How Low Can Higher Ed Go?
This article by Clayton Cramer, published by PJ Media on May 24, reveals some of higher education’s less obvious, more basic, and therefore more important problems. The situation is rather dire: the products of our education system administer, teach, vote, and otherwise direct the course the country is to take. The social harm inherent in that process is set to continue at an accelerating pace.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan stated that the FY2011 education budget represents “one of the largest increases” in education spending. President Obama sees it “as the key to our economic future.” But this is a mug’s game. Pumping up spending has not worked yet, and more of the same is not likely to work now or in the future. As Cramer notes, many now enter college in pursuit of the “welfare” benefits conferred merely by being there. Unsurprisingly, many don’t find the employment they expect upon graduation. True, many colleges encourage this entitlement mentality through mandatory grade inflation, mandatory bell-curve grading, and other subterfuges; the views of administrators rather than of teachers often dominate because they, “educators” rather than teachers, have the authority. Their numbers seem to be increasing. Cramer observes that many college freshmen can neither comprehend written English language nor write it grammatically. Victor Davis Hanson notes that, in California’s multi-campus university system,
maybe raising admission standards would improve the quality of student, end the trend toward watered-down classes, and encourage those who do not belong [...] to invest their time more productively in the work place. As it is now, over 50 percent of incoming freshmen in CSU must take remedial classes to qualify for university courses [...].
Why, as Hanson asks, are they there in the first place? This essential question, much less elitist than it seems, must be answered, and by elites themselves. Higher education should build upon solid learning foundations built from elementary to high school. Alas, the issue before us is one of damage control and course correction. Where to begin?
Perhaps with teachers themselves. At a certain college, John Morton Blum taught the most popular of all undergraduate elective courses offered, American political history. It was the only undergraduate class he taught. He spent most of his time with graduate students and doing research. A “liberal” in the old-fashioned sense of the word (one with an open mind but not an empty head, receptive to diverse views and open to changing his own — yes, there are such people), Mr. Blum loved his subject and devoted his professional life to studying it. His class was held in the largest auditorium at the university. Roll was not taken, yet the seats were consistently full. His was not a “gut” course in which acceptable grades could be had with little effort, but the necessary effort was enjoyable. His classes were instructive because his passion for what he taught was infectious and his presentations were entertaining. Much of what Mr. Blum taught remains memorable nearly half a century later. Shortly after Eleanor Roosevelt died in November of 1962 — he had gotten to know her well researching a book on her husband — Mr. Blum asked whether we would mind if he spent the period reminiscing extemporaneously. We students applauded.
Then consider the case of L.P. Curtis. He brought English cultural history to life. Like Mr. Blum, Mr. Curtis was an entertainer as well as a passionate historian. One lecture dealt with the Great Exhibition. It was a display of Britain’s superior technological, economic, and military successes. The Crystal Palace had been constructed for the purpose, “a huge iron goliath with over a million feet of glass.” Many hundreds of sparrows had entered the exhibition hall and many visitors found sparrow droppings on their hats. This neither pleased them nor reflected well upon Britain’s technical prowess. Queen Victoria sought sparrow advice from a country squire, whom Mr. Curtis imitated in a loud and gruff rural voice. “Try sparrow hawks, ma’am.” With a light touch, he made a serious point about Queen Victoria’s practical interests in the success of the Exhibition — brought into being largely through the effort of her husband, Prince Albert. For there to be success in achieving the purposes of education enjoyment is necessary to make even the less interesting stuff palatable. The sensation of pleasure further encourages study long after graduation.
Education for education’s sake – what a novel idea! The British Empire, after all, was governed by men who had read Classics or some other non-task-specific major at University; as an employer, too, I recognized that the applicant’s university degree was proof of his intellectual and reasoning ability and stick-at-it-ness.
But in those days we benefited from a faculty that felt a need to disseminate their enthusiasm for their subject and they wore ties when lecturing! Out of respect for us, I think.
In today’s “I know what I want and I want it now!” world, maybe universities should ask employers for guidance on how to adapt their under-grad syllabuses because, clearly, they are fudging it. At least then, when an applicant appears for an interview, the employer has a trustworthy base from which to assess. And, in order to calm the modern docent’s seething soul at this suggestion, I wouldn’t even insist on ties in the lecture hall.
O tempora o mores!
Thing is, the “business model” of the university, in terms of undergrad education, really hasn’t changed a whole lot, and its productivity sure hasn’t kept up with the rest of the info-sphere.
Except….
…for people who just want to learn, and don’t care about getting a particular certificate, it actually is catching up. I’ve been a long-time customer of The Teaching Company, from which I’ve learned more humanities than I did when in college, and then the relatively new, free entrants in OpenCourseWare (first from MIT, and now spread to several universities and colleges) and iTunes U.
For those who want to learn, the cost has gotten cheaper and cheaper. Those who want the certification, though…. that part has gotten more expensive, partly due to the dilution of the signal conferred by a college degree. So it becomes a certification arms race.
I think education per se, for those who want to learn, is on solid ground. The gatekeeper function is what’s in danger.
The rot started when “educators” preferred propaganda / brainwashing. And organised the system to require obedience rather than inquiry from anyone wanting a role in “education”. The evident intent to drive home to young minds “internationalism – socialism – one-worldism” … Their special interest, and who can guess why, towards specific ends inimical to and destructive of the ethos and “tradition” (a dirty word if ever there is one to these educator-politicians)in THE exceptional population of the USA. The population and their spokespersons they so easily, while accepting ALL the benefits earned by the labours of that population, sneer at as beneath them, the social and intellectual “elite”, dare one suggest royalty? OR Greeks of 5th century BC Athens? Of whom it has been said to beware, especially when bearing gifts.
The Gang of Four: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton, as prototype.And to assure success trained the young, and continue to do so, from the most vulnerable in nursery school / Sesame Street through graduate “education”. Virtually all “liberal arts” education has the odour of political correctness.
The only faculties immune to infection of brainwashing and lock-step marching being the science faulties in which PROOFS are still necessary as part of the work. And even in some of these the educator/politicians prefer their politics to the integrity of their disciplines, e.g the Climate Researh Unit at East Anglia University in Great Britain and who knows where else..
Most of these comments protest the ascendance of the 1960s New Left generation, ignoring the longer history of the populist-progressive movement in the U.S. and its attempts to bring “inclusiveness” into the curriculum. And the historians of education are polarized, with Diane Ravitch representing the other “moderates.” I wrote about her early book here: http://clarespark.com/2011/05/28/who-is-a-racist-now-2/, but re-titled it “Diane Ravitch and the Higher Moderation.” Look to organic thinkers of both the left and right for the current deterioration in the humanities and the “propaganda” that they disseminate. The search for truth is NOT the aim of higher education–rather stability and cohesion.
“Pumping up spending has not worked yet, and more of the same is not likely to work now or in the future.”
Like all of the “Great Society” ideas, we keep spending more and more money on education, yet we seem to be getting less and less for it. Many of our high schools are a joke, making high school diplomas a joke, and basic language and math skills have to be re-taught now in college. And this is progress?
