Detroit’s public school system has such incredibly bad attendance records that it has started paying kids just to show up. Besides the obvious horrible life lesson, the move is symptomatic of a systemic failure not just in Detroit, but across America’s public education system.
Laura Ingalls Wilder, in her frontier schoolroom, was memorizing half the history of the United States for a single presentation. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln had scarcely any formal schooling, yet they read so many books they could match wits with individuals who went to prestigious European universities. Booker T. Washington not only expected his Tuskegee Institute students to complete a rigorous academic routine, but also to learn manual labor trades and build their own campus facilities. Now we have college graduates who can barely read three pages, cook pasta, or memorize the multiplication table. What happened to American education?
This story about public schools from Fox 2 Detroit highlights how the whole attitude of modern educators and the sort of solutions they come up with are completely upside down:
Middle school students who get perfect attendance for a week, will get a $50 gift card up to $500 if they attend every class that week on time.
High school students will earn a $100 gift card for their perfect attendance for an entire week with a chance to make up to $1000.
There’s also a program to provide students free public bus transportation. One wonders where all this extra money is coming from. Superintendent Nikolai Vitti reasoned that students who miss fewer days of school are more likely to do better on standardized tests, but he is not taking into account that students who show up more often without bribes are more likely to actually put in work. Showing up for money is not an indication of one’s willingness to learn. By the way, last year, a mere 5.5% of K-8 Detroit students were proficient in math and 8.5% proficient in reading. I don’t think the problem is just attendance.
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First of all, as other people have already pointed out, teaching kids that merely being present is in itself an accomplishment is the wrong lesson. The kids are learning that they should demand special rewards for doing the bare minimum of their duty. That is without them turning in any homework or paying any attention in class.
Secondly, the reason that urban public schools are in such a dreadful state is that our entire public education system has, for years now, been focused on getting more money, being as woke as possible, and lowering standards to the point where every student passes regardless of what he does. When teachers’ unions seem to spend all their time and money on leftist activism and lobbying for pay raises, when teachers and administrators claim that students are doomed to certain levels of achievement based on skin color, when practically illiterate children are graduating from high school, of course there will be poor attendance. Why bother to show up if you aren’t actually learning anything and you constantly hear the mantra that your fate is sealed by racial group? Then add in the social dysfunction and parents not invested in their children’s education, and it all makes sense.
When America had stronger families and placed value on a classical education and practical skills, individuals of all racial groups and socioeconomic backgrounds saw education as a way of moving up. We believed that any child could reach certain rigorous standards, so, of course, grades were higher, attendance was much better, and there was more upward mobility. The work ethic of the average American 100 years ago is so far beyond that of the average American now that it is depressing.
Democrats realized they could destroy many American families, especially minorities, by building a massive welfare state, claiming everything was due to race or sex, undermining families, and turning schools into propaganda mills. Many politicians and wealthy businessmen don’t want most American children to have a decent education, because they like the class stratification. So between the elitists who like to keep the peasants ignorant and the teachers who themselves received an inferior education, most public school systems now are absolute jokes. Detroit administrators bribing students simply to appear in class is pathetic, but it is a symptom of a much bigger problem.
