Epidemic of Ignorance - Back-to-school blues.

National Review Online ^ | August 23, 2007 | Victor Davis Hanson

[neverdem]

August 23, 2007, 0:00 a.m.

Epidemic of Ignorance
Back-to-school blues.

By Victor Davis Hanson

Last week I went shopping in our small rural hometown, where my family has attended the same public schools since 1896. Without exception, all six generations of us — whether farmers, housewives, day laborers, business people, writers, lawyers, or educators — were given a good, competitive K-12 education.

But after a haircut, I noticed that the 20-something cashier could not count out change. The next day, at the electronic outlet store, another young clerk could not read — much less explain — the basic English of the buyer’s warranty. At the food market, I listened as a young couple argued over the price of a cut of tri-tip — unable to calculate the meat’s real value from its price per pound.

As another school year is set to get under way, it’s worth pondering where this epidemic of ignorance came from.

Our presidential candidates sense the danger of this dumbing down of American society and are arguing over the dismal status of contemporary education: poor graduation rates, weak test scores, and suspect literacy among the general population. Politicians warn that America’s edge in global research and productivity will disappear, and with it our high standard of living.

Yet the bleak statistics — whether a 70-percent high-school graduation rate as measured in a study a few years ago by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, or poor math rankings in comparison with other industrial nations — come at a time when our schools inflate grades and often honor multiple valedictorians at high school graduation ceremonies. Aggregate state and federal education budgets are high. Too few A’s, too few top awards, and too little funding apparently don’t seem to be our real problems.

Of course, most critics agree that the root causes for our undereducated youth are not all the schools’ fault. Our present ambition to make every American youth college material — in a way our forefathers would have thought ludicrous — ensures that we will both fail in that utopian goal and lack enough literate Americans with critical vocational skills.

The disintegration of the American nuclear family is also at fault. Too many students don’t have two parents reminding them of the value of both abstract and practical learning.

What then can our elementary and secondary schools do, when many of their students’ problems begin at home or arise from our warped popular culture?

We should first scrap the popular therapeutic curriculum that in the scarce hours of the school day crams in sermons on race, class, gender, drugs, sex, self-esteem, or environmentalism. These are well-intentioned efforts to make a kinder and gentler generation more sensitive to our nation’s supposed past and present sins. But they only squeeze out far more important subjects.

The old approach to education saw things differently than we do. Education (“to lead out” or “to bring up”) was not defined as being “sensitive” to, or “correct” on, particular issues. It was instead the rational ability to make sense of the chaotic present through the abstract wisdom of the past.

So literature, history, math and science gave students plenty of facts, theorems, people, and dates to draw on. Then training in logic, language, and philosophy provided the tools to use and express that accumulated wisdom. Teachers usually did not care where all that training led their students politically — only that their pupils’ ideas and views were supported with facts and argued rationally.

What else can we do to restore such traditional learning before the United States loses it global primacy?

To encourage our best minds to become teachers, we should also change the qualifications for becoming one. Students should be able to pursue careers in teaching either by getting a standard teaching credential or by substituting a master’s degree in an academic subject. That way we will eventually end up with more instructors with real academic knowledge rather than prepped with theories about how to teach.

And once hired, K-12 teachers should accept that tenure has outlived its usefulness. Near-guaranteed lifelong employment has become an archaic institution that shields educators from answerability. And tenure has not ensured ideological diversity and independence. Nearly the exact opposite — a herd mentality — presides within many school faculties. Periodic and renewable contracts — with requirements, goals and incentives — would far better ensure teacher credibility and accountability.

Athletics, counseling and social activism may be desirable in schools. But they are not crucial. Our pay scales should reflect that reality. Our top classroom teachers should earn as much as — if not more than — administrators, bureaucrats, coaches, and advisers.

Liberal education of the type my farming grandfather got was the reason why the United States grew wealthy, free, and stable. But without it, the nation of his great-grandchildren will become poor, docile, and insecure.

© 2007 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

[Gabz]

OOPS, I didn’t refresh the page before I posted ........

[RavenATB]

“I’m a parent, not a teacher, and I have no problem with the majority of complaints from teachers about parents.”

I’m not saying its wrong for parents to take significant blame for the horrible state of public education. I’m just saying that the teaching profession in public schools is so badly infested with incompetence and self-interest that they need to clean their own house before they point the finger at anyone else. Until that happens I have no interest in their “professional” opinion on the problems of public education.

[TruthConquers]

And I say that is just a convenient reply with no basis in fact.

[TruthConquers]

TruthConquers: The NEA does impact a majority of schools.

Gabz: I didn't say otherwise

I am glad that is cleared up.

[Gabz]

I am still not going to lay more blame on the teachers than I do on the “administrators” who, in my opinion, are even more incompetent than most parents.

Of the 3, I personally believe the teachers are the least culpable, yet the most excoriated.

[Gabz]

I am glad that is cleared up.

Glad to know you see things the way I do.