But that’s Washington’s answer to everything, just throw more of our hard-earned money at it and it’s bound to get better, right? And yet we have thousands of Catholic schools out there that cost less than what it costs to educate many public school students and their results are far, far, better than what you find in many of the public schools. But, the old argument goes, the Catholic schools can pick and choose who they teach. Public schools have to take everybody. Trust me, gang, if you saw some of the kids (like I did) in my Catholic school, they were NO different than the average kid you would see in any public school. It all came down to discipline, no tolerance for bad behavior, and good (and tough) teachers. And if the Catholic schools don’t do much better than the public schools, then why do so many public-school moms want to use the voucher program to send their kids to Catholic schools? Money is NOT the answer. Motivation and discipline are. Maybe Washington should try a little of that, rather than wasting even more money on a system that is bound to fail.
The problem is that education consists of teachers and students. You have to have both to succeed. What the Germans and Japanese have is good students. We have few. A majority of American kids today have been raised by parents who never matured beyond infancy (the 60s culture). The question is, whether this upbringing can be overcome. More money and/or good teachers aren’t going to succeed.
May I ask, are you Catholic? What I find interesting about the discussions about public schools vs Catholic, is that many have forgotten (or don’t like to remember?) that the whole reason Catholic schools came into being in the US, is that Catholic children were being “mistaught” Christianity in public (aka Protestant) schools.
My suggestion to parents who are concerned about the universities their children attend is to select schools more carefully. I only have one college student so far (of our eight) but his experiences at George Mason University are a little different from those described here, especially in the economics department. (Warning: he’s busting the curve of course, so your kids might struggle with their grades.)
The “secret” to George Mason’s success is their policy of snatching up “furloughed” conservative professors from all over the country.
BTW – I’m neither catholic nor protestant (have one parent of each – I’m Baptist and no Baptist’s aren’t protestant) but I think the catholics definately have it wrong. That’s my opinion – but to tell people that your doctrine is the only “right” way is insulting to those who are sincere in their beliefs.
lolly,
You made my point for me, thank you; if your children were receiving Catholic catechism (in public school or elsewhere), you’d think they were being “mistaught” Christianity. And if all public schools taught Catholicism and presented it as “Christianity” and taught that Protestantism (yes, Baptists are Protestants) was wrong, you’d look for Baptist schools so that your children could learn “correct” Christianity. In the US, however, the opposite was true until the Supreme Court decision about religion in schools. Now, I’m not insulted that other people think I’m wrong about my religious beliefs so I don’t see why anyone would be insulted that I think they’re wrong. Hello? Do you know your American history?
Ditto Lady—I will not vote for any RINO they put up. I am sick and tired of FOX News, Hannity, Rove, Krauthammer, O’Reilly and the rest of that gang at Fox who parade out their Dog and Pony Show 24-7. And, their so called debates and conversations on Real Issues is a joke.
I will not vote for a Huckleberry Huckabee, John McCain, Mitt Romney or any of the other RINOS who, if elected will Continue Business As Usual and the Constitution and Bill Of Rights be damned.
I guarantee you I will cast a third party vote in a heartbeat before I will vote for any Demo or RINO. These two parties have been Staging a Dog And Pony Show Election Process for Decades and I for one Refuse to Attend or Participate in Another Dog and Pony show. And, I also do not watch TV Wrestling. TV Wrestlers learned their Staged Advertisements from our Political Process. The National Campaigns are nothing but Dog and Pony Shows made for Public Consumption being played to an Ignorant and Functionally Illiterate Populace.
I hear you, Anonymous, I refused to vote for the lesser of two evils once. That brought us eight years of Bill Clinton.
Take care! Both of you. That’s how Clinton got elected! May I suggest that you get involved! Work for the candidate that matches your desires.
With the exception of a very few teachers in my days as a student, I was merely attending to get the piece of paper that said I know what I already knew.
I suffered through horrible Teaching Assistants in college, lazy and moronic high school teachers, and a general lack of enthusiasm everywhere. The administrators have taken over. They have sucked the life from the art of education.
The bureaucrats have turned a once hallowed establishment in to a God Damned bureaucracy.
And a story about exactly that. An acquaintance was attending a major (non-Ivy League) university, when a school physician had prescribed a medication that *seriously* didn’t agree with him. In short, he got terribly ill for a time.
This had coincided with mid-terms. Naturally, he had not done as well as he might’ve, all things considered. So, given the circumstances, he petitioned to re-take the tests (now that he was past the illness).
One particular ass of a professor refused to allow this, even given the circumstances, because it would “interfere with his (the professor’s) academic freedom.” (and recollect it was a university physician who’d begun this sorry story arc in the first place)
100% concern about his perqs and the “academic old-boy network,” and zero concern for fairness, academic freedom, and the student.
Due to the number of students (roughly two hundred), Mr. Blum taught his class as a lecture. He lectured twice each week and we had one seminar (roughly fifteen students), led by a post-doctoral teaching assistant. One day, while we were studying the events leading up to the civil war, the TA assigned an essay on “was slavery good preparation for living in a democratic society?” I considered it rather a foolish assignment and wrote an essay to the effect that such preparation had no more been the purpose of slavery than automobiles had been built to drive across the Atlantic Ocean and suggested that the goal of preparing slaves for life in a democratic society would have been better served by buying some and sending them off to Harvard (a rival school).
I received a grade lower than I thought my essay had warranted and so stated to the TA. He said that he would reconsider and get back to me the following week. I have no idea whether he consulted with Mr. Blum. However, he changed my grade significantly upward; I considered it an appropriate revision. My respect for him, diminished by his initial reaction to the essay, went back up because he had been willing to acknowledge – as he did in our conversation – that he had permitted his ideological views – he had in an earlier life been a union organizer – to interfere with his objectivity.
That was the only unpleasant experience I had with ideology obscuring teacher objectivity and the TA dealt with the problem as he should have. It is a shame that the situation seems to have got worse in many colleges.
I went to an extremely conservative university where ROTC was not only welcome, but almost a quarter of the student body was in it. However, I remember when I was enrolled in a course of technical report writing with a brand new “professor” from some section of the country that was heavily liberal. We got along fine until the first time she saw me in uniform. Her attitude towards me changed remarkably and I never seemed to earn an “A” in her assignments. She didn’t like my style of writing and heavily critiqued everything I wrote, often in contradictory ways. When I tried to cooperate and do it “her way” she would counter with a recommendation that I do it the other way, which was the way she denigrated to begin with. It was my first ever encounter with a liberal waging war on me. When I graduated, I critiqued her heavily, complete with very unsavory terms and recommended she return to whatever liberal hole she crawled out of.
You’ll appreciate the following story as well, then:
This is during ’71, if I recollect correctly. A friend of mine – a Marine Viet Nam Vet, Forest Recon – had begun to take courses at a local college. His History professor, a recent graduate, went on and on about how “misunderstood” the North Vietnamese were, all of the lies told about them, they never committed any atrocities, etc.
My friend then spoke: “During Tet in Hue, the North Vietnamese murdered all of the town officials, every one of them, and stacked their bodies in a church, stacked up like cordwood.”
The prof practically shrieked at him, Those are LIES. LIES. How could you possibly know such things?!”
To which my friend simply answered, “because I was the Marine who first opened the doors to the Church…”
He barely passed the class, because he was continually lowballed from that day on. How DARE my friend’s actual, on-the-spot reality trump the professor’s weeping Liberal revisionist history?
Thanks to Allston and SG-1 for your comments. I graduated in 1965 with a BS in chemistry and an ROTC commission as a 2LT US Army OrdC from a major Midwestern technical school. I also have first-hand experiences in Nam similar to Allston.
I am now long retired, but need to add my comment that the infestation of US universities with Leftists was not accidental; it was a deliberate act of war by Joe Stalin to rot the US from within by destroying the US education system.
