Why Every Kid in America Doesn’t Need to Be Educated
Why do we spend so much money on education? I think a lot of people would answer, “Because educating our kids is important.” Really? Why?
There are a lot of problems with teachers’ unions, whose goals are to make sure we get the least amount of education for the most amount of money, but the problems don’t start with them. Just look at the whole system we set up. We have 7.2 million teachers in this country and about 76 million students. Children are taught for 13 years in grade school, and many people want everyone to get at least 4 years of college on top of that. And what exactly do we get out of all this? If someone told me I was going to spend the next 17 years just studying, I’d expect at the end of it all to be Batman — a master of all sciences, languages, and martial arts. We’re lucky if our kids come out of this able to read and with at least one marketable skill.
So what is our goal with all this? It’s like we envision a future where we all just sit around and be all educated and smart while robots or illegal Mexicans do all the real work. But do we really want all of us to be a bunch of educated people who never do anything useful — like the Obama administration but for the whole country? Anyway, it’s not going to happen. The future still needs people to cook, clean, and manufacture goods — and it doesn’t take a decade of education in math and science to be able to do those things. So why are we spending hundreds of billions of dollars to make sure every fry cook at one point in his life knew what a gerund is?
Is there a benefit to educating everybody regardless of actual need? We keep hearing that we’re falling behind the rest of the world in our average math and science scores, but let’s look at some of the countries ahead of us: Finland, Lichtenstein, the Czech Republic. I’m sorry, but did I miss all the huge technological innovations that came out of these countries? China is also ahead of us in test scores, but they haven’t even figured out how not to put lead paint on children’s toys. What exactly are high average test scores worth? If a bank teller can properly identify the parts of a cell, this helps society how? Or do we just think that kids sitting in classrooms throughout childhood makes them better people? Well, Jesus didn’t spend his childhood in a school, but know who did? Hitler.
People can cook, clean, and manufacture good just as good WITH a good education as without.
The point is that it allows for the pursuit of more if it’s desired.
Except it makes them discontent to have an education if the only thing they are going to do is cook and clean. I would much prefer hiring a cook whose head was not filled with math and Greek and Biology.
That’s fine Bilo. So if you have a choice to learn or not YOU don’t have to take it.
But taking that away from everyone goes beyond.
No one said anything about “taking away” anything from anyone. It is easily determined who should be higher educated and who should not. It is fiscally irresponsible to attempt to educate everyone regardless of their inabilities.
I meant “capabilities” rather than “inabilities,” of course.
…it was definitely fiscally irresponsible to educate You.
I’m gonna take a wild guess and assume you are not a teacher and have never had to actually assess a growing and developing child.
I much prefer voters whose ARE filled with all that, AND a good dose of history and philosophy.
I much prefer educated, THINKING voters.
Tyrants don’t agree with this view, of course, but people who love liberty DO.
It depends on who educated those voters. If it was some stupid liberal, the country would be better if the voters were uneducated. At least that way there is a 50 – 50 chane they might vote for a sane individual.
“Education is dangerous – Every educated person is a future enemy” Hermann Goering
Keep up the good work guys. Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. Teabaggers remind us of this everyday. Yes, education is very BAD. We wouldn’t want them to become one of those librul elites with their smarts and all.
Teabaggers are the fat stupid kids who sat at the back of the class room shooting spit wads at the heads of the smart kids in the front. How sad.
It sounds like you have self-identified as one of the “smart kids”.
Your indoctrination … I mean “education” has apparently left you ill equipped to deal with opinions that differ from yours and seems to have extracted your critical thinking skills as well, at least where the Tea Party is involved. Too bad; that anger and arrogance is keeping your intellect from being fully utilized.
Almost as sad as people like yourself that allow the media to indoctrinate you into thinking that all people associated with the Tea Party are completely alike, and are to be pitied, ridiculed, and feared (excellent use of the media-approved “teabagger” label, by the way). Seems as if our educational system did their job with you and churned out a good little groupthink-addled, mindless consumer.
Not to worry, Praetorian. A good education will never produce a modern liberal.
Only socialist indoctrination and deliberate MISeducation can do that.
Say, have you ever read Marx? Ever notice how he’s a big fan of dumbing people down? For their own good, of course, but still…
Obviously someone here has never read Swifts “A Modest Proposal” and is slightly sketchy on the term SATIRE.
We tea party types however actually paid attention during English lit class, since we were actually there and not stoned or lit at the time.
Go Figure.
Amen Senamahair!
Ditto!
You show all the ignorant arrogance typical of most of today’s liberals who’ve never bothered to really listen to the other side or conversed with a Conservative. This Conservative, Radical Christian, Tea Partier is in the 99th percentile in IQ with analytical skills measuring – well, off the chart, so I guess they didn’t actually “measure”. You and your moral and mental midget friends might be wise to gather a few facts before you spout off and betray your total ignorance and flat-out meanness. The wise learn more from fools than fools do from the wise – that’s why they’re fools. Shut up and actually listen a little!
Your comments just prove that education is dangerous. The reason is that we are not educating children, we are indoctrinating them into good Communists. You show all the classical signs of acute Communism. Why “Educate” children that have the IQ of a turnip? Lets waste more money, hire more teachers to join the union and pay dues to go to the Dimbocratic party, and control more people.
Thanks for proving my point guys. Hermann Goering would be mighty proud of all of you arguing for the fuhrer but would we expect anything less from you Scott Walker Republicans?
“We must close union offices, confiscate their money and put their leaders in prison. We must reduce workers salaries and take away their right to strike.” -Adolf Hitler, May 2, 1933
Adolph Hitler was a Scott Walker Republican too I see.
You people will be dealt with in good time if recent polls are any indicator. American politics plunders its extremists, taking from them anything of value and leaving them nothing in exchange, not even gratitude.
I am a minor genius, according to the best tests. I graduated early, with high GPA and SAT. I was unable to get a college degree, but it was not for trying. I went to five colleges, but never got my AA. Can’t afford it, and so what if I did? No jobs. YOU, however, are a frigin genius, aka smartarse, having sat thru years of indoctrination and PC lies. You obviously never learned legitimate history, sociology, science, or religion. You only have the lies propagated by the thug communists currently in control in Washington. I, however, have already passed my CBest test, withOUT graduating. At least I got educated, and know you only think you did. May God have mercy on your soul…
Actually you have it dead wrong. Unless you mean the liberal homos the term refers to.
I know many people who are TEA Party people–who are all hard working and who could think and write rings around any liberal, particularly when it comes to history and the Constitution. Tea Party people are invariably people who work, pay their taxes, provide for their families (older and younger) and don’t use govt to steal from and sponge off others. They’re not out breeding like rats to keep those welfare checks and “free” housing coming.
What would kids do? Well, work. Have them work part-time jobs from the age of twelve. Isn’t childhood meant to set us up for a life of work? Then why are we forcing kids who are not interested, are incapable or whose families’ don’t have the resources in time, inclination or money, to spend years in less than useful schools? In fact, I would say keeping them tied to a desk until they’re old enough to realize – hey! I’m out of here is a formula for trouble. And we are in trouble, folks. Those who drop out are not equipped for work. They are prohibited from working until age 16. So where do they turn to? Crime. So think about it. We could be putting a dent in crime and drugs if we let kids do what they want to do. Emulate their elders.
All joking aside its worth looking at how the western idea of education has evolved and whether it still provides a useful solution. Now that educational materials are essentially free and lessons and lectures available via youtube it is not clear whether the idea of a large school is beneficial. These are a throw back to the era of large scale industry.Perhaps the most important skill that needs to be imparted is that of self directed study.
I agree with you completely on the self-directed study. They simply don’t teach them anything in school nowadays except how to pass a federally mandated test. No history, no penmenship, weak in science, seems it’s all math and reading, and of course how to pass that annual test.
Seriously funny and funnily serious.
Time was, you could occasionally hear someone say of one of his spratlings, “We’ll have to teach him to do something with his hands; his head is useless.” It wasn’t meant to be painful or derisive, merely a sober assessment of the kid’s intellectual potential. Today, saying the equivalent of anyone under 21 years of age would probably get you indicted and tried for felony child abuse.
There’ve been innumerable stories recently about how the specialized manual tradesmen — plumbers, masons, electricians, carpenters, and the like — have fared better economically since the College Or Bust fetish got pounded into our minds than those of us who endured sixteen (or more) years of classroom ennui under the gimlet eyes of union-certified mind-warpers. Skilled tradesmen with specialized knowledge are and will remain both economically self-sufficient and highly valued. The rest of us are at the mercy of the current fetish for sheepskin, perpetually in fear that our memo-writing skills will someday be rationally assessed for their value to anyone.
But don’t tell an educrat that. As do all persons of no objective worth, he regards himself as indispensable to the Ever-Finer-Grinding Mills of Civilization. Anyway, he might cry.
Francis, I wish I could agree with you. . . . I have been a stonemason for over 20 years, and the last 2 years I have barely survived. .. the lousy economy and cheap illegal labor has ruined things here. . . Most people now care only about cost, quality comes in 2nd. I WILL NOT do substandard work or use illegal laborers, so I am now living on the money I saved when things were good. I have discouraged my son from going into the trade, and instead am urging him to “use his brain”
It isn’t the “cheap illegal labor,” that have made american craftsmanship disappear, its been our governments support of outsourcing all manufacturing, from automobiles to FASHION. FIT in New York no longer has courses on “pattern-making” since there are maquilliadoras in Mexico and Central America that will make samples for US fashion designers at a pittance. Hence, an entire industry that thrived in the Westside on NYC picks up and moves, leaving potential students look elsewhere. Rather than “protect” our industries like other countries, we support the “free market.”
Stonemason is absolutely right in the constrution industy. I am very careful whom I hire–and I will not hire anyone who uses illegals. Gov’t hasn’t helped companies go overseas, it has forced them to to survive. We have the highest corporate tax rates in the world, even Communist China’s is only a little more than half of ours. (Japan used to be number 1 but is cutting their rate). Even most socialist countries’ corporate tax rates are much lower than ours and most don’t have a capital gains tax as well. There are too many taxes and too many constricting, expensive regulations.
For all you libs, when the govt takes the money, the people who earned no longer have it. When the govt takes the money, the companies cannot hire anyone. When the govt take the money, companies cannot invest. When the gov takes the money, stockholders don’t earn anything on their investments and will make fewer investments, constricting the expansion of business and the developmnet of new endeavors. When the govt takes the money, companies have to lay off workers. When the govt takes the money, the medicines that will cure many diseases or at least extend survival don’t get made, because there is no money to research and develop them. Chemists and medical researchers have to get paid.
And, since garment work has always been amoong the lowest paying jobs, NBD if it goes to Mexico–better they stay there and earn money then come here and suck out over $30,000 in taxpayer paid for “freebies” while paying no taxes. All those people who would have sewn garments can work in McDonald’s and Walmart which pay more and provide benefits, or go to an office temps company and learn business software which will pay even more and give them entre into major business (which might also pay for additional training and or college.)
Even in nerdy fields where education is supposedly very useful it mostly isn’t. The only thing I learned in school that I still use (for work) is typing. I certainly didn’t learn diagnostic logic etc. Worse everything has changed several times during my ‘career,’ which looks more like a drunken stagger than a career. Lurch one way into an emerging field and then lurch from there into another field that didn’t exist at all not 8 or 9 years ago. How would a University teach me anything about that? The problem is that the whole concept of the University came about to study the classics–which don’t change. Despite the tongue-in-cheek tone of this article he’s got a real point. I haven’t got much of a clue about how to fix the problem, but it’s worried me for years. In a free enterprise system wasting talent is a sin as well as a crime. We’re wasting it like mad with the one size MUST fit all approach. Flexibility is what’s required, not this factory-based straitjacket.
I’ve been a programmer since the late 1980′s (I know – cut off my arm and count the rings…)
I attended Syracuse U back in the 70′s-80′s for a degree in Computer Engineering. Obviously my classes in APL and my work with oscilloscopes hasn’t done much good since, but couldn’t they have taught more simple Logic and Rhetoric, which WOULD have done me a great deal of good – couldn’t they have ANTICIPATED that the computer industry would evolve at a tremendous rate and that the REAL Basics would be a better investment?
