Some have suggested that my columns have been all negative without any suggestions on how to improve education in Federal Way.

I believe I have made some suggestions in the past, but I will devote this column to what I think it would take to make Federal Way a light in the darkness of education.

It is my contention, supported by the empty buildings that could house well paid workers in Federal Way, that if this community were producing well educated students who did not spend their time committing crimes, businesses would target Federal Way for any expansion, or relocation, that was contemplated.

My suggestions follows:

1. As one school board member stated recently, and quite correctly, “The parents have primary responsibility for the education of their children.” Schools should not be “Daycare Centers.” When parents are not assuming this responsibility school personnel should be quite clear about the possible outcomes to the parents and the community.

2. Let’s have a school district that focuses on areas where it is not doing well and lets the public know the “real” facts about these areas. Study groups and other esoteric discussions will not bring in the public who are usually part of the solution. Continuing to placate the public with isolated accomplishments makes the public “Comfortably Numb.” This injection of Morphine is quite evident by attendance at any school board function. Discussions of the requirements for a new Superintendent brought out less than a dozen parents in the school district!

3. Let’s get over the “Student Empowerment” concept. Educators, should but don’t often, believe that they can be judgmental about academic progress. Building false “Self-esteem” only leads to more drastic problems. It is time to bring in the “Dog that ate my homework” as the dog might be better suited to being in the classroom than the student!

4. Let’s “Call a Spade a Spade.” Educators bemoan, quite correctly in my opinion, the lack of adult support for the children of Federal Way. To a great extent they have themselves to blame for this. They refuse to be candid about the actual progress that children are making on a scale that is relevant to either the parents or the rest of the world.

5. The priorities of some parents and students in our secondary schools have little relevance to achievement as it is measured in the rest of the world, including the US Department of Education. As such the district needs to remove all distractions from those students that are not meeting expectations. Not just barely passing as it is now.

6. Last year there was a nationwide poll of parents that asked “What do you want from your children’s schools?” The answer was that they wanted them to be “Satisfied.” I can tell you that being “Satisfied,” as a student, was not even a dream when I went to school. We did not come to school to be “Satisfied.” In fact we were “Dissatisfied” with much of what we were required to do in school. Student empowerment? Forget it! There was a body of knowledge to be attained and this required our full time efforts. If we did not exert this we found our lives in school, and at home, to be much less than “Satisfying.”

These suggestions would ruffle a lot of fur I am sure. However, unless we change the relationship between schools and parents I can’t see how we can get students to focus on what is usually defined as achievement. Today there are too many loopholes in the system that allow for insufficient efforts directed towards learning. Instead we have, particularly in secondary schools, a juvenile social hall with attached teenage playground. Nowhere else in the modern world is this happening and as a result our children are learning less than we did. This is the first generation that will be less educated than their parents according to the Governor’s commission on learning.

The learning process hasn’t changed in centuries. It requires focus, without distractions, on what is considered to be important. I fear that many of our children don’t realize what is important until it is too late.

Let’s get out the brush and comb out some lose hairs!