Education - a View from Inside

By Dr. Nicholas La Bianca

E D U C A T I O N:
A View From The Inside -

The book describes the teaching experience of the author in different public school systems of the country. A close reading will clearly show that most of the problems that slow down the process of education are generated not only by the uneven distribution of the financial resources, and the enormous numbers of school districts, but mainly by the lack of a proper leadership and realistic goals on the part of the administrators in charge of it. Their selection is not very accurate, and the result is that many of them are not competent enough to handle this very sensitive position. Also some of them give in to the different pressures from the public at large in order to protect their jobs and the relative large salaries. The personal experience and observation of other international systems provides the author with several suggestions to improve education in the financial and educational area of this nation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 5, 2008
• ISBN: 9781462821259

Dr. Nicholas La Bianca

Dr. Nicholas La Bianca was born in Giovinazzo, (Bari), Italy in 1930, and during his early life had to live under the Fascist regime and witness depravation, death, and destruction brought by WWII. He received the best classical education available in that country and after the war moved to the United States. He joined the US Air Force during the Korean Was and after being discharged he obtained a BA from the University of Illinois (1957). Moved to New York City and attended night school at CCNY where he obtained an MA in Education (1965). After three years of teaching in the public schools of New York City and an additional three years teaching overseas for the State Department, he settled in Stony Brook, Long Island where he received a DA from SUNY at that location. He spent the next 25 years teaching Languages at the Three Village School District in that area. He retired in 1990 and continues to be active in the field of Education.

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Copyright © 2008 by Dr. Nicholas La Bianca.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 10/27/2021

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Contents

CHAPTER I - EDUCATION—A Personal Experience

CHAPTER II - The New York City Experience

CHAPTER III - The Overseas Experience

CHAPTER IV - The Suburban Experience

CHAPTER V - The Suburban Experience—

The Dark Ages

CHAPTER VI - Some Opinions And Comments

From Other Sources

CHAPTER VII - EDUCATION: A Brief History

CHAPTER VIII - Early Education in Colonial America

CHAPTER IX - The Federal Government and Education

CHAPTER X - Additional Education Reforms

CHAPTER XI - Bipartisanship in the Federal Role

CHAPTER XII - President Obama Plan For Education Reform

CHAPTER XIII - TEACHING—Special Skills In

General Education & In Specialc Areas

CHAPTER XIV - Evaluation and Suggestions for Possible Solutions

A. On the Financial Aspect of the Problem

B. On the Educational Aspect of the Problem

CHAPTER XV - Teaching A Foreign Language

CHAPTER XVI - TEACHING as a Profession

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In loving memory of my son Angelo.

PREFACE

Education is a topic very familiar to everyone, but not too many people fully understand it. It can be viewed in many different ways by different people, such as students, educators, parents, and public officials and each one of them may have a different idea of what it should be and how best it can be administered. One of the most popular belief is that the more money is spent on it the better are the results. While it is true that money would make things very pleasant to everyone, the truth is that the learning process is not directly affected by it. It is only the desire to learn and the dedication of the educators that makes this process successful.

It has been my experience during my long career as an educator that those people who are interested in learning do so, no matter what is the system in which they happen to be in, and those who do not believe in it, refuse to learn no matter what the school may do for them. Between these two extremes there is a large number of students who are directly affected by the type of education they receive and can be successful in their goals provided they receive the proper education that they require. Each one of them has different needs and it is the job of the educators to fulfill it the best possible way.

The only person that can do this well is the teacher involved with the student, but unfortunately he is under pressure from parents and administrators to do what they think is the best way to do so. It has been my experience that not too many administrators are up to it, and they seem to be much more interested in their popularity and job security, so education comes in last. Consequently no matter how teachers try, a poor administration can destroy all their efforts to give students the best education possible.

CHAPTER I

EDUCATION—A Personal Experience

It has been several years since I retired, and I still have mixed emotions about my working years in the field of education. I feel that if I write down a brief history of my professional life, I may be able to have a better perspective of Education in general.

Every time one reads the paper or listens to the news, invariably someone talks about better schools better teachers, and the need for more money for Education. It seems that the consensus is that the more money you put into the schools the better education you are going to get. I don’t feel that it is necessarily one hundred percent true. Surely, more money will help, but it is not the cure for all the ills that are present in the field of education at this time.

Very often talking about teachers, people will say that they went into the profession only because they were not able to find any other job. As in any other field you will find a wide range of reasons why people go into this field, and so is the type of person that goes into the teaching profession. There are dedicated people who want to change the world, people who take it as a job, people who work very hard at it; and others that put in the minimum effort to get by. As I will explain later on, the end results derive mainly by the kind of supervision and direction they receive from their immediate supervisors.

In my case, I came to the decision to go into the profession by simply comparing it with all other jobs available to me at that time. I must confess that it wasn’t easy for me to be accepted in some positions because of my slight accent, but I managed to explore several fields. One thing that annoyed me to no end was the fact that the counselors in college always recommended a curriculum in Liberal Arts, claiming that most of the companies preferred to train their own employees in their related activities and would hire only those students who had a background in Humanities rather that those with one restricted to a specific field. It did make sense at the time, so I majored in Political Science with Italian and Russian as minors. To my great surprise and disappointment when I went out for job interviews the first thing they would ask was if I had any accounting or business administration background and if I could type. Frankly I felt a little betrayed by the counselors thinking that they either did not know what they were doing or didn’t care to really help the students the best possible way. I really can’t understand why colleges, industries and business cannot come up with some projections for future job openings that would be available in future years according to their needs and give students a better view for future job openings, so they could prepare themselves for future career according to their talents and best abilities.

