Posted on 10/30/2019 9:34:29 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
The whole point of American education was preparing people to pursue their interests, and their version of the American Dream. This blueprint has faded. Many kids today don't learn enough to have vivid, inspiring dreams, nor do they master abilities needed to fulfill dreams if they had any.
Jimmy Kimmel sent a crew to the street with a map of the world and the challenge, "Point to a country and name it." Many people could not name even one country, even though the USA was in the middle of this map. At Notre Dame, Professor Patrick Deneen concluded that many students were "know-nothings." He realized with a shock that a lot of them didn't know who won the Civil War. Less educated than that is hard to imagine.
What, in the age of Ignorance, is reality like for most people? A sort of sleepy gray fog you drift through? Are is it like the exploding world in the movie Inception, hyperactive and vivid but incomprehensible? Either way, how do you make smart plans in a world where there's so little coherence? Lots of people give up trying. That seems to be the new normal in K-12 education.
Public schools, years ago, had a clear mandate to ensure that kids learn basic skills and foundational knowledge. Reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, and science, that's what you need to start. News flash from the education wars. American students today don't learn much reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, and science. Apparently our Education Establishment has walked off the job. Why?
If candid, they would tell you they had a bigger job, a higher calling. Their new responsibility is to create a different country and new kinds of citizens; and they can accomplish all that by reinventing the schools. The formula now is simply stated. Teach as little as possible. Indoctrinate as much as possible.
Our education officials are obsessed with propaganda but indifferent to knowledge. This inversion is killing us.
For one small example, if teenagers don't know where Japan or China is, not even within a thousand miles, what sort of conversation can they have about current events, modern history, new movies from the Far East, weird weather in the Pacific, economic upheaval, and threats of war?
Once upon a time, people learned enough to think for themselves. Doesn't that sound quaint? There seems to be more going on than ever before in history; but people understand less. How can they think for themselves? They don't know much.
According to our Education Establishment, there are new rules. You don't need to learn facts because they are all on Google, and because everything in the digital world is fast-changing and ever-new, so why bother?
Meanwhile, in the absence of any commitment to the learning of academic content, schools offer a smorgasbord of fluff. Instead of History and Science, students will learn Collaboration and Creativity. What we have is amnesia by design. People know so little, it’s just a faint background noise.
YouTube has dozens of videos extolling the wonders of 21st Century Education. Kids today are said to need heavy doses of: Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, Innovation, plus the such 21st Century concerns as Interdisciplinary Themes, Global Awareness, Financial Lliteracy, Civic Literacy, Health Lliteracy, Global Literacy, plus Life and Career Skills, and Higher Order Thinking; and invariably a complex project where third-graders solve a problem that local experts cannot handle.
Truth is, Progressives always loved scenarios where children pretend to be engineers, scientists, inventories, government officials, and so on. What valid information do children take away from these make-believe worlds? Wouldn't it be more constructive if children learn something real, historical, or factual? But then, you see, students would be acquiring knowledge. And that's not helpful.
The country needs to stage an innovation on itself. Our public schools are the equivalent of an overweight alcoholic who cannot do a push-up. What do you tell people like that? Stop drinking so much, don't eat so much, start exercising. Let's return to vistas that work. Facts are fun, knowledge is power.
Grappling with reality should be education's main focus. What is real, what is true, aren't these the big questions? Look at what our Education Establishment does to kids in public school. They know very little about the world. They can hardly do basic arithmetic without a calculator. They can hardly read a real newspaper.
Consider our roots, Rome, Greece, European Renaissance, the flowering of sciences, and then tapping into knowledge from around the world. This is the mother lode. Isn't it curious that our Education Establishment is so fixated on ignoring what came before? Professor Deneen speaks of our schools deliberately producing amnesia.
What about solipsism? So much of what children learn today ultimately refers back to themselves. If they never grapple with reality, they retreat into the unreality called solipsism. It's a kind of mental illness. The cure is learning about the world that was there before you were born, will be there after you die, and is there now if you will but look.
That is the great sin of our Progressive educators. They encourage children to focus on the ephemeral and to remain permanently childish.
Never forget that none of these developments is accidental or inevitable. Progressive educators want to take over the country. The first step is to make everyone else is ignorant. And so the public schools flail and fail.
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Bruce Deitrick Price's new book is “Saving K-12"
Communist infiltration... Pure and simple..
Certain groups being ingrained with the idea that studying and getting good grades is a “white thing”.
I suppose I should have read all the comments before making mine.. :)
We took God out of schools and put fools in.
What could possibly go wrong.
You were obviously a threat to the administration - successfully teaching children and having the audacity to suggest real-world, common sense solutions to issues.
I am so happy that my daughter never set foot in a public school. She was either homeschool or attended a Christian school. Though it was expensive and we had to sacrifice quite a bit, it was worth it. She is now in college and doing quite well. She was rooted and grounded in God’s word and is holding her own.
It is amazing that in the state where I live, Missouri, spends nearly $12-$14,000 a year for each public school student, which could allow a student to go to a private school where they could get a far greater education. The public schools results have been abysmal. The St. Louis Public schools washed their accreditation for nearly 10 years and only recently got it back. What a joke.
College graduates who can’t read? Etc. Scary.
Can you give us any examples or specifics?
Not without naming names. I’m a millennial and I spend a good deal of time at colleges in PA, so I interact with college students almost every day. It is not unusual to be handed something in print and asked, “What does this say?” I’m asked to ghost write papers, too.
Talk current events? All they know is entertainment and sports, plus of course Trump=bad.
“Public” schools are run by the government. Any other explanation for their failure is either just the details, or wrong.
Thanks for your suggestions.
I have lousy typing skills and am very dependent on my dictation software. And when you have said “our,” your brain tends to read “our” even if the machine has printed “are.”
Dragon Dictate was a wonderful app. Enhanced Dictation on Mohave has problems.
Can public schools be saved, that’s probably the main thing people want to argue about. As if we could just instantly change the whole society. We can’t even persuade the educrats to teach grammar and proper spelling.
I’m probably too practical for big visions. I want to focus on what I can do this year. I feel that if enough people learn what’s really going on in public education, they’ll be angry and want to be more involved in fixing the schools.
I was sent through that public ed system and it was... harrowing (and soul-destroying). And that was several decades back. The entire public education system needs to be scrapped. They turn out either criminals ready for prison, or SJW’s ready to turn us into North Korea. Most of these teachers today have absolutely zero business being around ANY children.
You are doing important work. Please keep at it.
In my state, I am encouraged by the growth of charters and each year the legislature increases its funding of vouchers.
K-12: What explains our failing, flailing public schools?
GOVERNMENT
Yes, indeed.
My best review. Thanks.
We both care about the children and the future of our nation.
Parents need to be informed about the corrosive education practices in the schools ( your emphasis) before there is the political will to create escape hatches ( vouchers, charters, tax credits, and homeschooling).
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