I’m enjoying going door to door and meeting Kettering voters. Yesterday, I was happy to hear a lot of good reports about Kettering Schools.
One woman told me that she had checked it out before purchasing her home and that she chose Kettering Schools over Oakwood Schools and that she is very happy with her choice. She said she feels that Kettering teachers really care about her children.
Another older man spoke glowingly about his five grown children — all successful professionals — and said he was very happy with the great education that his kids received in Kettering Schools.
Another man told me that he liked Kettering Schools discipline policies and asked me what I thought about discipline in schools. I told him that yes, schools must be a places of good order and schools must enforce rules consistently and fairly. He was working in his lawn and seemed to want to talk so I continued the conversation by saying that the word “discipline” is related to the word, “disciple,” and that the central issue for schools is student motivation.
Students sometime are very motivated — self motivated — to disciple themselves to the discipline of basketball, for example, and may spend hours on end practicing their jump shots. This motivation is inner directed. I told this parent that this is the type of discipline that is most lacking in schools and that I believed it is possible to design schools and educational programs where this type of discipline towards personal growth could be nurtured.
I didn’t quote Deming, but I was thinking about his comment — that the very purpose of schools should be to “nurture the yearning for learning every child is born with.” Schools that took Deming’s goal seriously would be structured very differently from how schools now are structured. Schools that took this goal seriously would spend money very differently.
See these posts:
- Dr. W. Edwards Deming Urges Transformation — Warns Against “Remodeling The Prison”
- What Quality Guru W. Edward Deming Had To Say About Reforming and Improving Public Education