(PS – I know that schools aren’t necessarily developing curricula to best serve the students, but it is nice to dream…)
Mr. Fleming, the DoJ has an answer to this conundrum. Why lower passing standards of course.. for Dayton, Ohio’s Police Department (and soon the Fire Department) exams to become a police officer!
The article’s on Drudge and apparently the DoJ felt not enough Black candidates were passing the exam, so the passing grade for Parts I and II of the exam is 58% and 62%. No s hit. Oddly, Dayton’s FOP and NAACP chapters are on the same page!
http://abc.daytonsnewssource.com/shared/newsroom/top_stories/videos/wkef_vid_6103.shtml
Sleep well, Dayton. For instead of productivity, safety on your streets, you’ve been strongarmed by the DoJ in fulfilling their racial quota.
Yep, with this ‘Change’, Youngstown, Cincninnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Canton, Columbus and the other armpits of Ohio will ‘get better’. Riiiight.
Seems like if the world needed an enema…..it’s been relocated from Detroit to Ohio?
AKW, reasoning and keeping the public safe is TOTALLY lost on this wild bunch. And no correlation to the cool ‘Wild Bunch’!
I know Issa has his hands full but this blatant corruption and breach of public trust is astounding.
God help us..
Given that the above is satire, there’s something you should know:
Jesus most likely DID spend his childhood in a school. The ancient Jewish community was the first to institute a general system of near-universal childhood education, at least for almost all boys, and including basic literacy for many girls. After all, how could one be obedient to the Creator without being able to study the Law?
Just a note.
Of course, after Jesus’ bar mitzvah Joseph handed him a hammer and told him to get to work.
You are both right. Both boys and girls were taught to read and write so they could read the scriptures and teach their children. And they learned to listen and memorize and respond and question. Parents taught children their home responsiblities and their trade, even those who were to be rabbis were taught a trade so they could support themselves. Paul, from a wealthy family, a Roman citizen and a member of the Sanhedrin, was a saddlemaker. No welfare, you learned how to support yourself and your family.
For the leftist, welfare is god.
Spanning the Mississippi River, here in St. Louis, we have a great marvel of 19th Century engineering we call Eads’ Bridge which some of us long timers have even considered might better serve, than even our famous Arch, to represent us. History books you will find, may well describe the entirely self educated Mr. James B. Eads, as the American Archimedes for (1) his invention of the diving bell, (2) his gambit with congress, to employ the power of the river to scour its’ silting up at the mouth of the Mississippi with earthen jetties, (3) the design and production of his famous, civil war gunboats and then finally, (4) the design and construction of his great Mississippi bridge.
Once in this great nation we did not impede the path of mankind by insisting upon the issue of credentials, by universities of not, ivy league or not, all too often to idiots.
The way education is being practiced now its purpose is not to educate but to brainwash the little darlings. The more years that the person is exposed to this the more certain of it lasting a lifetime. This is necessary because no one would otherwise accept socialism as a political / economic philosophy. So no child can be left behind. To be honest the only solution I see is a total collapse of the federal government and the country breaking up into 6 or so nations. I hope to be in Texas then.
Thank you Dave!
It is not a question of Education- but what exactly are our Public Schools teaching?
The majority of home school families who use a Public School curriculum will tell you that their child can complete at minimum 2-3 days of work within a few hours.
I like the idea of an educated American, but only if the education sticks to academics and facts.
In all likelihood, we could shorten education to age 15 if the schools focused on academics instead of social programming.
Our political segment of our population has commandeered Public Education and sickened it with cultural agendas.
Though this article was humorous at some level, it also clearly highlighted the issue of “what are our children learning?”
To answer your question of “What are they teaching in school” I’ll tell you. They are teaching the TEST! The TEST that is given at every grade to see how well the student learned the lesson the teacher taught. The TEST SCORE is used to grade the school and school district to see how much money they will get from the different govt. programs out there for the “No Child Left Behind Act” If the score is low then the class will be tested again to raise the scores….and all they are taught during this period of time is the answers to the test they will be given! By the time the kids have been tested once…remember those tests you took that required two days of school to finish…they don’t give a damn about taking them again so for the most part the grades are lower the next time and the next time and then again the next time!! There is no time to teach them anything else. The teachers teach all the students in class at the same level…wouldn’t want little Tommy to feel bad if he was slower than little Johnie now would we…so the teaching SLOWS DOWN to keep them all interested! So Johnie is struggling to understand and Tommy and Suzy and George are staring out the window cause they are bored to death!!! The Principal and District Superintendent are on the teachers butt because the scores are low and now they’ve made the teacher angry so she or he doesn’t give a damn about the score because they can’t be fired anyway because they are UNION!!! They don’t have any advanced classes for our bright students…so the slow ones won’t feel bad. Then you have to take in to consideration that some of these kids speak no english…but are put in the class because of their age…and because that’s the grade they were in in Mexico (if they were lucky enough to go to school) so that slows down the class even farther. Now do you understand why our kids are having so much trouble in school?
Please don’t attempt to tell me I’m wrong about this. I have a daughter teaching in Oregon, which requires a Masters Degree to teach anything. She wanted to teach and put herself through college to earn her degree and now because of all the ridiculous bullshit required of teachers she is considering leaving the public school system and going to either a Charter school or a private school. She has been voted teacher of the year every year and her students love her….but she truly wants to teach…not just babysit. Add to this the fact that most schools can no longer afford assistants to help the teachers grade papers or assist someone struggling to learn how to do something. They can no longer afford to give the classes any money for supplies…so that comes out of the teachers pockets and they don’t get reimbursed for it. She ends up loosing time with her family on weekends and in the evenings because she’s busy filling out all the bullshit reports required by the schools and govt. Then some idiot in the parents league dreams up some program they insist will help and that ends up on the teachers shoulders too…the parents don’t really want to help…the teacher is supposed to do that too! Then the final kicker is that the students just doesn’t care enough to do the work at all…why should they put any effort in to it anyway…the govt. is going to support them anyway…that’s a lesson they learned real quick! And the final straw…don’t ever try to correct one of these students or suggest they might need some help because the parent will come to school and scream at you and threaten you in front of the class while the kid sits there and smiles smugly. Now you know what our kids are being taught. Last but not least, I have yet to see a line of parents waiting to sign up to help…even if they are home because they no longer have a job…they might miss their favorite talk show.
Yes but you want everyone to be able to read your articles right? I think everyone needs to be able to use computers. Even if computers become simpler to use in some ways technology will only become more complex. The more technically able you are, the better you will be able to take advantage of the options.
Thanks for saying it. Hope they don’t know where you live.
I’d be happy if they just
(1) put dodgeball back in gym class
(2) eliminate gender and feminist studies
(3) fire 95% of them and hire Marine veterans.
I beg to differ. There has to be a 2 track system. One in the direction of understanding quantum physics, medicine, accounting, business, chemistry, biology, etc. etc.
And another one in the direction of useful skills like construction, electricions, pipe fitters, plumbers, teachers, etc. etc.
That said, one of the biggest winners in the history of Jepordy was a maid. Eienstein flunked the 5th grade. Me personally, hell, I was a borderline juvenile delinquent in the day.
The tracks are not set in stone. People should be free to seek the education they want based on their own free will.
The trades have a technology all of their own. It is not like there is no education involved. In fact, education and training is an absolute neccessity. (ever tried to deciper building codes?).
For the rest of the crowd, we have created a monster. They make more from the government for merely existing than they could ever get from the free market with their skill set. They chose to take neither path.
Which brings us all back to the fundamental truth that defines the failure of the left: The true reality of purpose in life is this, if you don’t work, you don’t eat. If you provide nothing you should receive nothing. And it is a personal choice of the individual to do as much.
Having a systemic system that supports individual failure as some sort of virtue is a criminal act against the person and individual.
Considering that our collective national debt went up $225 billion dollars in the shortest month of the year last month, it is time to kick the beaners out, and cut off all welfare.
And then let the education of reality begin.
Which brings us all back to the fundamental truth that defines the failure of the left: The true reality of purpose in life is this, if you don’t work, you don’t eat.
And that’s why Marx formulated his view of the ideal society as “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”. In other words, anyone with abilities of any kind will work until all of those who need are satisfied.
Given that needs have become synonymous with wants and wants are constantly increased via advertising, it’s clear that those who work will never keep up with those who need. George Orwell’s Animal Farm shows this magnificently in parable form: the lesser animals work longer and longer, harder and harder for less and less while their masters, the pigs, frolic and revel in the fulfillment of their “needs”, particularly gambling and alcohol.
From what I remember of my education, the germans follow this type of program. The kids are tested in the 6th grade and how they perform on that test determines which path they should follow. Obviously, they can re-test, but it not only saves the taxpayers money, it saves the kids time. They all get the basics, but, they also get an education that provides them with the best for what they are capable of doing with their lives.
“I beg to differ. There has to be a 2 track system. One in the direction of understanding quantum physics, medicine, accounting, business, chemistry, biology, etc. etc.
And another one in the direction of useful skills like construction, electricions, pipe fitters, plumbers, teachers, etc. etc.”
Change must come from the general population RESPECTING teaching as a profession. I noticed you put teaching in your second track of useful skills jobs instead of including them with the sciences. Why is a businessman more of a professional than a teacher? Because they make more money? You have no idea what it takes to teach, or how much teachers have to know to do this MOST IMPORTANT JOB FOR THE BENEFIT OF SOMEONE ELSE’S CHILD!!!!!!!!!!! I hope you do not have children in school. If you do, keep them home and educated them yourself. Oh and by the way, learn how to use spell check and pay attention to what you write. I guess you should have paid more attention during your education. Great example of the abilities of the people on this board that you are either too stupid or too lazy to notice the giant red underlined word that indicates a mistake. One more thing, how much a person learns in school is completely their responsibility, the teacher is there to facilitate and guide the learner. It is the learner who should take responsibility for failing to learning, not the people trying to help that learner. If you Tea Party people had any kind of compassion for your fellow man you would support improving this society so ALL its members can succeed. I hope you like the society you are creating when, in the end, the dumb masses you have created take their revenge on you. Remember the French Revolution? Probably not, because you can’t even use spell check. Enjoy you life while you can before the disenfranchised realize they have power.
Well, we do need some effort put into teaching all the kids whether headed for higher education or not, tool skills. We currently spend a lot of time and effort trying to teach kids how to turn a phrase when most will never use it. We should teach them to turn a wrench. A skill far more likely to be used in life due to flat tires, tight cable connections and DIY home makeovers.
How right you are. I’ve been a nerd almost from birth, and despite a father and grandfather that could’ve taught me everything about carpentry and auto repair I ignored them and had to learn a lot of it the hard way much later. Over the last few years I remedied my ignorance by getting my ole dad to teach me enough that I could probably build a house now. Still not much use with cars but I hope to remedy that too over the next couple of years. Maybe it’s late to learn such thing in my 40s but better late than never.
It is never too late to become the person you want to be. Good luck to you and with that.
He is already the person he wants to be–he’s just learning new skills. Just as someday when and if I ever get to retire, I will learn to draw and paint.
The wonderful new factor you are missing here is that we now have the capacity to let kids learn what they are good at. When we free them to get educated using the Web, they will be able to learn what they are interested in when the interest arises in them. Eight-year-olds curious about algebra can visit Mathworld (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/topics/Algebra.html). Mechanical young minds can tinker in HowStuffWorks (http://www.howstuffworks.com/search.php?terms=machines). The literary source can putter in the British Library (http://www.bl.uk/evolvingenglish/).
The deep problem with USA public education is that it is public (socialist, losing the individual to the mass). Curricula are collective (all students are supposed to learn the same thing at the same time). The open knowledge on the Web browser now in almost every kid’s pocket will individualize learning.
