A journey in Obama's America
In this article, we look at Washington and spend some time visiting their schools. Looking at the formative years of American children is the best way of understanding the United States. At the time when Barack Obama makes the recovery of state-education a central part of his mandate, certain educational establishments prepare themselves for a teaching revolution.
I am often asked, during a journey, what makes the Americans so optimistic, polite and respectful amongst each other, even when in an economic recession. I have found the answer. Next year, my daughter will leave the French educational system in order to enter the American one. I know that she will learn less than in our French colleges but in leaving the American system, she will be prepared for a socially balanced and well-adjusted life and teamwork. She will not become, in later life, either bitter or angry — due to her teachers instilling within her a sense of self-confidence.
I have visited numerous schools in the United States. If I can, I try to do this in every country that I visit. Schools, it seems to me, are tangible markers of a country?s situation. There is always a link between the investment of countries in their educational systems and their level of development.
In Pakistan and Bangladesh, I spent a month in the madrases where teaching has remained the same for three centuries. Children of millions of poor families are abandoned to the hands of ignorant and harsh religious clerics. It is the willingness of local élites who invest their national resources in armies and police forces - that is to say, the means to continue their feudal domination. From Indonesia to Haiti, these forces are justified on the basis of suppressing public riots from the moment that their populations revolt against the injustices that inflicted on them.
I have seen caricatures of situations, such as that in North Korea, where the schools serve to enrol students in a cult-like worship of the glory of dynastic dictatorships. There is also short-sighted policy. In China, state spending in education is minimal. It is for the parents to pay. The results are lamentable. Young Chinese students rush towards the universities in America, Canada and Australia. China offers to the West its best young scholars! Above all, governments are obsessed with following short-term policies. 2The quality of education is not their priority.
In the United States, I am astounded at discovering that their problems are similar to ours. The bureaucracies that regulate schools, whether they be localor federal, have become “mammoths” to quote Claude Allégre. However, the past fifteen years has seen a sweeping revolution in the American state school system - the advent of Charter Schools.
This movement has neither a charismatic leader nor a real structure. Its principle is simple. It is about marginalising those state-school teachers who are content to act as security guards or do the minimum required by freeing the creativity of other, dynamic and entrepreneurial teachers from the corset of their administrative supervisors. The way it works is straightforward - the authorities spend between $12,000 and $50,000 (for handicapped students) per year, per child. If a student moves to another school, this money follows them. The charter schools receive this money for each pupil, equal to the state-schools.
In order to be subsidised, they have some fulfil some obligations. They must be non-profit, charitable associations, free and open to all. They are to be resolutely secular. Aside from that, they organise their teaching as they see fit. They are decoupled from all administrative oversight. The only method of measuring their success is by exam results.
“During the 1980s,” explains Malcolm Peabody, president of the organisation ?The friends of free choice in city schools?, “all the efforts to reform schools flopped. They were formulated by state-school system bureaucrats and teaching unions. When bureaucracy exercises control over schools, it leads to disaster. In 1991, a group in Minneapolis had the idea to separate schools from this bureaucracy. Forty-three states out of fifty have adopted legislation that moves in this direction.
A chance for social advancement for the disadvantaged
Many of the founders or directors of these schools have been to the most prestigious universities in America (Harvard, Princeton, Yale etc.) or from state-education. I am impressed by their enthusiasm towards their districts. Anne Herr founded the ?Capital City? school in Washington. She explained, “Entire communities sank where the population was poorest because the teachers satisfied themselves with their working benefits, not wanting to lengthen or adapt their working hours or enter into a dialogue with local families. The culture of the street became stronger than that of school or the family. Children took drugs because they were out of control.
Those Americans who were amongst the most well-off escaped the mediocrity of free education by sending their children to “private schools”. They are the equivalent of our public schools and are much more expensive ($18,000 minimum per child, per year). Middle and working class families cannot afford them. It is they who suffer the most from collapsing state-schools.
They flee in the direction of the charter schools. The five-thousand or so schools which have been created on this model welcome 1.3 million American children. In Washington DC, charter schools have already swiped 28,033 of the 73,120 children from the state-sector. Their classes never have more than eighteen pupils, the schools are small (250 students on average.
Their exam results are measurably superior to that of the standard state- schools. In Washington, young black and Latino children makeup 91% of charter school recruits and leave the secondary schools with success rates in reading and mathematics that are twice as high as state-schools. The state, without spending one penny more, offers disadvantaged minorities the best chance of social advancement.
Barack Obama has made the recovery of state-schools a central plank of his mandate. Minority groups are the base of his support. He encourages charter schools, even if his Democrat party are generally opposed to them. That is the case with the mayor of Washington, Adrian Fenty. He is rousing strong opposition to charter schools, because he was elected with the support of the teaching unions. The law provides that each time twenty-five students leave a state school, one teaching post is lost. More than 1,200 state-school teachers in the capital have been redeployed, where almost ninety charter schools have flourished. The rage of the teaching lobby against the charter schools is extreme.
I have visited many charter schools. They have become social anchors in districts in the capital where, twenty years ago, people were killing each other. Children in those schools work every day including Saturday. There are no long holidays, even in the summer. The children are rarely left to their own devices. The teachers are paid the same level as those who work in state- schools. But their enthusiasm is infectious. These new schools belong to them.
At the Haynes school, which takes its name from its founder (who graduated from Yale), I arrived in a bright and cheerful gym, in full celebration of the oriental and Asian community. Parents and their children are dressed-up as the Japanese, Indians, Chinese... The atmosphere is warm. “We do this once a month, every month, always for a different community because half of our students are black, a quarter are Latino and the rest are white, oriental and asian; they come from around the world” explains Julie Green, the director of development. The children dance under a banner containing the motto of the school that proclaims, “Be kind, Work hard, Get smart!” Here, they read it together. “It is a contest to read together 5 million words by the end of the year, and they are already up to 4.7 million!” enthuses Caroline, the mother of a nine-year old Chinese boy. “60% of the parents here are below the poverty level, their children benefit from free school meals” explains Steph, a teacher.
The important thing is team work
The most striking thing, for me as a French citizen, is the teaching delivered in these schools. The students work in groups. There are groups of between three and five students working around communal tables. They discuss, the atmosphere being as informal as that found in a kitchen at home at dinner time. The importance thing is not the notes that they make but their team work. “At six years old, they all know how to speak in public and present a project” explains Dave, the director of studies at the Capital City school.
The dialogue between teachers and students are based on the concept of the “sandwich”. The teacher starts with a compliment, “John, you know how much I like what you have done!” Then the remark “You should work on this, it could be great!” This is followed by a final compliment, “I really enjoy working with you. Well done!” In American schools, to be positive is the norm. “We instil confidence in the children, this confidence is essential if one is to become a sportsman or an entrepreneur” says Anne Herr, the director of Capital City. American schools make individuals who are sure of themselves and skilful speakers.
The defects of this method is that it produces rather uncultivated people and also liars and smooth talkers. In the United States, for example, exaggeration and dishonesty are normal from those seeking employment. The important thing is to get the job rather than being able to do it. George W Bush had left the United States twice before becoming the President. I am certain that he imaged that he could learn on-the-job once elected. This is in contrast to Jacques Chirac who after decades of training, gave the impression of not daring to do anything.
In this way, our two lessons forge two radically different cultures. In France, the remark, “No, I have never done it! No, I do will not know how to do it! No I will not manage to do it” is the daily refrain. We hesitate, we dither, we do not progress, we control everything before taking the slightest decision, for fear of taking a risk. In the United States, we throw ourselves head-first into the unknown, “let?s try” we say, the future is ours!" And we can reach the moon.