Oprah and education

It’s wonderful news that television host Oprah Winfrey has opened The $40 million Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa. Where Oprah goes others will hopefully follow. (But NYT, why buried in the Arts section?)

At the same time Oprah is raising a stir for comments she made about why she chose to build her school outside the US.

Oprah reportedly said:

“I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn’t there. If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.”

It seems that most commentators think Oprah is daring to tell the truth, and I agree with them. There’s a malaise affecting not just the US education system but the whole of U.S. society.

Consider than more than 50% of science PhDs in the US are earned by foreign students. Consider that 25% of new hi-tech businesses in the US are started by immigrants. While the children of immigrants are fanatically devoted to the attainment of a good education so that they can get on in life, too many US youngsters regard education as a chore and good grades as a right.

And this is not to blame the children, because the problem doesn’t start with them. US teachers are chronically underpaid. Hilary Swank’s new movie, “Freedom Writers,” about a young teacher who excites a class of disengaged inner-city youths makes a point of mentioning that she was paid only $27,000 for her very demanding job. But that’s way more than my wife was making when she was working as a high school teacher in Montana — and that was with a master’s degree and several years of experience under her belt.

We pay people more to look after our money than we do to look after our children’s education.

Local citizens who don’t have children routinely vote down funding increases for schools or proposals to replace inadequate facilities.

Parents all too often have a sense that their primary goal is to protect their children from criticism and low grades. If a teacher dares to discipline a student for bad behavior the phone is likely to ring off the hook with complaints. Good grades are seen as every child’s right, regardless of whether or not he or she has done any work. Bad grades are seen as inherently unfair because they damage a child’s self-esteem.

If children can’t concentrate we don’t teach them to concentrate, we give them pills.

Watching too much TV too young causes behavioral problems. Children need more unplugged time.

The whole attitude to education in the US is flawed. We need to pay teachers more (and weed out bad teachers, of course), to value education, and to demand that parents hold their children accountable for their behavior.

The US can get by for a while on imported brains, but that strategy has obvious limits.

As the Scottish novelist Alistair Gray said: “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.” They should put that on the currency.

2 Responses to “Oprah and education”

Dave Csonka says:

January 11, 2007 at 4:11 pm

Both of my parents are teachers so I have a very personal perspective on the lives of educators. It bugs me when other folks remark that most teachers are incompetent and that reason explains why they shouldn’t be paid more money. I agree with the notions you get at about younger people being less interested in working for an education today. Its easy for the masses to be critical of teachers when they are thrust into the role of baby-sitter, motivator, and educator, all while having little support from parents or a politicized beauracracy.
bodhipaksa says:

January 11, 2007 at 4:51 pm

There are of course some bad teachers, but I don’t see that as a primary problem in the education system. A lack of recognition and appreciation of the work teachers do is more central. That appreciation needs to come from society as a whole, but more specifically from parents and administrators. Teaching’s a tough job!