Sonia Marsh - Gutsy Living

Life's too short to play it safe

You are here: Home / Archives for Education

I live in the 3rd dumbest state in America

by

 

Have you thought about how “dumb” your state (country) is? A few days ago, my husband sent me this link, confirming that we live in the 3rd dumbest state in the U.S., and I took it like a personal insult. How can that be?

3rd Dumbest State: California

“California has one of the worst dropout rates in the country, with nearly 20 percent of the population failing to graduate from high school. In recent years, the state’s approach to fixing this was to artificially inflate the numbers. Besides this, graduating seniors in California scored an average of 1511 on the SATs, placing it in the bottom third of the nation. It was probably a bad sign when, in 2008, it was considered a great accomplishment that the state would work towards getting eighth graders to learn algebra, a common requirement in other states. One of the main bright spots for California was its “gold standard” for higher education, where students would have access to the excellent state colleges at a lower tuition rate. But this too has suffered in recent months”

 So we may be dumb, but at least we have this in southern California:

 San Clemente Beach September 2011

   And we have this beauty in the north:

 Golden Gate Bridge September 11th, 2011 

 So where are the smartest people in the U.S.? According to the same article, Vermont is the place to be, especially if you’re raising a family. 

The Smartest State: Vermont

“Vermont was declared the smartest state by Morgan Quitno thanks to several factors. “A high percentage of the state’s students are proficient in reading and math. In addition, class sizes are small and the number of teachers per student is among the lowest in the nation,” the firm said in a press release. The average SAT scores in this state are not overwhelmingly great (just 1542), but Vermont makes up for it with strong classrooms that foster good students who are dedicated to continuing their education beyond high school. The National Center for Education reports that 91 percent of people in Vermont have a high school diploma or higher, and nearly a third have completed a bachelor’s degree.”

Just to prove I’m not dumb, here’s a photo my husband took of me last night while waiting for the boat tour of the San Franciso bay.

 

So I don’t think California can possibly be the 3rd dumbest state. Do you?

On a more serious note, feel free to add your thoughts on education.

Is Education a Privilege or a Right?

by


Big Sergio and his son, little Sergio, in Belize.

I am so lucky to live in a part of the world where my children can have an education.

Living in the developed world, I sometimes forget that education is a privilege, despite my belief that it should be a right for every child in the world.

Greg Mortenson, author of NYT bestseller Three Cups of Tea, is the director of the Bozeman-based non-profit Central Asia Institute (CAI), and has been building schools, particularly for girls, in mountain areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. As of 2007, he had built 64 schools which provide education to over 24,000 students, including 14,000 females.

I wanted my 15-year-old son Jordan to watch the special on CNN last night where children in Afghanistan and Pakistan were begging for an education. Kids sat cross-legged on dusty desert floors, watching their teacher write on the outdoor blackboard. The concentration and enthusiasm they expressed, was equivalent to U.S. teenagers being offered the latest, most expensive electronic gizmo. When asked what they wanted more than anything, “an education” was their first response.

When we lived in Belize, my three sons spent hours fishing with big Sergio, our caretaker and his son, little Sergio. One evening we had them over for dinner. Big Sergio, only twenty-one said, “You lucky. You go school, get books and computers. I work in sugar-cane fields at thirteen, to help for food. No money for books, only work for food.”

Big Sergio gave my family a gift. No amount of lecturing from me, could ever make my kids understand that in many parts of the world, education is seen as a privilege.

I know they were shocked to hear big Sergio had quit school at thirteen. During the year we spent on Ambergris Caye, my boys showed him how to use a computer and little Sergio how to read and speak English.

What are your views on this topic?

Do you have any stories to share about your kids and education or kids from other parts of the world?

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

by

“We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it.” Would you agree?

This morning I listened to Sir Ken Robinson’s presentation on the educational system. I urge you to watch it, if you haven’t already. Not only do I find his speech thought provoking, but he also has an incredible sense of humor.

He claims that, “Creativity is as important in education as literacy and that we should treat it with the same status?”
Do you agree?

Picasso said, “All kids are born artists.” The problem is, how do we remain artists as we grow up? It’s our fear of making mistakes and being wrong that causes our loss of creativity as we grow older.

Sir Ken gave the example of a six-year-old girl who hardly ever paid attention in class. One day, during a drawing lesson, she finally sat still. The teacher asked her, “What are you drawing?” the girl said, “I’m drawing a picture of God.” The teacher responded, “But no one knows what God looks like.” To which the little girl said, “They will in a minute.”

Sir Ken claims that we run our companies in the same way as our educational system. “We stigmatize mistakes, and we run our education system this way, where mistakes are the worst thing we can make, and the result is we’re educating people out of their creative capacities.”

As a writer, I’m teaching myself to become more creative. Classes are offered in creative writing and now I wonder if that’s because we lost our creativity in school and as adults, we’re trying to get it back. Just as Picasso said, “We’re all born artists.” We just have to remain artists as we grow up.

Sir Ken points out something very interesting. Every education system has the same hierarchy of subjects. At the top are mathematics and language, then the humanities and at the bottom, the arts. Even within the arts there’s a hierarchy. Art and music are generally given a higher status than drama and dance. There isn’t an education system in the world that teaches dance everyday, the way we teach mathematics. Why not? Dance is very important as is math. Children dance all the time if they’re allowed to. We all have bodies. As children grow up, we start educating them progressively from the waist up, and then we focus on the heads, and then only one side of the brain.

If you’re a teacher, have children or grandchildren, and even if you look back at your own education, what do you think about education killing creativity?

Latest from the blog

Top Posts