All we have to do is watch the education establishment meltdown, which is inevitable for the same reasons Napster pulled the music industry apart, newspaper bundling of content is obsolete, and individuals in the Arab world are able to harness their yearning for freedom into political change.
Judy Breck, your reply was beautifully stated … and deadly accurate, in my opinion. The web has generated profound changes in most industries that it has touched (music, publishing, news, media, politics). The traditional structure of the American education system is about to be rocked to its core, likely to the benefit of all.
It’s a shame that you’ve been overlooked for Secretary Of Education.
In the U.S. we still lack education. We have lots of schooling but few take advantage of the opportunity to acquire real knowledge. The proof is in the pudding: see all of those students and teachers in Wisconsin blindly following the union bosses, see what 50% of the voters of this country have put in the White House, etc. We already have lots of unemployed men and women holding Master’s degrees. We already have accepted as “mainstream” all kinds of asinine theories that don’t resist the slightest logical analysis. All of that and we are still lacking plumbers, pipe fitters, electricians, bricklayers, basic care givers. Instead of letting the market take care of the problem via apprenticeship we are creating “colleges” that teach pipe fitting (in two years) or plumbing, we are going the way of some European countries that don’t let anyone paint a wall at home without a “professional license” etc.
I wish those who go to school were relatively few and learned useful things for real (we have enough lawyers, English majors, and MBA’s.) Has anyone noticed that the crisis in American corporate management began almost at the same time that MBA’s started being issued?
I wish we had real “unions” like the guilds of time past. Those made sure that everyone in the brotherhood knew the trade and was able to pass it on to future generations. For all our technological prowess and bombastic titles we are still incapable of building a medieval cathedral, or a Macchu Pichu.
Progressives have produced a regressive education system. We need to inject some common sense in the education process. I don’t think the Founding Fathers imagine the present system when they decided that education should be available to all. What good is a degree when the holder does not know the US Constitution, and can be brainwashed by some union boss to support the endless indebtedness of his country to buy some temporary “benefits”?
Good article. Pardon the rant.
Progressives did not institute No Child Left Behind, Bush did. The American educational system is set up to profit the testing companies, not children. You people should be ashamed of what you are saying about teachers. All you conservatives should be happy because you are getting what you want, an uneducated population. That kind of society is easily controlled, or so you think. Enjoy it now, because in the near future white people will be the minority and then, hopefully, more American citizens can enjoy the benefits of this country. when the minority/majority comes into power, hopefully they will vote in progressive legislators that will support education and health care for all.
“So there’s our solution to the education problem:” Decades ago your solution was the norm. And we benefited from it enormously. That’s before the “educating of America” became the racket it is. It’s ALL about the money. My grandfather had a sixth grade education and taught himself to read by reading newspapers. He owned several businesses and gave his wife and two children a very comfortable life. We are becoming like Europe. More and more people are in a state of elongated adolescence waiting and going to school because there are less and less jobs and more and more people. You can’t just address this aspect of the problem, you need to take into account the last twenty years when America has become flooded with unskilled labor and has exported thousands of jobs which used to provide a good living with the acquisition of a PhD.
I know; I know.
Because the state of “education” in the United States, has depreciated to a point where no one is getting “educated” anymore. “Equal Opportunity”, “Diversity”, and “Minority” Programs provide employment for everybody, regardless of “education”.
And as you illustrated; Obama and his “administration”.
Do I get a star today?
They’re making my jokes come true:
http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/12/dayton-police-lower-standards-f-now-a-passing-score-for-recruits/
Excellent article, the leftist propaganda machine has brain washed everyone since the ’60′s to get a degree (without regard to what it is). The result is a huge amount of debt, huge expansion of the leftist education bureaucracy, dilution of the quality of education and chronically unemployed or “underemployed” young people.
Illegals flood across because “educated” young people in America think the trades and labor are “beneath them” as they sit around moaning at the lack of jobs for sociology, political science, and literature degree holders, fretting about how to re-pay their student loans.
It is more than unwise to push education on people who aren’t cut out for it, it borders on criminal.
Don’t you get it, Frank? Democrats are always telling us that EVERYBODY needs to go to college because it keep a lot, and I mean a lot, of teachers employed with their stunning pension plans and Cadillac health benefits. These teacher’s unions, in turn, then always vote Democratic in every election. It’s the “Circle of Life” within the Democratic Party. So there is absolutely NO incentive to stop things now, especially with elections getting more and more expensive. Colleges have also become big business in this country, a nice, sweet, tax-exempt money maker that keeps a lot of far-left liberals employed.
But not everybody needs to graduate from college. Trust me, where I live in New Jersey, we have lots and lots of plumbers who make more on an hourly basis than attorneys around here, and that is a fact.
About 100 years ago, few people went to college simply because it was so expensive. Most workers started life as apprentices in a given field (yes, even as lawyers) and then, after they learned their trade from an expert, whent off on their own to earn a living. I guess we got rid of that system because it was too cost-effective and too easy. There was always higher education for those who wanted to become doctors or scientists or engineers and we were still one of the major leaders in the field of technical innovations and cutting-edge inventions.
Today we have more and more kids graduating from college and we seem to be doing worse in technical innovations and new inventions, although we still hold a commanding lead in many fields (such as computer design and software creation). Yet we really are falling behind on training kids today in the technical fields that still need to be done, such as electricians, plumbers, carpenters, cooks, and a host of other jobs that now seem too “beneath” the kids we force to go to college.
We should not have a mantra that states that every kid needs to go to college. College should really only be for kids who want to specialize in specific fields that really require higher education or graduate school, such as doctors or engineers. But we should not be denigrating the other skills that keep this country going that do NOT require a college education. And, given what a college education costs for most people today, you wonder if you’re getting a decent return on your investment. Hopefully, this recent campaign against the Teacher’s Unions in many states will shed some light on the fact that we are spending way too much money on a system that not only does NOT work, but may NOT be needed as well.
It’s even worse that that.
It appears that a college education now is a net negative for most people.
They delay training in life skills that they can actually use to support themselves. They run up debts that can take decades to pay back; in the meantime, their lifestyles are dimished by the payments. They develop unrealistic expectations for what life will hold. They are indoctrinated to socialism. And they are a burden on their parents for several additional years whick in turn dimishes the parent’s lifestyle in their later years.
College should be for people who have the ability to be engineers and architects (in the wide sense of the word), and for professions that require intense academic learning (law, medicine, accounting, a limited number of academic disciplines). That might be 10% to 20% of people. The rest should receive training for a year or two in a marketable skill.
That will also free huge numbers of teachers to do something more useful than plying people with information that is obsolete and useless as soon as their students graduate.
We need to distinguish between “educated” and “credentialed”. Not the same thing.
It increasingly seems that the term “educated” means being indoctrinated in the ever-expanding pathologies of the left. Such as hating pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart, Alaska, oil, coal, nuclear, manufacturing, agriculture, preservatives, meat, guns, fishing, hunting, pick-up trucks, American flags, Christians, stay-at-home moms, home-schooling, patriotism, the military, personal responsibility, an accountable government, SUVs, plasma TVs, white men, etc; and then calling everyone who disagrees with them racist haters.
Amen brother, Being a teacher I see the value in what you say. It’s all about A-G in my neck of the woods. No industrial arts anymore, all about getting kids ready for college, so they can get financial aid and owe the government more money when they get out. Many of my kids will not go to college, so what kind of trade are they learning in school? To make it even more crazy the one industrial art class we do have the teacher is getting RIF this week. So now if it we lose him no more wood shop, the talking heads just cancel that class. I do like the idea of 24 hour gyms, since I’m a physical education teacher. Have a great day America.
“A-G”?? “RIF”??
I’m losing most of the point of your remarks because you haven’t explained what these acronyms mean. I’ve never seen either one before.
I agree with you about teaching trades. I took my car to a mechanic who had taught that subject but left to start his own garage. He hired students to work on cars, had very high standards and the cleanest garage I’ve ever seen. The same could be applied to many other trades/jobs. I used to give VCRs etc. to a high school where kids learned to fix them. They haven’t been taking them for the last few years so I guess the ‘throw away’ world has taken over.
I once had a 4th grader who could fix anything and even made a heater for me when the furnace in the school broke down. After a few years he was eligible to be in a learning disabled program and I lost track of him. He might have invented something had he received some encouragement. The system did nothing to capitalize upon the kid’s obvious talent
Hahaha! Thanks for the satire. It made my day, as I have been focused on how to transition from a 19th century model of education to the post-electronic-age 21st century .
Education is important because that’s how kids get to learn that the greenhouse effect is a problem that must be solved. No joke. Straight from my stepdaughter’s homework.
I think that this “Modest Proposal” makes a lot of sense|
Frustration is based on emotion and real solutions are based on logic & problem solving skills. The article that I just read smacked of high frustration and very little actual problem solving.
I agree that the education that children are current receiving is pretty worthless. Our children reaceive a very expensive, first rate indoctrination to hate for 16 years and learn nothing of value….not even to think!
However, perhaps the solution is not simply to teach our children to “google” (which assumes they innately want to know something about history) but rather to change our attitude regarding how they are educated. Some children love school and some hate it. Do we assume that the children who love school are the “bright ones” and the ones who hate it the “dumb ones”? Children learn differently yet our education system teaches (I am using this word loosely)all of them in the same manner. Why not allow the child to choose between academic or hands on curriculum?
There are just some of us who find satisfaction in “brain” work and others that find satisfaction in consistency and structure (e.g., doing the same thing again and again).
Human beings innately want to accomplish something…to have meaning. This desire can certainly be destroyed but it is there.
In the end, I think you and I agree but I would humbly suggest that if you desire to have your thoughts heeded, you might consider communicating with more grace.
Okay; Hail Mary, full of grace,……..
Anything I can do to help.
Without the public
education conformity system how would the children learn to groupthink?but but but….
how would the children learn that Karl Marx has the solution to all of society’s problems if they couldn’t be controlled by the state’s indoctination experts for 17 years? They might get the wild idea that individuals are responsible for their own behavior and start to think that they could be successful without their benevolent government providing cradle to grave poverty for them.
Agree! Rather than being forced to read a George Eliot novel my time in school would have been better spent learning how to read and follow a gas grill assembly instruction sheet or a rebate instruction form. Desptie having 9 US Patents is still cannot follow IRS instructions. My Appalachian background makes English my second language. Perhaps those who say educated really mean indoctrinated.
You’re right about our teachers. Generally the dumbest students and the athletes become teachers and even if some are dedicated, the lack of support from parents, apathetic students, incompetent but grossly overpaid administrators make it difficult to get a useful education. Kids know all about Giraffes but don’t learn that if you earn $1 and spend $2 you’ll soon be in trouble.
I’ve taught business courses at two of the best universities in America and I was always amazed at how many of the students would have been better off learning some trade rather than wasting time and money having fun or suffering through classes to get a degree that would be of little use to them.
Meanwhile our corporations keep sending jobs overseas, our military spending keeps expanding, politicians lack the courage to tell people to buy American made products. We tolerate imports from countries that steal our technology, illegally copy our products, pay low wages without benefits and impede out exports whenever possible.
Granted some of our unions have restricted our productivity and our financial institutions are allowed to exploit us with minimal restrictions
However it seems like our populations use of imported illegal drugs, our lack of an alien worker program and allowing Muslim terrorists to enter the US and spread their sick philosophy is going to be one of the major threats to the survival of our way of life unless we get our politicians to do something about it rather than figuring out how to line their own pockets and reward special interest groups.
“Why can’t we just identify the few kids worth educating and focus on them? We’ll find a few of the very best teachers — people who are a combination of Einstein and Master Splinter — and make sure our best and brightest get all the quality education they need.”
Simple. Diversity.
The recipient of a high school diploma from the ’40s had enough education to compete easily in today’s marketplace in all but the higher sciences such as medicine. Once schools can focus more on teaching and less on social justice and behavioral problems we might start seeing competency from our graduates that will serve them in the workplace.
