Neo what?

Imagine the school you send your child to. Can you picture it? Children seated in neat little rows, learning things that they will need to help them succeed in the real world. Becoming literate individuals, making life long friends, and gaining a first rate education. But what is it that they are really learning and who is determining what it is that our children need to know for the real world?

Most of our schooling is focused on state exams. Schools are pressured to meet particular goals and are required to have each student pass the state exams. In some schools, upwards of 13 weeks of test prep occurs during school hours. That's more than 3 months of school devoted to the state tests. Who determines this? Why are we working towards meeting the demands of state tests?

Though my recent research on the topic, I've come across Neoliberalism. Through the beliefs of Neoliberals, there is a desire to have what is public, privatized. They want to see public education done away with. But what does this mean for our children? Public schools are forced to meet certain standards set by the state exams. These exams determine how much state funding schools receive. We are seeing schools that are not meeting the standards classified as failing schools. These failing schools are often shut down and then reopened as charter schools or other privately operated schools. Many of these schools that are failing are in locations with a high concentration of African Americans and Latinos, or in an impoverished area. Things for these students don't get better when a charter school is opened or a private school. These schools are highly competitive and pricey. These students are put into schools that are failing, with limited resources. These schools are over crowded and they are still being put through strict, direct instruction leading up to taking state exams.

I came across another term in my research this week. This was Neoconservatism. Even though neoconservatists are on the opposite end of the spectrum as neolibertarians, their beliefs are not making matters better for our students. Neoconservatists want to see education return back to what it traditionally was. They want to reduce what students are learning. Many Neoconservatists support Charter schools and Private schools because they can follow a curriculum that does not have to meet the standards of the state. These schools can limit or restrict what information their students learn. One example of such a restrict was teaching students about how the United States was racist. Parts of Martin Luther King's, "I have a dream" speech was cut out to keep all inferences of the United States being racist.

This current shift in the education system in the United States is one that angers me and will be extremely interesting to watch progress through the next few years. There are major changes in need of occurring and I'm not sure where these changes are going to take place.