Posted on 08/02/2004 4:53:26 AM PDT by JesseHousman
We're hearing quite a bit from politicians who decry what they call "the two Americas," by which they mean the rich and the poor.
Notwithstanding the fact that "poor" Americans are wealthier than most of the other people of the world, this political ploy seems to me to be divisive and rooted in the politics of envy.
Be that as it may, I believe that there really are two Americas — the educated and the uneducated. And education is the basis of wealth in the United States. Aside from the occasional pop star who makes a fortune in show business (and usually loses it just as quickly), education is the difference between rich and poor in this nation of ours.
Knowledge is power, it's been said. Knowledge is also the road to riches.
Unfortunately, "educated" doesn't necessarily mean possessing a college diploma. It's a sad fact that a young man or woman can go through elementary, middle and high schools, and then on to college, receiving good grades all the way, but not learning very much.
I got my first inkling of this from my sister.
She's seven years younger than I, and went through the same Philadelphia public schools that I did. She went on to nursing college, and has enjoyed a successful career in medicine.
Yet, when she and her husband were about to take a vacation trip to Europe she asked me, "Is London a city or a country?"
That was my first inkling that kids weren't being taught geography in school anymore.
When I married my adorable second wife, she had three children ranging in ages from nine to fourteen. They all lived in a very upscale town, West Hartford, Connecticut. I watched as each of her three children went through the school system there, each of them learning less than the one preceding. The schools were dumbing down before my eyes.
Protests and PTA meetings accomplished nothing. The school administration proceeded on its own course, unperturbed by the fact that the children were not getting a quality education. The school board was well insulated from the town's politics. In effect, it was a political fiefdom of its own, with no effective controls from the people of the town.
As I began to study the field of education, I learned that this was the situation almost everywhere. Local school boards have practically no restraints on their actions. Even today, with politicians demanding that schools be held accountable for their students' learning, the school bureaucracies are evading their responsibilities.
When I became the editor of Analog magazine, which publishes top-rate science fiction and science fact articles each month, I went to teachers' conventions to suggest that we could send copies of the magazine — gratis — to their schools. I knew from personal experience that youngsters enjoy reading science fiction, and the magazine's factual articles could help the kids learn some science.
The teachers were horrified by the idea. Bring new material into the classroom each month? There are no teacher's guides! No preprinted sets of questions and answers for quizzes! The teachers would have to read the magazine themselves and make up their own quiz questions!
Anathema!
Several years later I found that teachers in a Florida college were inflating their students' grades, because the students were empowered to evaluate their teachers. A student who got low grades gave the teacher a poor evaluation, which reflected on the teacher's chances of receiving a raise or a promotion. So plenty of students were pacified with A's and B's regardless of the true quality of their work.
I was studying for a doctorate in education by then, and found that this practice of grade inflation was so widespread that good grades were becoming almost meaningless. I was tempted to suggest that every child born in America should receive a college diploma at birth, thereby saving the taxpayers the cost of sending the kids to school. The educational outcome for such children wouldn't be much different from what we're getting now, I reasoned (not entirely seriously).
Now, while visiting in New Mexico, I saw a newspaper story about public school teachers slipping test answers to their students so that they can pass the state-mandated standard exams. Again, the people in the system whom we trust to teach our children are subverting the system they were hired to serve. It's akin to a policeman taking bribes from crooks, or a witness perjuring himself in court.
In the immortal words of Daffy Duck, "That's despicable!"
American taxpayers spend more than half a trillion dollars each year on education. Five hundred billion dollars per year: more than any agency of the federal government receives for its annual budget, including the Department of Defense.
We are not getting our money's worth, not by a long shot. The schools have dumbed down, and when the taxpayers demand accountability — such as statewide testing — the people running the schools find ways of avoiding their responsibilities, ways that include outright cheating.
Each and every individual teacher and school administrator will loudly proclaim, "Not me!" They all swear that they're doing the best they can, and point accusing fingers at parents, at state school boards, at federal mandates, at ethnic minorities — anywhere except at themselves.
But while I was studying for my doctorate in education I saw the results of surveys taken within hundreds of school systems, surveys that showed what the teachers' and administrators' priorities are. Teaching students was far down the list. Their top priorities were protecting themselves and their jobs.
This is quite natural, I suppose, but it doesn't give our children the quality of education that they deserve. And education is the key to wealth. When politicians talk about "two Americas," they're really talking about those who have received a quality education and those who haven't.
The have-nots are growing in numbers every year, and that is a grave danger to our democracy.