While I was still in my senior year I did inquire about the possibility of going to graduate school and preparing myself for the teaching of languages at the college level. I was advised against it. They said that it would be a good choice for my background but finding a position would be close to impossible since there was almost no demand for it. Anyway at that time it didn’t seem to be a very challenging choice and wanted to explore all other possibilities in any other field I could get into.

At that time New York City seemed to be the place that could offer unlimited choices, so I spent some time looking for a challenging job opening in that city. Unfortunately most of the jobs in the classified ads required previous experience or specialized training and the ones that did not require it, didn’t pay much or had a very large number of applicants for the available openings. After a while I was able to get a job in an import-export business and soon I found out that most of them were small agencies which employed clerical workers with no room at the top except for the person who owned it. Then I moved on into the banking business, and I found out that although the corporation was very large, there were very few possibilities to move on to the top and if so it required a lifetime. But the worst part of it, in addition to the low pay, were the tedious and repetitive activities that one had to perform day in and day out, without any chance of being creative, or being able to solve problems of any kind. You followed rules and routines to the letter. Frankly anybody could do it and a college education would have been a waste. At that time I realized that all my previous education and training would go to waste unless I went into a field in which I would be able to use them. I had gone through the toughest classical school in Europe whose curriculum, from the sixth year on required the study of the native language for eight years, a modern language for two, Latin for eight, classical Greek for five, World History for five, Philosophy for two, along with Math, Chemistry, Physics, History of the Arts and other minor subjects.

At that time The City College of New York was offering the Fifth Year Program with free tuition for those people who intended to make teaching a career. I applied for it, and after work I was taking courses at the uptown campus. At the same time I went to the administration building of the Board of Education which was located at 110 Livingston Street, in Brooklyn. The information desk sent me to a room on the fourth floor to see a certain person. I went to that room, the door was wide open and a little old lady was busy with some papers. She glanced at me and without saying anything kept on going about her business. I didn’t say anything, and I leaned against the door waiting for her to finish what she was doing. After a while, she turned, looked at me and asked what did I want. I told her I was inquiring about the prerequisites and the possibilities of getting a teaching job in the city. "You want to be a teacher and here you are standing with your hands in the pocket and leaning against the doorway? Tell me, is that the proper attitude for a person who wants to become a teacher? I stood there in a state of shock trying to decide if I should turn around and leave or stay and get the information that I needed. At this point too much was at stake, and I wouldn’t let such remarks bother me. I had been in the military service and been treated worse than that on many occasions. I apologized and asked the lady if there were any openings in the city’s schools for a social studies teacher. Her reply was: Social studies teachers are a dime a dozen, and with your accent you will never get a job in the city. But there is a critical shortage of language teachers and I would suggest you look into it. As I expected there were no openings for teacher of Italian, but they were desperate for teachers of Spanish. Since I had taken few courses in Spanish and practiced it while I was in Texas, and since it was my last resort, I decided to go for it. Before I could fill an application I had to go to a speech therapist to make sure that my English pronunciation met the requirements of the Board of Education for the City of New York.

After the test I was informed that I met the requirements as a teacher of foreign languages. I remember that one of my problems had been the pronunciation of the I, and one of the words mispronounced was circus. The lady who gave the test told me that it was possible to eliminate the accent, and she was willing to give me lessons at the rate of six dollars each lesson. I told her I was going to look into it, but since I had no time and no money I postponed the issue to a later date.

During the summer I was notified that I would be assigned to a junior high school in Flushing, Queens. I gave notice to my employer who was not expecting my departure, and with promises of doubling my salary was hoping that I would change my mind. He was really in a difficult situation trying to replace me because of my by-lingual skills. I felt bad leaving the job so abruptly, so I gave in and I decided to stay long enough to train someone else for my position. This process took so long and I had to notify the board that I would be unable to begin in September and asked to give me an assignment for the following year. Early in the spring I finally walked away from my job, but at that time there were no openings in any school so I was advised to get on the list of the daily substitutes for the Manhattan Junior High Schools. Early in the morning or the night before, a school would call me and I went in to cover for an absent teacher. In many instances the coverage was not in my field and being new at this job the task was very difficult, unless the absent teacher had left very specific instructions and lesson plans. Each school was different from the others. The best working conditions were when the AP would escort me to the classroom, introduce me to the students and worn them not go take advantage of the substitute and complete the work assigned. And many times during the day he would come in and check to see that everything was under control. Under those conditions the day would go on without incidents, the students did the work and I had a very satisfying day. In some other school, I was handed the keys to a classroom and in many cases I would not even have the class roll. I would have to pass around a sign-in sheet, and in many instances the students would enter a fake name so they wouldn’t get in trouble in case at the end of the day I reported them for discipline infraction. In that case the day was generally very difficult and sometimes it made me reconsider the idea of going into teaching. Naturally after a while I would not accept going to these schools that seemed to have a very poor organization and a very poor support from the administrators.

CHAPTER II

The New York City Experience

Finally, the school year ended and during the summer I was assigned to a school that had just been built in Jamaica, Queens. So, anxiously I waited for the new school year to begin. Unfortunately, during the summer the roof of the cafeteria in the new school caved in and the building was not ready for the September opening. Since the new JHS had already been created, they had no choice but to spread the new school on the fourth floor of four different elementary schools. I had to teach my five classes of French and Spanish in two different schools. In spite of the fact that the students had to walk in single file on the right side of the corridor and make the forty-five degree turns at the end of it, during the day there was too much confusion