Too many of our educators want every student to go to college when, in fact, many of those students would be better served by a vocational school. Also, we need vouchers incorporated in every school district. Parents need the ability to have their children attend the best school available, not just one operated by some union.
If it really were, “all about the children” for teachers, they would be pushing for the expulsion of incompetent teachers from their ranks, and for every child to be intensively taught the three Rs until they could read, write, comprehend, and calculate sufficient to be aware, effective, and participating citizens in our democratic Republic, and able to put their hands to all sorts of productive jobs, not squabbling and near rioting over their pay and benefits and unionization.
Frank J. Fleming, if the point of your post is that we have too much Federal government and too much Teacher’s Union in our classrooms, you could have do so in fewer, more well reasoned, words! So that you get the message: EVERY CHILD NEEDS TO BE EDUCATED TO THEIR FULLEST POTENTIAL. The U.S. and no other country on earth accomplishes that! The European and Japanese models tests children shunting those who don’t pass to Vocational Training, with no recourse to late bloomers!!! Is that what you are proposing??? Totalitarians decide on who gets what education! Virtually all children are eager to learn from birth. Schools the world over provide them with EXTERNAL STRUCTURE and INFORMATION. They are not taught to learn. That they must pick-up on their own. Are there problems but you addressed none of them!
In your comparison of Jesus to Hitler, not only do you make a false comparison, and you blaspheme!! If you read the Bible, it tells us that Jesus is God, the son of God, and therefore has natural access to all knowledge! Comparing God to a follower of the prince of Hell is not acceptable!!!
No no. Please re-read and do your best to understand. Reading, writing and basic rithmateic (2+2=4) is about all the state SHOULD be required to teach.
Once children like you and all the other bubble heads that CHOOSE to treat school like a place to model name brand clothing and give BJs on the playground, well by golly, off to vocational training with you. Off to nail salon training. As it SHOULD BE.
Those that CHOOSE to treat school like the GIFT it is will go on to get their edcation.
Do you get the difference? YOU choose to be the BJ factory or YOU choose to learn something – and that includes those lazy ass parents that CHOOSE to treat schoolin like a day care center. Those that cannot muster a C avg have CHOSEN to be burger flippers and hair dressers. Sux to be you, but no totalitarian decided that – YOU did.
“Every child needs to be educated…” In the excellent system from which I retired, kids with a 0 IQ were bused on gurney’s to a special school where teachers and aides taught them to eat from a spoon. They went home to an environment where parents used a baby bottle and nipple with enlarged hole for that purpose. I know of a kid being taken by taxi to an adjoining state which had a school meeting his needs. There was also a little girl taken by cab to an adjoining school system for the same reason.
I remember when a lot of those regulations were written and the senator who was responsible some of them. His handicapped child was in a school where I used to teach. All this ‘education’ costs a lot of money. The U.S. is bankrupt. Can we continue to afford this?
In many schools in NYC, many many kid have IQs in the 80′s—and we are still expected to make them “college ready.” Let’s get real—those are not kids who will be college ready and it is a waste of time –of teachers and other students’–and taxpayer’s money to have them take the same class and exams three times hoping they will finally pass.
Those schools were great once–before the welfare mentality and gangster mentality came to dominate whole communities. There is no work ethic–except for some wonderful West African immigrants–attending the same schools and graduating,without summer school, at 14, 15, and 16.
Oops! One sentence is a bit off and should read: ‘Neither the U.S. nor any other country on earth accomplishes that!’
I disagree.
While I don’t mince words regarding the sorry state of most of our public schools, or the quality of our colleges; the fact that the educational system is done poorly is not an indication that it shouldn’t be attempted. I have known a few persons with PhD certificates who couldn’t speak well or write a coherent sentence. Yes, their native language is American English. Yes, our educational system is a horrible mess. But the solution is not to quit but to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
We need people who can at least read and write coherently, who can understand basic arithmetic, who understand the basics of geometry, Newtonian Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History, Geography, Civics, and some cultural background of this country.
We also need people who can go beyond these basics, but they should not be educated at public expense. I strongly believe that we would be remiss if we did not educate children in these basics.
We do not have a muscle based work-force any more. With mechanization and automation, such jobs are fewer and fewer every day –even in countries such as India and China. Education is the only way to stay ahead of the game.
I really would prefer our voters were literate and numerate, and able to recognize bull when it’s in front of them. And if they’re going to be waving their Most Important Text at me, I want them to have read and discussed it. But it’s hard to see how a college education in studies is going to help anything. Unless people plan an otherwise career, a trade school can be more useful than a college degree.
Darn it, I used brackets in my entry, and the parser made them go away, along with their contents. So here I am, appending it with parantheses:
“But it’s hard to see how a college education in (fill in the blank) studies is going to help anything.”
By this, I mean courses of study that make you angry and leave you unfit for a job that uses your hands — Underwater Basketweaving Studies seems to be the least offensive version of this.
I am a retired teacher and I have been saying for YEARS that All students should NOT go to college. Well, they don’t anyway, so we need to stop tryig to teach everyone what they need for college. We need to stress reading, writing, arithmetic, American history and civics; not algebra, Beowolf, etc. What we need to do is to go back to the ole days when students learned a trade in public school. When I was in school we had courses in shop, auto mechanics, etc. for boys and home ec for girls (girls were expected to be home makers in those days). My father made sure I had shorthand and typing so that, if necessary he said, I could support myself. I have used those skills all my life, teaching them when not using them as a secretary. Since so many students drop out of school rather than graduating, we need to teach “saleable skills” early, probably junior high. Students should be taught a trade. Actually, today tradesmen are more in demand than, say, English majors. I will bet there is not an unemployed plumber right now, but there are college-educated professionals (even with masters degrees)who cannot find a job. We are doing our students a disservice in trying to prepare everyone for college and it is not working. Teach them something they can use to support themselves.
Trigonometry is college prep; algebra is something every high school graduate needs to know.
Sez who? Back in the benighted 1980′s, I failed algebra – TWICE – yet still graduated. And a need for algebra has never come up in the twenty six years since. Now I’m given to understand that some elementary schools are teaching algebra – and that makes my skin crawl. People who aren’t going to be engineers, chemists, architects or math teachers probably don’t need to study even long division, let alone stuff that uses letters in place of real numbers.
Gordon, I suspect that you actually use algebra a lot more often than you realize. My daughters’ 3rd grade textbooks introduce basic algebra concepts.
I hated math when I was in hs, though I was okay at it. But as an adult, trying to help kids with it, I realized how much algebra I use without really thinking about it. It teaches you logical thinking, and problem solving skills—how to figure out the information you lack from what you have. Rate of change, interest rates, square footage (geometry) are things most people can use.
Having it can open doors to jobs. And good math skills are important for computer science.
Why?
Students need to understand graphs and percentages used in standard articles and ads so they can see thru propaganda. They should also be taught about use and misuse of polls for the same reason.
I agree. I am a retired teacher also and remember a few times when I tried to retain a student only to have his parents say, “But he will be 2.. when he is in college”. I must be in the same generation because both parents wanted me to have a ‘fall back’ career. I took typing so I could type my term papers and later used the skill for summer employment.
When did parents stop having the common sense of our parents? When did so many kids start majoring in things like Art History which has virtually no jobs and Polysci? When did 4 hour lab classes….all the sciences have them…..become something no one wanted to take. College seems to be a way of life these days; not a place to learn. Saturday classes are a thing of the past. Maybe classes are also. Spring Break is the big thing.
I have retained the desire to learn after all these years and have taught myself what computer skills I have as well as other things. Modern kids may not know it all.
IN the sixties when the drugs and leftist dominated media and government. When now parents don’t expect kids to work for anything and won’t say no, and won’t swat their butts when they throw a temper tantrum.
It’s not the schools…once you get a majorioty of welfare minded I am entitled hispanics (even if parents do work,it’s often off the books and they suck up every govt program) schools crash and burn. Yet in the same schools with the same teachers, West African immigrants are kicking butt, passing exams the first time, writing research papers when the gimmes can’t write a paragraph or spell their own mother’ name. And, the West Africans never go to summer school and often graduate at 15 or 16.
It’s a moral and spiritual thing, as is creativity. If you don’t have a sense of moral responsibility to work for whatever you want, you will be lousy at whatever you do and demand special treatment. Innovators are thinkers and learners and readers and studiers, regardless of their level of formal education. Kids who never shut up from the time they open their eyes and never read or study are not going to accomplish much. The best we can hope for until their morals change, is to force them to work at least some job.
The problem I have with the sort of rants here and in other comments on this article is that I personally know people who wanted to go to college who were not allowed to and spent decades being very bitter about it, plus there are communities where being smart is not encouraged, so those poor kids who want to go to college will have even more discouragement with this sort of logic. Is Equality 7-2521 from Ayn Rand’s “Anthem” the goal here? I hear lots about the turgid “Atlas Shrugs” story/movie, but no one talks about this Rand book, which was actually readable.
The educational system Frank is suggesting, was actually the system that the British had until 1976. All children took an exam at the age of eleven, called the 11+, and on the basis of the results you were sent either to a Grammar school or a Secondary school, the Secondary being for those who scored low on the test. The Grammar school’s curriculum was geared for students who were to go on to college and the Secondary school’s curriculum included metal shop, needlework, cookery, wood shop etc. This all ended when the system became Comprehensive, which is another way of saying the system was dumbed down to include all abilities, and of course, this was all done because it was seen to be a much ‘fairer’ system. British education has not been the same since.
This is true.
And I would further rank the education level of any kid finishing “Grammar” school from that place and era as superior to a three year university degree from any US college including to-days graduates.
Like many of the wackier populist ideas, this one seems designed to make America more like Bolivia. Every day in every way, we must strive to destroy the public institutions that distinguished 20th-c. America from those happy lands with no public roads, education, health care or sense of shared purpose.
How about at least a re-set? Our schools – since being taken over by liberals – churn out kids who are dumber than a bag of rocks.
100 years ago an 8th grade education meant something plus we have artisans and people who could work with their hands. We make nothing now – we need to get this skill back!
Sounds like a great idea to me. Didn’t our country produce a mighty industry with an eighth grade education ? Sure we need engineer’s as in the 1900th century,but not all student’s need be.
Mr. Fleming, you are right. Standardized education is simply not practical. It wastes both time and money. Would it not be more practical to run 7th graders through industrial psychology and IQ testing to try and give them some guidance for where they would be most talented, productive, and thus happy? Or do we simply let them stumble from one miserably mismatched career to another because, while they may know Shakespeare, they understand painfully little about their own God-given strengths, nor about what is even available to make a living.
I have both an MD and MBA, having spent 15 years in education AFTER Highschool (4 College/4 Med/5 Residency/2 Business), of which probably at least 12 were wasted on nothing I do day-to-day nor that I can even remember learning (not including the first 12 years!). In my opinion, even a practical doctoral program could easily be taught in one year, especially now that most of the world’s information is available to anyone at anytime with access to even basic technology.
And to those who would argue for the process of time and maturation, I would tell you that in my experience, very few people mature one drop, regardless of age, until they understand that “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” But, when was the last time you heard that taught in school? So, yes, education as we know it is wasteful, impractical, and unpreparing. For goodness sakes, exactly what requires 27 school-years to teach someone? I’ve been duped!!
It’s a two for one disaster deal. Increase the years of “education” exactly as it is dumbed down in proportion, and create large pools of withdrawn or hostile captives that would otherwise have been learning the skill of working.
90% of college graduates could not dream of passing a high school graduation exam from 1880. The average educational level of the Americans who won the Second World War was tenth grade. Who are we kidding? Ourselves.
somehow, this all seems like total snark or something.
Yes. We send too many kids to college. Back when there were rigorous academic standards, it took an IQ of 115 to be able to graduate from college with a BA, which is about 16% of the population. Right now we send about 40% of all kids to college, which means almost 2/3 of them are not smart enough to do actual college level work. That is why they need to study Warner Brothers cartoons and the history of the polka dot, and that is why employers are not impressed with the useless degrees they have.
