The informaton in this article is no surprise to me. I suspect that it is fairly common knowledge that the educational system in America is ineffective. It is a failure, and intentionally so.
That is if you see a satisfactory education producing students who have mastered basic skills (the 3 Rs), the ability to think critically and a desire to become successful at whatever field of employment they choose. That is just one view of a successful education.
Sadly that is not the view that prevails today in American education. As long ago as 1983 a woman, I forget her name, who headed up the United States Department of Education described another model. She was addressing the annual gathering of governors.
She began her remarks by pointing out that those who felt the education system to be inadequate did not understand the reality of the system. According to her, educators were engaged in a total transformation of society. Without going into too much detail I will say that there were two things that struck me about her comments on the video I was watching.
One was that she was speaking to the nation’s governors. They were being made aware of the “total transformation’ American educators were initiating on American society.
Secondly, I was reminded of the changes John Dewey implemented in the educational system. This icon of American education opened the first “laboratory school” in New York in 1896. He was a socialist and an enemy of the capitalistic economic system in America.
He indicated that teaching children to read when they entered school was a mistake. He intended to first shape their “attitudes and opinions”. Reading would come after that.
Now we have students who can’t read receiving high school dipl;omas they can’t read. We have several generations of citizens who are ignorant and without the skills to become productive.
No, the article doesn’t surprise me at all. It is scary to consider that America’s governors know what is happening to young American children and to our society. I think Barack Obama could only have been elected POTUS because of American education.
So a Socialist made the Dewey Decimal System?
To think they mostly taught about that when we went to the school library.
No, lady, we don’t need hours to learn about a placement system for books in libraries.