Unless there is some kind of miracle in Harrisburg, by the time you are reading this, we will still be without a state budget.
Apparently the divide in Harrisburg along party lines has resulted in an inability for our elected officials to agree on why, to whom, and how much of the state coffers are directed out and how we will collect money in to cover all of it.
Embedded in the discourse about the state budget one can generally find arguments that the state is either spending too much or not enough on education.
It seems that our legislators need to visit a school or come to a university to see what is actually happening in the education system in Pennsylvania and across the nation. What is expected of education and educators has changed drastically in the past several decades.
It wasn’t all that long ago that I was a public school student right here in Centre County. I started kindergarten at the now Penn State-owned College Heights School and then went up to sixth grade at Radio Park Elementary.
In those days, we had our assigned teacher and also in the building were the principal and usually one or two school secretaries. (I’m not forgetting the janitors or the staff who made our lunches). I’m sure there were guidance counselors in the elementary schools but, in those days, they focused on the troubled kids. We had music teachers and art and gym teachers who would come into our classrooms or take us to the gym once or twice a week to augment our classroom learning. We had recess. We had a school nurse who managed our scrapes from the playground or if we felt ill enough to go home.
In most classes, the material was presented by a single teacher who delivered the material one way. If you didn’t get it, you had to work harder.
In middle school and high school, it was pretty much the same. Teachers teaching subject material, giving us homework, and trying to keep the crowd in control. They had assistance from a few additional principals and guidance counselors whose job seemed to focus primarily on class scheduling, career planning, and occasionally working with some kids who weren’t getting along with each other.
Along the way, we participated in some extra-curricular activities such as sports or clubs — or didn’t.
For those of us who moved on to college and post-secondary learning it was more of the same but on a larger scale. It was college, so naturally we had classes. We had advisors (initially in offices called the Undergraduate Studies who would help us continue to select our intended path). We then took the courses we needed to graduate, visited our advisor (who was usually a faculty member) for help with course scheduling, and did so without a lot of fanfare. And then we graduated — or didn’t if we couldn’t make the grades.
My, how times have changed.
While some might argue that the facilities and the resort-like amenities of both public schools and universities have gotten out of hand, teaching remains at the core of the mission.
Consider the public school teacher today and the many roles and hats he or she has to wear. In addition to being able to teach a subject in such a way that students can grasp the material and be able to regurgitate it for a state mandated standardized test, the teacher of today must be schooled in theories of learning to meet the needs of what we now know is a multitude of learning styles. Teachers have to be versed in technology, social work, psychology, pharmacology, and be sensitive to diversity.
As mandated reporters, they have to stay on top of the signs and symptoms of children who may be experiencing mistreatment outside of the school hours. There are helpers in the classroom to manage behaviors and parents, nipping at their heels, demanding that his or her student is getting exactly what is needed (if not more). There are enrichment programs, special needs programs, disaster drills, conflict management, security in the buildings, and mandates that cupcakes for a school birthday party don’t meet national mandates for healthy eating in school.
Likewise, I’ve been teaching at Penn State for almost 24 years and have seen an evolution in the university climate. With research and the advance of most fields of study, the content of what we teach has certainly changed but perhaps not as drastically as the environment in which we teach. It’s no longer just about the subject matter. Universities now use words like recruitment, retention, and student success. We have to pay attention to what students tell us and show us in their classroom behaviors lest someone might need emotional or mental support outside of the classroom.
Departments have “safe words” to help alert others to a potentially explosive situation at a reception desk or in an advisor’s office. University resources in the areas of counseling services, student affairs, student conduct, and so on have expanded, just as the mission of the university has evolved to a more customer-focused, in loco parentis, model. Universities are seeing greater parental involvement as well as a greater “consumer focus” from students, some of whom have grown up without learning that ability and effort sometimes do mean different outcomes. Like our public school colleagues, universities are required to provide many more support services outside of the classroom that would have been unheard of in prior generations.
The cost of providing an “education” goes beyond reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. Perhaps if our legislators spent some time in a classroom, they might be more motivated to compromise.
In our bubble of Happy Valley, we are fortunate that, based on financial strength, both the State College Area School District and Penn State rely only limitedly on state dollars although the dollars we do count on are very important. Step out of the bubble of the Centre Region and schools and smaller universities are hurting — while our legislators and our governor squabble like children in a school yard over who gets to be the team captain.
We know that an educated society is a healthier, happier and more productive society. It’s time for legislators to get this budget passed and in it, make sure that we are being smart with our education dollars.
