View from a Farley The Current Events and Opinion Weblog of Chris Farley

The Ideal School

Whenever I think about how to solve the world’s problems (as I do frequently, with limited success), I realize that education is the most important tools to combat a plethora of issues. On a national scale, proper education would have, I believe, prevented the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Part of the blame for the crisis falls to consumers who accepted loans they shouldn’t have and lived beyond their means because they didn’t understand basic economics. Voters’ susceptibility to the various misinformation campaigns in the recent election (particularly those perpetrated against then-Senator Obama) underline how better education might focus voters better on real issues.

Then I thought more specifically about schools. My school does many things right, but like most students, I’m constantly thinking of ways things could be better. I eventually want to be a venture capitalist and, assuming I’m wildly successful (which is admittedly a lot to hope), I figure that I want to donate money to education.

So what would be in my ideal school? It would be an independent school (public education, at least at the moment, is fraught with complications) and the facilities would be state-of-the-art. Schools with amazing facilities, however, are not unique.

The standards for both students and teachers would have to be stringent, but at the same time I believe that teacher salaries should be very high. The culture of standardized testing in public education has reduced teachers there to babysitters instead of trained professionals. The ideal school would pay teachers like pros because they are pros. All contracts would be year-to-year. In the time I was in public school, I saw far too many teachers who worked hard until they got tenure. Job security should be tied to job performance.

Students should also have tough academic requirements. Schools are responsible for creating well-rounded people, but academics should always be the primary focus. In addition to disciplinary measures, the school should expel students for failing to meet academic standards. Students shouldn’t live under the constant threat of being expelled, but there are a few students in my grade who clearly do not live up to basic standards of academics. In the ideal school, they would be given the chance to improve and, if they didn’t, they’d be expelled.

Of course, it should be difficult to get in to the school to begin with. Ideally, an entrance exam would not only cover the subjects that you need to study for, it would include problems that require reasoning. It’s more important that people know how to think than it is that they remember things, particularly in a time when information is so easily obtained. Oxford and Cambridge do this really well. Admissions should also be blind – students shouldn’t be admitted because they’re likely high donors.

As far as the curriculum goes, ethical and moral reasoning should be featured prominently. Independent schools attract wealthy families and produce the next generation of important people. It’s important that ethics is introduced very early on. There’s a class at Harvard called “Justice” that would ideally be the model for the Upper School ethics curriculum. I also believe that writing should be a big part of the curriculum. My school’s most glaring curricular failing is not having a good writing program. We simply do not do enough writing and we don’t do enough long writing. Students should have to write papers of considerable length frequently. The result of the lax writing program has been students viewing writing as traumatic and poor writing quality.

Those are the few building blocks of an ideal school that I was able to brainstorm in a few minutes. My observations and conclusions are based on my time in both public and independent schools. My ideal school is based on my current school which is as close to ideal as possible. That said, there are always improvements to be made.

Happy 2009 everyone,

CF