I agree with everybody above about returning to the practice of having two types of high school. One for college bound kids who have an IQ of 115 or higher, good behavior, and work ethic and trade school for those who don’t.
My kid is in 11th grade and is college bound, and easily passes the test in the above paragraph. We have told her that she is not going to get any useless degree at our expense. She has to get a degree in science, engineering, or medicine if she wants us to pay for it.
I would advise all parents to use the following test. If your kid can get admitted to honors courses in math and science, takes at least two each semester, and gets As and Bs in these courses, they are college material. If not, it will cost less and serve them better if they go to a two year community college and learn a trade.
There is a confluence of several disturbing trends that I haven’t seen tie them together:
1. The education bubble (for mostly worthless degrees) inflated by student loans
2. The cynicism of academia for encouraging false hope in science PhD candidates.
Programs do not adjust enrollment for expected hiring as this would decrease department budgets.
Most graduates work for menial wages in post-doc temporary positions and ten years out
Have nothing to show for it.
3. Scientists that have gone along with the “climate change” scam to get grants funded.
It is extremely difficult to get grants funded that fall outside of the established
Theoretical orthodoxy whether it’s String Theory (30 years and nothing to show for it) to
Anthropomorphic Global Warming (ditto). These are the high end “make-work” projects funded
by the government to give “scientists” a research position. It’s no coincidence that
scientists are overwhelmingly leftists promoting the funding status quo.
Maybe it is a scam, but I went to graduate school because it was the only place I could find a job. Even if my nuclear engineering degree does wind up being worthless, at least I’ll be qualified to teach math or physics.
Once upon a time, when kids passed their 8th grade, some would enter a “college preparatory” curriculum, and others would be steered toward “vocational training”. The latter would learn skills that prepared them for a career in building trades, auto repair, culinary, etc. People who mastered these skills could earn a good living, but the jobs lack the prestige attached to the “professions”, which required college degrees and more.
The same nincompoops who give all the Precious Snowflakes who enter a race “participation ribbons”, and insist that the soccer/baseball games be played without keeping score, want them all to grow to earn above-average incomes in the highest-prestige jobs. But if we’re all doctors, lawyers, and architects, who will fix our cars and plumbing? Who will build the houses those architects design?
@9
Seriously! I had a Marine veteran for chemistry and physics in high school, and he was great.
schools are a tool for social justice …what ever the F@$k that is.
like all government operations it is on the curve to failure …we are at the point where the parabolic steepens.
I agree (and don’t hear it enough) but other then learning reading writing and arithmetic not everyone needs a “higher” education.
In north america even college is looked down on ..trades ..well they are the ones too stupid to go to higher education. ……..fun how the elites still go to them, the mechanics plumbers and carpenter since they cannot do anything useful themselves.
not that university is bad …I went. My brother needed a ride home. (didn’t have a car because he didn’t work)
I’ve been saying it for years- we don’t match up to the world in test scores, but we beat the crap out of it in one critical area: creative thinking. That’s why we have all the patents and technological advantages.
While I think the U.S. does have an advantage in “creative thinking,” we no longer have the edge on patents or technology.
Six of the top ten generators of U.S. patents in 2010 were foreign, mostly Japanese and Korean.
http://www.ificlaims.com/news/top-patents.html
The U.S. was dealt a great hand after World War II. Our manufacturing and industrial capability was undamaged. We had good political leadership (Eisenhower), far better than Communism that impoverished China and Soviet Union and Socialism in India that stagnated their economy. We were the beacon of freedom, capital, and innovation. If you look around, many countries have made massive strides, while many Americans have decided to become less competitive.
We have to step up our game, all around.
How come, back in my grandfather’s day, most folk had only a 9th Grade education and high school was “academic” and optional, we could do all kinds of things but, now that everyone has to have a high school education and “college for everyone” is desired next, we’re all a bunch of illiterates and school doesn’t teach us jack any more?
My mother and aunt were both public high school teachers and I think they would agree with your basic premise. They both mentioned that about half their students would never go on to college. Instead of providing these students with applicable job skills to make them self-sufficient in life, the state mandated a college prep. curriculum. Do to anything less was branded discriminatory.
I value the idea of public education. An educated electorate is mandatory for a thriving republic. But I also see the massive shortfall between current practice and what is required to empower a self-sufficient adult to be successful in modern society. There are many public school teachers that are frustrated with the limitations imposed by state mandate. Many know that there is a better way but cannot make changes. Fortunately, a few public charter schools are showing the way.
Anonymous, baack in your grandfather’s day a ninth grade education was the equivalent of a Master’s today. We’re seeing a dumbing donw of grade levels since the 50s and 60s in order to force more people to take “advanced” programs. You would need a master’s degree today to have what was covered in high school in the early sixties, and a high school degree today is the equivalent of a fith-grade education in the 50s, minus the ability to multiply, divide or analyze sentences. Just listen to someone on CNN read the news as written by advanced degree holders, or the news clips from AP and hear and see the grammatical and context erros (not counting PC language blight).
Here in Peru private interests control most advanced education, and make the most of it, turning out tens of thousands of architects, graphic designers and system engineers every year, which is one reason why taxis are so cheap here.
The disagreement isn’t whether the country needs to educate its children, the disagreement is about what constitutes education. Albert Speer, Minister for Armaments and Production of Nazi Germany, wrote that his education had been wholly technical and literary and was typical for men of his generation. No sociology, no political science, not even economics. No one had taught them how to see the Nazi movement for what it was. Just so, when the Reverend Jim Jones sought lieutenants to administer his mad welfare empire, the People’s Temple cult, he recruited them at the colleges of California. They considered themselves educated. They had college degrees. Some had advanced degrees. But, they were credentialed, not educated, and their ignorance cost them their lives.
as a husband of a special education teacher…….
not all kids can benifit from even an elementry education…..yet we spend huge amounts of time, resourses and money trying…..money and resourses that could, and should be spent on those who can benifit, and are being deprived because we try to educate the uneducatable.
case in point….my wife has in her class room a 8 year old who cannot talk, read, effectively communicate, and is incapable of using the restroom by herself(she still wears diapers). yet every day she is in the classroom, with a one-on-one aid, paid for by the school district.. she cannot understand anything that is being presented, and will never comprehend, much less use, any of the knowledge being taught.
and to top it all off, she is given a SOL just like every other student, and that score is counted with the class, school, state, and national average.
IMHO this is a horrable waist of time and money…..but it keeps my wife employed
“Horrable waist” Priceless!
In response to your comment on special ed, if there is a kid who is disabled and can communicate and learn, why shouldn’t they? I agree with much of this article and believe not everyone needs college but a good prep for a career/trade, but I will tell you my 7 year old son with CP, who is in a wheelchair and does have to wear pull ups, has no trouble talking, learning, and memorizes everything since he cannot write/hold a pencil well enough to write everything (since you mentioned special ed). He just got his computer, has a straight A average, has his lessons from Monday memorized on Tuesday most weeks, and learned the pledge of allegiance at age 3, even knows his church prayers and many normal doctrinal concepts as he has been taught. Even though he physically cannot compete, his mental abilities well exceeds many of the “normal” children in his grade. Our ISD had no issues allowing him to mainstream and he is loved on by everyone since his attitude is bright and sunny when he’s there. On an academic playing field, he would kick some butt. For him to be a productive member of society, he does need an education with therapy in lieu/conjuction of PE. He is smart enough to be a rocket scientist and I would push him to learn to the best of his abilities. As a last note, his little brother right behind him who is not disabled might even be smarter.
Myra….you just displayed that common sense is missing in todays society. The problem with special education is that education bureaucrats and politicans legislate a one-size-fits-all policy and laws.
Your example is way off course at several levels. First, children of special needs are divided in category….physical and mental apptitude. It is not necessarily difficult to differentiate a profoundly handicapped child into one category or another…or both. Educators are not nearly as stupid as so many non educator citizens apparently are!
The counter to your example may well be a current 5th grade student in a district I use to consult with. Male student. 13 years of age. Minimally proficient at 1st grade reading and general apptitude level. Placed into the 5th grade mainstream class under federal and State inclusion laws with a modest EIP for all classes but math in which he receives special ed assistance by a special ed teacher while still remaining in the mainstream classroom during regular scheduled math class. Check out co-teaching and inclusion mandates. This same teacher has not this one…but six such children in her mainstream class, as does the other four 5th grade teachers at her school.
The exceptions as you discussed are NOT ‘a’ problem or ‘the’ problem in special needs education!
Who will be the elite class which decides who needs education and who doesn’t? What criteria will they use to decide? I’m sure their own children will definitely be selected to win the lottery and get the education. People like me or my children will surely be judged not worthy of education.
In America, we don’t have our lives planned for us by a collective which knows how many cooks and sweepers are needed, and educates children to fill those roles accordingly. We all get chance to rise to the heights that our ability and ambition will take us. No matter how bad our education system is, there are those who hunger for knowledge and achievement, and do something about it. We aren’t a collective, but a nation of individuals, each one of which has the right to better themselves as they see fit.
How about we leave the educational decisions in people’s lives up to their parents, and as adults, up to them? If we end up with PhD’s sweeping floors, why is it any concern to anyone but them? If getting an education is what they want to do with their time and money, who should stand in their way? Don’t they have a right to compete for better jobs?
Aside from getting a good job, aren’t there other purposes for education? How about living a fuller and richer life? Don’t cooks and floor sweepers qualify for self-improvement and the attainment of wisdom in life?
What’s next? Deciding who gets health care by how productive to the collective we expect them to be?
The serious point to be made here is that too many young people go to college without knowing anything of the world. It’s a waste for them, not having earned it, and not taking it seriously. To them, it’s just the step in adolescence which comes after high school. Still, it’s the role of the parents to spend the money wisely. I’d also submit that the idea of scholarships is wasteful, especially when they are given based on high school academics. The quality of public education is notoriously bad today, and that’s another issue altogether.
It’s much better to have the freedom to choose, wisely or poorly, than to have some busybody deciding what is good for us.
Of course, the whole issue here is, Who decides?
I would suggest that one item for consideration ought to be the student’s own efforts. If you go to a high school and see the resentful kids pushing the rules to the limits, hating the fact that theyr’e required to be here, thwarting the teacher’s efforts to teach, or even just passively taking themselves ‘out of the game’ by refusing to pay attention–well, those are all choices. Kids who make them really shouldn’t be catered to; a lot of the waste in the system is going towards coddling them and trying to cater to them.
The disaffected might do better at schooling when they’re older and see that it’s tough to make it out there without any education. That worked for a relative of mine.
What are they to do when they’re not in school, though? I don’t know the answer to that. But keeping them at all costs in school is what’s turning our school systems into glorified day care.
I don’t agree at all Suzanne. First, the entire premise of anyone picking life’s winners and losers is against everything that I thought American culture was. Second, who has the power to stop anyone from getting an education? That sure as heck is not in the Constitution. This whole argument is communistic anyway. We have a free market in which colleges and universities are businesses, and they should market their wares to those who want to learn and get a degree. I’d wholeheartedly be in favor of getting government out of the colleges though.
What kind of measurement would high school achievement be? High school is pure BS! We can’t even get K-12 education functioning well at all. Teachers aren’t necessarily ethical people who grade fairly either, they have their teachers’ pets, and the good grades will go to the favorites. It will all end up decided by politicians anyway, and the Democrats will own the process. Guess what kind of criteria they will use.
Also, why do we need to limit who gets an education at all? It’s been pointed out that a high school diploma was once the equivalent of today’s masters degree. That means to me that everyone should have a masters degree.
The only way any of this article has any validity is if there is public money being used for the education in question. It obviously is that way for K-12, and you can make some valid points about fixing it. Just don’t try to tell me that I am not good enough for college.
…no, it’s not a good thing that colleges and universities are like businesses. This way, we have students whose attitude is “I’m paying good money to take this course, therefore you have to give me a passing grade” when they really deserve to fail, and administrators who are sympathetic to this. And since the students are the customers, they must be satisfied; thus, pre-tenure and non-tenure-track faculty are slaves to the whim of the students and whatever inane complaints they might have on their evaluations.
