Thoughts on Education, Then and Now

Editor’s Notebook: Thoughts on Education, Then and Now

As Hauppauge kids go back to school on Monday, there’s a little piece of me that wishes I could go back to school, too. Who’s with me on this one?

Over the weekend, I had a conversation with my mother about my own experiences starting school.

“Mom,” I said, “When I was really young, what was I like when I was in school? Did I look forward to it?”

“You couldn’t wait to go to school,” she replied. “You were always super excited and you wanted to be super organized and you couldn’t wait for the bus.”

I grew up attending school in Island Trees – a tiny public school district set in the historic suburb of Levittown. It became famous in 1982 as the center of a U.S. Supreme Court case, Board of Education v. Pico, after the school board tried to ban from its libraries certain books it deemed inappropriate for students. That history lesson aside, Island Trees was a fantastic place to go to school. I participated in award-winning music programs, the dance team and drama club (and the student newspaper, of course). I learned to type on those old computers with black screens and green letters and floppy disk drives, and loved playing the computer game “The Oregon Trail” – which is now available for Nintendo’s Wii gaming system, if you can believe it.

If that’s what it was like for me back then, I can only imagine how exciting it would be to be a student nowadays.

In no particular order, here are some things I wish existed back when I was a student.

Smart boards. In March of 2010, during a budget meeting in the North Merrick school district, I got to see firsthand what smart boards can do. Never before were elementary-level geography and math so exciting to me – a 28-year-old college graduate, at the time.

Three-dimensional printers. Nothing can replace the satisfaction of making something from scratch, which we did in classes like wood shop or ceramics. Of course students are still doing those things in various settings, but the development of 3D printers is a game-changer when it comes to class offerings in engineering and computer-aided design.

The Dignity for All Students Act. In my own experience, the hallways and playgrounds were sometimes cruel places, in which students didn’t always feel free to be themselves. But now, the New York State law known as DASA requires school districts to take on issues of bullying and discrimination to provide a harassment-free learning environment for students. Since DASA went into effect in 2012, schools must incorporate lessons on respect and good citizenship; they must collect and report data on incidents of bullying and harassment; and they must appoint a bullying prevention coordinator in each school building. Sounds like a great idea to me.

My own classroom experiences aside, my thoughts these days are on the underlying issues in education. Deeper issues that are wide open for debate, such as the Common Core curriculum and the rigorous standardized testing that comes with it; New York State’s cap on school tax levy increases; and the idea of consolidation of school districts to save taxpayers’ money.

Decisions based on these discussions should be made cautiously and with an open mind, as they will shape the future of public education – an education which I hope will provide students with an experience as enriched as the one I was privileged to have.