Normally I disagree with Margaret Wente and Charter Schools but...

But this column in the G&M is bang on the money. At least as far as I can tell based on my thesis - (that's right now I have a body of research I can appeal to what a bonus!).

Kids who don't come from advantage need hella more then "portfolio based curriculums (new school education reform), or the 3 R's and standardized testing (old-schoool education reform), or portfolio-based learning with standardized testing tacked on at the end (Quebec bien oui!).

The schools she is talking about here, the KIPP program (Knowledge Is Power Program) have instituted many changes to a traditional public or even private model school, school days are much longer, students can actually call their teachers off school hours for homework help, and the curriculum includes some non-standard elements like overt training in listening and attention skills, instead of the simple yet- in-effective exhortion to; "PAY ATTENTION CLASS".

But what gets me, is that teachers at KIPP schools actually practice strengths -based teaching [Thanks Ruth - good talk yesterday ;)]. Wente writes:

But the teachers tell them constantly that they are smart - and they are.

and:

The aim is not only to teach reading and math but to instill non-cognitive abilities such as self-control, adaptability, patience and kindness. (These are traits that most middle-class kids pick up outside the classroom. They have a huge impact on any child's future success.)

She could have written as shorthand "Social Skills" but maybe that would have been laying it on a bit thick?

Public schools are historically based on preparing people for an industrial economy, and one wherein nuanced social skills are less importance then obedience too, and ability to negotiate life in a pretty clear-cut hierarchy. Right now, hierarchies aren't crumbling per se, but the work people do within them has become complex, fragmentary and differentiated across social spheres. There are the social worlds of home, of work, of your voluntary organizations. A person may be a leader in their community yet subject to the most abject discrimination at work, for example.

Schools today have an obligation to teach students to be socially intelligent yet critical, and be able to find positive and affirming lessons in a society, that often affirms only those people it already likes (that's privilege folks). Students who come from social worlds where the lessons they learn include painful ones, about the untrustworthiness of authority figures, about the appeal of non-legal forms of employment, about their own inherent lack of worth for reasons beyond their control, ie; skin-color, gender, lack of wealth etc..- For these students in particular, schools need to be a social space that offers other "life lessons" and builds a students sense of self- worth in the social sphere, not simply in terms of intellectual achievement.