|
|
|
From the Desk of Bill Cirone...
November 6, 1998
Schools enhance personal skills
There is no thrill quite like the one that comes from mastering a challenging concept or problem. Remember the first time you finally realized the marks on a page were words, and you could understand them?
Or the first time you looked through a microscope, played an instrument, or understood what someone was saying in another language?
U.S. schools seek to give that same opportunity to every American child every day.
That's because education encourages students to strive for excellence. Schools do this by helping students set high standards and specific goals. Then they help students measure their academic achievement toward those goals.
Not all the lessons schools teach are academic. Education also gives students life skills. Students, through their schooling, learn self-discipline, patience, and the importance of sharing.
They learn to pay attention when others are speaking and they learn that others will listen to what they say. Many schools also teach children how to solve disagreements through conflict resolution and reasoning. Extracurricular activities, from student government offices to volunteer projects, also offer opportunities to learn life skills. Sadly, for some children, school may be the ONLY place they can learn these important lessons.
Wrote author Tomas Henry Huxley: "Perhaps the most valuable result of education is the ability to make yourself do the things you have to do, when they ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned…and it is probably the last lesson learned thoroughly."
And David Kearns, former CEO of the Xerox Corporation and former deputy secretary of education added: "A liberal education not only imparts the great lessons of history, citizenship, and science, it teaches people to think, to solve problems, to take risks, to think independently, to step back from problems and the crowd, to be an entrepreneur and an innovator."
That is, in fact, the great strength of the American public school system and always has been.
© Santa Barbara County Education Office
<.shtml>