Posted on 05/24/2016 8:20:18 AM PDT by Kaslin
For far too many years we’ve tried to address the problem of failing educational achievement in America essentially by ignoring it. And by ignoring it, I mean, throwing money at it and hoping it’ll go away. But yet those problems persist. To wit, in the past year, for the first time in U.S. history, the majority of U.S. public school students fall into the category of the economically impoverished. This, despite the fact that spending per pupil in most American school districts is at an all-time high. There’s a gross disconnect here that no one’s talking about, and no one really wants to address.
The challenges with American public education came home to me as I watched my own niece struggling in school. She lives in a rural county of South Carolina that has one of the state’s lowest performing school systems. The usual culprits were to blame; ridiculously large class sizes, and frequent learning disruption by behaviorally challenged students that took away valuable learning time. The schools, despite having adequate funding, were nonetheless poorly managed and under-resourced. It got to the point that my sister and I were desperate to find a better option for my niece.
After several years of struggling against the educational system to no avail, we decided to take matters into our own hands. Fortunately our family had the resources to enroll my niece in educational enrichment programs, to take time with her to make sure she completed her assignments, to find appropriate private tutors – and ultimately to move her into a better school. She is now thriving, and performing above her grade level in all her subjects. My niece is a success story, but those left behind in the failing schools are sadly condemned to an uncertain fate.
So let’s get down to brass tacks. What exactly should we expect of our educational system? What should we not expect? That is quite difficult to answer effectively because most public schools cannot control the quality of students that attend. They have to take whoever shows up and deal with it the best they can. So, increasingly, schools have become an extension of the welfare state. They are expected to feed students who come from impoverished homes. They have to deal with the socio-economic problems that students bring with them – and often find themselves in the position of being behavioral counselors, mental health professionals, and babysitters. A smaller and smaller portion of each school day is spent actually focusing on learning.
And what about the quality of education itself; should schools be primarily focusing on ‘liberal arts’ education, or the hard sciences? We live in a country in which less than half the engineers and scientist were educated in America, and even fewer of those scientist who were born in America are products of the public education system. Companies like Apple and Microsoft are begging the government to expand the H1-B Visa program and similar measures to permit more foreign-trained engineers and scientists to enter the country and stay after they have completed college here. The U.S. continues to fall further and further behind other leading nations in math and the hard sciences.
The answer is clear – we need fewer African and hyphenated American studies majors, and more computer science majors. But our educational system is woefully underprepared to produce students with the requisite math and science skills, the critical thinking skills, to compete in college level engineering and science courses.
Here’s where the gap gets really bad. Students are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars and coming out of school saddled with debt – only to be found working as baristas at Starbucks.
Of course they’ll have a dog-eared copy of Proust or Jane Austen to read during their coffee breaks – at least they can afford those working at a coffee shop – but compete in the global economy, they cannot. There is an unspoken debt crisis among young people who’ve barely lived, haven’t started families or even bought their first home – but are armed with a degree in ‘Feminist Studies.’ They’re in debt to the tune of over $1.2 trillion with nothing to show for it.
What is the solution to this pernicious dilemma? Not the knee-jerk response - ‘throw some money at it.’ This is not a problem that can be solved by money alone. Throwing money at the current educational system will merely add fuel to the flames. What we need is a leaner, meaner, more results-focused educational system. The federal government should get entirely out of funding education that is not related to productive vocations. If colleges want to school their students in the liberal arts, if they think those degrees are so valuable, they should pony up the money themselves. But the government is doing students a grave disservice by putting them into deep debt for education that will not earn a return on the investment of time or money.
Secondly, at the elementary and secondary school levels, kids with demonstrated behavioral problems need to be quickly extracted from learning environments where they interrupt and prevent other students from learning. Parents may not like being told their child is a cancer on the classroom – but that’s what it is. The responsibility for bringing a student to school who knows how to behave must be squarely placed on the parents. Doing this is sure to get their attention – and cause them to become more attentive to their child’s emotional health.