[neverdem]

public school ping

[Amelia]

And I say that is just a convenient reply with no basis in fact.

You're welcome to prove me wrong...or perhaps the above is just your opinion.

[SoftballMominVA]

Your profile doesn't mention the state you live in, therefore I'm taking a shot in the dark as to your problem.

Gabz, leda, Amelia, and I all live in 'right to work' states. In these states, unions have little control and are reduced to little more than trade unions. They don't have the membership in these states to do more than an average size group of citizens petitioning the school board. In the county in which I teach, more members belong to the American Assciation of Educators, or the AAE, which is not a union, but a conservative organization that offers benefits. The AAE does not lobby and is non-partisan.

I suspect you work in an 'at will' state. In an at will state, employees in a huge variety of industries can be forced into a union, with dues taken from their paycheck. In fact, if one delves into the finances of the NEA, one finds that nearly 2/3's of their dues come from at will states. This is not just true for teachers, but for a surprisingly large spectrum of the population.

The answer in breaking the back of the unions is to change state laws to prevent employees from being forced into a union. That change will come from citizens petitioning their local and state governments, not from the feds.

[SoftballMominVA]

Sorry, I missed this post earlier - Colorado is an 'at will' state. Unions are very, very strong in your state - you are 100% correct about that. Comparing the strength of the unions from Colorado to Virginia is laughable as it can't be done. Unless you live in a 'right to work' state, you cannot understand how refreshing it is to not be forced into a union and have dues taken from your paycheck to support causes with which you fundamentally disagree.

But not only teachers are required to be in a union. Unions would be required for a huge spectrum of workers.

Change the state laws, and you will break the control of all unions. Again, this is a state-to-state issue, not a federal one.

[taxcontrol]

Ahhhh, now I understand. Thank you cause I was very confused. I get that way sometimes. Sorry.

[cinives]

Considering that most workers get NO pension other than what they themselves contribute to their 401(k), teachers at least have something a lot more significant.

If the average worker is lucky enough, they might get a company match for some part of their contributions.

Teachers contribute 10% ? Wow, that’s just devastating ! And 66% of their average salary of their highest paid years ? Here, that would be 66% of about $117k, or 72k per year for a pension.

Sounds pretty good to me.

[cinives]

Exactly. The fact that teachers can’t get a 4th grade education instilled in most kids by the time they leave after 12 years speaks volumes to curriculum, teacher ability, and student motivation. 100 years ago the majority of citizens had only an 4th grade level education, and that probably the equivalent of what a lot of kids get by 8th grade today.

I keep telling people; I’ve never met a 6yo kid who wasn’t eager to learn. I’ve met a lot who were turned off by the time they were 10, however. And I blame that on administrators, curriculum, too long of a school day, and at the end, teachers.

[cinives]

Far off the mark ? I was responding to that comment that you pointed out in your own post#10 about teacher pay. Do you think somehow that does not merit a reply ? Why bring it up, then ?

Get the unions out of the teacher contract business and then we’ll see market wages.

There are is no such thing as “market wages” in an industry where unions are protected. Just ask the auto industry.

[cinives]

Did you read the article ? The term “average worker” referred to the average professional worker, not a blue collar employee.

Get that ?

[cinives]

You quote a liberal blog ? Oh boy. The writer is not an economist or knowledgeable in accounting or finance, so his analysis is a bit suspect on the subject of pay.

But OK, from the blog:

The very first sentence: “Teachers learned last week that they are overpaid.” Greene and Winter didn’t say they were overpaid, they merely pointed out that they’re not underpaid, either. Not being an economist, this writer did not put any value on 2 months of vacation. Yet, if you talk to teachers, it’s one of the things they enjoy most about their jobs. Many studies have noted that almost all professionals would accept being paid a bit less if they had an option for more free time. It’s one of the reasons women are routinely paid a bit less than men, because women typically take more time off to be with family.

And more: “Greene and Winters can be extraordinarily glib: “Metropolitan areas with higher teacher pay do not graduate a higher percentage of their students than areas with lower teacher pay.” “Metropolitan areas” sound like such sophisticated places. In Greene’s and Winters’ universe, poverty, asthma, untreated eye, ear, and teeth problems, malnutrition, single-parenthood, inadequate prenatal care, low birth-weights, gangs and other achievement-lowering characteristics of “metropolitan areas” don’t exist.”

We are supposed to substitute compassion for fact here ? The very first thing teachers unions do is cry that they’re underpaid every time they’re asked how to improve schools. Greene and Winter pointed out that they’re not underpaid. Then this apologist for teachers tries to excuse a high failure rate among high school graduates as being entirely out of a school’s control; it’s all the fault of kids, parents and society. People all over the world, with the same or worse issues than those found in NYC, learn to read and do math better than our kids in situations far more dire than we will ever see here. These are just excuses for poor schools. No country spends more on public education than we do.