After he started the Korean War, Stalin was aghast that the ChiComs could not quickly defeat the US & ROK troops, so he decided to look for alternative ways to strike at the US – namely to destroy the will of the people to fight. His solution was to deliberately install as many Communist/Leftist/Liberal professors as possible in every “important” and “elite” (meaning non-technical) university in the US and Western Europe, and once they gained tenure, they heavily influenced future hiring of those like themselves.
The Communists were and still are very patient in their goal of world domination, and with the disastrous state of the US education system today, it looks like they are about to achieve their goal; that is unless the Muslims beat them to it.
Occam, thanks for the accolade, but my friend is a Viet Nam vet; I served in CONUS, the FRG (during the Cold War), and the invasion of Grenada.
Occam – The process started long before Stalin. Woodrow Wilson rewrote American history in the 1890s in a manner that supported the Progressive Socialist viewpoint. Many of the newer history books have reflected and expanded his twisted views. Tenure has been used to isolate and eradicate opposing views in the colleges. Yes, a lot of the present left wing propaganda is left over from the KGB campaign, but it is being used by the still believing socialists now.
It’s hard to picture an anecdote that better epitomizes the nature of the leftist mindset. For a Leftist, wishful thinking wins out over reality every single time.
It seems inevitable that the leftist professor would softpeddle the North Vietnamese and fly into a towering rage when his nonsense is challenged by someone acquainted with the reality.
The thing I’ve never understood is how someone like this professor can be unmoved by confronting the reality presented by the young ex-Marine in the anecdote. Did the professor really believe that the Marine was lying? Or was he so committed to his Leftist ideology that he literally couldn’t believe that he was wrong? Or did some small portion of his brain realize that the ex-Marine was telling the truth but just wasn’t able to let him acknowledge that reality?
I too had a leftist viewpoint due to indoctrination in high school and university but after some real-life incidents – and encountering Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago – the scales fell from my eyes. It was shocking to find out how wrong I’d been but enormously liberating to finally get on a path that was based on what really happened, rather than what teachers/professors wanted me to believe had happened. In other words, I learned that Marxists, far from having liberated their countries and elevated their people to new heights, had actually enslaved and/or annihilated them.
I don’t know if we can ever get our educational institutions back on a reality-based footing but I think our best hope for our civilization is to do exactly that. It may take a generation or more to flush the contagion of leftist philosophy but if we don’t, I doubt we’ll ever see a long-term return to common sense. If we leave the institutions riddled with leftism, any return to sense in our political institutions will be fleeting at best as new generations of ever more extreme leftists are generated in the colleges and universities.
Harry, my friend is convinced it was ideological in nature, not willful disbelief. Although he did indicate there was a sense of inability to simply deal with an ugly truth as well. It was simply rejected out of hand, because it didn’t fit the professor’s spoon-fed Liberal narrative.
“It was shocking to find out how wrong I’d been but enormously liberating to finally get on a path that was based on what really happened, rather than what teachers/professors wanted me to believe had happened.”
Did you go through that white-hot rage stage at your teachers and how much they had truly betrayed your trust in them? I know I did! It’s still real hard for me not to show outright contempt when someone tells me they are a teacher. I know there are some good ones out there – but I’ve never met any.
Pretty much every class is poly sci now. My son’s freshman English lit teacher demanded that each student write an essay on “how Bush stole the Election,” or face failing the class.
And being a student while in ROTC or the national guard? Ha!
Many of the scientists I know, most of them in the “life-sciences” (i. e., biology, medicine, etc.) are as politically corrupt . . . er, correct . . . as the sociologists.
When I’m on the local campus, DIVERSITY seems to be on everyone’s mind, not the works of Aristotle, or Dante, or Jane Austen. The word DIVERSITY has been blasted into the concrete pavement in front of the administration building — I kid you not!!!
maybe past time to leave some children behind.
……..it seems we are willing to harm the majority in the misguided aim of fairness. (it isn’t fair and it isn’t equality ..it is stupid)
Academic excellence taking second seat to “fairness.” What a parody. No wonder studies I have read state that up to 50% of first-year college students require at least one remedial course. They haven’t been taught critical skills, they’ve been taught to be “fair” to their ultimate disadvantage.
I can sympathize and agree with everything you have stated Allston. My contract with the Navy just ended after 7 years and now I’m going to college for the first time. Just to put my two cents in, I took the “math placement” test and missed “college level” by one point. Not everyone is brainwashed and liberal, just the majority.
Zamir
Education?
More like “obedience training” for humans.
And then the “easy money” comes when you enter “elective” obedience training. That’s where the upper level “graduate” of the elementary obedience training learns that the “Government” hands out cash and benefits for attending.
Any old dog knows how to survive and find something to eat and suitable place to sleep; But, some of the kids (and adults, only by age) seem not to be able to maintain their own basic living requirements, without assistance from someone. Usually a government entity, these days.
And since the “government” has plenty of the best tasting “treats”, it’s the “government” that gets the obeisance.
The “obedient graduate” knows that the best government official is the one that displays and promises more “treats”. So the “obedient graduate” votes for them. And conveniently, this is exactly what these government officials want; Obedient constituents.
What parent would leave any of their litter out in the street to fend for themselves? Better to have an old dog at home than some dog you don’t know.
I’ll be counseling my grandchildren to have dogs rather than children. More loyal, with less expense. And they can take care of themselves better than most high school graduates.
Becoming educated is a fine thing, but if parents and students really knew that the course of study, while building a life of the mind, wouldn’t materially improve their employment and earning prospects, would they really pay the high prices now demanded by universities? So universities have a direct interest in representing their product as being economically enhancing. Professors, regardless of their enthusiasm, materially profit from the illusion of their courses improving a student’s economic prospects.
Being educated and holding advanced degrees does not seem to help an individual with job skill and actually is a detriment due to entitlement. For some reason, living a life of the mind seems to interfere with the simple ability to cleaning the toilets. A job skill that is easily grasped by those without advanced education even as they work to put such tasks behind them in a career.
As this study indicates, employers are finding that today’s college graduates don’t even possess basic job skills, like communication or punctuality. Surely the universities could instill these skills as they expand the mind. Say by requiring students to show up, on-time and turn in work on-time or be penalized say by not being accommodated or a lower grade?
I would just add this anecdote. My first semester at the university, I was, let’s say, less than a stellar student in the new unsupervised environment and received the grades to prove it. It never occurred to me to whine to my professors over my error in judgement. But I did learn the lessons, even the one where 4 yrs later, I was limited to graduating cum laude due to those grades that first semester.
I mention this simply because from what I’ve read, the universities take great pains to see that their students don’t learn this hard lesson. A lesson, I might add, that is very valuable in their work life. So there is little need for a course in job skills if the university would simply return to standards of performance and behavior as a way to transition the entering children into competent adults.
Indeed, sitting in the oval office is the quintessential example of how to “act educated” without actually knowing anything. It’s an imitation of depth, knowledge and learning. From “corpse-man” to “57 states”, the degree to which this clown takes a toll on intellect is staggering. I am reminded of a scene in a movie where the main character is allowed to drone on and on while the person who allegedly educated him does repeated face-palms with each verbal miscue. But hey, he’s educated and brilliant if everyone says he is, right? I’m also reminded of an episode of “The Twilight Zone” where Andy Devine plays a character named Frisby who’s the biggest liar the world has ever seen, but some aliens hear about him and kidnap him to serve them, until they find out he’s not what he claims to be. I recently saw this episode again and was struck by the parallel between Frisby and our man-child president although with some stark differences. Frisby was harmless and nobody believed him. But with the president, we seem to have a large share of “aliens” who believe him and they haven’t awakened to the truth yet. They may never.
