In the last year or so there has been a lot of talk and some finger pointing in the rush to find ways to improve public education in Hawaii. This kind of frenzied energy about 鈥渇ixing schools鈥� is a cyclical thing 鈥� it seems like every few years we as a society target public education and project onto it every hope we have for social reform, while at the same time we assign the blame for every conceivable social ill to our schools.

These extreme views of the potential and problems in education distort efforts at making real improvements, and make the job of real reform harder.

In this electrically charged atmosphere it is worth pausing to reflect on the original purpose of free mandatory public education.

The people who built the American system of mandatory public education 鈥� namely John Dewey and the pragmatists philosophers 鈥� had dual purposes in mind: first they wanted to educate the next generation of citizens 鈥� that is equipping people from all walks of life to fully participate in our American Democracy; and second they wanted to create equal access to opportunity – so that all students could pursue their own excellence.

For Dewey equal access to opportunity, especially job opportunity, was a cornerstone of the American Dream. For the pragmatists these two goals were assumed to be mutually reinforcing since they believed a stable accessible middle class was essential for a stable democracy.

As we in Hawaii struggle to make our public schools better these twin goals (education for citizenship, education for opportunity) should be very much on our minds.

There is a lot of energetic and valuable work on this issue right now – from Debbie Berger and the Learning Coalition, to the willingness of the HSTA to look at ways to enhance teacher quality, to the highly spirited direct action of Save our Schools, and the remarkable work of SEED (Student Equity Excellence and Diversity) at UH Manoa to increase access to college education. The state is lucky to have groups like this.

As FACE prepared to join the discussion on education we zeroed in on the contributions that parents and communities can make in improving teaching and learning. With parent/community participation in mind we looked at successful proven models from around the country as the subject for our policy report: 鈥淚mproving Education Together鈥�. Our panel on Saturday will grapple with several elements of this problem and we hope you can join us for a good conversation.

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