A Stroll through the Beautiful Ruins of American Public Education

Renew America ^ | March 7, 2018 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

K-12: Q&A with Bruce Deitrick Price

Q: What is your main feeling about K-12 education today?

A: Sadness. There is a perennial waste of energy and money, both taken in great quantities from millions of citizens. Instruction, if logical and systematic, can teach a great deal in a timely way. Instruction, if incoherent, will leave students worse off than when they started. That is why McKinsey and Company, circa 2007, concluded that American students are measurably worse each additional year they remain in the public schools. Our #1 job is stopping this waste.

Q: So what is the big sin?

A: The Education Establishment concocts new ideas that are presented to the public as panaceas, as the ultimate and final answers to better education. But what we get instead are systemic poisons, things that damage the body politic. Individual citizen sometimes never recover from these poisons. This is not hyperbole. For example, we have more than 40 million functional illiterates. Every one of them has been damaged by the poison known as sight-words. In practice, this means that many children level out when they're only 10 or 12 or 14. And stay there for the rest of their lives.

Q: What is the most critical thing you want people to know?

A: Throughout K-12, many bad ideas are locked in place. Some of these ideas were first introduced 30, 50, 70, and 90 years ago. The Education Establishment hangs onto its bad ideas with ingenuity and ferocity. That's why reform is so difficult. However, I think if more people get involved, and make more noise, we can unlock these bad ideas, and toss them in the trash. I want people to realize they can't depend on the Education Establishment to fix problem. We can, however, have progress if people demand it. So start demanding. The first step is to understand all the worst gimmicks. Once you understand these things, you'll know we have to get rid of them. (Here is a quick rundown: "56: Top 10 Worst Ideas in Education.")

Q: What are you most disappointed about?

A: I'm surprised that our movers and shakers, especially the media and mainstream political leaders, are so passive, so indifferent. I think the Education Establishment has succeeded in baffling and exhausting the society's top people. Year after year, we wallow in mediocrity and confusion. Executives and politicians decide that Education is a hopeless field full of incompetents. Why aggravate yourself by getting involved with such people? I suspect our educrats want to induce precisely this feeling. In particular, political leaders, black leaders, and religious leaders, who have millions of followers, do not use their leverage. Part of the answer is that every American should pressure their leaders to be more active. Every large organization should have an Education Committee whose job is helping the organization use its influence in the most constructive ways.

Q: So why did you become focused on K-12 education?

A: There is a lot of nuttiness in K-12, counterproductive for students, but often intriguing for onlookers. (For me it's a big crime scene and I find it utterly fascinating.) You might hear an anecdote from friends at dinner or you might read something in the newspaper. You think, this is impossible, isn't it?? College kids who don't know where Alaska is? They don't know what 6×7 is? When I hear things like this, I'm first disgusted and second resolved to do something about it. Each such anecdote is a canary in the coal mine. Education is dying all around you. The signs and symptoms are unmistakable. Point is, you shouldn't look away from this nuttiness, you shouldn't excuse it. Confront it. Think about what schools were like when you were there. How should they be now? You know immediately that we could do better.

Q: If you could have any improvements you wanted, what would they be?

A: Just for starters, we have to get rid of sight-words and bring back phonics. Second, we have to eliminate the idiotic, century- long campaign against memorization Third, try to obliterate anything called Common Core, which is a glittering array of dopey ideas. Fourth, we need to get rid of Constructivism yesterday. Let teachers teach.

Q: Take it from the top. How would you summarize what's happening to the kids?

A: They are ideology fodder. That's a reference to World War I when soldiers at the front were called "cannon fodder." They were fed to the big guns. Similarly, our kids are fed to theories and visions. Stalin killed 20 million of his own people. He had really big theories and visions! Point is, ideologues don't mind cracking lots of eggs in order to prepare a few omelettes. Ever since John Dewey and his Progressives started taking over the schools of education in order to transform teachers, the country has been hurt by a simmering ideological war. You feel the existence of this war every time you see a public school embrace a counterintuitive idea. The main thing to know about ideologues, in addition to their ruthlessness, is that they are tireless. They never take a week off. That's why they have been so successful, and people talk about "the deliberate dumbing down of America."

