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I came across a very old "Time" magazine, from sometime in the 1940's & there was an interesting article about a noticable decline in the quality of American education. That was long before most of the government polcies promoting a decline in the family.

The industrial revolution & the rise of union power changed our education system. Society needed greater numbers of semi-educated sheep to fill jobs & at the same time a way had to be found to keep the job market regulated, so the flow of applicants into job openings met demand, while at the same time, keeping "unemployement" numbers low.

The answer was *mandatory* education AND a set age of "graduation" around the age 18. Gone were any of the old motivations of learning, including a natural desire to know more things. Line up class. Remain silent & raise your hand until you are called on by the teacher... Leaders arose *despite* the education system created, not because of it.

Think of some of the greatest minds in American history. Many did not do very well in the education system. Their inate hunger & drive took them to the top of their fields. Many also had crummy home lives.

We kill drive by making education *required* & boring. The bright are held back, cuz we instruct down to the lowest common denominator. One of the best ways to learn is by teaching, so eliminating something that made single room school house learning great also cost us.

I'm very radical about education. The "cure" IMO would be the creation of mixed age classes made up of kids with similar IQ's.

Yes, but just look at wonderful basketball players that are produced, not to mention the 14 yr. old mothers.

Fascinating.

The bright are held back, cuz we instruct down to the lowest common denominator.

Not always--individual teachers can make a difference. My high school American History teacher caught me reading a novel during class and made me stay after school, at which time I explained to him that I was able to read at a very high speed and I'd read the entirety of the textbook during the first week of the semester. It ended up with him allowing me to use the class as a free reading period as long as I continued to get A's on the tests. And I did.

Years later I was trying to get accepted into some competitve University of Michigan program that I wasn't quite qualified for, and at the meeting where I was to present my case, that same high school teacher showed up out of the blue and vouched for me. I have no idea how he ever found out what I was doing.

That was in the 60s, though.

I came across a very old "Time" magazine, from sometime in the 1940's & there was an interesting article about a noticable decline in the quality of American education. That was long before most of the government polcies promoting a decline in the family. The industrial revolution & the rise of union power changed our education system. Society needed greater numbers of semi-educated sheep to fill jobs & at the same time a way had to be found to keep the job market regulated, so the flow of applicants into job openings met demand, while at the same time, keeping "unemployement" numbers low.

Diane Ravitch talks about this in her book Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform, and says much of the same.

If American education was degenerating in the 1940s, it was largely because the 1930s (Great Depression) saw the inception of high school education for the masses. It kept the teenagers out of the job market, which was important, I guess, with 25% unemployment rates. Previous to that, most students didn't even go to high school.

Black education rates started to go up in the 1940s, too, even before Brown v. Board of Ed in 1954. Even so, in the 1950s the average black level of education was fifth grade - which was a big improvement over the turn of the century, when many blacks weren't educated at all.

IOW, the complaints about education going downhill probably started right after huge numbers of kids started staying in school longer than they ever had before in the US. This is exactly what's happening today as well.

I came across a very old "Time" magazine, from sometime in the 1940's & there was an interesting article about a noticable decline in the quality of American education. That was long before most of the government polcies promoting a decline in the family.

And the greatest ed stat of all. Public school teachers send their children to private schools at twice the rate of the general population: 20% vs. 10%.