Our very own History teacher, Mr. Edwin Benson, has recently achieved the status of a published author. Through his personal experience as a teacher in the public education school system, Benson was inspired to write “Can America’s Schools Be Saved?”

    The novel addresses how the so called progression within the public education system is actually crippling students ability to comprehend basic skills and learn new information.

     Benson stated that the new way to teach students, forced upon teachers from the offices of public education officials, is taking a step backwards. Instead of advancing students abilities to grasp information, “The kids didn’t learn more. In fact it seemed, over time, the kids learned less. It seemed like the harder I worked at teaching the less I was accomplishing.”

    Benson expressed, “The book has three parts. It’s part memoir, what went wrong, and it’s part suggestions to perhaps get it right.”

    When it comes to Harford County Public Schools, Benson explains that their focus it to teach students extensively about why an answer is correct through critical thinking rather than focusing on how to get the answer, “I wasn’t seeing that level of critical thinking from a lot of people in this school. And I thought, wait a minute if we’ve been focusing on this for so long, then why don’t they seem like they’re able to do it.”

    Benson pointed out an example of students lacking basic skills, “When doing relatively simple multiplication and division, they bring out their calculators.”

As the novel begins to grow with popularity, Benson states his goals are to, “Start a dialogue about education for teachers to understand that there is a point of view that they didn’t get when they were in schools of education.”

Benson recalls the education system during his time as an elementary student, “In the middle of the 1960s, before they came up with something called new math, it was just arithmetic, and we worked through and practiced and mastered it by fourth grade.”

    Benson’s point of view, from starting as a student during the 1960s to a teacher struggling with the curriculum forced upon him he states, “I want people to remember how the education system was before and how it worked forty years ago.”

   Benson states he also conferred with fellow teachers views and after reading the book, one colleague in particular stated, “You’re just writing what we already know.” Benson explains that teachers are irritated with being told how to teach their classes by public education office workers who don’t understand the specific needs of their students.

   Benson suggests parents, as taxpayers, especially should read the novel, “I think there is a perception in society as a whole that the schools aren’t working. Society spends massive amounts of money educating everybody. Yet the public doesn’t seem to be getting as much for their money.”

   The novel is available online as an ebook and as a paperback on Amazon.

“Can America’s Schools Be Saved?” is the first step to starting the conversation between teachers, parents, students, and education officials. Benson explains, “It’s not that there’s any one best way to teach everybody, but I believe it’s the teacher’s decision, not the peoples’ in education offices around the country.”