Having graduated from high school used to mean something, but it no longer does. The way to cope with this is not to say “oh well, this just means that everyone should get a master’s degree now”, because of how many more years of school that amounts to for everyone. It’s a serious problem!
I think the really communistic argument here is the one that basically says, “We should treat everyone as though they have exactly the same educational needs, into high school and beyond. Oops, real academic work is too difficult for a lot of people, so we have to bring everyone down to a low enough level that we can pretend this isn’t true. Gifted and talented? Meh. They’ll be OK even if they’re totally neglected–they are smart, after all!”
The tax and invasion of privacy bill known as obamacare exactly does decide who deserves to get health care and what you MAY get. Obamunists in DC will decide that a 70 year old white person who has worked and paid taxes all their lives doesn’t get certain treatments, while 15 year old gangbangers will get fifteen checkups are year because they will always vote leftist.
Every state has requirements for how long students MUST go to school–in most states they cannot drop out before sixteen or seventeen. I say, publicly fund up to 8th grade, then require the parents to pay for whatever training they get thereafter. You can keep the age limit. As it is now, we pay extra for lazy asses who don’t want to work to have summer school and extra classes every single year of their 14 years (or more since they often need extra years to graduate) in school (counting kindergarten and pre-K). States set curriculum, theoretically based on what they hear from people in business.
You could require parents to pay for extra classes and summer school in high school. As it is, in urban areas, they send the kids to school solely to keep the welfare checks coming. Make the checks contingent not on showing up for 3rd or 4th period, but on academic achievement.
I’d have kids start taking vocational training in 6th or 7th grade and then directed from there. I’d also reform the higher ed system so that many people can do their career training in two years, instead of taking two additional years of humanities when they’re really not interested. These days, kids, especially in urban areas, need to be directed toward work much earlier on.
so riddle me this one…How do we know which kids to educate? This is proposing to educate our brightest students…but if they don’t have extensive schooling how are we supposed to figure out who is bright and who isn’t? I am a psychology major and have recently been studying theories of intelligence. I have found that there isn’t one standard to measure intelligence. In fact, many prominent psychologists have proposed that there are many different types of intelligence. In my opinion the education system helps students discover what they are good at and what they need work on. I’ll openly admit I am a bad test taker, especially on tests such as the SAT/ACT. However, my content knowledge of a subject is usually very solid. So if we start weeding out kids with some sort of assessment, some of our brightest kids will never get the chance to shine. Albert Einstein struggled with algebra, Abe Lincoln lost multiple elections and failed out of law school…there are so many examples of these sort of success stories so I ask you: what if Mr. Albert Einstein was never educated because of his struggle with math? What if someone told Abe Lincoln he could no longer pursue politics? The world would be a much different place.
Every person, every student, every unborn child has the potential to shine in this world. How is it our job to decide who receives an education and who doesn’t? Sounds an awful lot like how China does things. The current education system has its flaws, but I have yet to hear a good proposition for a new one. You can’t build a skyscraper from the top down, first you have to establish a strong base..which is exactly what our current education system tries to do.
With all due respect. Psychology and MSW’s are a voodoo science at best. A study of prediction based on statistical data laced with a tad bit neurological sciences for social and professional validity appeareance. The only ‘clinical’ profession that has never [independently] prevented or cured a social ill. They are great at conspiring with the pharma industry to diagnose fad psychological conditions that of course can be treated with those pills on a fabricated scale….$$$$.
I only bring this up in that psychology utilized extensively in America’s educational systems since the 70′s perpetuating non stop experimentation, has contributed to what in our educational systems? Perpetual national decline in educational outcomes? Likewise for crime in America with law enforcement and corrections relying extensively on the psych folks to help in retarding criminal behaviors. Compare crime stats from the 60′s and 70′s forward and see if the chart doesn’t look like the east side of Pikes Peak.
This is not a personal attack on you….just the ‘science’ of the profession.
All I ever needed to know I lernt in kindergarten.
I agree with many of the points made in the article. However, I would like to see universities offer what was once called a “liberal education;” neither of those words now has a meaning even remotely resembling what either once had and a trade school is not likely the best place to concentrate upon such an education.
Multiple courses in history — not rote memorization of chronologies — would help our citizens — voters — to understand what’s currently happening: why did Germany start WWI and WWII? What happened in Korea? What was FDR doing? TR? Wilson? Truman? Other luminaries? What was the War Between the States centered upon? Courses in philosophy and logic would be very useful to the same end. Courses in English literature would put these things into perspective and courses in English grammar would be useful in communicating. We have entered a TwitterAge, with few actual sentences and unrecognizable sentence structure where they are found; try diagramming one. When in college, I studied these things and found them quite useful later in my trade, law.
There are still some teachers competent to teach such courses, although they seem to be a species nearing extinction. Unless they are used successfully and others follow, the country will continue on its downward spiral to the septic tank.
Like you couldn’t tell by my comments, I’m not secondary school educated. I dropped out of H.S. at the end of my Jr. year. With a little drive and initiative I have had years of earning over $100k working with some of the biggest companies in the world.
On the down side, in times of economic turmoil (like now) high paid uneducated workers are among the first to go. Life is about change. What you do with it is your choice.
I spent 9 years in the nuclear Navy. I’ve worked as a technician for E. Kodak, Motorola and other silicon valley big hitters. I’ve traveled the world as a technician in the medical field and all the while earning more than $30 an hour +expenses and overtime.
Secondary education is designed to (as in Cool Hand Luke) ‘get your mind right.’ Around the concept that you aren’t in charge and that you need to genuflect. I don’t. It trained my counter parts to accept liberal dogma, to hold their professional opinion quiet for the sake of political consequences in the work place. And that being treated like an idiot (even PhD’s) was part of the process of power in the work place.
While I respected everyone, I was not intimidated by figures of authority and didn’t kiss enough booty to ensure a career as a boot licker when work was slow. I accelerated to leadership positions and positions that required self motivation and drive to perform because I could be relied upon and I was a dedicated, motivated, hard working person.
That’s all that is needed in the work place. If you have to kiss ass to get ahead or to keep your job, then go some place else. No one should have to demean themselves just for a paycheck. Keep your principles and dedicate yourself to learning your craft. But you do NOT need university or college programing to be successful or even good.
Right on the head. School beginning to end teaches ‘socialization,’ which really equates to obeying your betters. All the respect for ‘expert’ opinion that turns out to be wrong time after time wouldn’t exist if we were taught logic and a properly skeptical science. How have they tried to sell Global Cooling I mean Warming I mean Climate Change I mean Climate Chaos? By saying ‘the consensus is in.’ Don’t you disregard the experts, you know scientists. As Michael Crichton said (I’m paraphrasing), if it’s scientific, it doesn’t need a consensus.
Well, if you want to get into modes of authoritarianism, you can parse the parent-child relationship, as opposed to the teacher-student relationship.
In the modern culture, school has come to rival family, as more time each day may be spent with teachers, than with either parent. It is a cultural shift that warriors on one side of the culture wars hate, unless they send their kids to parochial school, or to, gulp, private boarding school, in which case they do see their children hardly at all.
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.
This annoys me so much. Walk a mile, buster….
Mr. Fleming, Your article was refreshing. It made me nostalgic for the”Old Days” when Boston had a Girls’ Latin School and a Boston Latin School (for boys). Those of us who thirsted for knowledge, and were able to get in to these very selective schools received educations second to none.Multiculturalism, Diversity, and Political Correctness have since destroyed these educational jewels and have left behind mere shadows of what was once a premier educational landmark. My son when in school tested at 170 IQ. We had to remove him from the public school system and send him to a private school which still adhered to the ideal of a rigorous education. My heart breaks for this countries children, and their parents, who are trapped in this modern nightmare of progressivism in education.
Education is great for teaching us how to read and write, and do math, without those basics no one can function in today’s world. However, once one as mastered those basic skills, all sorts of opportunities lay ahead. A good teacher knows which children (or should know) can accomplish amazing things with a great university education, or which children are amazingly creative with their minds and hands ……. an artist, artisan, a craftsman, a creative tinkerer. It is these children who will do so many of the things the “educated” can’t possibly do.
I was a great student, learned quickly, and spent my middle school years in in accelerated classe in math, science, literature, English, and public speaking. I was (and am) and accomplished musician (piano/organ) and good
vocalist. I majored in voice and minored in piano at university noted for it’s music department. Loving music, that was not where my heart was leading me. I really loved architecture, and the efficient use of space. This career typically requires an architecture degree to enter. I did not have that, but had determination. Stumbling on an ad in the newspaper one
day, I called the advertiser about the ad for “space planner” wanted. I knew
I had to talk with him. He was on loan to my home town from NY and worked for the world’s largest architectural firm. I had nothing to show him but
what I considered childish drawings from my childhood of imagined houses.
The drawings consisted of floor plans, and perspective drawings. This dear man was fascinated by the drawings, especially learning they were done when
I was between 10 to 13 years old. He asked what the scale of the drawings
were and I had no idea, but he insisted they were clearly very creative and
amazing. One week later, I was working for a commercial real estate developer, developing the largest high rise in my city’s downtown area (a million sq. ft.). Within two weeks I was planning office spaces for large
corporations. I was a natural, and in three years had my own practice with
a staff of 12 college educated designers, planners, and architects. I am
retired now, and claim to have planned and designed nearly 100,000,000 sq. ft. of space for dozens of major corporations. I have hired and fired employees with Master Degrees in architecture, including a couple of professors of architecture. I had one semester of college. I’m still asked
to be a soloist, or pianist for a variety of events, and love my music to
relax me. I don’t deny others the opportunity to go to college, but only if
they want to.
I had a son who was ahead of his teachers all the way through public schools and never went to college. He earned a 4.0 grade average in high
school, and could have attended most any school. Instead he chose to study
art at a small art school. He could speak four languages fluently (English,
French, Spanish, and German). Was a self-taught genius with computers, had
read most of the great books of fine literature, could write poetry and prose with little effort. I think his public schools felt a bit intimidated by this kid. His IQ was tested twice over a two year period, and each time measured 168. Yes he was a genius. My daughter was bright,
outgoing, popular all the way through school including college. I don’t know what her IQ is, or if she was ever tested, but for several years she owned an operated a retail business that was a huge success, and earned her
a lot of money. I was an upscale baby boutique. Now, the mother of an adopted girl child and a girl child of her own, she has founded a non-profit foster parenting network, is raising money, finding loving people
to house the unwanted babies of society without government pay. That is the foster parents get not one cent for caring for and often adopting these children. I will one day die a proud man. Our public education system was
better, but is getting worse. Our universities seem to be getting worse and are so politically dominated today. It is not important for most children to go to these schools. All we need is a great teachers in public schools to recognize the potential of their students and guide them into the right direction for their lives. The less government, especially the Federal Government, is involved the better.
Now you’re being a bit silly.
The point you should be making is WHAT education should we be providing.
Not everyone needs a liberal university education. For many an apprenticeship for a trade makes more sense. But we still can call that an education, since it IS.
Good article (although it’s obvious you’re exaggerating for effect). Someone had to say it. It’s the same with health insurance–not everyone needs it or wants it. The nanny state is smothering us. It should get off our backs. Stop telling us what to do. In most all ways, we know better than the government bureaucrats how to live our lives. They sure have made a hash of everything.
Do most wealthy people expect that their children will go to college? Of course. In less wealthy communities do far fewer children go to college? Of course.
Hmmmm.
A lower percentage of students may go to college, or settle for community colleges in the next decade because a lot of wealth has been lost and these are hard times. But whether kids go to college or not is probably less important than whether or not there are jobs waiting for them.
By the way, I haven’t noticed any shortage of plumbers and electricians; they have been losing their jobs as well.
By the way, I haven’t noticed any shortage of plumbers and electricians; they have been losing their jobs as well.
