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Thursday, December 27, 2007
Let’s Ban Big-Box Schools
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It seems like we’re constantly bombarded with stories and studies proclaiming how bad public schools are.
Teachers are targeted as being, at best, ill trained or, at worst, too lazy to get a “real job.” Politicians are blamed because they’re uninformed about what goes on inside schools — or they’re corrupt.
Then we hear parents are the problem because they aren’t involved; students themselves are lazy.
We read how the only real problem with education is student discipline. That our problems all stem from a lack of funding or class size or poor administrators or …
Well, you get the picture.
There may be some merit in all those claims. I think many of our educational ills can be chalked up to one simple explanation: the size of our schools.
In metro Atlanta, we are trying to provide an education to literally thousands of students under one roof.
We used to have high schools that served 300 to 600 students. Today’s megacampuses have that many kids in a single grade. And entire schools sometimes exceed 4,000 students — at least in Gwinnett County.
When I was growing up, we actually learned, often in classes with more than 30 students. But our schools overall were small.
Why can’t we start building smaller, more manageable schools again? Aren’t the potential benefits worth any cost?
Today’s guest blogger, a Buford father and businessman, is a regular contributor to Get Schooled. If you would like to be a guest blogger here, please send an entry to bgutierrez@ajc.com. Include the words “guest blog” in the e-mail’s subject field.