You have the gall to criticize Barry O’Bama’s innate intelligence? And after all the media documentation they’ve provided?
If “We” as a nation, don’t believe all the media documentation, praise, and admiration that has been showered on this true “Einstein” of modern day, then we must be a nation of fools! (Snort!)
Not to mention the hero he is to so many in the “educated”, elite masses.
You, sir, are guilty of blatant racism. (Just like me when I make comments like this one.)
The definition of “Racism” has morphed into “intellectually honest human being who Genuinely cares for others and questions the BS spoon fed via the MSM by self proclaimed elites”. I’m a racist.
Dave;
I’ll drink to that! Cheers!
Saddly, the colleges and universities have become money makers for Leftists and indoctrination centers for their students. You can’t even bring conservatives on campus to lead discussions. How’s that for closemindedness? They have speech codes which is nothing but the stiffling of free speech.
Northwestern University held an after hours demonstration of using a power tool
as a sexual stimulator. Now one radio talk show host, calls the school of journalism, the McDildo School of Journalism.
All of our instutitions have been corrupted. The future is not bright. Leftist hide behind “freedom” to squelch the freedom of others.
One word that the author used immediately said it all to me “Incentive”. Over all time whether animal, plant, microbe, or indeed Human animal the one thing that we all always share is incentive. We all make decisions everyday based on incentive. The short statement is “Whatever we incentivize we will get more of whether it is entitlements or achievement, whether it is being a taker or a maker, making good decisions or bad decisions” It is endless, everything we do as humans is related to incentive.
AS to education I have suggested that we do one relatively simple thing to correct our downward trajectory (and I am sure that academia will dismiss me as shallow and uninformed) but here it is.
Go back to 1960 and look at an education system that was the envy of the world and examine why it worked at all levels and determine if we can in some fashion recreate something that was successful.
May I note a few differences between know and then:
1. No unions in 1960 (I beleive that Kennedy brought them on in the public sector). Thus no last in- first out teacher turn over, leaving the best and brightest teachers in our schools, no rubber rooms for teachers, no defined benefits, the list is rather long.
2. Teaching was a highly respected profession. Not so much today.
3. No trial lawyers suing school systems for any and all perceived or imagined injustices against Johnny, thus no wasted resources or bureaucratic administration set up to fend them off.
4. Salary ratio of teacers to admin was 60/40% today that number is rereversed Admin 60% vs Teachers 40% of gross payroll.
5. PHD Administrators with limited classroom experience running the show were hard to find if they existed at all.
6. No Federal Dept. of Ed. What exactly do they do?
7. Schools were organized and managed by local people at the local level with minimal federal or state interference.
8. At university professors taught classes rather than their assistants.
9. Social majors (Female Studies, Comparative Religion, etc.) at university were almost unheard of (I mean do this stuff on your own time, that is fine with me but don’t get a degree in it and expect me to hire you as a sales rep.)
10. And the Heirarchy looked like this K thru 12:
a. Teachers at the top mostly setting their own curriculum based on guidelines from administration.
b. Administrators supporting and running interference for the teachers.
c. Parents supporting the school system and making sure Johnny did the right thing.
d. Johnny was a student there to listen and learn and show respect for the education system and especially his teacher most of all.
You can reverse this heirarchy today.
If some or all of this is not examined the system will continue to deteriorate. This isn’t magic, this is good old American common sense. OK I’m 62 and this is probably way to simplistic for your average PHD from Columbia or Harvard, but think about it.
A really good example of what you’re talking about is to compare and contrast the movie “To Sir With Love” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (starring that asshat, Sean Penn).
The differences are glaring. I always though the former movie was astoundingly good, all of those young people brought to graduation, fully functional and appreciative of everything they’d been taught. The latter movie is simply puerile and juvenile, and appreciates nothing but being some dumbass slacker moron engaged in self-gratification.
Of course, To Sir With Love was made when education was of crucial importance, and everyone knew it and appreciated the fact; Fast Times was made at a time when the 60s protest generation had already been screwing up everything they’d touched – especially academia.
This really isn’t new. When I went to college in 1991, about half of the students failed tests and exams (results were often posted outside the classroom using the student ID number instead of name) and the course catalog was about a third remedial courses. Many students spent their time talking about partying and it was not uncommon to hear them say “my parents said it was either college (which they paid for) or get a job or go in the army.” So they went to college for a year or two, failed out and made things miserable for serious students.
About 10 years later I went back just to take some courses because they looked interesting. It was more of the same only worse. The number of students failing out was about the same but the course work had been watered down and some of the professors admitted to me that they were under pressure to “improve grades” to make the place look better. But when they hand out study guides and even pre-tests for the class to study with but still half would fail, there wasn’t much they could do. At least it was easier to stomach the second time around since I knew what to expect and there were more older and serious students to talk to.
Money is important and I wish I had more of it. However, an exclusive or even principal focus on it does not serve us well, individually or as citizens. Thinking, with the background necessary to do it, is required if we are to understand what’s happening to the country and therefore to us. Without such understanding, there is little we can do beyond get irritated and repeat trite phrases disparaging events and statements about them that we don’t understand. Merely repeating political slogans and bumper stickers may be gratifying but does little good otherwise.
Communication is certainly a necessary job skill but it is far more than that. Communication is part of life off as well as on the job and effective communication requires more than adequate grammar. Without clear thoughts to communicate, what is there to communicate that could not be equally well expressed with a grunt, a sneer or a shake of the head?
Punctuality is also necessary both off and on the job. Off the job, it is a matter at least of simple courtesy. In law school, one of our teachers, Mr. Priest, was a retired founding partner of a New York City law firm where his specialty had been public utilities law — usually a dull subject, I thought. An elderly gentleman with a good sense of humor, he often kept our interest with humor. Once he told a story about an attorney’s address to a state public utilities commission, arguing that if a merger were to be permitted the acquiring firm would, once again, reach out “with its slimy testicles” to grab a smaller company. The attorney had, of course, meant to say “tentacles” rather than testicles. Mr. Priest had a way of dealing with tardy students: when someone entered class late, he would stop what he was doing, look directly at him and remind him that “punctuality is the courtesy of kings and the obligation of gentlefolk everywhere.” This was said with grace and good humor but after a few repetitions hardly anyone came late to class.
Mr. Priest had a way of dealing with tardy students: when someone entered class late, he would stop what he was doing, look directly at him and remind him that “punctuality is the courtesy of kings and the obligation of gentlefolk everywhere.” This was said with grace and good humor but after a few repetitions hardly anyone came late to class.
Your anecdote reminds me of a comparable situation in one of my own university classes. This particular course ran on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:30 AM and one particular student invariably came late, after the lecture had started. It was a small class held in a seminar room and the number of seats inevitably seemed to match the number of students so this late-arriving student always ended up in the only empty seat, which was in the middle of the front row. This student always marched in, sat down in that front row seat and promptly lay his head down on the desk and went to sleep for the rest of the class. The professor’s reaction? He never said a word, just shrugged as if to say “What can you do?”. And that student repeated this behaviour for the entire term.
An interesting contrast, I think you would agree. I much prefer your professor’s approach. Then again, I suppose any student who experienced that treatment today would raise a grievance with the school administration and demand an apology – and probably a top grade – from the professor for “undermining his dignity” or some nonsense like that.
