Ideas for Innovation

This article "Rebuilding the Stock of Social Capital", though written nearly a decade ago, contains some very valid points which must be considered with the utmost seriousness. In the brief, but informative article, misters Sander and Putnam set about to identify the main cause of the problem of declining community spirit and contribution, and their main solution is to alter the schooling system. They write about nine ideas for innovation, changes made in the educational system which, if put into effect, they argue will have a positive impact on society as a whole.

The first idea is to encourage parents to become more active in the education of their children. This is a tremendously important point, because parents, as the main financiers of education, have a great deal of say in how their children's educations are conducted. The only issue with this is that parental involvement can be encouraged, but not created. It is very difficult to spur interest in a community where parents traditionally do not feel an urge to be active in their children's learning.

The second idea is to make schools smaller. This has its merits, but I feel that it also has disadvantages. Coming from a small school, I can confidently say that it often frustrates me. In small schools, students often suffer because of the lack of facilities and social diversity. Students do not have the choice to properly pick which social circles they want to be involved in (because there are so few). As a result of this, I feel that many students in small schools turn out very similar to each other in terms of personal identity, because a lack of social diversity does not give rise to an abundance of diverse and interesting people. One of the better aspects of smaller schools is the idea that there is more concentrated interaction between teachers and students. This is the most important point in support of smaller schools. When teachers interact with students on the individual level, they can often create interest where there hadn't been any before.

The third idea is to "use community service to foster civic engagement". This is a valid point, but I think it is secondary to the more urgent task of teaching about civic engagement. The essential goal of a school (in terms of civics) should be to make students aware of certain issues, to create the desire to help others, and then to provide an outlet through community service.

The fourth idea to incorporate civics into education, as I mentioned above, is one of the most important points on the list. Schools should aim to produce people who want to do community service, not people who have simply done community service. I feel that the college application process has been enormously detrimental to the idea of doing community service, because it has turned it into a requirement, not something that a student genuinely likes to do. Through incorporating civics into education, hopefully students will begin to want to devote their time to community service purely for the sake of helping others, rather than helping their college applications.

The fifth idea regarding funding is a nice, but tricky one. It is easy to say that schools should encourage and fund extra curricular activities, but the simple truth is that schools often lack the finances to do so. I think that there should be some degree of engagement from the school when it comes to a student's extra curricular activities, but it should not be expected.

The sixth idea of modeling a high school on a community is a bit vague. I think it is important that students learn essential life skills and social values in school, but these can be taught without modeling a school on a community. I think that bringing in the idea of "community" is to unnecessarily turn the situation into something it is not. We are simply talking about the passing on of age-old social values, which can be done in education without bringing "community" into the equation.

The seventh idea that schools need to create opportunities for meaningful contribution is very important. The faculty of a school should be willing to listen to the concerns of the student body and also be willing to pay heed to said concerns. Students should have the opportunity to actually take part in the creation of school policies, because this creates a sense of involvement in the students and will probably raise interest in community service.

The eighth idea of establishing mentor programs is in my opinion the worst on the list. You cannot establish a "mentor program". You cannot pair a student with an adult and tell the student that the adult is their mentor, that just isn't how mentoring works. Instead schools should focus on fostering close relationships between students and teachers, and hope that students will find mentors or similar figures in the teacher body. This is a much more realistic and helpful solution.

The final idea of asking students for solution is important as well. As I mentioned above; when you create opportunities for students to actually take part in solution-finding processes at school, they begin to feel more involved and will probably be more willing to participate in such activities outside of school.