What Everyone Needs To Know About Education

RenewAmerica ^ | August 15, 2015 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

The most striking thing about our public schools is that they have been in perpetual decline for many decades. Why?

The government has its own tests called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP); these tests regularly suggest that two-thirds of fourth-graders and eighth-graders are "below proficient" in reading. That's what decline looks like. It's guaranteed those two-thirds will never be literate, as that term has been traditionally used. Some may learn to read in a painful struggling way, but they won't be reading a daily paper or curling up with a good book. And yet, a century ago, this country was said to be headed toward universal literacy.

A single anecdote can tell you more than years of statistics. College professors report that incoming freshmen often do not know, for example, what 7×8 is. This is totally fascinating. Ask yourself, could schools be this bad by accident? Or wouldn't somebody have to carefully organize the school to be this bad?

Another fascinating kind of evidence is a dozen books written from the 1950s to the present, with titles like So Little for the Mind; Educational Wastelands; Quackery in the Public Schools; Brainwashing in the High Schools; Why Johnny Can't Read; The New Illiterates; Ed School Follies; Dumbing Down Our Kids; The Conspiracy of Ignorance, and many others.

These books are basically reports from the front lines, provided by the country's smartest and most sensitive people. Always they write from the same perspective of stunned, what-the-hell amazement. How, they wail, could the people in charge do such a horrible job?

Everyone who studies public education comes to that question very quickly. Then you have to deal with the two most likely answers: our self-anointed experts are grossly incompetent; or they are grossly subversive.

If the decline weren't so pronounced, over so many years, you might want to argue that we should give these experts the benefit of the doubt. They've had some bad luck, they made some bad decisions, that's all. A relative of mine insists, "They mean well. They just can't get their act together." This attitude is precisely the one that our Education Establishment hopes you accept. Please don't.

Twenty years ago Charlotte Iserbyt, who once worked in the Reagan Administration, came up with this book title: The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America. When you first encounter this phrase and contemplate its implications, you are probably stunned. "Deliberate" implies conspiracy and Fabian termites (i.e., socialists) chewing away at the foundations.

Conspiracy is an unpleasant word, much like pedophilia when that scandal rocked the Catholic Church 30 years ago. People do not want to believe bad things about their authorities and their experts. But priests, in many cases, were in fact child molesters. Our Education Establishment, it seems to me, similarly works against the best interests of children. (Siegfried Engelmann coined the phrase "academic child abuse.")

Professor John Dewey laid out a scheme more than a century ago: take over the ed schools, brainwash the teachers, send them out to brainwash the kids, and thereby radically transform the society. This remains the primal mission today. The result is a secret agenda that deserves the word "conspiracy."

But how, you might be wondering, can they get away with it? They dumb down the country in plain sight...but nobody stops them??

Here is one sweet irony. The Left often speaks of their contempt for capitalists and ad agencies; these pests create appetites for things that nobody needs. I would counter that our Education Establishment has almost no skill aside from creating a market for educational theories and methods that are not only not needed, they are destructive. In order to keep all these gimmicks, as I would term them, in play, they have to keep the public perpetually befuddled. That is how they get away with it.

They have two principal techniques. First, they constantly change the names, the jargon, and the selling points. New Math, introduced in 1965 and quickly rejected by the country, was re-branded as Reform Math 15 years later and is now known as Common Core Math. Despite all the minor differences, the common intent seems to be to prevent children from mastering elementary arithmetic. Mastery, in fact, was specifically denounced by Reform curricula. That's why students in college don't know what 7×8 is.

The premier example of perverse marketing appears in the Reading Wars. You had Look-Say, Whole Word, Whole Language, Balanced Literacy, Dolch Words, Sight Words, and many other phrases. Surprise: they all mean the same thing, that is, phonics is no good. Instead, kids should memorize words as logos. This goofy idea creates the NAEP statistics mentioned in the second paragraph.

