blog : The Adolescent Student Disengagement Dilemma

05/09/2012

Currently, there is substantial information circulating about the disengagement of our teenagers in school. I hear it from teachers, parents and students from all over the country in every socio-economic tier. The “Disengagement Dilemma,” addressed in Jerry Diakiw’s article, “It’s Time for a New Kind of High School” (http://tinyurl.com/d5etsrz) captures current concerns that schools are not engaging and inspiring our students because of the cavernous divide between the school environment and the “real world”.

Quoting Sir Ken Robinson’s work, he succinctly identifies the major issues of what I refer to as the “Disengagement Dilemma.”

And Sir Ken Robinson, the noted international education expert, said in 2006 at the TED conference that we have been “trying to meet the future by doing what we did in the past, and on the way we have been alienating millions of kids who don’t see any purpose in going to school.”

We have shifted from the Industrial Age to the Technology Age and the latest educational/political vehicle, Common Core State Standards (CCSS) recognizes this shift. I see CCSS as a means for us to truly implement what we know, as educators, in our heads and our hearts the kind of teaching and learning that inspires a generation of students. There are significant obstacles that boil down to my concerns about funding and resources. To create the kinds of teaching and learning contexts that CCSS advocates, we need to provide the professional development and resources that can truly prepare our students to be career and college ready in the 21st century. Other countries are doing what we need to do, most notably, Finland. The way I see it I think the key difference between Finland’s success and the failure of the United States is resource and funding. Until this is addressed on the most fundamental level as a civil rights/social justice issue, I am deeply concerned that the new kind of high school that Diakiw and Robinson advocate cannot be realized without resources and proper funding.

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