The fact is that teachers are, in general, grossly undereducated compared with other professions. An accountant must have graduated with a major in accounting and to get anywhere in their field, earn a CPA license. A teacher ? They take an education degree, some with a few more courses in science or math or another concentration, and they get a teaching degree for elementary ed or secondary ed. On the coasts (and maybe elsewhere in the US), if they take a 1 year master’s degree in education, they get a salary jump over other teachers. Teachers in general (and there are always exceptions), are the least educated of all professionals. Look at all the teachers who cannot pass standardized tests for their profession - in Massachusetts wasn’t it 33% the one year they tried ? And yes, other professions than teachers must do continuing ed thruout their working lives, just the same as teachers.

Let me get real world in a subject with which I am very familiar. In every suburban school district outside Philadelphia, teachers with 10 years are making about 60k per year. By retirement time, at 25-30 years, most of these same teachers are making 100-128k per year (depending if they have a masters degree). So around here, a 25 year teacher with a masters degree is making 117k per year for 10 months of the year, and at age 47 can retire with a pension of around $60k per year.

I call that well paid by any standard.

[TruthConquers]

“I keep telling people; I’ve never met a 6yo kid who wasn’t eager to learn. I’ve met a lot who were turned off by the time they were 10, however. And I blame that on administrators, curriculum, too long of a school day, and at the end, teachers.”

And don’t forget the excessive, boring, useless homework assignments they hand out at the earliest stage possible. This really does kill the desire to learn.

Case in point. My daughter was at a ballet camp for 5 weeks. Her roommates were death on reading, hated LOTR, got their Harry Potter books, but couldn’t read more than 4 chapters. My daughter was considered a child prodigy by them because she finished the book within 24 hours of getting it, while still taking her ballet classes during the day. These were 13 to 14 year old’s. But they could watch endless DVD’s of various chic flicks that my daughter had a very low opinion of. (I was sooo proud of her!)

These girls were very advanced in their being”turned off” to school and learning.

[cinives]

My parents weren’t involved in my education at all, other than making sure I got out the door to school every day. We walked to school, we walked home, they only went to school on parents night (and sometimes my father was working so he didn’t go), and they never gave me any help with homework. (More accurately, I don’t recall asking them for help either).

Yet, I skipped a grade, excelled in school, and didn’t cause problems.

Parents shouldn’t need to be involved in a major way, because then parents undercut the kid’s initiative to handle their own problems.

My sister, on the other hand, skipped days of high school, didn't do work in classes she despised, and my parents never knew about it until the report card came home. The school didn't see the need for parents to assume any of the responsibility that properly belongs to the kid, and they assumed, usually correctly, that bad grades would galvanize student and parents to fix the problem. We are infanticizing our kids by butting in to solve those problems for them, while preventing them from suffering the consequences of their own actions.

[cinives]

Sounds like your daughter and mine are very similar. She was in a 4 week away summer camp when she was age 10 when the 5th (I think) Harry Potter book arrived in her mailbox. She finished it by the next day, and she then spent the next few weeks reading it to some of her fellow campers who couldn’t read it for themselves.

Yet those same “popular” kids, in a school setting, ostracized her because she was a “geek”. Luckily, she didn’t care and I pulled her out of school in 6th grade to homeschool because the anti-academic bent of the school was overwhelming. And this was in a highly-ranked suburban school district.

Sadly, 3 of her 6 teachers participated, encouraged, or allowed putdowns of academically-advanced kids in class.

[eraser2005]

Wow, you don't get it, do you?

The "pension" the teachers get is essentially no different than a 401(k) where your only choice for withdrawal is an annuity...

The "pension" is funded almost entirely out of teacher's own contributions. As I pointed out before, a 401(k) with a historically average return would produce a larger nest egg for retirement than the teachers' pensions. In other words, if the money the teachers contribute gets just an average rate of return, then their pension is equivalent to a 401(k) in which every employee contributes 10% of their salary and for which the company has a negative match. That's right - its equivalent to a company taking away part of your investment. That is a ROTTEN deal. Show me a single company which has a negative match for some part of the employee's contributions. It wouldn't be legal in any other system.

To state it again.... if you look at the pension plan teachers get, it is exactly like a 401(k) plan in which you put 10% of your salary in, get average rate of return of about 9.8%, and in which the company matches absolutely nothing.

Compare that to the average 401k plan which matches 3% of the total salary (http://www.econ.brown.edu/econ/sthesis/MattPapers/Paper8.html).

If teachers here had that level of match from the state, then they would need to average a gain of 8.6% on their investments to fund their pension.

What if a teacher had invested that 10% of their salary in the S&P 500 (11.4% return from 1970-2005)? According to that "pretty good pension" you're jealous of, they would have had enough to retire with a pension 40% higher than the one they actually got.

In other words, the teachers have fully funded their own pensions through the 10% contribution, and the state has skimmed off the top. Not only that, but all funds from the pension after death go back to the state, not to descendents.

Do you really want that deal?!?!?!?