Schools Will Improve if Society's Ills are Fixed

The political season is upon us again. With this, comes dialogue about improving schools. Talks focus on what is wrong with our schools, followed by elaborate plans to remedy those faults. But focusing on schools in isolation will never fix them. The real attention needs to be on society at large.

Schools are a mirror of our society. The problems we face as a country are brought into our schools daily by our children. When we view these problems as being unique to education and attempt to solve them in isolation, we usually get minimal results. The reason is simple. Trying to fix education's woes without simultaneously fixing society's ills is like trying to clean a broken window. There is no cleaning solutions that will "unbreak" the window.

In order for children to be able to learn, they must have their basic needs satisfied. Those needs include proper nutrition, having a sense of security, feelings of being loved and cared about, and proper medical care. These needs are foundational needs. In order to build a house of knowledge, children need these foundational conditions met. It is difficult for children to focus on the requirements of learning if one of these simple necessities is missing. Survival-wise, academic learning becomes unimportant until the survival needs are met.

Yet schools are asked regularly to do this. And frankly, it's impossible. The priority of learning cannot be accomplished in its totality without a sense of basic needs being met. Children cannot focus on mathematical equations if they are concerned about where their next meal is coming from or if they will have a home to go to. Children cannot focus on grammatical specifics if they do not feel safe in their family setting or if they do not feel loved or cared about. When these needs are unmet, the unfulfilled need becomes a distraction to learning. The more deprivation a child experiences outside of school, the more distractions that child has while in school.

What society needs to do to increase student achievement is to focus on fixing society's ills. The first priority needs to be reducing poverty. Poverty and its symptoms cause the majority of underachievement in our schools. If poverty could be eliminated, school achievement would automatically improve. The reason is simple. Without poverty, a major distraction would be gone, clearing the way for learning to occur.

Adequate medical health, including mental health, would alleviate a significant portion of the remaining distractions. Students who suffer due to medical and dental problems cannot possibly be expected to concentrate on academics. Proper preventative care could lessen the amount of time children are ill, maximizing instructional time.

Teaching society's adults how to constructively resolve problems and how to effectively parent would resolve the remaining distractions children face. If children were to arrive at school with a sense of security and a feeling of being loved, they would be able to fully concentrate on whatever instruction they were experiencing, thus maximizing learning.

All children can learn. But many children have too many survival needs unmet, thus causing distractions in their attention while at school. If politicians are serious about wanting to improve our schools, they need to shift all their focus AWAY from schools and onto society as a whole. Improving the conditions for the poorest among us will improve the conditions in our schools and maximize learning for our students.