Radio Atlantic recently examined a question that underpins many, if not most, debates about education in the U.S.: What are public schools for? Increasingly, it seems, American parents expect schools to first and foremost serve as pipelines into the workforce—places where kids develop the skills they need to get into a good college, land a good job, and ultimately have a leg up in society. For those parents, consistently low test scores are evidence that the country’s education system is failing. Conversely, other parents argue that public schools’ primary responsibility is to create an educated citizenry, to instill kids with the kinds of values integral to a democratic society—curiosity, empathy, an appreciation for diversity, and so on.
Nuanced answers to that core question abound, shaping public policy and inciting PTA debates. But rarely do students get asked what they expect out of school. What does the promise of education mean to public-school students? Magdalena Slapik, a photojournalist working on an oral-history book project, has been interviewing public-school K-12 students across the country over the past several years to see what they have to say.
The Hechinger Report, which produced this project in partnership with The Atlantic, is running longer excerpts for 10 students, exploring questions such as: “What do kids really think about school? How would they change it? Do they agree with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s conclusion that the U.S. school system is a ‘mess’?” The Atlantic has published an abridged version of those excerpts to zero in on what students think their schools, teachers, and educations are for.
[For more on this story by Magdalena Slapik , go to https://www.theatlantic.com/ed...-to-students/541602/]
Photo: Magdalena Slapik / The Hechinger Report
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