Stupid in America -- Why your kids are probably dumber than Belgians

Reason ^ | January 13, 2006 | John Stossel

[mo]

someday...somewhere...somehow...someone needs to run the NEA through the RICO wringer and prosecute accordingly......

[Rhetorical pi2]

My daughter taught in three different states - Georgia, Connecticut, and Tennessee.

She said of all three systems that the biggest obstacle to improved education was the teachers union.

[toddlintown]

3 advantages of being a teacher...June, July and August.

[Larry Lucido]

Well, there are some smart Belgians out there.

[cyborg]

LOL

[Fresh Wind]

But they're not schools.

That's the same school system that gives kids Hardy Boys books as reading assignments. In my day, we were reading Shakespeare, Dickens, Melville, and others of their ilk (not that we wouldn't have prefered the Hardy Boys!)

[globalheater]

If you think that running a country on educated folks is to expensive try having it run on jerks.

[LK44-40]

I agree with you, Sassbox. One must concede the obvious truth that European kids are much more rigorously educated. I agree, also, that great education may not add up to a great society.

We have all been trained to believe that education is a pure and great good that can never be over done. I've had some pretty serious second thoughts about this lately. I pay a lot of attention to French culture and to their very competitive and rigorous educational system. French people are very educated, but they have a dying culture. (I am not engaging here in cheap French bashing -- there is a lot there that I admire.)

Intellectual activity is only one sphere of human endeavor. Someone (some country) will always be ahead and some other will be behind when we rank ourselves on educational attainment. I don't think it is a healthy thing to become obsessed with the necessity always to ratchet up and up the goals and standards of education. It can be life enhancing, but, for many, it is crushing, dispiriting, when the real world needs lots of people who don't especially need to know any calculus or have a knowledge of ancient Greece.

I say all this in a very tentative spirit. I don't exactly have a plan. For me, personally, life is in large measure about learning and understanding. But I do feel that we are unreasonably pressuring everyone to fit into that mould. All the while, these educated people are chosing not to have enough children to reproduce their numbers. This strikes me as the ultimate definition of social decay.

[Uncle Vlad]

There are many things that should be done to improve education in the US. But please let's not emulate Europe. They are a dying civilization - better seen as a warning of what not to do than as a positive role model.

Because our public education system is a socialist monopoly, I'm afraid we're already emulating Europe.

[Mobilemitter]

"If people got to choose their kids' school, education options would be endless. There could soon be technology schools, cheap Wal-Mart-like schools, virtual schools where you learn at home on your computer, sports schools, music schools, schools that go all year, schools with uniforms, schools that open early and keep kids later, and, who knows? If there were competition, all kinds of new ideas would bloom."

Why can't we grasp this? Why can't the American people see that a garden designed and maintained by the "state" is profitable only to birds and fertilizer companies. Birds because insects and weed seeds will prosper, fertilizer companies because the poorer the harvest the more the state demands. Until we submit such social fallacy to the tines of free market forces we shall continue to reap our well deserved harvest of blooming idiots.

If we don't have the constitution to deal with squawking birds and turd haulers, then we'll soon have no Constitution period.

[Chanticleer]

In fairness, the hours they spend in the classroom are only a portion of their day. Many teachers spend evenings and weekends preparing and grading lessons as well as participating in extracurricular events.

My sister was an award-winning teacher in the gifted program in Alabama. Her life revolved around her students, and like many teachers, she spent a lot of her own money to supplement supplies for her classes. She ended up burning out and quitting the profession. The kids weren't the problem. Lack of parental support was part of the problem, but the main problem was dealing with the school administration.

[jimbo123]

This from the country whose only notable achievement is the Belgian Waffle.

[CzarNicky]

If you think that running a country on educated folks is to expensive try having it run on jerks.

We call it the Senate

[Chanticleer]

That is the myth that all, or virtually all, young adults are capable of tenth-grade level work and beyond.

It certainly is possible! Just keep lowering the standards for 10th grade level work!

[MNJohnnie]

Comparing 300 million Americans to 40 million Belgians is stupid. We have a larger sample OBVIOUSLY we will score worse.

[Chanticleer]

This from the country whose only notable achievement is the Belgian Waffle.

No, no, no! Belgian chocolate is wondrous! Amazing what they can do with cacao, milk and sugar.

[tuffydoodle]

My daughter brought home a book list to choose a book from, on the list were: Bastard Out of Carolina, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Deliverance and lots of other books consisting of mostly deviant sexual behavior. (I blew a gasket over this list).

Later on, she told me she was doing a report on The Crucible and The Scarlet Letter. I said, great, you're finally reading some classic literature. No, she told me, they watched the movies in class. *sigh*

[AndyJackson]

Their education system is better because it's less socialist.

I am not sure what that means. What most European socialist governments offer is govnerment funded choice, so there is no monopoly, though there is socialism - the taxpayer pays regardless.