When I was assigned to cover the story of Public School 114
being in danger of closing, I was taken back even though I didn’t
attend the elementary school. If there’s not something seriously wrong
with the oldest school in Canarsie closing, I don’t know what is!
Locally, I attended public schools 276 and 115, then Isaac Bildersee
Intermediate School 68. It’s ironic that while attending these fine Canarsie
schools, I don’t recall politicians or anyone else ever contributing
money to reconstruct a new library, gymnasium, computer room or other
creative learning resource in those buildings. So it surprised me even
more to realize that P.S. 114, a school which had just
received a newly renovated computer lab and library in the past four years, is in danger of closing.
How could it be that these schools weren’t in danger of closing when I was young when there were NO resources?
Our computer classes were repetitious, low-quality lessons on how to use
the home keys (which I never do now, anyway) and play games on floppy
disks. In P.S. 276 and P.S. 115, the librarian would throw 10 books at a
table of 6 students and we’d attack the pile like piranhas who haven’t
eaten in a week. Even though Bildersee Junior High School used to have
separate boys and girls’ locker rooms so we could put our things away,
ten classes piled into the gym and we stood around doing nothing for 40
minutes. Girls walked around and gossiped and boys might have played
basketball or chased each other around. There was no order and we all
got the same grade based on doing nothing. And the teachers did nothing
as well.
Yet, a fine school like P.S. 114, whose staff at some point in time
developed meaningful curriculum and programs which made students work
and learn,
is crumbling. While politicians now put a lot of money into local
schools to make them look more modern and better than when I attended,
the schools seem to be doing worse than ever.
For example, every local school now has Multi- Cultural week
celebrations where students cook, dance and incorporate different
countries into their studies.
The closest we had to multi-cultural acknowledgement 15 years ago was
taking a foreign language by force, not choice. We sat at our desks just
learning words without stepping outside the classroom to actually
research the language or background of what we were speaking. Students
did exceptionally well all the time– and why shouldn’t they have, they
were doing the minimal of sitting there repeating verbs and nouns in
Spanish, Italian and French.
Yes, the demographics and dedicated school staves have changed in Canarsie
and perhaps the language barrier is often a problem for some students
who can’t, for whatever reason, succeed with the new technology and
resources. It seems unfair that students are having their educational
values threatened by the Department of Education,
as well as unqualified principals and teachers, when they have so much
more than some of us did when I attended local schools.
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