Replies

The principal reason Americans support public education is to prepare children to find employment as adults. All that stuff about literacy, roundedness, or good citizenship pales compared to the overwhelming need to acquire the credentials with which to find a job. Parents deprive themselves for decades, only to send their child to a college or university, with nearly half the coursework being unnecessary or even counterproductive and a substantial fraction more soon forgotten. Why?

Credentials. This entire system is built around the power to control who gains credentials. And who controls that game but a claque of hardened socialists committed to destroying the foundations of Western Civilization! With all that cost, all that work, and all that time spent for a rotten product, do they provide a guarantee?

No.

There is a very simple solution to this problem, one that could bring the entire edifice crashing to its knees: A competitive system of private credentials.

Envision a small shop in a strip mall: "We Test." We Test tests, and how. We Test tests are no joke, indeed; they're hard. REALLY hard. We Test guarantees that any person who can pass their tests can perform as specified with an insured guarantee. If the person you hire fails to perform to those specifications within the term of the guarantee, We Test pays the cost of hiring and training a replacement.

Any human then could use any means imaginable to acquire the necessary knowledge to pass We Test tests. Any school would do, no accreditation required. The Internet is loaded with coursework and curricula, libraries and lab-simulators. Any human with the drive and intelligence to learn on their own could then qualify for a job. No saving for decades, no brainwashing, completely transferable work, at any pace one can withstand. Any employer could then simply select from a menu of We Test specifications instead of a diploma, at any level. We Test tests.

One would think that this should have happened a long time ago, but in fact there is one thing standing in the way that makes the realization of this seeming inevitability a matter of now or never.

State licensing requires degreed credentials obtainable only at said profligate, bureaucratic and unaccountable institutions charging outrageous fees and demanding excessive time as only a State monopoly could command. Why not just amend the legislation specifying education for state licensure by adding the simple words, "or equivalent"?

As an example of how little it would take, consider my wife. She just passed her board certification exam as a Clinical Nurse Specialist in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit. She walked into H&R Block, sat at a computer, took a three-hour exam harder than anything she'd endured in her Masters' Program at Cal State San Francisco, and within five minutes after completion had her passing grade. If the private system can handle a test that specialized, why can't it test arithmetic, algebra, US history, or college chemistry? Instead of bricks and mortar, it would be e-books in quarters. Why not?

Hurray! I've been spouting this for a decade. I became a teacher later in life because all the computer programmers I was training were from India, not America.

Too late did I learn the truth in your screed. Becoming a teacher is about accepting union socialism - not educating children.

I tell students this all the time, in more simplistic terms of course. I will ask them "What if McDonald's ran the schools?" They understand that schools would probably be more fun. A cheap trick but it makes them think.

Keep ranting!

All that stuff about literacy, roundedness, or good citizenship pales compared to the overwhelming need to acquire the credentials with which to find a job.

Credentials are worthless if they aren't backed up with knowledge and/or experience.

Would you accept someone who just passed the test as sufficient?