Q: Is there a conspiracy?

A: No, it's completely coincidental that virtually all public schools embrace and promote the worst ideas in the history of education. Just a coincidence that every professor of education at Harvard's Graduate School of Education believes in the same wacky things. They all somehow drank the same Kool-Aid and found each other. What are the odds?

Q: Okay, if you're in charge, what's the next step?

A: A wise dictator would cut the Department of Education in half; protect teachers from coerced membership in the NEA; politely point out that the public school system in America has been in steady decline for more than 75 years and any professor who has been involved with this decline is not entitled to work in the field of Education, please find a new line of work; and college students must not be allowed to major in that most trivial of majors, Education. They should major/minor in the subjects they will eventually teach. That's common sense everywhere but the USA.

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(Bruce Deitrick Price's new book is "Saving K-12;" his education site is Improve-Education.org. You can support his work on Patreon.) © Bruce Deitrick Price

[kiryandil]

Friends don't let friends send their beloved children to the public school shooting galleries.

Friends help their friends home-school their precious children.

[kiryandil]

The main thing to know about ideologues, in addition to their ruthlessness, is that they are tireless. They never take a week off.

And when they DO take a week off - you're paying for that week as a taxpayer.

Just as you're paying them full-time to be a vicious ideologue...

[Kipp]

Another thing to change: Stop teaching to the lowest common denominator. This is essentially done so students won’t feel bad about not being in a top group. Most people find it acceptable to let the most athletic students play on varsity teams, but it’s not acceptable to let students who learn more quickly be in classes that progress at a faster pace.

[joshua c]

Stop with the central planning. Let the states and localities run things.

Abolish the Education Department. All they do is enforce the strings attached to the FED money. They are a LEFT policy enforcer. period.

[Teacher317]

My second ex-fiancee has been a professor at a smaller Division I university for 30+ years. I trust her when she says that the steady decline of the talents and abilities of virtually every incoming freshman class is more troubling than the one before. The current crop simply doesn’t want to work, is incapable of abstract thought, and seem to be stymied by the word “if” the days.

[outofsalt]

ping for later

[marktwain]

This is the result of Progressive ideology.

One of its main tenents is to take over education to indoctrinate children to become the citizenry it wants.

That involves educating them against God, against the Constitution, against the theory of Natural Law, against Capitalism, against limited government, and in favor of government control of all things.

It holds as a self evident truth that experts (educators) know better than everyone else how to educate children.

In fact, warring bands of educators are always looking for a new program to latch onto to make their name and fortune.

They can never admit to failure, or they give up their perks and status.

[humblegunner]

Q&A with Bruce Deitrick Price

So who are you to play the expert?

What makes you so much more knowledgeable than everyone else?

And why are you so needful of attention that you would post it here?

[Bonemaker]

“Stop with the central planning. Let the states and localities run things.

Abolish the Education Department. All they do is enforce the strings attached to the FED money. They are a LEFT policy enforcer. period.”

Precisely. My experience going through the public school system during the 50’s in both Iowa and Illinois was that they were pretty damn good! The only thing I can pin the decline on is the creation of the fed dept of ed. All downhill since. And more recently Bush’s gem “no child left behind” that he let Ted “the puke” Kennedy design hasn’t helped.

[TexasGator]

“That’s a reference to World War I when soldiers at the front were called “cannon fodder.”

It goes Bach much further than that.

[hanamizu]

Most people find it acceptable to let the most athletic students play on varsity teams, but it’s not acceptable to let students who learn more quickly be in classes that progress at a faster pace.

---

I found a similar reaction from both kids and parents when it came to ball practice and homework. All of the kids understood the point of and need for practice. Even if they didn’t like it, they’d do it so they could play basketball. Homework? Completely different. Why should they have to do school work after school? Why work more to get better at school?

[hanamizu]

Most people find it acceptable to let the most athletic students play on varsity teams, but it’s not acceptable to let students who learn more quickly be in classes that progress at a faster pace.

