Posted on 04/24/2008 9:23:42 AM PDT by neverdem
If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)
Let us limp down memory lane to mark this week's melancholy 25th anniversary of a national commission's report that galvanized Americans to vow to do better. Today the nation still ignores what had been learned years before 1983.
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once puckishly said that data indicated that the leading determinant of the quality of public schools, measured by standardized tests, was the schools' proximity to Canada. He meant that the geographic correlation was stronger than the correlation between high test scores and high per-pupil expenditures.
Moynihan also knew that schools cannot compensate for the disintegration of families and hence communities -- the primary transmitters of social capital. No reform can enable schools to cope with the 36.9 percent of all children and 69.9 percent of black children today born out of wedlock, which means, among many other things, a continually renewed cohort of unruly adolescent males.
Chester Finn, a former Moynihan aide, notes in his splendid new memoir ("Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik") that during the Depression-era job scarcity, high schools were used to keep students out of the job market, shunting many into nonacademic classes. By 1961, those classes had risen to 43 percent of all those taken by students. After 1962, when New York City signed the nation's first collective bargaining contract with teachers, teachers began changing from members of a respected profession into just another muscular faction fighting for more government money. Between 1975 and 1980 there were a thousand strikes involving a million teachers whose salaries rose as students' scores on standardized tests declined.
In 1964...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
It’s too bad that we never really heeded “A Nation at Risk”.
I really would like to live to see the day that we get our priorities straight in education. I don’t think I will....
This year I had my whole program eliminated due to budget cuts. (foreign language) But, if the football team wins next year everything will be OK.
The article on educaton (heh) brought me to think of Bill Ayers - one of Obama’s distinguished “friends”. Good old Bill is a “Distinguished Professor of Education”. Wow, a double oxymoron. Given our public schools, and given those who drive the curricula, the idea of even an associate degree in education - let alone an advanced degree, is preposterous. Couple that with the title “Professor”. Give me a break. Think of how tenured physics professors would react if an Einstein-Denying physics type were offered tenure. Too bad the education types have no inclination to clean their ranks of clowns.
If you want a real shock find some school textbooks from pre-WW1. If you’ve read any of them you understand just what I mean.
You are so right! I have a copy of Myers’ “Ancient History” from around 1916 that belonged to my wife’s grandmother. It covers history from Mesopotamia through Charlemagne in great detail. It contains an extensive history of ancient Greece and the development of Western Culture. It’s a marvelous book that builds confidence in and understanding of our civilization and it’s for the 9th Grade! I’ve seen some of the stuff that my 9th Grade son brings home and there’s simply no comparison.
Somehow society thinks that the state should be separated from church
... at the same time that the state should OPERATE schools.
Amazing.
And the government school system is what we get.
Somehow society thinks that the state should be separated from church
... at the same time that the state should OPERATE schools.
Amazing.
And the government school system is what we get.
Yup...my son is just finishing up WW2. His teacher is good, better than most.
But the curriculum...oh MY!
Granted we’re a few decades further removed from the event...but...
My hope is that he’ll continue his love of reading and history!
Schools were bad when that report came out in 1983. They’ve clearly gotten worse.
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