Age of Opinion

Garbage in Garbage out, a concept well understood by computer geeks, is the perfect metaphor for what has happened to public education in the United States.

Just as democracy, a generic substitution for the more specific, republic, is the word of the day in politics, so egalitarianism or multi-culturalism is the by-word in American Education. Egalité is not a synonym for democracy, as those with a vested interest in promoting the concept would have you believe. The standard dictionary definition of egalitarianism is affirming, promoting, or characterized by belief in equal political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people. The definition of Democracy is a government by the people, either directly or through representation by elected officials; the principle of social equality and respect for the individual within a community. Notice the striking difference. The phrase economic rights in the definition for egalitarianism and the exclusion of the word individual, or to put it plainly egalitarianism is a synonym for socialism.

Socialism did not begin with Marx; it was the seed sown by Rousseau that resulted in the Reign of Terror. It is equality gone amok, mob rule, multi-culturalism, and the primary reason why the American Revolution succeeded and the French Revolution did not.

The task facing today’s student is to be non-judgmental not only in the area of personal relations, but in metaphysics as well. Umberto Eco calls it syncretism, "’the combination of different forms of belief or practice;’ such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth . . . there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.” This accounts for today’s nihilist, anarchistic philosophers who spin great globs of contradictory information into a lithified whole, and for the convoluted conspiracy theories concocted by taking an inference from here and a half truth from there.

Just as reverence for multi-culturalism has removed all judgement from the human affairs arena, so too, has its intellectual evil twin, which I will call multi-conceptism removed judgement from the realm of ideas. Young minds are taught that firmly held convictions and clear visions of the truth are worthless hallucinations of the mind; that truth and fact are judgmental; it is more important to understand process than to produce a correct answer; and no particular idea is more noteworthy than any other.

Education in an egalitarian mode has produced the age of opinion, where few Americans are deterred from their beliefs by attention to fact or detail. Our public schools, bathed as they are in ‘old world’ swill, teach American children that there are no absolutes, that facts don’t manner and that everything is just a matter of opinion. They are told they may pick and choose the ideas that create their personal philosophy like items from a Chinese menu, one from column A, 2 from column B or vice versa. College students, by virtue of age and experience, have some defense against this onslaught, children, for the same reasons, are powerless.

Eco tells students that simultaneously held contradictions are liberating. Jacques Derrida assures them, “that [a] text is incoherent because its own key terms can be understood only in relation to their suppressed opposites.” In other words what an author says is not what is meant, but rather its opposite. It is a ‘Bizzaro’ world where one has to say the opposite to be understood correctly. One or more generations of Americans has already been educated by teachers inspired by this charming ‘old world’ drivel; but when any and every idea has equal value and all opinions are equal, perhaps it doesn’t matter what is taught or who teaches it.

In the spirit of egalitarianism many Americans have been convinced that everyone has a right to an opinion, and that every opinion is just as informed as any other. Witness ‘man on the street’ interviews or the call in segments on C-Span. Opinions are accepted from anyone and everyone and all are treated with equal respect. It is not a criticism of C-span to mention this, I believe they are doing us a favor by rubbing our noses in it.

Erudition is now measured by trivia contests. Wisdom is defined by how many subjects one can offer an opinion upon. "I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth, " says Umberto Eco. The same educators, who brought us the French Derrida and Italian Eco, are also quick to remind us that the ‘civilized’ nations, meaning European, have National health care, but fail to remind us that they also have double digit unemployment. Insurance is not free. Eco delivers the coup de grace with “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.”

So many Americans cling to inaccurate information on a wide range of subjects. The Flat Earth Society actually believes that the Earth is flat. It is not a joke. The Earth, they tell us, is shaped in the form of a pentagon, and thus has five corners. They warn us of the danger of falling off the edge. Beneath the Earth, or hanging off the edges, is a land populated by either green-skinned women or Nazis. The Springfield Effect is the phenomenon by which every place named Springfield is hard-linked in hyperspace to every other place of this name. In other words, there is only one Springfield, but it is "linked" to various locations around (oops, sorry) in the world. Idaho, North Dakota, and Australia do not exist. More American’s believe in UFOs than believe they will ever see Social Security. The moon landing was faked. Secret societies control the destiny of the world. Republicans are for smaller government. Democrats are for the underdog. Libertarians are aging potheads. The list is endless. Einstein once remarked, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

You might ask how outrageous ideas could have so many adherents? The answer would be a devalued public school system. Those who have virtually no training in the subject matter, teach today’s public school curricula. Union rules dictate who teaches what, with the most senior teachers deciding which classes they will teach. Qualifications are sacrificed to the perquisites of seniority. The biggest single complaint is that there are too many students per class. How could that possibly matter if the instructors are inept? It’s a good thing the answers are in the back of the book.

