PTA does not stand for Parent Teacher Association
By Jim StergiosApril 4th, 2008
How could it? Take a look at this video from a recent Massachusetts Board of Education meeting – especially the 0:20 to 3:37 section, where Ruth Kaplan, the PTA representative to the Board, attacks charter schools’ focus on educating students for college. Despite being the, ahem, Parent Teacher Association pick for the BoE, Kaplan clearly doesn’t trust parents to choose what’s best for their kids:
“But to create many schools where college is, you know, the number one goal, I think it sets some kids up for failure and that concerns me….And their families, who don’t always know what’s best for their children.”
Golly. I was wrong all this time. I thought having a parent send his or her kid to a charter with the hope that s/he’d be the first to attend college was a, you know, good thing. I forgot that the fulcrum of education wisdom (located in my fair hometown of Brookline) might disagree.
So if parents don’t know what’s best for their children, then what does the PTA stand for? Part of Teachers Association? Pro Tickling Association? Pickled Trout Anglers?
Someone, please, enlighten me.
Entry Filed under: Education, News
2 Comments Add your own
1. Jennifer Katz | April 4th, 2008 at 11:50 am
I agree with Kaplan - when you set up a school in which the main goal / intent is to send the students to college, you deprive them of a wholesome, well-rounded education. Centering a child’s education around an objective of sending them to college, does not allow them to focus on learning for the sake of learning. Instead of studying for the purpose of understanding the material thoroughly, they are merely doing what it takes to meet the requirements of entering a higher institution of learning. This does not necessarily include truly understanding the material one is taught or excelling to one’s highest abilities - one can enter college with a C average, a sprinkle of D’s, and a mediocre ACT or SAT score. Charter schools are dangerous in that many of them focus on one or two subjects, such as science and math, or quite possibly the arts, without fully exposing the students to and showing them the importance of, learning several key subjects (reading, science, math, art, foreign language, among others) for the purpose of being a well-rounded individual. Kaplan is right to speak out against charter schools - as her position/ title as entrusted by the Board, this is her job. Bravo to Kaplan for speaking honestly and openly about a sensitive matter.
2. Jim Stergios | April 6th, 2008 at 3:44 am
Jennifer, Thanks for your comment. I hope you will agree that no one forces a parent to choose a charter school. If you grant that point, then the key question is, in fact, not sensitive at all: Why not let parents decide what is best for their children, rather than letting you or Ruth decide that?
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