Prolly has something to do with semi-skilled people and their collectivist unions believing they should earn $50-$75 dollars and hour. I’m a damn good computer programmer (with degree), which is HIGHLY technical – and I dont make that much.
Be careful, you’ll be getting called an elitist, any time now.
In past generations one heck of alot of the kids worked from an early age. Not necessarily a job that paid them money but a job working along side Dad twisting wrenches on the car, tractors, combines…building an addition onto the family home, reparing plumbing, doing electrical work, welding repairs and on down the line. Kids back then learned at an early age how to develop and utilize critical thinking, math and the sciences, etc. By the end of their high school years they were not only educated to varying dgrees in formal academics, but they had acquired real world skills in a number of area’s…at least enough to survive with in any kinds of economic environments.
Todays kids….well, I think we know the story unless you’re fortunate enough to live on a working farm or ranch.
College is NOT for everybody nor does everybody have the minimum required learning skills to complete college….a historical fact! Most disciplines in colleges and universities today are easy compared to college demands in past generations. Today, we graduate approximately 75% of what I refer to as educated morons. They fill the low and mid level mgmt jobs that only high school graduates use to fill in retail and the services areas of the economy.
Soon, if we keep diminishing college education for the benefit of graduation rates rather than quality education, it will become equivilent to a high school education of the 50′s. Heck, I know boatloads of folks with PhD’s who are literally deficient academically beyond past sophomore requirements.
I’m all for setting a national standard for public educational assistance requiring you have a minimum entry GPA of 3.3 and a 1200 SAT. You don’t meet the minimums you go to a community college or votech college if you so desire…..and pay for it!
Lower and middle class is for laborer’s! Upper middle class is for college graduates in some entry mgmt level and aspiring for upward mobility from middle management and….. journeyman labor skills.
He’s right. All real schools have admissions exams. I remember taking a few when I was four. If you don’t possess the logical and cognitive faculties of a non-retarded five year-old at five, you never will. That’s the truth. Nobody’s IQ ever increased after age five.
If you can’t identify the logical fallacies on which Keynesian economics rests at five, you will always be retarded. Those who lack logical faculties (which are all-or-nothing, like pregnancy) also necessarily lack cognitive faculties and are actually certifiably ineducable. They CAN’T learn. There is no point in educating them.
Y’know, I don’t think I’d object to our current system if it actually worked. If kids came out with literacy, basic math, good work habits and the study skills needed to discern truth from nonsense and find out what they need later, that’d be enough and then some.
But those who object to that here, how about this question: Shouldn’t our current system do AT LEAST that? For say 80% of its students? I mean, if you are truly afraid that this minimum requirement is too little, why aren’t you upset that we don’t achieve even that now?
Let’s face it–if today’s schools made automobiles instead of educated kids as a goal, we’d have fined, sued, and shut them down long ago for creating unsafe, non-working, fraudulent products.
Setting a minimum goal and then INSISTING on it for everyone is the first step, along with ruthlessly getting rid of any so-called teacher who can’t achieve that basic minimum result pronto instead of wasting not only public money on them but our kids’ valuable TIME and youth on a process that does not work.
Let’s face it–if the current crop of teachers were in a world where these outrageous pensions and benefits WERE affordable by tax-supported government, it would still be foolish and fraudulent to pay them (and the administrators and the rest of the school establishment) based on their lousy results. The fact that we can’t afford those bennies anymore and haven’t really been able to do so for a long time is only icing on the contemptable cake. It’d be nice to balance the budget, but the “silver lining” isn’t the money–it’s the awareness and the will to solve the REAL problem–bad schools and under-educated students.
Any huge entity can grow fat and bloated, and education is no exception. Yes, it has become a habit and a reflex, as much as a rational decision, but it is at the core of what our culture has become. I agree with a previous writer who mentioned that far fewer kids learn practical skills from their parents. The model is more that both parents work to provide money so that the kids can be in all sorts of athletic and social programs. It is what we are; if the jobs are there, both parents tend to take them.
As far as level or declining test scores, you have to factor in that all sorts of special needs students, not only survive in their birth – youth, which they never would have fifty years ago, but also get mainstreamed into the educational system. The adjustments for these students are very expensive on a per student basis, but until we have better alternatives than warehousing them in state facilities, or telling their parents that it is THEIR problem alone, it is a tough nut to crack.
Factor in the millions of immigrants, illegal and otherwise, who are in the schools, as well as the millions of kids who would have dropped out after, if not before, eighth grades, as my father did, and the test score thing is misleading at best. Yes, it may tend to facilitate a mushy, mediocracy of self-esteem etc., rather than an elitist focus on la creme de la creme, but that is exactly because it does try to respond to almost everyone’s kids (probably pleasing no one in the process, but what else is new?)
Educational reform is tough because it is the same as reforming ourselves. The only real changes will come when there are few jobs to fill and little money out there to continue our current practices.
Just get students prepared for politics with the B.S.C.A.T.
Their heads are so full of scat already. And they’d be ready to read and write at the politician level.
Frank J has obviously never studied basic economics. What the devil is going to happen to legions of suddenly unemployed teachers? Oh sure, a select few will become super-villians or otherwise useful members of society, but the vast majority will be without employment( almost gaffed and said work).
This not merely some academic exercise. Wandering bands of English and social studies teachers will be forced to compete with not only our essential non-documented workers but also our newly released spawn for menial jobs. As for the PE instructors, well there are only so many stray dogs and cats to be had until they turn upon humanity.
No, I fear that Frank J has been let down in his analysis by the very educational system he proposes to eliminate. There is only one real solution, and that would be professor Xavier. After all, everyones gifted in some way.
Fantastic article!!!
one of the problems with our current education system is that it has been so diluted and dumbed down in order for everyone to have access
compare a modern day bachelor’s degree curriculum with that of the rickety old school houses of yesteryear and you’ll find that yesteryear’s students were versed much more thoroughly than today’s
to get a bachelor’s degree today you need to be able to read at a 5th grade level, spell your name correctly, know your social security number, and pay tuition (or qualify for state/federal enslavement, i mean grants)
if you have any skill in writing then it’s easy street
if you have appropriate butt-kissing skills then it’s cruise control
ivy league schools, nowadays, are little more than way stations for legacy blue-bloods and the cornucopia of the nation’s minority of the month while most generic universities could be finished by a child with basic educational skills
like the author said, k-12 schools are basically free day care and universities do little more than spew out wide-eyed, entitlement-deranged, protesters that have to be praised and coddled on an hourly basis
Schooling has become an industry and college careers are its merchandise, that’s why education has lost its target and rather it’s become another commodity to be traded, marketed and pushed to potential customers.
College education is required for specialized fields such as the sciences, engineering and medicine. “All others need not apply”. But in today’s world, in order to become say, a proper hotel reservations clerk, you need a 4-year college education followed by perhaps one or two years in a Master’s degree in “Recreational Activities Management”. Teaching someone a 6-month course in the basics of hotel back-office generals and sending them off to a 6 to 12-month in-field training, wouldn’t provide a nice income for the money-suckers that univeristies have become now, would it? And furthermore, lawyers, accountants and agents wouldn’t be able to charge $100 for something that’s maybe worth $20.
hear hear
Exactly!
A debit account connected directly to the U.S. Treasury.
As a high school teacher, I thought mandatory education through age 18 was silly: If students found value in what they were learning, we wouldn’t need laws keeping them there. Plus, then young people who didn’t want to be there, wouldn’t be.
If we do not educate our people and youngster, we will not have the opportunity to decide such questions in the future. The democratic and liberal society is buttressed by education. Knowledge is all, and all is knowledge.
Some things I have learned in my life, that I should have learned in school:
-How to make a household budget, stick to it, and why it’s important that it be in the black.
-How to eat so you don’t get fat. How to cook in order to eat that way cost-efficiently.
-How to carry yourself at a job interview. How to select the jobs to interview for.
-How to be on time.
-How to interact with people. How to be nice to them. How not to be nice to them. When to do each.
Not to start something but I have a question. While I agree there are things to fix in the education system, why is it that I can only help my child through half of his Algerbra 1 book? (of course my degree is not in Math, but still)
My children must complete a senior research project of 10 pages complete with an annotated bibliography, 50 note cards and some kind of visual aid in order to graduate from a public high school out in flyover country (where are the rubes and dirt farmers live).
All of them have been taught how to use and balance a check book, in the 5th grade. I teach them how to cook. And I teach them BEFORE they go to school how to treat others appropriately and continue that teaching everyday they are in my care.
Just asking.
i dont know about you, but math was something i had to practice on a daily basis to maintain my skills and it gets easy to forget a step or process as i get older
as for flyover country— i believe that our best k-12 schools are in middle america where core american principles haven’t been purged out yet
i also believe that one of the tenets of the statist playbook is to try to remove the parents from the equation in their kids’ education– this is done by assigning a ton of busybody work and attempting to portray the child’s schoolwork in the most complicated fashion to make parent’s feel inferior and inept
Good point all. You right Math is something one needs to use or they lose it. I guess Algebra was not as important as they told me it would be……..of course the fact that I struggled with it might have more to do with it.
I guess my disjunct with this discussion (which by the way has been somewhat civilized –yeah for us) is that there have always been awesome teachers doing fantastic work in horrible conditions, working with children who don’t care and parents who can’t be bothered. There are also horrible teachers who don’t do anything and manage to destroy any chance a child has to progress. I’ve experienced both, 40+ years ago. The biggest difference is that then they could be fired but they weren’t. No one believed the children. The adults were in charge and they knew better.
While I realize there is no longer money for cadillac style education for everyone, one wonders who will get to decide which children will be “allowed ” to further their education. I too believe that not all people are college material but who gets to decide that and when. Most of my children didn’t attend college right after high school. They worked first and decided what they wanted to do and then when back to school, most starting at a junior college first. It cut costs and gave them a better student teacher ratio.
There is a reason many in Europe are on the dole. Why work at a dead end job for little pay when one can live off the government and live the same lifestyle? (We have generations of the professional aid gatherers here as well ) I thought that was why we endeavored to educate every one, so that the playing field was as level as possible. But I could be wrong. It happens a lot.
Now you sound just like china, and odumbo. What you are describing is socialist at if finest. odumbo and his czars must be removed from OUR government and OUR country. We do not need more fools like odumbo and his crew.
I’ve homeschooled each of my sons for eight years, then have dual enrolled them in hs for classes such as band and anatomy. (I’m capable of dissecting a cat, I’m an RN, but unwilling.) 60% of general science time is spent watching “Myth Busters”, without following discussion or lab work. Freshmen are not ALLOWED to take history classes. There are zero books to bring home to study if you are falling behind or inspired. The chemistry teacher taught them to taste their unknowns. In PE, they watch “Chicken Little”. 3/4s of the way through the year, my son has brought home work maybe four times, because teachers don’t want to take the time to grade it. Oh, but they’ve got spirit. Two and a half hour pep rallies are common. I’m fairly certain this isn’t unusual. We’ve got a generation of techno communicators who feel good about themselves and have been taught to take tests, but not reason. So, at the end of the semester, my dear son came home and pleaded with me to homeschool him again, because the teachers weren’t teaching anything. Today I read in the paper how they want to raise taxes to keep up with our “excellent” education. I think not!
These concepts are exactly what made America what it is. Kids learned to read, write, and do arithmetic. If they were interested in science they took it. The interest has to be there. They learned how to help support their family….helped with crops and household duties. Many learned mechanics…not from schooling but by helping to keep the tractor running. I could go on and on….but by now you get my point.
we keep hearing that we spend so much more than the rest of the world on healthcare… but you know what, we have far and away, the BEST healthcare in the world (and will continue to if we can keep der fuehrer from screwing it up… on purpose)…
we also spend much much more than the rest of the world on education… but guess what, we don’t even finish in the top twenty of the industrialized nations…
can you spell teachers union… a cancerous growth, plain and simple and its time to cut it off…
why don’t we just focus on what the average citizen actually needs? Everyone needs literacy, as you have to have some reading skills to be able to set your shows to record on a DVR. And then we should also teach everyone how to use Google, as that will cover science, history, and math whenever those come up. No reason that basic knowledge can’t be knocked off in a year for each kid.
ok–i realize this is tongue-in-cheek, but as an unemployed special education teacher, I object. I agree we spend way too much money on too little substance, and even objectionable propaganda, but you can’t do it in a year. Most of the founding fathers were educated at home, and those brilliant minds were ready for Harvard and Yale before their 16th birthdays. Most of us are no Jefferson, of course, but for our republic to work we need to have solid basic skills for everyone, and that can’t be done even by Papa Jefferson in one year.
carolinca
IMHO, the bulk of the problems with the current system revolve around the fact that we have no grand consensus about the goals or purpose(s) of education. Absent such a societal agreement, our educational “systems” will remain a mess.