Private schools, which are substantially outperforming the public schools in every conceivable way, find no need for teacher certification. It is not news that the greatest minds that exist now or have ever existed, the greatest scientists, mathematicians, poets, writers, artists, and inventors the world has ever known would not be allowed to teach in a public school. Instead of qualified teachers we have teacher qualifications.

A house that in 1960 cost $30,000 now costs $200,000. What was, in 1948, a high school diploma, is today’s Baccalaureate. From the 60s through most of the 80s, a BA was sufficient education for most tasks, now employers look for candidates with a Master’s. The Ph.D. is also been affected; students are now engaged in postdoctoral work. As standards continue to slip more and more degrees will be required to compensate for what is not being taught on the level below. We will soon need a new degree. Perhaps we could call it the Phdd or DD for Doctor of Doctoring.

Web pages offering materials to assist teachers boast of “attention-grabbing solutions to stop or manage youth violence, school failure, truancy, dropping out, family problems, poor motivation, Asperger’s behaviors, apathy, bad attitudes, attachment disorder, ADHD, depression, withdrawal, peer conflict, classroom misbehavior, dropping out, independent living, anger control problems, delinquency, severe emotional problems, independent living, and even "girl's problems" like teen pregnancy. It's information that no contemporary youth professional can safely be without.” When do they get the time to teach?

Notice that teachers are now called youth professionals. When I attended public school before decades of Leftist experimentation, we had a school board, a principal and assistant principal and teachers, not youth professionals. The greatest behavioral difficulties were unruly demonstrations when a teacher left the classroom or the heinous crime of chewing gum. Now teachers must be social scientists, who are nimble enough to dodge bullets and teach at the same time. School sponsored sports don’t keep score lest someone feel bad; we experiment with pass/fail, so that students doing “A” work can not be distinguished from those getting “Ds”; the ‘whole word’ system for teaching reading gave us an entire generation that is functionally illiterate, and some great minds even suggested we teach Ebonics.

We are told that Life is a journey and the destination unimportant, and while this might in some sense be true, (it’s certainly catchy) it could also be the reason we got lost. We have been ‘improving’ public education for 40 years, and though the “innovations” fostered over those years have been adopted as historical and accepted as indispensable, we consistently fail to achieve the goal of educating children.

In the “thrilling days of yesteryear” when “father knew best” things were quite different. There were none of the parasites that have attached themselves to school budgets whining about being underpaid. Teachers were responsible for teaching; Principals supervised without guidance from on high; and the job got done with nary a thought to blaming parents when students didn’t learn. A few kids dropped out who were not of an intellectual bent or hated the idea of sitting behind a desk all day, but neither they nor their parents blamed others or worried about self esteem. Instead, the dropouts took useful, honorable positions in factories, supermarkets or auto shops because that was what they preferred in the first place. There was no liberal guilt about a system that failed them or weeping and wailing that the world may have been deprived of a great scientist or mathematician (as if today’s system could produce one). We were grateful for a competent mechanic.

Mark Twain once wisely remarked: "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." If we had any sense we’d go back to the one room schoolhouse.

Our schools are terrible. Completely unacceptable. I taught for a year and got out in disgust. So, to a certain extent, I was part of the problem.

Our society cannot enforce a standard because we are allergic to failure. This allergy causes us to lose the ability to judge good from bad. This works fine until an actual decision is required.

I agree. Kids need goals and even failure to mature spiritually and socially. We live in a relatively good school district. Although the public school she was attending is considered the best in the area, the behavior of some students was absolutely appalling. Other kids were putting their hands into our daughter's food, discussing their dates (some of them started "dating" in the third grade) and passing notes that would make your hair curl. She tried telling the teacher. I went to them several times, but all I was told was that she needed to learn to "get along" with all types of people.

Have you considered teaching in a private school? We put our girl into private school this year. She almost begged us to be allowed to try it. It's pretty bad when an eleven year-old comes to you and complains that her class lacks discipline and that the work is boring because they never learn anything new. It's been wonderful so far. The work is much more challenging and the level of respect among the students and teachers is much higher. She even hass less homework since they are actually expected to work during class.

"She tried telling the teacher. I went to them several times, but all I was told was that she needed to learn to "get along" with all types of people."

That's the problem today. Everybody is supposed to go along to get along and accept any type of behavior -- bizarre, criminal, perverted, whatever.

My niece was in the 4th grade when she finally had it. She came home one day, slammed the front door, and told her parents she refused to go back to her school the next year. They took her seriously and found a school that upheld their family values.

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