Serious Answers Only—How to Fix MCPS?

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08/29/2023 12:31

Subject: Serious Answers Only—How to Fix MCPS?

Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop trying to fix social issues using education. Focus on teaching and accept the fact that different kids perform differently. Build more accountability at all levels of MCPS. Stop closing the gap by bringing down high performing kids.

Education exists largely to provide what society needs, so I don’t even know what this means. Of course education should be mindful of social issues — it’s how we get a better society.

To “fix” MCPS and other schools, parents should step back and realize they are neither the experts nor are they in charge. I realize the internet has eroded trust in institutions and made everyone think they know better than actual experts about so many things. But there already exist channels for parents to have input on school policy, including curriculum. Layering on these attempts to micromanage individual classroom instruction, trying to protect children from discomfort in learning, when cognitive dissonance is often needed to achieve greater understanding, and seeking to do things like restrict or ban books and media in schools is harmful to your children and society as a whole.

Or, shorter version: Parents should listen more and talk less, know their place, and stay in their lane. People who know better than them about what children need to learn are in charge — let them do their jobs.

I don’t actually disagree with the substance of the specifics of this, but I hope you understand how counterproductive the tone and rhetoric of this post would be if it were to be communicated to concerned parents.

DP. That depends on which "concerned parents" and what the parents are concerned about, no?

I also agree with the substance of the post. I am the expert in my child (along with my child), and I have parental authority over my child. I am not the expert on teaching or learning, and I don't have parental authority over children who are not my child. Parents who want to micromanage their children's education need to home-school.

The “I am an expert on my child” but is valid but there’s a fine line between advocating particular needs and helicoptering and demanding acquiescence to your perceived needs, often at the expense of other children.

I argue they shouldn’t home school. They really should sit down, shut up and let their child learn from professionals.

One of the most bizarre complaints in recent years is the one where parents complain their white children feel guilty or ashamed of their skin color after lessons about slavery, equity, etc. Most of this reaction comes from a good, if ignorant place and an impulse to protect their children from discomfort. And many of these parents are just sick of this race talk already and think we live in a color blind society; their well-meaning parents likely taught them not to see color.

But here’s where letting the professionals handle this is better:

1) Sometimes learning *is* uncomfortable. Dealing with cognitive dissonance is necessary in order to become better educated, more empathetic, more enlightened and a better member of society in general; this will in turn actually move us closer to a genuine color-blind utopia. The problem is the parents never got this education themselves and so feel theatened and personally attacked. They consider themselves good people — and they probably are — but they are closed minded to considering other perspectives.

2) Your white child’s temporary discomfort in learning this material is fleeting. And it pales (no pun intended) in comparison to the discomfort people of other colors feel more regularly navigating our society. Trying to protect them from the discomfort instead helping to transcend it only reinforces bigotry.

Your well-intentioned explanation for why we need Maoist-style indoctrination tactics to shame children about their ancestral bloodlines doesn't become less horrifying because you come at it from a place of kindness. Let me guess: you have a Peruvian grandmother? R your husband is bipoc? I'm sure there's a person in your head that you think you are speaking for, defending, being an ally to "protect."

But they are not fragile products of a tragic history, your person(s). They exist in the same world as the rest of us.

You can't shame children into feeling empathy. You need to feel some yourself, I think. Really put yourself in someone's shoes when you think about what their response will be to being told that centuries of systemic racism are something for which they must atone.

I also recommend taking a few history classes yourself, perhaps enough to learn that the blanket term "bipoc" encompasses both people whose ancestors came here in chains and people whose ancestors came here on investor visas from cultures with strictly defined caste systems. Neither are inherently good or bad, but how the weight of history falls upon them is not the same.