Issues Blocking Our View of Proper K-12 Education

In this time when everything about K-12 education is up in the air and up for grabs, we should consider that the default educational context in the period before 1880 was one room schools controlled by working parents and local boards, which rewarded diligence and merit in the educational enterprise, was oriented toward biblical and civic literacy, and inculcated high regard for the Christian acceptance of the classics and good, modest literature (the good vs. the great books) among children of families of modest means, children who had time-limitations on their school career because of the need to go to work early.

Developments which cloud our vision of that, to us idyllic time, admittedly subject to "the good-old-days syndrome", the time with a proper educational hierarchical order, include the following issues which we have trouble seeing beyond. This is a list of descending chronology, in which the older issues are of greater importance.

Consideration of a bullet list of the historical architects of failure can help homeschoolers now to sidestep the futile outreach of the school hierarchy.

Ideology From the Ivory Tower Down to the Normal Schools. Intellectuals spin etherial theories about how the little people must live, but don’t pick up the tab. John Dewey destroyed primary 1-6 education between 1920 and 1940, from Columbia Teacher’s College for “trainers of trainers”, to mis-educate generations of teachers at Normal Schools across America, effectively jettisoning of the Western civilization legacy of Good and Great Books from America’s schools across the board.

By the first quarter of the 20th century, broad public awareness of socialist mis-educators' destructive plans caused them to veil their actual intentions in smuggled phrases like "democracy" and "progressivism".

At the beginning of the 20th century, education was subjected to the broad action of monopolization of all institutions, cartelizing the educational enterprise that had been the natural domain of families and local towns.

Instead of senior students of the One Room School assuming Headmaster and Headmistress roles at the local level, Teachers must be mass-processed through Normal Schools (Horace Mann). Mega High Schools with thousands of anonymous students must replace the intimate, home and local educational enterprise. School Districts must be combined into larger and larger districts, so that the NEA could dictate Federal Educational policy.

The Crusade Against Knowledge and Memorization

This is a tragic story but with some comic overtones. Starting more than a century ago, this country’s Education Establishment embarked on a schizophrenic quest to praise and promote education while making sure that not much of it occurred.

I said schizophrenic but you might prefer the words disingenuous, hypocritical, deceitful, double-dealing, unscrupulous, mendacious, shifty, or perfidious.

As a practical matter, educators couldn’t very well announce that they wanted students to possess as little knowledge as possible, with only enough reading and writing to be workers or serfs. Some subtlety was required, and some misdirection.

So educators did not praise ignorance. Instead, they praised policies and attitudes that would invariably lead to ignorance. Ingenious, huh? One might say diabolical.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Dumbing-down was certainly not on any citizen’s Wish List. If we got dumbing-down, that has to be because our top educators decided among themselves that dumber was what they desired America to be. And why would they decide that? For ideological reasons. Then, as now, the “enlightened” people tended to be socialists.

In schools, this tendency favored cooperative children, minimal competition, and as much leveling as could be managed. Our educators were concerned with creating peas in a pod.

All the things traditionally esteemed in education became irrelevant, even a nuisance.

Have I exaggerated? Not at all. This crusade against knowledge, this campaign against memory, this devotion to ignorance, can be told via endless quotes from the top minds in the field of education.

When reading these quotes, imagine you are a teacher. Imagine these injunctions come down to you from Teachers College or your state superintendent. You can probably imagine the damaging changes you would have to make to conform. (There are 8 quotes; skip ahead if you are already familiar with them.)

In 1897 John Dewey wrote: “The true center of correlation on the school subjects is not science, not literature, nor history, nor geography, but the child’s own social activity.” In 1899 he added: “The mere absorbing of facts and truths is so exclusively individual an affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat.” So there go facts, truths, and learning.

In 1911 Professor Stanley Hall made the case for illiteracy: “The knowledge which illiterates acquire is probably a much larger proportion of it practical. Moreover, they escape much eyestrain and mental excitement, and, other things being equal, are probably more active and less sedentary. It is possible, despite the stigma our bepedagogued age puts upon this disability, for those who are under it not only to lead a useful, happy, virtuous life, but to be really well educated in many other ways.”

