Hodgkinson On Demographics

How fascinating! Harold Hodgkinson's article on shifting demographics (Educational Demographics: What Teachers Should Know) and the challenges they pose for today's educators was truly illuminating to me, (although I'm sure that for many who are currently immersed in the public education system, it serves to confirm what they already finding out).

This article was infinetly more intersting than our reading from last week because it goes beyond mere statistics to provide a meaningful look at America's changing student population and their needs, and offers what I feel are some valuable suggestions for teachers as well. To some extent this article even goes beyond the subject of education, giving us an extended view of how America itself is an ever-changing global entity, and therefore, one that is increasingly difficult to define.

It was particularly interesting to find "transiency" mentioned as a major obstacle to educators today. This is something I never thought about, but makes total sense. Just anecdotelly, my daughter briefly had a friend in elementary school whose family was always relocating. (This seemed to be not for job reasons, but more about an unstable family situation, but that is a totally separate issue). At any rate, this was one obviously very bright girl, who also happened to be very precocious and popular, but she seemed to be getting in trouble a lot and failing in school (6th grade) because she refused to study or do homework. My daughter and other kids, spent a lot of time urging this girl to do her work because they didn't want to see her get left back again (she was a bit older than them), but she just didn't care, claiming that "what was the point of bothering, her family was just going to move again", and you guessed it -- within a year, her mother had gotten divorced again, and they were history.

The point here, is that regardless of race, socio-economic status or any other factor, no child can succeed in school if they are constantly being moved around for whatever reasons, and according to this article there is a real lot of this. Therefore it is a revealing , though reasonable correlation that "states with the lowest rates of high school graduation and college admisssions are the five most transient states in the U.S."

Equally interesting was the study's discussion of race and how it is becoming less and less important in providing clues to what is going on in our schools. The other makes an argument that this is due in part to the "blurring" of racial lines -- more mixed marriages, people falling into more than one category, yada...yada. (I was shocked by my own ignorance to realize that the term "Hispanic" does not define a race -- I even looked it up in Websters! After a lifetime of seeing it as a race box to check off on forms, I suspect that many others share this ignorance as well. Yet think about it -- it is no more of a race than "Jewish" -- a religion or cultural background, is.) But the key point here is that what affects performance globally in school is not race but POVERTY. This is one thing that unfortunately affects kids of all races and from all countries.

So where does race fit in? Well according to the author, it is not so much race, but culture and cultural-climate that teachers need to be sensitive to and Hodgkinson provides several interesting examples of cultural differences to be aware of and possible ways to respond to them. all of which make great sense to me.

Lastly, the article addresses our aging population and raises questions about the baby boomer generation (over 70 million!) and whether or not they will maintain their interest in supporting public education once their own children have left the school system. With rising costs of health care, medications and the like, along with shrinking Social Security benefits, it is not surprising, nor hard to understand that many seniors who value education, would elect to opt out of paying school taxes if allowed. However the "side effect" of this demographic is critical and could be life-threatening to the future of schools. Therefore in the same way, that public consciousness is being raised about global warming to ensure the health of the planet for future generations, the public needs to be educated about the debt owed to future generations by ensuring the health of our public school system.

In conclusion, this article is not only essential reading for future teachers, but helps to illustrate that demographic studies can be interpreted in many ways and that statistics are more than a collection of numbers--they are indicators of an intricately linked series of cause and effect phenomenon that have implications way beyond the obvious. For those willing to navigate them, they can provide valuable clues that can help make the journey a smoother one.