Another technique for befuddlement is to flood the nation's psyche with dozens of alibis and excuses: kids are texting and taking drugs; the Internet is distracting; there isn't enough money; teenagers are sex-crazed; parents don't care; and many more. The intent is to take attention from the real culprits and to wear everybody out. Look at the typical education article in the newspaper or on TV. You probably won't be able to discern what the article is trying to tell you or what you should do about it. Typically, our media report in great detail about surfaces.

These techniques – coordinated with great persistence – have been overwhelmingly successful. The average citizen understands nothing about education. Community leaders, the movers and shakers, the people who should be defending us against our home-grown barbarians are themselves as confused as the average mother of a first-grader. Nothing is solid. You don't know where to find the truth on any issue.

I've never met a doctor, lawyer, etc. who knew anything about education. Their kids go to private school, what do they care? Further, the Education Establishment concocts jargon that neutralizes thought. Test yourself. What exactly are Whole Language, Sight Words, Reform Math, and Constructivism?

If you don't know what they are and why they're bad, then there's no way to defend yourself against them (or against Common Core, which wraps those old scams in a shiny new package).

As I've watched the Obama administration, I've often thought that to really understand it, you have to study education. Similarly, to understand education in our country, you should watch Obama. The unifying theme is constant deceit and deception to ensure that people don't know what is being done to them.

I'm not particularly interested in grand educational visions, nor do I think we need them. I believe the answer to our dilemma is remarkably simple. Get back to what works. In a pinch, make a list of the best hundred private schools, pick a few at random and copy whatever they're doing. You'll be fine. Education ain't rocket science. Smart people who love knowledge will invariably create good schools.

You want rocket science? That's our Education Establishment keeping an entire society ignorant and befuddled. I think of these people as evil. But I never said they aren't smart.

© Bruce Deitrick Price

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

I know a lady that has been substituting in various elementary schools this year. Wanna know what goes on in the schools? Get your sub card and go see.

She speaks of subbing in 2nd grade classes where the kids don’t know the most basic facts such as their address or phone number (My kids knew their address and phone number before they went to Pre-K). They can neither add nor subtract, when they should be learning multiplication tables at that age. The can’t read a lick, and the teacher reads everything to them, including their tests. When they do poorly on a test they are allowed to correct their mistakes until everyone has 100. She happened to be there when report cards were given out in this class - surprisingly all of these dullards are pulling A’s and B’s.

How can kids be expected to learn if they are not required to read? These kids are set up for failure later on in school because they are not being taught the fundamentals in the lower grades. And their parents likely think they are doing great because their grades are good.

[Calm_Cool_and_Elected]

Phonics and reading were the reasons I began looking into homeschooling my children. I taught my kids to read and never looked back.

Public schools teach to the test and they still can’t pass them.

[proxy_user]

But, nevertheless, a surprising number of people turn out to be very sharp, and make a very good living by fooling all the dummies.

[shanover]

Textbooks have already been written stating President Trump is insane and illegitimate.

[nicollo]

When I took over as Dept. Chair for high school history department, I reached out to the History chairs at the colleges and universities to which my high school typically sent kids to ask what skills/ knowledge sets incoming students lacked, especially in U.S. History.

Universally, those professors told me that incoming students just didn’t know enough historical facts, including basic things like the dates of the Civil War or names of presidents in different periods.

High school teachers pride themselves on teaching kids to think, but they forget that underlying knowledge is requisite for higher level thought.

[ClearCase_guy]

High school teachers pride themselves on teaching kids to think, but they forget that underlying knowledge is requisite for higher level thought.

Your basic point is spot on. I'll just quibble with the first part -- I think a lot of teachers are not at all interested in teaching students to think; they want to teach students which opinions the students ought to hold.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

... incoming freshmen often do not know, for example, what 7×8 is.

Why should they need to know the dimensions of a sheet of plywood?

[KC_for_Freedom]

Yes, the concept of teaching reasoning skills is given lip service and some students figure this out on their own but the schools do not go out of their way to teach concepts as important as thinking. The students are quickly satisfied if the kids grasp the politics of the left. Extra points if you go to a democrat candidate rally, super extra points if you hold a sign.