In 1929 Edward Thorndike and Arthur Gates, in their textbook about education, zeroed in on the real problems: “Artificial exercises, like drills on phonetics, multiplication tables, and formal writing movements are used to a wasteful degree. Subjects such as arithmetic, language and history include content that is intrinsically of little value.”

In 1936 the NEA Journal summed up the guiding philosophy: "Let us not think...in terms of specific facts or skills [that children acquire] but rather in terms of growing."

In 1942 three education professors wrote “Adventures in American Education,” which describes a curriculum under which seventh-grade pupils would devote six weeks to “orientation to school” and 30 weeks to “home and family life.” There is a section on the care of clothing, on jobs, on relationships with parents, brothers and sisters, but no references to reading, writing, or arithmetic.

Professor William H. Kilpatrick, who has been hailed as the “Grand Master” of the cult, tended to lump mathematics with Latin and physics, and concluded at about this time, “There is little practical value to warrant the time spent on them.” What Kilpatrick could write purple prose about was practical stuff, which he called “real needs.” Filling out forms, learning to drive, and decorating a house in the suburbs. That’s real!

About 1950 educator Wilbur Yauch wrote: “More than 90% of the arithmetic...taught at the typical old-style schools has no future practical value to the average child...[T]he emphasis in these [new] schools is on problems that are down to earth, such as accounting for the school lunch money.”

In 1951 A. H. Lauchner, principal of a junior high school, famously said: “Through the years, we've built a sort of halo around reading, writing, and arithmetic. We've said they were for everybody....When we come to the realization that not every child has to read, figure and spell...then we shall be on the road to improving the junior high curriculum.”

"Things have gotten so bad with prospective teachers not being able to pass the PRAXIS that their is no ongoing considerations being made to ‘make it easier’ for prospective teachers to PASS the PRAXIS cause nearly half of them utterly struggle to pass it. "

I had several careers over the years and ended up teaching high school biology and chemistry for seven years. I retired this summer. I support what you say. Among my teaching colleagues were many teachers who wrote abysmally and had little comprehension of math. Typically our older teachers had good literacy and reasoning ability. Many of the younger ones were clearly products of a lax system of instruction and certification. They used all the proper progressive buzzwords, did lots of group projects and used plenty of technology in the classroom. Unfortunately, they also wrote in fractured English and conveyed incorrect information to their students. It is a very deep-seated problem in our educational system.

I found high school students weak in basic skills. Except for the very best students in the school, they struggled to understand textbooks, and lacked understanding of even basic arithmetic. I taught a lot of 15-16 year old students who could not figure out practical applications of division or calculate percentages. In talking to 'old timers' in education, most linked the widespread weakness in literacy to mobile devices. They experienced rapid declines in student literacy about the time cell phones and tablets became widely available to young people. Few students read books now. Book reading involves greater concentration and engagement than much of what they read on their devices. As they spend more time on social media, flitting from message to message, their immersion in complex writing and challenging vocabulary is reduced. Technology brings change - some good, some not. Teachers are told throughout the school year that kids have changed since we were in school and that we have to change our methods to engage them. That means making school fun and doing lots of team projects and using a lot of technology. Having students listen to a lecture, take notes, and be individually accountable is pretty much considered 'dinosaur teaching'.

I concur, as well, with what you have indicated. I spent years teaching uni. students from Freshmen to Seniors. So many observational conclusions I could tell here, but yeah, one thing I noticed/observed is that many of my Freshmen students could scarcely put a proper academic paragraph together, many lacked adequate studying skills, most failed at rational objective thinking and reasoning, and even lacked the ability to read and then comprehend what they read. I have literally witnessed, year after year, Senior level uni students GRADUATE and still lack those writing, reading and comprehension skills.

After 12 years of watching and experiencing higher education literally become just another failed mechanism like the K12 system, I knew it was time for me to leave and move on. I loved teaching and working with students, but when the system is too busy indoctrinating them and sucking every last dollar out of their souls, so to speak, I realized that both the K12 and uni/college higher education had/have become nothing more than an ideological libtard assembly line that I could no longer tolerate. Imagine a system that is creating our future leaders .... who for the most part, are themselves ill-prepared to face the real world and the host of real life situations and problems. I could go on and on, but will not. So frakin’ frustration, but yeah, we are currently reaping what we have sown, how sad and unfortunate.

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