For “undermining his dignity?” What dignity could he possibly have to undermine?
I was merely speculating on what a student might do if embarassed by a professor in a class today. There are, of course, many possibilities. The student might claim racism – the student in my anecdote was Chinese – or simply expressed displeasure that his sleep was interrupted. Perhaps he might have complained that the professor was discriminating against his preferred learning method and claim to be gifted at sleep-learning. Or he might have protested that being criticized hurt his self-esteem and diminished his ability to learn. And so on. It’s not hard to conjure up possibilities for how one of today’s students might have acted based on the sort of nonsense they see, swallow, and do these days. Of course none of those strategies would have made a shred of sense but I don’t see that as being any kind of disincentive any more. To give just one example, Ann Coulter was at the University of Ottawa a little over a year ago but was sent warnings about Canadian hate crime laws before she even appeared to try to influence her speech. A near riot of “student activists” protesting her appearance got the speech shut down before it even began. http://anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi?article=361
“Having to “teach to the test” diminishes what should be the passion demonstrated by even a competent teacher and hence the joy of learning experienced by his students.”
If what is in the test should be known, then to the extent they need to for a sufficient bulk of the students to know it, they should teach to the test. If there is time for more later, that’s all well and good.
Start by teaching about tax code, state and federal, in junior high going forward. Integrate this into math, history, English, science and “social” studies classes etc.
Right on the money, Mr. Lucky. High School in the US is mostly a waste of time anyway. High Schools should teach practical preparation for life. They should teach how to buy a house, including going through closing. If they did, students who reached college would not accept the ideological pablum that is dished out to them in most classes that are not in the hard sciences or engineering.
Remember those TV shows and movies back in the 50′s and 60′s where the protagonist would be the first to go to high school or college and then when they came home, the parents were completely confused as to what the kid was learning, like economics, history, higher math, physics or chemistry? Well, nowadays, the scenario is playing out again but with the parents confused as to why the kid is learning about “Gay is OK”, “Why I have two mommies”, “Wrap That Rascal” and so on.
To me, it just makes me sick. The forced socialist agenda is criminal. They do not teach about the Constitution anymore, but they do tell the story of how white people have been cruel to blacks, mexicans, indians, etc, etc ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
There is an interesting parallel. When I was in the USAF, I had the opportunity to chat with some Luftwaffe pilots. They had been brought up in an education system that taught “Being German is bad”..and they all had the potential to become nazis and any/all thoughts that Germany is something to be proud of is a bad path. They were quite sick of that particular line of thinking.
I cannot help but think there will be plenty of kids who grow up to dismiss the socialist line of thinking. Although the socialists have intentionally avoided teaching critical thinking skills to kids and college students, there are those who possess it naturally and certain career fields require it. Real science absolutely requires it. Therefore, there have to be little pockets of it here and there. Someday, the disgusting portion of our population that came into its own in the 60′s will be gone. Oddly, they are children of the greatest generation, WWII veterans and such. How that happened, I really don’t know. But they rebelled and were allowed to do so. A monumental failure in mammalian instinct to say the least. In other mammals, the young are kept in their place and scolded harshly for challenging the elders, until they are skilled and strong enough to fend for themselves. The hippies never learned these vital skills, thinking “belonging” and “group-think” to be a suitable replacement for actual talent and skill..and….critical thinking. Eisenhower said, “That which is popular, isn’t always right and that which is right isn’t always popular”. But the left has taken that to mean that they know best and even though 70% of the population is against this healthcare thing, a select few think it’s a good idea. But they see it through the prism of either A) a utopian dream or B)being able to accumulate more power into the government. But a more-powerful government is what I would call another contradiction in the world of the hippie-cum-politician. Weren’t they “against the man, man”? Wasn’t “the establishment” what they were all fighting against? Or, is it more accurate that they only saw things through relative terms and thus, arrived at socialism as “the answer” to all problems? I think this is the case. The hippies, the worst thing that ever happened to this nation in my lifetime, raised laziness to epic heights. Mental laziness and physical laziness begat our current glut of politicians who do not know what work is and actually think it’s something the hired help does. They, themselves are more attuned to calling what they do, “serving” and various other false identifiers. Yet, they toil not, neither do they spin. In other words, try to reach your elected official and you will find, more often than not, they are not in their office or otherwise unavailable. One also sees this behavior in CEO’s, managers, executives of all stripes and though they often are called away elsewhere, they often spend little time in their actual place of “work”.
Well, I’ve said enough…I’m really sick of the whole state of affairs and wish I had a time machine. I would try to accomplish a few things, One, I would do my best to prevent Martin Luther King, Jr from being shot, same with Kennedy and two, I’d do what I could to curtail the hippie movement and make sure that I had enough money to rent the Woodstock farm before the hippies got ahold of it. I’ll bet if the parents of hippies could’ve seen what they are doing now, they would’ve clamped down on their kids and made sure they stayed at home and did the dishes instead of going out at night.
I write historical novels as a way of teaching history, and making it interesting, and counteracting some of the poisonous brain-washing of students, when it comes to American history. We have to believe that the people who founded and built this America, our America — were rational and moral people, that they did their best in the framework of their society; that our ideals are worthwhile, that our past has value. Without an accurate knowlege of the past, we are in a sort of sensory-deprivation tank.
Fiction is a great teaching tool and the sensation of pleasure derived from studying history when young encourages study long after graduation — of fiction such as well and passionately written by Patrick O’Brian (British naval history), Steven Saylor (ancient Roman history) and W.E.B. Griffin (World War II and Korean conflict history). Knowledgeable of history, fiction writers can bring fictitious, ordinary humans into their stories to make them enjoyable to read but also as foils to highlight the characters of those who actually had major roles. Mr. Griffin’s tales of the war in the Pacific and of the Korean Conflict make General MacArthur’s ghost come alive fairly, warts and all.
Please don’t forget “Graves” as in “I Claudius” a most entertaining fictional book. But probably close to historic intent.
“…the causes of decline”
Let’s see…teachers themselves trained up by the morons of the 60′s who went on to professorships.
Teachers who, quite literally, cannot challenge students intellectually because they don’t know what that is. Besides, according to the value system with which they were brainwashed in their own eddukashuns, it wouldn’t be “fair” if some students were seen to outperform other students.
The NEA. Teachers more interested in their own union benefits than quality education.
Chickification ? drippy drooling curricula crowding out academic rigor. Sex education in 3rd grade is straight out of Brave New World. (oh but wait, the sec’y of eddukashun loves that stuff)
Federal interference at all levels in public schools.
Grade inflation, wouldn’t want to embarrass a student by flunking him etc.
Some ghastly percentage of the Detroit population can’t read, in excess of 80%. Dropout rate in Chicago public schools has exceeded 50% for decades. Other big cities aren’t far behind.
Perfect fodder for the continued destruction of Constitutional government.
Colleges and universities are now institutions for ideological training, except maybe in the hard sciences and engineering. Ideology is rigorously enforced. How can you teach reasoning when you are required to teach that homosexuality is morally approvable, that all criticisms of homosexuals are bigoted, and that our government has a duty to redefine marriage so that gays and others are permitted to marry? The life of the mind has pretty much disappeared. Academic departments outside the hard sciences and engineering are ideological ghettos. The result of affirmative action policies is that only affirmative action candidates are hired, with the rare exception of a white male who argues vehemently that only affirmative action candidates should be hired. The only thing that could cause this ocean liner to change course is a shift of the magnitude experienced by Europe after WWI, WWII, or the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
In a March 21, 2011 article at Open.Salon.com that attacks Herman Cain, Chauncey DeVega (alias) wrote that Republicans: “recycle conservative fantasies of self-made men and women, the dime-novel Horatio Alger tale, and embrace the myth of meritocracy.”
