An Educational System

        An educator is a person who helps another person to learn.  An 
        educational system is a group of educators working with 
        educational facilities and materials to facilitate the learning 
        process for a number of students.  A good educational system is 
        supervised by well trained educators who spend their time 
        setting goals for the education of students in the system and 
        supervising and training other educators to achieve these goals.  
        These supervisors see that business administrators and others 
        within the educational system provide the necessary facilities 
        and materials to reach these goals, but they use most of their 
        time in day to day supervision of other educators observing, 
        training, supporting, rewarding good performance, correcting 
        poor performance, and planning.  These supervisors have actual 
        authority over their subordinates. 


                        The Clinton County School System

        Although most teachers in the Clinton County School System are 
        or try to be good educators, the purpose of the System as a 
        whole is to employ as many people as possible in the name of 
        education, to put as many children as possible into classrooms 
        with teachers for a period of twelve years of the student's 
        lives, and to get as much money as possible to pay these 
        employees as much as possible.  There is no planning process, no 
        set of educational goals, very little supervision, no trained 
        business administrators, and no system of training and rewards 
        for good performance by teachers or sanctions for poor 
        performance.  Supervisors exist in name only because they have 
        no real authority over their subordinates and perform very few 
        supervisory functions.  Teachers are, in general, poorly trained 
        and many are not proficient in the subject they are supposed to 
        teach.  The system provides, for the community, employment, baby 
        sitting services, and entertainment (by means of school sports).  
        The education provided is incidental to these other functions.  
        Due to pressure to actually provide education, in spite of lack 
        of support from the system, many teachers in the last few years 
        have begun to teach children to take tests so that test scores 
        will rise.  Their approach has been to provide copies of the 
        tests and answers in advance of the test.  It has been found 
        that this does, indeed, cause an increase in test scores. 

        The Clinton County School System is obviously, a school system, 
        not an educational system and probably will not become one in at 
        least the next ten years, if ever. 

        As far as I know, no one in authority would try to implement the 
        above definition of an educational system.  This includes the 
        Superintendent, most school board members including the so called 
        "reform members" and most, if not all, principals.  I am sure 
        though, that all these people will give lip service to this 
        definition by saying they support it.

                                                    Duane Bristow
                                                    July 9, 1991