[KC_for_Freedom]

Yes, the concept of teaching reasoning skills is given lip service and some students figure this out on their own but the schools do not go out of their way to teach concepts as important as thinking. The students are quickly satisfied if the kids grasp the politics of the left. Extra points if you go to a democrat candidate rally, super extra points if you hold a sign.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

...basic things like the dates of the Civil War

From what I've read, most high school kids cannot tell you the CENTURY of the Civil War.

[nathanbedford]

Here are my views, similar to yours, written in April, 2016:

Five years after I graduated from high school in 1960 the immigration policy in America was radically altered by the Hart-Cellar immigration act of 1965 which opened the floodgates to immigrants which utterly altered the character and culture of the United States. Succeeding "reforms" notably done to us by Teddy Kennedy in 1985 accelerated the process changing not only our culture but our color. Not incidentally, alteration and increases in legal immigration were accompanied by accelerating increases in the count of illegal immigrants. All of these millions and millions of immigrant children were inserted into our education system.

Of equal importance to the nature the educational experience in America was a new demographic element initiated in 1954 by the decision of the Supreme Court in Board of Education vs. Topeka Kansas requiring the integration of American schools, "with all deliberate speed." Over the course of the ensuing decades the educational system took on black children with very mixed results and much resistance from white suburban parents in places like Boston.

If the Supreme Court's decision represented a fulfillment of the promise of the Declaration of Independence and an overdue reaffirmation of the goals of the Civil War, it also brought with it a leftist mentality associated with the civil rights movement which regarded merit as a code word or dog whistle for discrimination. This was true in hiring for employment and, of course, true for education. If the left seeks "equality" in income, housing, employment, union benefits, and regards merit as the enemy of that goal, it will naturally oppose a merit-based system in education.

If discrimination based on merit in any statistical respect parallels discrimination associated with skin color or national origin, the left will oppose it even though no causal connection can be demonstrated. We see the same phenomenon today in the oversight of local police forces by our leftist Attorneys General.

We have seen from K through postgraduate university levels the phenomenon of grade inflation. We have seen our undergraduate colleges resort to remedial tutoring because the high schools have failed to produce literate candidates for college. Our high schools are passing failing children on to the next level in order to secure federal monies. Inflation is not limited, unfortunately, to grading but extends to tuition costs as the interference by the federal and state governments has inevitably detached our universities from a system of supply and demand and turned them into subsidized industries like solar power. Not surprisingly, the process has politicized our educational system even as it has debased it.

John Dewey and The Frankfurt School have succeeded in taking the American educational system hostage to their worldview which requires equality and abhors merit. This process is inherent in the soul of an educator but it has been accelerated by politics and the politics of immigration and integration. The aphorism, culture trumps politics, is true and tells us that the remedy for a failed educational system comes from a culture but it is the job of of education to shape that culture.

Therein lies our dilemma.

[northislander]

Keeping up on the K-12 lobotomy?

[Yaelle]

I’m in a crunchy granola 1st grade class 2-3x a week. This school is big on whole child and not shoving the kids into academics too soon. But guess what? Slow as they are with the stuffing the kid full of info, not a single worksheet in sight, those little cuties are all learning to read and doing VERY WELL. They are happy and proud of their new abilities and they are counting and doing arithmetic as well. I’m not worried about these kids, but indeed they have good teachers and parents who care.

We should be worried about all the kids who came to this world accidentally when their parents briefly met and messed up, who are daycare-housed in schools, and don’t have either teachers or parents who are able to give a damn.

[metmom]

That’s not unusual from what I hear.

I hear the same things from what are supposed to be good schools, IOW, not inner city hell holes, but small town America, family values, small school districts.

[metmom]

ANOTHER REASON TO HOMESCHOOL

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[metmom]

LOL!!!

[metmom]

Let me guess.....

They come from families with parents who care.

Right?

[FrdmLvr]

An American classroom not immersed in common core? It sounds like you’re talking about a homeschool or private/parochial school not taking federal funding.

[FrdmLvr]

An American classroom not immersed in common core? It sounds like you’re talking about a homeschool or private/parochial school not taking federal funding.