Since this idea has great currency on the political Left and among the African American elite do we really have to say more?
That quote embodies the very definition of failure and is why throwing money at education never has and never will work. Give me a piece of paper and a pencil and the will to use them and I’ll write books, math formulas, make architectural drawings and art and I’ll whip anyone with a computer or state-of-the-art facilities who believes in that quote.
PS. I’ll make the damn paper and pencil myself.
That quote literally made me feel ill. I’ve been dealing with an inherited disorder for years now, and the “myth of the self-made man” was one of the things that convinced me I could still live a normal life and not be sidelined or forced to leech off government help. When did it become criminal to do well for yourself?
Yes, I saw Chauncey de Vega’s nasty little valentine – he seemed to be setting himself up as the One who decides the authenticity of the black experience, and who doesn’t count as truly ‘black’ with an uppercase ‘b’. Pity about the editorial slant at OS, there areally are some thoughtful and intelligent people there, and there are even some who are libertarian or conservative, or at least, truly free-thinking. They don’t often get picked by the editorial staff to adorn the front page.
James
Great argument. As a member of one of the very best of the american meritocracies, let me say this: DeVega and his ilk had better (well, I was going to say pray…but that arifact gives us away, doesn’t it?)
…DeVega and his ilk had better hope that DOD levels of success never plummet to those of the educator-class. If veterans had the level of success that educators have had in this country, we wouldn’t be celebrating 4th of July weekends, would we? The EC might give continuous feedback and constant competition a try. Myth indeed…
The author states, “I have seen few articles, written by conservatives, touching upon the quality of education beyond lamenting that the Libruls have taken over and that “teachers’” unions, focused largely on increased benefits for “teachers” with decreased learning for their students, have too much power.”
That’s right. All of the recommendations by the unions have been awarded to teachers, since the 1970s: smaller class size; more money to hire “better quality” teachers; nicer work facilities; “New Math” courses; new ways of teaching; more teachers’ aides, etc., etc., etc. And what do we get? Teachers making more money while test scores continue falling. We’re not getting anything in return for our investment, and the author recommends hiring teachers that make learning “fun”. That’s right, that will work, especially when today’s future teachers themselves need remedial reading and math courses. The horse is out of the barn and it’s too late to close the door.
I’ve got a novel idea. Visit Germany and Japan to learn what they are doing, and implement the same systems here in the U.S. Why do you think there is never any mention by any “libruls” on how other countries are managing their education system compared to what we are doing? It’s because other countries rely strictly on test scores to determine advancement of students to the next level. How unique is that?
Instead, the author talks about “we need better notions of the meaning of success”, and students should take more courses they enjoy rather than courses that increase chances of employment. Make learning “fun”. This is all pie in the sky we’ve been hearing from teachers for decades. It hasn’t worked until now, and it will not work in the future.
…the system used to be the top in the world. one doesn’t need to visit other countries to see what needs to be done.
there are plenty of people here who follow pj media who could fix all these problems. as most of us have not been bought and paid for by the washington system.
truly education has very little to do with money. the education system has been taken over by marxists and socialists decades ago. bill ayers and his wife and obama himself spent much of the young adult lives subverting the system …and continue to do so today using YOUR money.
I must apologize for not having expressed my thoughts with sufficient clarity. The word “fun” was used in the article twice, in conjunction with a video link to the Wiffenpoof’s song and the immediately following video link to a reunion of Wiffs from classes of 1939 to 2010. They seemed to be having fun and that’s part of college life; it should also be part of post-college life.
Otherwise, the thrust was that education has to generate excitement – passion — for learning and for the subjects studied. Only teachers who are themselves passionate can generate such excitement and passion. Teaching to the test seems unlikely to do that and when those are missing “education” amounts to little more than the rote memorization of facts. Education should involve far more than learning how to take tests.
“Teaching to the test seems unlikely to do that and when those are missing “education” amounts to little more than the rote memorization of facts.”
It works in Europe and Asia. All that you are suggesting is that students will want to attend classes more frequently, not that they will retain or learn more. Maybe our teachers should be required to take classes given by Bill Maher so they could be funnier. Let’s throw more money at teachers. Attending an entertaining class doesn’t mean they will learn more. To insinuate that tests shouldn’t mean anything is ludicrous. And I never suggested that “rote memorization” is the way to go. Memorization has it’s advantageous. If 1 + 1 = 2, and 2 + 2 = 4, then 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4. It’s called logic.
teachers and professors who have never been outside the education system should never get tenure. All teachers should do several years of real work before being allowed to call themselves educators.
We should be so lucky that college graduates leave school having learned little or nothing. In fact, they are thoroughly brain-washed with Leftist BS, and many appear to be beyond saving. A number of surveys have shown that college graduates know less than freshmen, and much of what they ‘know’ is false. The best we can hope to do at this point is to steer as many kids as possible away from higher education. Luckily, the feminization of schools will (already is, in fact) accomplish that naturally, as normal men will not endure living in a women’s world. I take as given that we are past the point of taking real action to change the nature of the academy, by changing personnel. Healthy societies eliminate foreign elements just as the human body eliminates foreign bacteria.
Higher ed now has to make up for the lack in K-12. You shouldn’t need to take two years worth of junk classes in college. Basic math, English, lit – it’s all basic information that students should have learned in high school. You can sleep all the way through school, there’s plenty of time to actually learn stuff. People could go into college and start right in on their major, learning things they actually need to know, instead of blowing $900 on a math class that covers the same thing you learned in high school, or on a lit class that covers material you should have already read.
We had a fine example of what education can accomplish here in Canada on Friday. During the Speech from the Throne, the ceremony that opens a new session of Parliament, a Senate page hauled a “Stop Harper” sign out from under her dress and held it up while the Governor-General read the speech. (Stephen Harper is our Prime Minister and leads the Conservative Party here. The Conservatives won a majority in Parliament during the election we had on May 2.) This is roughly equivalent to a Senate page holding up a sign that said “Bush lied, people died” in Congress during the State of the Union address.
This young woman, who committed this act just a day or two before graduating from a four year university program in International Politics and Globalization, is now a celebrity in this country, alternately revered or reviled depending on your politics. She has already received a job offer from the Public Service Alliance of Canada, one of the main unions of government employees.
Here’s an article about her which contains an interview – you’ll have to endure a brief commercial before the interview begins – and a variety of comments about her “protest” from across the political spectrum. http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110605/senate-page-protest-brigette-depape-110605/20110605/?hub=OttawaHome
Yet another triumph for our
Marxist training academieseducational institutions!I’m sure this will come as no surprise to any PJM reader but Michael Moore has now endorsed the protesting page: http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5hrKE9-tLmQYYBq45CCTk0PIsduGA?docId=7060435
An interesting article. I would like to add this personal experience as anecdotal evidence of part of the demise of “good” education in the US.
I attended a major mid-west university on a military scholarship. I was married with two children.
My wife (at that time still a German citizen) worked in the Registrar’s Office to augment our income. Her work was mostly associated with the College of Education.
In the Spring of 1964 she came home very upset, on the verge of tears, and told me she was wondering if it would make sense to educate our children in Germany?
I was of course astounded, what on earth brought this on.
