, PRESIDENT NAT'L ACADEMY FOUNDATION: Well, there are lots of very complex reasons, but the simplest is that American secondary schools, as they're presently structured, do not meet the needs of the young people who we service, and they were designed in an -- a century ago. They need to be restructured into more accountable, small, learning communities so that we can get engagement of the business community into the school and answer the question that every teenager, time immemorial has asked: why do I have to know this stuff?
So, we need to change the actual structure and accountability systems that exist within the schools.
PILGRIM: You know, I was really fascinated by your premise that the schools were built for an agricultural society. Why, and why won't they work? And, certainly reading, writing and arithmetic is still very relevant.
FARRENDINO: Oh, absolutely, it's very relevant. But, yet, the design of the school at the turn of the century was designed in a theoretical, classical curriculum base which was designed to have 30 percent of the young people be successful, and the other 70 percent to go into our factories and our farms, and those factories and farms no longer have that need. So, the schools need to change dramatically.
We need to -- the National Academy Foundation, our experience, is to create career academies using thematic approaches that turn kids on to learning and allow the business community to get actively involved so that when the young person is engaged, they can see that what they are doing in school relates to what opportunities might exist in the future for them.
PILGRIM: Give us an example of something thematically based that might...
FARRENDINO: OK, sure. A simple one and one of the academies we use is called the academy of finance, but, if you think about it, if a kid is learning their math and their social studies and their English as it relates to a theme -- and you can use business or the financial services industry -- when they are doing their algebra and the application of their algebra problems relates to how much money is earned or profit margins or all of the different kinds of machinations that take place that can take place with mathematics, using a business context, the kids then understand that the skills and tools that they are gaining are not abstract, but they're things that are actually going to apply to their everyday life.
Sounds right on target to me.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at June 20, 2005 8:38 AM
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