---

I found a similar reaction from both kids and parents when it came to ball practice and homework. All of the kids understood the point of and need for practice. Even if they didn’t like it, they’d do it so they could play basketball. Homework? Completely different. Why should they have to do school work after school? Why work more to get better at school?

[lurk]

The public school system is a Soviet relic. The teachers and admins are there not to excel or compete, but because the job positions exist. Innovation or inspiration are killed in the grinder of bureaucratic protocol, lawsuit aversion and equality. Those inside the system do not see the need for change, just the continuance of the system. See the inability to think for oneself in the various school offices and the deadness in their eyes.

[Sam Gamgee]

A Canadian perspective: I am a big social studies fan, but my wife is not, and will be teaching social studies soon. From speaking to her what I figured out is that teacher rely strongly, especially if they have few insights themselves, on source materials. In Canada, the majority, if not all of the textbooks and materials obviously take a liberal slant. Everyone ends up teaching the same leftist speak.

I recall a few big things we learned that were patently false or biased:

1) Wilson was a great President. Canadians love Wilson. After all he created the league of nations. None of us know he betrayed his promise to NOT get into WWI.

2) Franco was a tyrant fighting the legitimate republican forces. Patently false or simplified.

3) The Dark Ages have little to offer and gave us nothing of note. We now know so much more about the so called Dark Ages, and the glorious rise of Western Europe.

[Dick Bachert]

I believe it was Dr. Gary North who, years ago, coined a phrase to describe the activities of the Frankfurt and Fabian Socialists when he declared "When the socialists came to take over American, they sought to CAPTURE THE ROBES." The judiciary, the academics, the clergy and others who then (or in earlier times) wore ROPES or similar vestments as symbols of their authority or station.

While they went for journalism (adult opinion molders - and Columbia, where the Frankfurt School agents landed in1935 - was a major target) they went after what used to be called “Normal Schools”, the colleges and universities specializing in TEACHING THE TEACHERS. They were spectacularly successful as every TEACHER sent forth carrying the Marxist virus infected THOUSANDS of young people in a decades long career. Can you say "exponential growth"?

They were wildly successful and we have a generations long fight on our hands - if fight we will - to turn them back. And you have only to watch CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, etc. or read the NYT, WAPO, etc. to see the results in that arena.

Former FBI Agent (back when - putting aside a self-serving J. Edgar Hoover - the tops of such agencies had not yet been infiltrated with leftist traitors) Larry Grathwohl's 2 1/2 minute testimony concerning the destination these Cultural Marxists have in mind is here:

LARRY GRATHWOHL

[Bonemaker]

“They should major/minor in the subjects they will eventually teach. That’s common sense everywhere but the USA.”

My understanding is that no matter how educated or experienced you are in a paticular subject (especially stem types) you can’t get teacher certified unless you take required education courses...whatever the hell that is.

[elbook]

Leftists want dependent people. Its as simple as that.

“Destroy all institutions” is the first like in their ‘little red book’.

America needs to remove them from all positions of power to survive - like a body defecates poisons.

Denounce them

Boycott them

Tell them to their faces that they are evil.

[MichaelCorleone]

“Friends help their friends home-school their precious children.”

Well said.

[ml/nj]

Just spent four days with my 2nd grade granddaughter on trip to visit her great-grandmother. We got talking about school, and that I didn't really like it when I was her age. She does seem to like it. She asked me why I didn't like it, and I told her that they spent a lot of time talking about things I wasn't interested in like history. (Things have changed, to be sure, but probably not until I was in my mid-20s.) I don't think she really knew what history meant, but after a brief back and forth the first name she mentioned was ROSA PARKS.

OMG !!

I asked if she knew who George Washington was, and she asked me if I meant GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER. A little more discussion revealed that she did know that the George Washington the first President. I asked her about the second and third. She knew neither even though both of her parents are UVa alumni. (FTR, Mr. Jefferson founded the University of Virginia.)

[This granddaughter is not a dummy. She knows who Anna Netrebko is and can talk about several of her performances.]

ML/NJ