In my own experience, would-be teachers were highly motivated, looking anxiously to the end of their own college programs so that they could get into a classroom themselves and teach. And, in my own experience, would-be school administrators saw dollar signs and careers of power and prestige and control over their underlings. I never met a future school administrator who had the kind of selfless, child-centered motivation that the usual future teacher had.

The combination of elected amateur school boards and professional educational administrators, spread like a plague over the U.S.A., has brought education in this country to its sorry state. It is an absolutely hierarchical system with the school board members at the top and the teachers at the very bottom, the lowest bottom.

Some might say, Of course that is the way it is - but is there an alternative?

Ron Diener

The Canadian system is organized at the province level, with no counterpart at the federal level and no counterpart at the local level. The province runs things. School funding is integrated into the larger general-fund tax system of the Canadian provinces, with parts of the education budget consisting of earmarked funding sources.

Here is a test. Put ten American teachers in Canadian classrooms in, say, Regina, Saskatchewan, or Calgary, Alberta, for six weeks. Ask those teachers six weeks later whether they would prefer to stay or return to the U.S.A. - or whether they would prefer to see schools organized in the Canadian fashion in the U.S.A. The vast majority would prefer the Canadian system, a bottom-up organization, rather than our top-down hierarchical system.

The French system is operated at the national government level with marginal disparity in expenditures and educational opportunities throughout the land, other than cost-of living-differences. The students proceed through thirty-eight regional sub-systems, each with a full complement of primary and secondary schools, both academic and technical, headed with a university.

The German system is operated at the federal and state level in combination to prevent the vast disparities between the richest and the poorest states, combining grammar school, gymnasium (high school/junior college), and university in one track and grammar school, technical education and technical universities in another track - allowing students to get off where they will or help them achieve the most that they are capable of. Through joint sponsorship of business and government, Germany has had an enviable apprenticeship program since the days of Bismarck.Ý

Furthermore, when it comes to higher education, European education ministries sponsor their best and brightest students.

In America, the student loan system that strips the young professionals of assets that they need at a critical time in their professional careers leads to the kind of self-aggrandizing greed we see in medicine and law and high tech: these folks are convinced that they are "self-made men," because they had to pay dearly for every step of the way.

In Europe, the graduate student is a virtual civil servant, salaried to be a student, forbidden to take jobs or moonlight, but rather immersed in both the educational program and the profession of choice. As the U.S.A. learned from the GI Bill, the funds spent on education were the most valuable expenditures made by our government, because they returned so much in increased personal taxes over the years. The U.S.A. learned just once, but did not pursue this practice.

In the days of Soviet Russia, there was an interesting twist to the educational enterprise. The students were routinely taught to tackle problems, take on projects, or participate in larger programs in groups. When asked why they did this group-centered activity, one teacher told me, "To prevent competition among the students and teach them how much more they can accomplish if they cooperate with each other." Educational achievement was competitive, but concentrated efforts went into mitigating the sense of one against another.

(I had only one such teacher, in fifth grade, a firey, small young woman with red hair, a decided limp from her bout with polio, fair skinned with millions of freckles, who had definite ideas about how students should conduct themselves and how competition can spoil potentially wonderful educational experiences. She routinely downplayed grading. She routinely worked us in groups. She got angry and cursed and swore. During breaks, she went to the janitors' room and smoked cigarettes. She was sublimely unconcerned about her dress or appearance, never fashionable - not that she was dirty or unwashed and, in fact, she smelled wonderful - on a Saturday afternoon in shorts, shopping down Main Street - remember folks, this is 1949. She was known to tip a few steins on Friday and Saturday nights at one of the local watering holes -- this was, after all, Wisconsin -- as she told off-color jokes in her loud, high-pitched voice. God love her. I sure did. She was a one-year wonder. She left after one year, a victim of a zealous and puritanical school board, her contract terminated "for the good of the school system." She was the lone, brightest spot in eight years of grammar school, and I learned more in her classroom than I did in the three remaining years before graduation.)

It is time to look around and try other models. The system in place now is not working well. It is very, very expensive. The mistakes and problems with the schools are leaving their marks on a whole generation of graduates.

I am looking for creative leadership at the state level to take the entire educational enterprise out of our beloved "local control" and put it in the hands of a state system, organized from the bottom up. "Local control" got us here. It is not going to get us out of this mess.

Ronald E. Diener
Lizard Lick, North Carolina