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It's the Teacher, Stupid! Thoughts on Restructuring Education in the United States

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While politicians call for better standardized test scores, more security, The Ten Commandments in every classroom, compulsory classes in Patriotism, and other meaningless solutions to 21st century problems, the 19th century "system" of public education, which absorbs and then spits out all attempts to reform it, goes right on churning out its hapless graduates with meaningless diplomas. As in all huge bureaucracies, self-preservation has supplanted meaningful action and only systemic change of an overwhelming nature can once again bring it to serve our children in a time of blindingly fast ec...

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A child of The Great Depression and World War II, Pete Melcher was born just three years prior to the stock market crash of 1929. Thus his life spans the last three quarters of the 20th century and the staggering changes which have occurred during that time. As a child he saw horse-drawn vehicles performing most of the transporting of goods in Philadelphia, while gas street lights in some places were still lighted by hand every night. Air travel was a rarity in relatively primitive planes. Then like just about every other male citizen he was thrust into the maw of the greatest war the world has yet seen, moving around many of the now-fabled islands of the Pacific Ocean with the Army Air Corps. After a very brief flirtation with the insurance business, he chanced into a teaching post and never looked back. Teaching English in New Haven, CT, Carpinteria, CA, Austin, TX, and St. Louis, MO, while also picking up administrative experience were all preludes to his becoming headmaster at a school in Los Angeles, CA, with the task of converting it from a family run proprietary school to a non-profit school. From there he went to another school in Waterbury, CT, to bring some new life to the dying cause of girls' single-sex education. That in turn led to his founding and constructing a girls' boarding school in Southborough, MA, a school noteworthy for its fresh and successful approach to single-sex education. When that school was absorbed by its sponsoring neighbor, a single-sex boys school, he went on to Jacksonville, FL, to repeat the revival of a girls' school. Mr. Melcher finished his career with an additional seven years as a school management consultant to over 100 schools in every part of the United States. These consulting assignments gave him a depth of perspective in school operation and management which ultimately persuaded him that independent schools had much to offer the nation as illustrations of different models of management, both good and bad. It also made him realize that the general citizens' view of public schools competing with independent schools was preventing a deeper and richer relationship in which cooperation and mutual exploration of new ways of doing things could help all children in all schools. Finally, his wide and deep experiences also brought him to the realization that the United States is at risk of losing its edge in the world economy unless it reexamines the principles on which the education system was founded.