PJ Media

We had a voucher resolution on the ballot two days ago. I voted for it, but it tanked.

I like the idea of public education, but I despise the education establishment. I can’t see how “education” should be a college major, let alone an area for graduate degrees. Our schools are overloaded with administration, because getting graduate degrees and moving into administration is the only way to really get ahead financially. Why should a principal be paid more than a good teacher? I think proven teachers should be the highest paid, and not just because they have a strong union, like the janitors.

I dislike the way too many parents don’t know and don’t care what their kids are taught, as long as the high school wins in sports. I dislike the practice of hiring sport coaches then expecting them to teach classes they aren’t qualified in. I especially fear the growing power of groups like the NEA and the way curriculum has become politically correct and intruded into matters that should be left to parents. If parents don’t do their job, nobody, least of all government, can do it for them.

So much of education is a no-brainer. To learn your times tables, you repeat them until they come to you without having to think.
But modern educators dislike the idea of recitation and boring repetition and so they imagine that they can make everything interesting and fun. It’s true that we learn what we’re interested in easier, but not everything worth learning is all that interesting to the beginner. Learning is work, but we seem to want our kids to get by without too much exertion.

I think we spend way too much on textbooks that add nothing but politicized material to what the books 50 years ago contained. When I think about what I was taught in grade school about the United Nations, I cringe. Today, kids are being inculcated with environmentalism, multi-cultural equivalence, and a whole lot of stuff they’ll probably have to unlearn later on. I can’t see where I’m better off from learning to read from the adventures of Dick and Jane than by studying Latin and Greek or Shakespeare. A lot of mental ability is lost in the first 5 years of school.

I agree with the idea of standardized testing, because that’s the only way to get an objective measure of whether schools are doing their jobs, but I dislike the way policy is handed down by bureaucrats
at the state and federal levels.

I could go on, but that’s enough for starters.