Well the following brought this on:
1. In her job she became aware that over 50% of the upcoming Education College graduates would be graduated with “special dispensation”. This meant they did not have a C average necessary for normal graduation.
2. It was well known on campus that the “Teachers College” was the last stop for many college students. They arrived there after “flunking” out of Business, Engineering, Science, Liberal Arts, one or more times.
3. The attitude of these students was also well known on campus. Get the degree, get a Certificate, join the union and get tenure. You have it made and probably will do better in the long run than the poor b*****d in Engineering who busted his butt 18 or more hours a day to get a degree and a job.
She was really, really upset and it opened my eyes even further than the very large presence of the SDS (visited by none other than Bill Ayers) on our campus.
An interesting article. I would like to add this personal experience as anecdotal evidence of part of the demise of “good” education in the US.
I attended a major mid-west university on a military scholarship. I was married with two children.
My wife (at that time still a German citizen) worked in the Registrar’s Office to augment our income. Her work was mostly associated with the College of Education.
In the Spring of 1964 she came home very upset, on the verge of tears, and told me she was wondering if it would make sense to educate our children in Germany?
I was of course astounded, what on earth brought this on.
Well the following brought this on:
1. In her job she became aware that over 50% of the upcoming Education College graduates would be graduated with “special dispensation”. This meant they did not have a C average necessary for normal graduation.
2. It was well known on campus that the “Teachers College” was the last stop for many college students. They arrived there after “flunking” out of Business, Engineering, Science, Liberal Arts, one or more times.
3. The attitude of these students was also well known on campus. Get the degree, get a Certificate, join the union and get tenure. You have it made and probably will do better in the long run than the poor b*****d in Engineering or Business or… who busted his butt 18 or more hours a day to get a degree and a job.
She was really, really upset and it opened my eyes even further than the very large presence of the SDS (visited by none other than Bill Ayers) on our campus.
Financial incentives have proven to be a failure in every sector they have been used in and it will continue to destroy the system.
We are creating a 3rd world bulk population with PC lowering of standards for selective admissions,filling quotas and replacing the rewards of advanced educational knowledge,ideological stimulation and critical thinking with financial gain,excuse laden lack of comprehension and mass produced neutral thought processes.
Starting in grade schools they use a median goal to achieve a statistical sum for financial gain.This sorts children into an educationally specific rut of homogenized mediocrity.The focus is based on lower and remedial score improvement for financial gains.Building elaborate schools and paying excessive administration-educator expenses does not and never will educate a child.Nor will preferential treatment based on parental financial status,race,country origins,religion,sex and political opinion.
Giving school vouchers and choice simply forces successful schools to accept children that may be unqualified and unprepared to integrate into a higher standard working program that must lower it’s standard while attempting to compensate and improve the sub standard scores of the new student population.
The falasy of equality and revision of the definition of success has created a passionless,illogical production line of students paid to sit in a class room,party,reproduce,mimic teachers opinions and print copies of internet papers.
Using IQ scores alone a 68 will never equal a 90 which will never equal 120.Add in parental influences,enviromental exposures,social and political ideologies and base education shows that not only is a standardized system irresponsible,illogical and impossible but hugely damaging to students.It sacrifices natural talent,individuality and strengths that deserve cultivation to advance a percentile that are incapable of basic socialized govermental requirements.
What benefit would our world,country and society have achieved if Einstein had to take a class on Madonna for credits,Nikola Tesla been forced to learn Home Economics or Lady Gaga learned Calculus ? These people all achieved greatness despite the educational system.I would love to credit their teachers with something-anything but it is obvious their growth,support,creativity and ingenuity came from outside the deteriorating box of socialized ,paid to attend educational system.
Every child has individual perceptions,talents,comprehension rates and interests.Suffocating these under a blanket of government controlled mediocrity does not encourage democracy,desire for education or success.
Can’t you picture Winston Churchill throwing paper airplanes at Audie Murphy who is poking Patton with his pencil for laughing at Michelangelo for coloring outside the lines on his geographical map while Obama makes fart noises in a modern remedial history class?
“How Low Can Higher Ed Go?”
Apparently, it isn’t low enough. The professional whiners and complainers are still flunking as it is.
Instead of educating the individuals that do have promise and passion for their chosen field, educators have created courses that can accommodate the most recalcitrant, lackadaisical student that arrives in class.
So, the theory is; Dumb down the courses to accommodate the worst students, instead of educating for motivated individuals that seek higher learning and intellectually challenging career fields.
(This is a good example of creating “equality” in a commodity that devalues the commodity for ALL recipients.)
$150,000 invested into a mutual fund at age 18, would mature into a sizable fortune when the beneficiary reaches 55 or later. Prohibit them from accessing this money until that age, and they would have enough to retire on and live the rest of their life very comfortably.
Off topic, but Crystal Palace burned to the ground in the Thirties and the little leftover bits are still there to this day. It’s mostly a grassy park, with the occasional cement Sphinx or odd bit of tilework. They keep trying to raze it and put up a cineplex or something, but the locals always bat it down.
I used to live nearby.
Higher education deserves the bulk, but not all, of the blame for this mess. Let’s be honest: a lot of the last couple of generations’ kids have been raised with very little in the way of intellectual curiosity. (I say this as a member of one of them, and a recent college graduate.) Many parents are going insane making sure that their kids are drug-free, smoke-free, and using appropriate and inclusive language, but the idea of learning for (or as a byproduct of) enjoyment is quickly falling by the wayside.
I did well in college, but most of that I don’t chalk up to the institution itself. My parents would entertain us kids by reading aloud to us–history and science fiction, mostly, by the great masters of the genres. It was them, not any school program, that taught me that Learning is Fun. (And since I was well-read and minored in philosophy, everyone assumed I was a liberal. It was perfect camouflage.) I had some fun at my designated institute of higher learning, but I didn’t learn much there that I hadn’t learned elsewhere.
This is a bit off topic, but when I went to school I used to have to walk barefoot through blizzards 173 miles everyday while whipped by bullies wielding cat-o-nine-tails after having had a breakfast consisting of nothing more than a moldy cracker and some iodine.
At night I was put in bed by giant savage apes that would say good night by biting my head off.
Luxury.
And yes 150 of us lived in a shoebox in the middle of the road.
A few gems my son learned in 7th grade last year:
He should follow local news because Jews control and edit mainstream media.You are a racist if you are a white Christian and do not consider dating other races or religions.
All US citizens are responsible for the governmental genocide of 80 million native Americans through controlled disease exposure and mass murders.
Despite the facts that only 5% of enslaved Africans were shipped to the US and America is the only country where citizens killed each other to free the enslaved ,the American history of slavery is equal to Adolf Hitler’s final solution.
Societal neglect of minorities demands that the educational system and other students show compassion to and give special assistance to them with tutoring,meals and school/sports supplies as compensation.
Fact: At 8th grade graduation this year 76 students will receive their Jr.High Diplomas.My son is the only student with natural blonde hair and blue eyes.
Does it really annoy you, that my beige kids do better than yours?
Miller makes some worthwhile points, but misses the mark also. Re: “At the undergraduate level, there should be no overpowering pressure to focus exclusively on subjects merely because they may be conducive to finding lucrative employment.” There little pressure at most universities to major in lucrative or employable fields; in this writer’s opinion, there should be more such pressure, not less.