IMHO, the goals of education are two: to train the mind, and; to inculcate children with their parent culture. If the education is done at the public expense, there should be a third purpose which is to identify those minds reasonably susceptible to further training at the public expense.
In the current environment, there’s little agreement on the goals and the political demands for “appropriate socialization” and other such nonsense leave little time for reading, writing, arithmetic, culture/history and civics. (Anyone try to buy something in a store recently when the computers are down and been unable to make a purchase because the cashier couldn’t figure the correct change?)
People- get over your bad self. This article is satire. Read it, laugh, and take it’s one serious point to heart. That being, that if you teach people to think, you’ve taught them all they need to know.That, and teaching a marketable skill is more important than producing a “well rounded” fry cook.
I’m shocked that people can’t recognize satire when they see it. What have they been taught?
I really resent the philosophy of education that says that we drones need to be taught only how to bring our queen (President, whatever) loads of honey. I could refer to liberal arts education, but virtually no one understands what that means anymore.
What do you think the phrase “READING, WRITING AND ARITHMETIC” was created for?
If these three necessities were competantly taught, there would be no need for remedial classes once you got out of high school. Plumbers,electricians, steam fitters all make good money and many of them become millionaires. Why does a garbage collector or a janitor need to know algebra? At some point in their lives if they decide to obtain more education they are free to do so (and they may have gained a litte common sense along the way). Instead of whining unionized ‘teachers’ we could have excellent and qualified instructors in these various fields. And finally, why do we have so many malcontents? Mainly because kids are forced into achievements they not only don’t want to engage in, but they feel inferior in unfriendly environments which doesn’t make for much satisfaction.
MRose
Does Huckleberry Finn’s father ring a bell here?
It is not wise to encourage ignorance.
Oh my. You have just scared the pants off of a bunch of leftist, useless, Marx loving teachers, my friend. The thought of the general population learning just how useless they are will terrify anyone with a teacher certification.
If you think about it, where do our children learn to be critical of their parents, disobedient and dabble in drug abuse? It is when they are out of our control in the local school system.
They have turned the curriculum into the most boring, group think possible, thus discouraging any child from thinking on their own. They have taken the rows of individual desks, which discouraged talking and socializing during school hours and placed children in tables of eight to encourage team learning. This also takes away individual accomplishments and forces children to depend on a partner or group to achieve a passing grade.
The idea that, in order to play sports (which is the goal of any boy) you must have passing grades, forces many at risk kids out of the only thing that may keep them from hanging out with the undesirables. Sports have become the most important thing in most schools, while civics and history have been delegated to the back burner, or corrupted beyond recognition.
Only the most popular and most able to conform to group think are able to succeed, while anyone who thinks outside the box is relegated to the waste heap.
We are losing too many children to the system. Our schools are an abject failure. Teachers can blame parents, lack of funding, government, etc., but who do the parents turn to? Sylvan? Another scheme for teachers to earn extra money from the system. Why make children a success in the classroom, when you can charge astronomical fees to tutor them after school?
It is time for teachers, administrators and school districts to be held accountable for the children not learning. At present, the children are held accountable, while everyone else gets off with nothing. Bad teachers are not held accountable, period.
We have failed several generations already and the results are becoming obvious for all to see. If you really care about the children and their future, cleaning up the schools is the very beginning and where we have to start.
They are being ruined by a broken system and without them, our future is very bleak.
I have worked in the trades my entire life. I have seen my share of inept people in the trades and we sure don’t need to use “the trades” as a dumping ground for “those not suited for college.” Talk to your insurance adjuster and I am sure he can tell you about massive losses caused by those in the trades that are not smart enough to “think like a rain drop!!” As the trades have progressed to keep up with the latest technology good tradesmen need to know theory as well as manual skills, and in many trades this includes using trig & calculus daily!! Surprise. On the other end of the spectrum we have far too many engineers that would have benefitted by gaining some practical experience before completing their advanced degrees.
Trade schools often turn out students that want to do only the “advanced” work, for example electricians wanting only to program controllers etc.. but don’t want to run the handle end of a shovel, install the conduit etc. and are not bashful about telling the foreman what they will and will not do. I don’t know the answer; but, sending everyone to the trades is not the answer; it will in the end drive the good tradesmen out of the trades. It is already happening.
Wouldn’t it be beneficial if this diverse group were to get involved in the school boards, locally voice an opinion to bring vocational education back into the schools, run for political office, and find out more about what is actually happening inside the classroom? First hand information: talk to the teachers, administrators, and state officials, and make an effort to effect a change that would provide for the needs of the young people, the communities, and our great nation? It is not the youth who have created this situation…But it is the responsibility of people sitting back making no effort to have a voice in the local school system who need to make known loud and clear the needs that appear obvious.
A history of USmerican education (or what passes today for it)is revealing. Please read John Taylor Gatto’s work, The Underground History of American Education. Gatto was twice the New York City Teacher of the Year, and once the New York State TotY. He tells the story from an insider’s point of view.
Horace Mann, the putative “father of American ‘public’ schools” and his cronies were outspoken about their true goals, and “education” was nothing more to them than the bait to get parents to submit children into their hands so they could indoctrinate them.
The son of a Congregational minister, Mann hated his father’s religion (ultimately becoming a “devout” Unitarian) and had, as his goal, the divorce of children from their parents, especially their parents’ values and religion. The Peabodies (of coal mining fame and fortune) wanted a submissive workforce. Somewhat later, Dewey, signatory of the “Humanist Manifesto, bragged “what can they do for their hour every week in Sunday School when we have their children thirty hours a week?”
Mann copied his schools from the Prussians. He claimed (falsely, I believe) to have visited those schools and to have spoken to teachers and students. (His visit, in the summer, could not have been in the schools themselves because they were shut down due to the agricultural needs of the Kaiser. No teachers were in school, and their charges were in the fields.) Kaiser Frederich had his advisers invent their own grtf (aka welfare) schools to insure his soldiers would not question their orders, that his people would obey him without hesitation, and that his taxes would come in with minimal fuss. This was Mann’s model.
Government-run, tax-funded schools are not now, nor have they ever been about education. They exist because politicians want what their ancestor, Frederich, wanted: a complacent populace who will pay taxes and obey unquestioningly. Education performs the same function it did in the 1850s (when the first compulsory attendance law was passed in Massachusetts): to get children away from their parents, the parents must believe (against all common sense) that the children will be educated, so the bureaucrats and politicians constantly harp on the education without mentioning that the outcome will be what they want, not what the parents want. And thus we see that their lie always comes back to haunt the rest of us.
G.K. Chesterton told us “The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their common sense.” H. L. Menken said, “The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda – a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make ‘good’ citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.” No truer words have been written.
Calling kids stupid, endorsing cheap American labor (as long as it’s done by kids), making connections from education to Hitler. I truly hope this was a political humor piece and not intended as a serious article.
I agree that not everyone should have the same education not matter how much interest or talent they have for it. What we need—and I have taught for years—is more vocational education beginning in junior high school, instead of constantly trying to pound square pegs into round holes–and paying for 13 years of summer school, tutoring, etc. etc. for kids who NEVER read a book at home, NEVER study, NEVER do homework, come into high school reading at a pre-K to 4th grade level (not because the teachers are bad, but because they never practice) and come to school only to gossip, score drugs and sex.
In the CUNY system, most kids take 7-10 years to graduate from college and many many high school graduates drop out or flunk out in their first year—because they never bothered to prepare themselves. Except for the specialized high schools which require an admissions test (and the left is trying to force in more hispanics who don’t qualify), it’s all about teaching test questions and nothing else so the school can get a decent rating. This totally destroys the whole purpose of teaching the subject—just a few facts for short term memory and no scope, background or depth that makes it meaningful and interesting.
And no, unions are not trying to give bad education–its’ the govt bureaucrats who demand things that make it bad–such as all kids even ELL’s and Spec Ed taking Regents exams (which should be optional), bureaucrats who wouldn’t last a day in a NYC classroom. I don’t much like the teacher’s union but they do provide great professional development and they do want kid to learn. They have supported charter schools (which only take and keep kids who work and whose parents will contribute).
Schools are failing terribly in the most basic education for our children. How many graduates can write a basic letter with correct grammar and spelling (without computer help) or do basic math without a calculator? How many can read at a practical level and comprehend what they have read? How many can write legibly? So much for the three r’s: readin’, ‘ritin’ ‘rithmetic and the fourth (responsibility).How much do they learn about two of the most important things they will do during their lives: their personal finances and parenting/relationships? It doesn’t matter whether you are a restaurant cook, a housekeeper, or go on to further education, you need a proficiency in the basics and sadly, they are being cheated.
When you stop learning, you stop living. I’m still learning at age 84, why? Because I’m studying what I need to do as your next President to ReStore not Change America. I started learning electronice in 1939 at age 12, I was employed constantly my entire life, because I had a skill that was worth someone hiring me. I did not need a Union to get me a job. My choice of work required contant learning as electronic technology advance in large steps every 10 years. I was 54 when the IBM computers came on the market. The college I worked for was buying computers and I needed to know DOS, and Windows, and how Hard Drives worked, guess what! I had a fast learning challenge, no sitting back and let someone else younger do it. I spent those hours learning what made things work, and I enjoyed it. I still enjoy learning, and hope to live another 100 years just to see what else we can invent. Living is fun, if you participate. Once you sit down and tell yourself, it’s all over, it really is. I had gone to 13 schools in Indiana and Michigan by the time I got to the 10 grade, during the depression we moved a lot to find work. I’ll tell you what happens when you are a kid, and you are hungry! You don’t learn. We have many kids in school today that are hungry. Is there any hope for them?
Remember when you buy stuff from China, China buys America. Do you care?
BILOXIPAT is correct in his response to comment number one. Educated people are not going to be happy in labor, working class, or underqualified positions. Employers are seeing this everyday. In fact, many employers steer clear of educated applicants because they know educated people will likely jump ship once they find a better job more suited to their education.
People go to college generally for one reason — money. I know I did. We must obtain the education to acquire the money. I don’t know anyone who obtained a college degree just for the learning experience, and then joined the working class willingly. The main goal is a large income, job prestige, and the postive social affirmation from society. If college education wasn’t necessary for a better income, people would not go to college.
We are witnessing the negative results from decades of everyone being allowed to attend college. The market has been flooded with graduates, and there aren’t enough jobs to go around. College used to be for the brightest students. As a result, there were less graduates, which meant greater demand for college educated employees. Today, everyone and his uncle has a college degree, which means there is less demand for college educated employees. Due to the increased supply of college graduates, the bar has been raised so high that people feel the only guarantee of financial success is to get a graduate degree. How long will it be before a master’s degree is devalued because of an increase in grad students? Will the only viable option in the future be a doctorate?
We cannot have everyone at the top. We need the lower middle class and lower classes, too. Unfortunately, we live in a consumer nation. Everyone wants the best of everything. No one is content with just being a working man or woman. So every year, millions of people head off to college to avoid the working class stigma.
I blame social conditioning. Our attitude is a cultural disease. We are told to consume and always one-up each other with our possessions. Immigrants are perfectly happy working hard without having the best and most expensive possessions. Often they are much happier. I truly envy their cultural upbringing. Work, spend time with family and friends, and enjoy life.