Opinion: Utah Must Change the Way it Handles Education

By Chris Palmer

Our education plays an important part of our daily lives. Every day we are using something that we were taught how to do in school. One of the our nation’s founding fathers and 3rd president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson said it well when he said, “It is highly interesting to our country, and it is the duty of its functionaries, to provide that every citizen in it should receive an education proportioned to the condition and pursuits of his life.” According to Jefferson, we should only get the education that we desire to receive and that will help us in the pursuits of our lives.

Though some may disagree, this does not happen in our current education system. We are limited by what we must take and “the traditional justification for restricting choice in education has been the assertion of a compelling public interest.” Is restriction in education really a public interest? No it is not! The public interest is that we all contribute to society by using our talents and interests. Society needs to be more encouraging of this and less restrictive by giving the parents and the student a choice in their curriculum. “Parental choice leads to more efficient educational outcomes.” (Greene)

This absence of choice not only harms the public interest, but public funds as well. Public schools are funded by the state and under the current educational system the curriculum is set up so that the students repeat what they are learning in some subjects every few years and are learning things that have no effect on their future pursuits of life. These same things that they learn in high school are again forced upon them in college by the General Education requirements. “In effect the state is paying twice for the same education, said Rich Kendell, Utah commission for higher education. ‘You should come out of high school literate in mathematics and English, and we would not have to spend $5 million again on courses you should have taken in high school…’” (Stewart)

Also the students of our schools may discover that the past four years don’t count for much in college. A perfect example of this is the English classes offered in high school. Yes you learn sentence structure and spelling, but you also learn about literature, which is not important in college unless you are going into some type of literature major. Instead of forcing the students to learn about something the majority are never going to use, why not have a literature class separate from the English classes for those students that are interested in it and use the time that it would have taken up to learn something that they will use in college.

A perfect use of this time would be to teach the students to formulate a thesis and construct an essay. Coming from personal experience, when you enter college, your professors expect you to know how to do that already. If I had been taught how to do that in high school instead of being forced to learn something I had absolutely no desire to learn nor use for, then I would find college to be much easier and would not be so frustrated with our educational system.

When I asked Rob Miller, Vice Chair of the Democratic Party of Utah, if he felt that our schools are properly preparing our students for college he respond with the following: “No. We need to take a proactive approach with our children. It’s not just school, it is our entire lifestyle.”

We need to leave behind the practices of the past and adopt new traditions that will help us in our day. Kim Burningham, State Board of Education chairman points out the correct direction that we need to go in quest for attaining those new traditions. “The (K-16) alliance has the right belief that we’ve got to stop thinking about a public education system and a higher education system. We’ve got to start thinking of a continuum. We’ve done too much of working in isolation.” (Stewart)

A great way to accomplish this dissolution of the educational isolationism would be to strengthen the curriculum taken in high school by incorporating the general education requirements now found in college. This would accomplish a faster passage through schooling and into the workforce. Also this would save the government and the students money. Though Susan Ertel’s statement wasn’t given about general education in college, many students feel exactly what she says. General education “adds a burden of time, finances, and for some students it’s psychological…” (Stewart) So let’s save money and time and make the general education requirements a part of high school.

We can also shrink the size of our school districts and school populations. Tad Wimmer of the Deseret news makes some really good points in his article “Small Districts Would Better Server Community.” He says, “when most – if not all – of the schools within a city are performing significantly below state and national averages, as is the case in West Valley, then the existing district is not serving that city. When the dynamics of a large district force the construction of monster elementary schools five to ten times their optimal size, as is the case in West Jordan, then the growing areas are not being served by the existing district. When 1,000 families sign a petition asking to break from a district because of faulty curriculum decisions, as in Orem, the needs of the students and the common good are not being considered by the existing bureaucracy.” All these problems would be taken care of by dissolving the huge districts that we have now, create smaller districts and more schools. This would help the economy by creating more jobs and would help the students to learn more effectively.

Another way that we have to better our schools would be to increase funding. Jennifer Toomer-Cook of the Deseret News wrote an article about how our school funds are not increasing as they should, but instead are decreasing. She states that in 2005 public schools “received 86 percent of the money set aside for them and colleges. But in the 2006 legislative session, they got 77.5 percent of those income tax monies…”

She also points out a very good point about the money for schools, she says that “Money’s always been a sore spot for Utah public schools, which receive fewer bucks per student than any other state in the country.” How is the inadequate funding of our public schools living up to the standard set by Jefferson? It is not.

In 2006 the Utah State Legislature came up against a 70-120 million dollars in tax revenue surpluses. Is there a plan to funnel this money into bettering our school system? The answer in fact is no. Some if not all of this money is going towards the largest tax cut in Utah’s history. Susan Kuziak, executive director of the Utah Education Association, said: No matter how much money the state is taking in, any surplus should not be an excuse "not to make real investments in public education," she said. "The levels of tax cuts they are talking about" — from $70 million to $120 million in income tax cuts — "is way too high." (Bernick)

By not supplying these funds, by keeping our school districts huge and by using an outdated curriculum, the functionaries of the state are not doing their duty and have slowed the academic progress that our students would be making. This injustice must stop. We need to elect those that will stand up for our students and make the changes necessary to elevate us to were we should be in the nation and in the world, at the top.