My sister just informed that my 12 year old niece placed out of reading and is not allowed to take anymore reading classes in her school. My sister has three choices: (a) P.E., (2) media (I think) and (3) Spanish.
I would like to know, how in the world can a 12 year old place out of reading? It's impossible. Idiot educators.
We are dealing with an idiot eduction establishment. It is interesting that the author is talking about West Hartford. That is the primo education district in New England. Expensive town. People flock there because of the education.
and their robots, the administrators!
Yes indeed!
Schooled's meaning is very similar to docking your boat for a period of time, or dropping your pre-schooler off at the local day care center. Of course, even then, some vapid parents forget the child is in the back seat and drive off to work only to find at 4 PM that the child has died due to being suffocated in 98 degree heat.
The problem is a plethora of ignorant teachers and parents and school boards and administrators!
Government's meddling and insidious control in respect to education over the decades has become positively ruinous!
Until the parents realize that it's their responsibility to see that their child gets a real education, nothing is going to change.
The problem is that our 19th-century military/priesthood model of education is broken...and completely obsolete in the era of DVD's and notebook computers. Children cannot learn what they need to know today in a classrom with a teacher standing at the front lecturing - the whole model is antique, dumb, and wrong. But, as Bova points out, the Education Establishment is only interested in protecting its existence - not in revamping curriculums and instructional models for the 21st century. So government schools are doomed to remain gigantic buggy whip factories, subsidized by tax dollars but producing nothing of value.
Does she read at or above grade level? If she does, perhaps that's why.
How curious that a self-described Doctor of Education is unaware that this nation is NOT a democracy.
Many people, nitpicker, refer to our republic as a democracy. Of course it's becoming unrecognizable as such as each year spins by.
The author has described the nature, symptoms and cause of the problem. Government bureaucracies cannot deliver the goods.
Characteristics of a Bureaucracy:
l. There is no incentive to get the job done as rewards and punishments are not related to performance. The best teachers do not receive more money and the worst teachers are not fired.
2. The main goal of a bureaucrat is not to perform the function for which he was hired, but to save his job, and, if possible, hire more bureaucrats under him. Thus we see incredibly top-heavy school districts in which administrators outnumber the teachers.
3. Bureaucracies use coercion to survive. The larger the bureaucracy, the more evil and heartless (the IRS). Approximately 75% of local and state taxes go to education. If you are dissatisfied with your schools, you still have to pay the taxes and meet the requirements of school attendance laws.
4. Bureaucracies are rigid and unresponsive to the clients they serve. You think the first grade teacher's main job is to teach your child to read, but in reality, her daily motivation is to avoid the disapproval of the administrators in her building.
5. Information flow is stagnant. Each level distorts the information as it passes through. In an educational bureaucracy, information about better teaching methods which comes in at the top level (university professors) does not reach the bottom level (classroom teachers).
6. Bureaucracies based on power attract sick individuals who enjoy wielding power over others. Try disagreeing with your child's principal over educational philosophy and see how nasty things can get.
7. Bureaucracies cannot reform themselves. Americans have been trying to reform their educational system for about 75 years, ever since they discovered Johnny can't read because the schools ditched phonics.
Such usage doesn't make itself in any way correct de se, or ftm even acceptable. This sort of thing coming from a D.Ed. or Ph.D. is appalling, although I suspect we can agree with each other that the number of supernumerary bozos churned out by ''education'' schools is equally appalling.
Well, as a PhD I recognize serial nitpicking whenever I see it.
Now, what do you think of the postulation or the thesis of the article?
Ping
I didn't make this comment earlier because there's usually little need here to belabour the obvious, and I see that FReepers are in top form today in lambasting the racketeers of organised public education.
Thanks for the ping, BC.
I have kids ranging from 25 to 10, as of this weekend. Lots of birthdays this weekend :-) I can see the decline of public education first hand. I went to Catholic school for 5 years, and I wish I could have stayed there. Funny thing, I have huge problems with fractions and geometry, but I can do algebra. Why? Because I never got to algebra in public school!
I'm going to homeschool my two youngest when we move. My youngest came back from her father's house and told me that he and his wife, who is an "educator", said I can't homeschool her. Yep, see you in court. This school district that we're moving from, is the worst. It's the school district I attended, and I see nothing has changed. All they want are awards and recognition for their "achievments". I'm fed up with a school that makes my kid cry in class. Oh, they socially promoted her to fifth grade.
I'm hoping that between me and her older sister, we can bring her beyond grade level.
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