“A degree in a job-related field can help in finding a good job; some find them, perhaps because they are in love with the subjects of their studies. Why not major in a job-related field because it is interesting, and not merely because it seems the most likely to be of help in finding the most lucrative employment?” Only someone living in the Ivory Tower, detached from reality, could write such a ludicrous passage. Undergraduate school, even at our more affordable four-year schools, is pushing the six-figure mark in costs. Add in graduate or professional school, and you are looking at an even bigger mountain of debt to pay off. Student loan debt, remember, is not dischargeable in bankrupcy – if that promising career teaching early modern French literature fails to materialize, and one ends up working a low-wage service job after graduation. The higher education bubble is real; a college education costs several orders of magnitude more than it did fifty years ago and delivers correspondingly less content. It is also often more time-consuming. Oh, by the way, most of what a general studies or liberal arts major knows at graduation in 2011 used to be taught in high school, back when a diploma actually stood for real educational attainment.
Apart from the higher education bubble itself, another sizeable problem – one with profound social and economic implications – lies in the fact that colleges and universities are the de facto gatekeepers for much of the employment market. You have to “pay to play,” or cannot legally enter many fields of employment. My grandfather studied for and passed the bar exam independently; he never attended law school. That would be impossible today; the universities have closed that door. There are many other examples. It’s a racket, a very lucrative scam, for the higher education system. The sooner this “bubble” bursts, the better off we’ll all be.
About 30 years ago Robert Heinlein wrote an essay titled “The Happy Days Ahead”. Excerpt:
We are screwed. Thank you, Democratic school boards, “educators” and teachers unions. I let teachers off the hook because they’re in the middle and they don’t set the agenda.
Just to add to the discussion. I have been an educator for 17 years. When I got my first job, I was given a text book, a list of novels, and a directive, “Teach them something.” Fortunately I was trained in a progressive(little p) program that emphasized real life application of what a teacher presents to his class.” As a result, I planned every unit I taught with one goal in mind, making sure that what I taught my students had some real world application. I set the standard and I set the bar high because in the end, I was the authority in my class.
When I think about what I could ask of my students, general ed, special ed, and honors compared to now, I get sick. What changed? Standardized education. At first I embraced standards. They gave teachers common goals and helped ensure students recieved similar educations. The problem is how to measure the standards, which lead to standardized testing. Adminstration and evaluation of the test is costly and time consuming. Also, inevitably, significant numbers of students fail and with a directive that all students pass the test, states dumbed the test down to avoid NCLB penalties. Finally, the disparity of what each state asks of students is ridiculous. A kid in NC is not getting a comparable education to a kid in Colorado.
The standards set by those above me are sometimes inappropriate or more often far too low. By the time I see students in high school, they are convinced that a paragraph is 3 to 4 sentences long, that reading consists of taking a test with multiple choice questions following a short one page passage. They also know the game. If they wait it out, teachers are going to find a way to pass them because NCLB is designed as a gottya for the school system more so than an accountabilty measure for the student. Now teachers teach to the test to keep the powers that be off their backs. Or they think that teaching to the test is good teaching mostly because they do not know any better. The problem is that when you set the bar too low, when students fail to meet the bar….
Last I check, the right was as instrumental in the implementation of standards and NCLB as the left was.
Please forgive the typos, I am late for work and did not proofread thoroughly.
I am a professor. What spoke to me here was the observation that many, perhaps most, incoming freshmen are unable to read and unable to write. But they are the consumers, and we are the producers, and thus we meet the consumer where he is, not where we wish he were. Even gifted students, then, must sit through remedial instruction, dumbed-down lectures, readings chosen with an eye towards a readership that can’t follow a complex argument. As a conservative, I typically believe that the market’s invisible hand is a better guarantor of results than is top-down planning, but notably, market-driven higher ed, coming as it does at the end of a virtual state monopoly over the first 13 or 14 years of a young person’s education, produces a poorer, diminished college experience. Fewer, better students is the answer. But what business willingly shrinks its market share?
“I am a professor.”… “As a conservative, I typically believe that the market’s invisible hand is a better guarantor of results than is top-down planning, but notably, market-driven higher ed, coming as it does at the end of a virtual state monopoly over the first 13 or 14 years of a young person’s education, produces a poorer, diminished college experience.”
You’re a professor? I certainly hope you aren’t a professor of English writing or rhetoric, because if you are, I truly feel sorry for your students.
What if the federal government ran primary and secondary schools. Wait, they do -
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d01934.pdf
and the dramatic difference in out come can only be traced to the culture in the home. Decide what you want for the reason but the motivation one finds at home in expectations and standards can not be ignored. The ramifications in school systems which shackle students in such disparate households to group promotion and standards in the name of ‘social justice’ rather than individual merit gives you the result you see today. You have an entire community that uses the pejorative ‘acting white’ to describe other students who try to excel in school. John Galt isn’t just in business.
What is needed is not education reform per se, but curriculum reform. We should get back to the basics of essential skills and return to the classical liberal arts curriculum.
Grammar
Logic
Rhetoric
Literature
Mathematics
Science
Art
Seriously, what else does one need to know? Dump all this whole language, new math, pseudo-science, politicized coursework, and other nonsense that has infiltrated and degraded the education system over the last four decades. The reason why students leave school unable to read, write, think, and perform mathematics is because the current system does not teach nor require them to. I know, because I was a teacher for 17 years, at every level from elementary to college.
One thing that definitely is part of the problem is that this society is decidedly anti-intellectual and does not value education generally. I have a lot of friends from East Asia where education and meritocracies were revered in theory even when the practice didn’t totally live up to expectations, and some of them have lamented to me how hard it is for them to relate to American parents. They don’t understand why American parents don’t think education is as important as sports, though my Asian friends still push their children far harder to study and succeed regardless of what the Americans around them do.
Having been raised myself around a lot of Asians with this sort of strong desire to achieve, I relate to their sentiments. Too often the desire for academic achievement is relegated to merely being “a nerd” while the captain of the football team is held in high honor.
I appreciate your canvas of many issues dogging the American educational system, though I suggest you’ve only touched the tip of the icebert. I would argue that it’s not possible to hold up any one major cause for its perceived failure, and likewise that no one system will work for all communities.
Perhaps if the federal government stopped intruding into educational systems, states might implement more effective practices. Not all would succeed, but perhaps some would and could serve as a model to others. If nothing else, a variety of systems would provide more choice to students and parents when seeking a better foundation for their future.
Here’s another problem: academia teaching students to fill roles that only exist in academia. True, in small quantities, this is necessary in order to replace faculty and administrative attrition, but in large quantities, it’s simply a pyramid scheme. Ten BA’s compete for one position as a supported graduate student, and then ten PhD’s compete for one professorship. Even if it is only five to one at each level, that means 80% of students are unqualified for employment commensurate with their level of education as soon as they graduate, with another 16% following them a few years down the road. Universities attempt to support these over-credentialed personnel using undergraduates and cross-subsidizing with funds from useful disciplines. Even so, academia can only absorb so many artists.
The fact is, most students at today’s universities are well aware that they have no business being there. They simply don’t have the background (books at home, literate parents) or desire (“real men” aren’t “educated”…..that’s why there are now more women than men in college)to pursue ANY academic field.
But I can hardly blame the students. Without that sheepskin, it’s a life of stocking packages at KMart or Target forever. I’m glad I long ago finished college….I’d hate to be a student today.
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I recently listened to a discussion on this topic. It was more along the lines of why students were earning more business oriented degrees than other degrees.
Most on the panel conceded the students were money driven–influenced on the success of several young, high profile entrepreneurs in the spot light.
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