We do not have the luxury of raising another generation of failing children. It’s not being ‘nice’ to them to engage in social promotion only to arrive in the workforce unable compete for well-paying jobs. We have to prioritize effectively, root out the bad apples, and focus our educational resources on developing critical science and engineering skills that will move our nation forward.
At the end of course, their grades are based on what they have done on their exams. It is up to the student if they pass or fail.
To solve the education problem we need to get rid of teachers with degrees in education. Make every teacher have a real academic degree.
The fact that you already provide study sessions shows you are a step above.
There are many problems with higher education in this country.
I think the first step to fix these problems is to hold the professors accountable for their work. I know of no other business (and it is a business) where the customers are blamed for receiving a shoddy product. The students are customers. If a professor is incapable of teaching a student (who has met the prerequisites) than the professor should not take the money from the student.
Again, I commend you on your efforts and I wish you well.
This from the 1987 book “The Closing of the American Mind”, by Allan Bloom
From the Introduction starting on page 25;
“There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every
student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is
relative. If this belief is put to the test, one can count on the students’
reaction: they will be uncomprehending. That anyone should regard the
proposition as not self-evident astonishes them, as though he were calling
into question 2 + 2 = 4 . These are things you don’t think about. The
students’ backgrounds are as various as America can provide. Some are
religious, some atheists; some are to the Left, some to the Right; some
intend to be scientists, some humanists or professionals or businessmen;
some are poor, some rich. They are unified only in their relativism and
in their allegiance to equality. And the two are related in a moral intention.
The relativity of truth is not a theoretical insight but a moral
postulate, the condition of a free society, or so they see it. They have all
been equipped with this framework early on, and it is the modern replacement
for the inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional
American grounds for a free society.”
Snip
“The danger they have been taught to fear from
absolutism is not error but intolerance. Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is the virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education
for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating. Openness—
and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of
various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings
—is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger.
The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad
in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars,
persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism. The point is
not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think
you are right at all.”
snip.
There’s so much more.
You can download the entire Book (PDF) here;
We have taught our students and now these parents are teaching their kids about the new virtues to live by.
Openness, So-called Tolerance, Truth is subjective, Relativism in all its forms, Being Non-Judgmental and the list goes on and on.
The Left/Progressives of today, whether they know it or not, promote willful ignorance and uncertainty as a virtue. After all, to be certain about something is a truth claim and is judgemental and should not be advanced ahead of any other truth claim.
Our educational system has been indoctrinating our kids for over 70 years and I believe we have reached the tipping point. Our American culture has been lost. Our Media, Businesses, Public and Private Institutions, Government entities both Federal, State and Local have bought into this insanity to such an extent that they don’t even know any difference. It’s not like they are making a reasoned and thoughtful decision about which position to take on any given issue. It has become their worldview, the foundations of their belief system.
And now we have this insanity being forced upon us by our own government with laws, regulations, threats and fines for non-compliance. Forced upon both individuals and businesses with political correctness and well organized boycotts.
But, I will say it again. They don’t know what they are doing. They don’t know anything else. They advance this worldview without any critical thought. They are on auto-pilot and they have reached critical mass.
Ever thought that Conservatives and Liberals live in two different realities?
See above.
Ever wonder why Liberals seem to be completely immune to their own hypocrisy?
See above.
Ever thought that Liberals and Logic don’t seem to go together?
See above.
Do you recall the axiom”: (I first read here on FreeRepublic, BTW)
“Conservatives hate it when you lie to them, Liberals hate it when you tell the truth”
See above.
“Way more than 1/2 of American students are below average.....”
That’s a math joke, isn’t it? Math makes my head hurt.
“Way too many teachers are the kids who loved being in school and entered the profession so they could stay in a Peter Pan world.”
That’s the money comment right there. Well done sir.
That has very much been my observation since high school. Putting my daughter through school only reinforced the notion.
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