Students, educators question state of curent education system

Graduate candidate and teacher Kelly Thomas doesn’t tell her students they have to stay in school.

She teaches the University’s required course for all students about academic probation, “The Culture of College,” and said she sees much that is wrong with the culture of not just college, but of modern education generally.

Thomas was one of about 30 people who were in Dunn Meadow on Thursday to protest what they believe to be critical problems with traditional schooling. The event, which was for the National Day of Action for Education, was organized in solidarity with the Occupy Movement.

“For as far back as I can remember, I wondered why school is set up the way it was,” Thomas said.

“Even as a kid, I seemed to learn a lot more when I was hanging out at my grandma’s house and could learn what I wanted to learn, rather than the regimented system at school.”

But she said it wasn’t until she volunteered with AmeriCorps, teaching at an inner-city school in a low-income area of Philadelphia, that the problems became apparent.

Teachers would call parents in to beat students behind closed doors, she said. They would make first-graders stand outside in a line during recess, yelling at them if they weren’t doing well in school.

“It was very much a struggling school,” Thomas said. “And to see that school functioning was to see all the problems that I’ve seen in the schools I went to, which were more for middle-class white people, and they were just magnified tremendously.”

Following the informational forum in Dunn Meadow, about 50 students and other concerned individuals packed into a Ballantine Hall classroom for a “teach-in,” a panel and open discussion about what they perceive to be one of the greatest problems with college education: high tuition and the resulting student debt.

Panelists included professor of educational leadership and policy studies Robert Arnove and professor of geography Rebecca Lave, both of whom spoke about the causes and effects of high tuition abroad and domestically.

Lave said state funding of IU’s budget was 47 percent in 1980, and it has decreased to 19 percent.

“These are big, big cuts, and where those cuts get made up is in tuition costs,” she said. 

Arnove discussed the actions students and other individuals can take in response to the increasing costs of higher education.

“Where do we go from here? We can protest and act at different levels,” Arnove said, adding that individuals can act at federal, state and institutional levels. “Individually and collectively, you have tremendous power. It’s not just the students. It’s also the teachers.”

Jeanette Samyn, a graduate student who helped organized the teach-in, said the discussion was part of the “Rethink” series organized by Occupy IU and the Progressive Faculty and Staff Caucus.

Thursday’s teach-in was the first of three major teach-ins that will take place this semester, she said.

It was followed by an occupation of Dunn Meadow that evening.

“Student debt was the first thing we wanted to talk about simply because it affects so many people,” Samyn said. “Everyone has different information they can offer, so that’s the whole idea around the discussion, rather than it being more question-and-answer.”

The next teach-in is tentatively scheduled for April 12.