The reason for Public Schooling...
Posted on 09/26/2015 3:27:13 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
The traditional view is simply stated: the purpose of public education is to take each child as far as each child can be taken. Who can disagree with that?
If a school is aiming for less, that school would seem to me to be guilty of malpractice or false advertising. Doesn’t the word “education” imply a striving for excellence? At the end of each school year, children are presumed to know more than at the start. Isn’t that a reasonable presumption?
Somewhat bizarrely, given what’s going on in our public schools, the Education Establishment might claim they agree. Oh yes, of course, that’s exactly what we want to do.
But that’s not what they have been doing for a long time.
H. L Mencken famously proclaimed: “Th[e] erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.” And that was in 1924!
Mencken describes what he had concluded is the real “aim of public education.” It’s low and ignoble, which brings us to the eternal question: is all the failure in our schools happening by incompetence or intent? One has to suspect intent because, starting around 1905, John Dewey and his progressives laid out a blueprint for dumbing down the schools as a way to turn the US into a socialist country.
A recent book called “Credentialed to Destroy” argues that this dumbing down is not just a conspiracy, but a conspiracy organized in much greater detail than most people could imagine. Robin Eubanks, the author and a lawyer, argues that all “reforms” and all agencies have the same goal: creating a passive citizenry.
The basic strategy is to remove facts and knowledge from the classroom, using whatever pretext is handy. The point is to keep the kids engaged in empty discussions, empty projects, empty testing. At the end of each school year, astonishingly enough, many students know hardly more than at the beginning of the school year.
Samuel Blumenfeld, in a book published just before his death earlier this year, concluded: “K-12 education is a criminal enterprise from top to bottom.”
I believe everyone should be fighting back. How?
First, teach a lot more facts. Start in K and teach the things that all citizens need to know. Surely every child can learn one new fact each day. But if schools are at all serious, they can easily teach a new fact each hour. Then we would have a reformation.
Second, understand how our phony educators accomplish so little. Here is a quick explanation of the top 10 worst ideas in the schools. When you understand the gimmicks, you can fight the gimmicks.
My impression is that there are three groups of victims in our public schools: children, parents, and teachers. To help one group of victims, you have to help all three.
As long as the children are taught with silly methods, the parents will be frustrated because they cannot help. Children will be frustrated because they are not learning and they know that. Meanwhile, teachers have to sense that much more could be accomplished if only they were allowed to use the optimal methods.
QED: don’t give the Education Establishment any more money or power. Roll back Common Core. Reclaim the educational high ground that has been given up to make room for a galaxy of gimmicks.
The correct formula is used in every serious school. First, you teach the basics, that is, reading, writing, and arithmetic. Then you teach as much factual information as children can reasonably absorb about geography, history, science, the arts, etc. Then you teach children to think shrewdly about this information. That’s real critical thinking, when you can compare and contrast one fact against another.
Here are two facts to compare and contrast. So-called progressives have been in charge of our public schools for a hundred years. We have had a perpetual decline in those public schools. What conclusions can you draw?
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Bruce Deitrick Price’s ed site is Improve-Education.org.
The next to the last paragraph pretty well covers what schools should be about.
How we save schools from a liberal and political agenda is what baffles me. Not everyone can afford private school or to home teach. But the public schools are supported by tax dollars and should teach what they are intended to. Not propaganda.
How about the intentional hiring of the incompetent?
No instructions needed - just tell the teachers and administrators to go out there and be themselves.
Public schools are designed to provide a basic education necessary to operate machinery in the local mills and factories.
Guess what?
There are NO local mills and factories any more. The education of the modern jobs can’t be done by the teachers we have. Nor, is every person “capable” of learning and applying that education.
Simpler solution: shut the government schools down. Education is too important to be left to the state.
Today’s publik skewls are designed to produce Facebook and Twitter warriors with no critical thinking skills who are completely interchangeable with any of the characters in the movie Idiocracy.
Nope. It’s to provide a government jobs program for otherwise unemployable deadheads.
The dirty secret of government schools is that parents use them as “free” daycare. Its a welfare entitlement, just not means tested.
Call it what it is: Aid to Families with Dependent Parents.
Perhaps today that is the case. And I despise the people that have co-opted our children.
But I don’t think that started out to be the case. It started out (as most things do) to be a good thing. So we wouldn’t be a nation of illiterates.
I have never understood why so many people say that kids need preschool to teach them the things that they need for elementary school. If a parent can’t teach a three or four year old their alphabet and numbers then they need someone to take care of them.
See my post #11.
It was not intended to be that way in the beginning.
Another program horribly abused and gone wrong.
“No instructions needed - just tell the teachers and administrators to go out there and be themselves. “
Hey, don’t knock it. It was good
enough to get Obama a Nobel prize.
only vouchers can remedy the abomination of government schools
They were designed for that; at this point they are designed to simply transfer wealth through the teachers’ unions to the Democratic Party. If your children aren’t in “honors classes” (newspeak for the only classes where any learning takes place - about on par with regular classes thirty years ago), then they aren’t getting any education at all. My children have foreign math & science teachers because there are no American teachers that know those subjects (they prefer easier material that has less-obvious performance metrics), and the American teachers will offer increases in grades for cans of food brought in for food drives.
Great post. Thanks.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism…
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture—education…
http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm
That certainly seems to be the point in urban districts (where free breakfast is provided in addition to free lunch); the state regards the homes of those children as the most damaging place they could be (and in most cases I’d agree; years ago children would have been rightfully seized from those homes where they were bred only for benefits, with no parenting going on at all). Outside of those districts, the children simply don’t spend enough time in school (180-182 days here in NJ, and kindergarten isn’t required), and whatever mush they are trying to insert in the students doesn’t take. I suspect Prussian teachers worked much longer hours than our part-timers today (and were quickly replaced if they were ineffective).
That’s very interesting.
I wasn’t alive in the 1800’s (although my body often feels like it was, lol) but I will say that when I was in school it was all about learning the basics. There were no politics involved...as far as indoctrination goes. I read a different sentiment into Dewey’s statement. A teacher absolutely has the power to set social order. Correct behavior and aspiring to excellence.
That has changed in the present world. Much to do with personal agendas and much to do with politics and the insane laws they deal with.
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