Community in our schools

This month's tragic shootings in Tucson, Arizona have altered America's sociopolitical landscape and forced us to question matters ranging from gun control to the adequacy of mental health care in our country's educational institutions. After all, the attacker is a community college student, while one of the victims was a nine-year-old girl in elementary school. Gary Rhoades comments in this recent entry in the Washington Post about the issues that the attacks have raised for school institutions. While Rhoades focuses on university campuses, I think that we need to pose the same questions for elementary, middle, and high school communities in the United States. Are educators doing enough to provide safe, tolerant learning environments for students where individual problems are met with adequate care? Rhoades insists that universities - and thereby schools - must be "public, open" spaces that encourage the spirit of democracy and do not shove students' individual problems on the back burner.

Frighteningly, it seems that today's schools are veering farther from this ideal as students' grades ultimately weigh more with educators than do "side" issues such as mental health. Perhaps it's time to re-evaluate how we envision our nation's educational institutions and discuss what changes need to be made to avoid calamities such as the January 8th shootings in Arizona.

For an engaging dialogue on today's education, join the conversation at the Tutorpedia Foundation's 2nd Annual Benefit on February 23, 2011, featuring speakers Vicki Abeles, the director of Race to Nowhere, Dennis Littky, co-founder of the charter school network Big Picture Learning, and Farb Nivi, founder of the educational tech company Grockit. All proceeds go to support personalized tutoring for the Bay Area's low-income students.