Posted on 10/20/2009 2:17:20 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
We would not have to ask the above question if public education had not become the great, costly, and tragic failure that it is. It has failed the children, but in reality it has not failed the progressives. They were the ones who engineered the dumbing-down process which parents and taxpayers continue to pay for. But it is the children who suffer in terms of becoming intellectually disabled, semi-literate, disoriented, frustrated, and terribly unhappy. But what is even a bit disheartening is that many liberals still believe that government schooling has been a noble experiment.
Perhaps Walter Lippmann, the great liberal pundit, best expressed liberal disappointment in the great experiment when he wrote in 1941, while World War II was raging in Europe: “Universal and compulsory modern education was established by the emancipated democracies during the nineteenth century. ‘No other foundation can be devised,’ said Thomas Jefferson, ‘for the preservation of freedom and happiness.’ Yet as a matter of fact during the twentieth century the generations trained in these schools have either abandoned their liberties or they have not known, until the last desperate moment, how to defend them. The schools were to make men free. They have been in operation for some sixty or seventy years and what was expected of them they have not done. The plain fact is that the graduates of the modern schools are the actors in the catastrophe which has befallen our civilization. Those who are responsible for modern education -- for its controlling philosophy -- are answerable for the results.”
Unfortunately, they have not been answerable for the results. In fact, if you read today’s slick professional education journals, you detect great pride in what they’ve accomplished. And of course, since the time Lippmann wrote as he did, we have had any number of wars — Korea, Vietnam, First Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan — with no end in sight. Not even Lippmann would have foreseen our war against Islamic terrorism. In fact, on September 11, 2001, the United States was attacked in a manner that no one could have predicted. It was worse than Pearl Harbor, and the reason why the terrorists succeeded was because what they planned and successfully carried out was too diabolical to be believed. It required believing the unbelievable. A well-educated people is supposed to believe the unbelievable when warranted.
There were many seductive arguments for free universal public education at the time of its first promotion in the early years of the nineteenth century. Horace Mann spoke of compulsory free education as the means of perfecting humanity, the “great equalizer,” the “balance wheel of the social machinery,” the “creator of wealth undreamed of.” Poverty, ignorance, prejudice, social injustice, and every other evil afflicting the human race, it was thought, would disappear.
Others argued that free education for all would help us preserve our way of life. Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York said in 1826: “I consider the system of our common schools as the palladium of our freedom, for no reasonable apprehension can be entertained of its subversion as long as the great body of people are enlightened by education.”
Daniel Webster, the famous Senator from Massachusetts, eloquently echoed those optimistic sentiments in 1837 when he said: “Education, to accomplish the ends of good government, should be universally diffused. Open the doors of the school houses to all the children in the land. Let no man have the excuse of poverty for not educating his offspring. Place the means of education within his reach, and if he remain in ignorance, be it his own reproach…. On the diffusion of education among the people rests the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.”
But of course neither Daniel Webster nor DeWitt Clinton could have foreseen what would happen to public education once atheistic socialists got their hands on it. We have seen a steady erosion of our domestic freedom to an ever growing dependence on government to solve all of our problems. Most Americans, living in a capitalist society, still cannot understand such basic economic concepts as supply and demand, or the meaning of the word profit, or how government can cause inflation with the printing press and thereby destroy the value of our currency. Even the President of the United States, a graduate of Harvard Law School, seems unable to understand some fundamental economic principles that govern a free, capitalist society.
It is important to note that our system of compulsory state-controlled education was not brought about by any spontaneous popular demand, for education was already virtually universal in America before it became compulsory. And most people did not relish the idea of paying taxes to support schools that were not really necessary. But the politicians and professional educators wanted government financed education because running successful private schools was not easy.
According to Prof. E. G. West: “The supplier of educational services to the government, the teachers and administrators, as we have seen, had produced their own organized platforms by the late 1840’s; it was they indeed who were the leading instigators of the free school campaign. Whilst conventional history portrays them as distinguished champions in the cause of children’s welfare and benevolent participants in a political struggle, it is suggested here that the facts are equally consistent with the hypothesis of self-interest behavior as described above.”
It has become abundantly obvious that all of the totalitarian states of the modern world have used the instrument of public education, with the willing cooperation of most public school teachers, to keep their people enslaved. School teachers, even in a free society, are not necessarily freedom fighters. They generally do what the government tells them to do. That’s the way they keep their jobs, particularly in a down economy.
Most Americans are not aware that our own compulsory education system was based on the Prussian model, which was criticized by wary citizens as being inappropriate for a free country. It was suspected that such a system transplanted to our country would not promote freedom. Horace Mann, who was most instrumental in getting America to adopt the Prussian system, addressed the critics. He wrote in 1844:
“If Prussia can pervert the benign influences of education to the support of arbitrary power, we surely can employ them for the support and perpetuation of republican institutions. A national spirit of liberty can be cultivated more easily than a national spirit of bondage; and if it may be made one of the great prerogatives of education to perform the unnatural and unholy work of making slaves, then surely it must be one of the noblest instrumentalities for rearing a nation of freemen.”
One of the great uses of history is to be able to study the foolishness of past leaders who today are upheld as great benevolent statesmen. Horace Mann is certainly one of these moral idiots who gave us an education system that has gradually dumbed-down the American people to the point where their enslavement is virtually assured. If under the present regime in Washington, the American people manage to fend off their enslavement, it won’t be because of anything they learned in the government schools. It will be because of a spirit of independence and love of freedom that is enabling them to rise up in face of a potential dictatorship.
Public education was not only unnecessary, it has become the major destructive force of American culture, a destroyer of academic excellence and moral behavior. The growth of the home-school movement has demonstrated that parents can become better educators than the so-called professionals. Our colleges of education are producing educators who have no idea of how to teach reading, writing, or even simple arithmetic. Their minds have been filled with a collectivist ideology that makes them unwitting accomplices in the enslavement of the American people. Unbelievable, but true. If you want to survive in today’s America, you’d better start believing in the unbelievable.
Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of nine books on education including NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education, The Whole Language/OBE Fraud, and The Victims of Dick & Jane and Other Essays. Of NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education, former U.S. Senator Steve Symms of Idaho said: “Every so often a book is written that can change the thinking of a nation. This book is one of them.” Mr. Blumenfeld’s columns have appeared in such diverse publications as Reason, The New American, The Chalcedon Report, Insight, Education Digest, Vital Speeches, WorldNetDaily, and others.
What I'm describing is what is happening in the inner city public school system in which my wife teaches. And she doesn't teach in a school that's been taken over for failing (yet).
And, btw, teachers best be teaching to the test - what else are they going to do? If I know my students will be tested, among other things, on figurative language, why would I not teach similes and metaphors just because they are on the test? That doesn't even make sense.
That's not what I'm saying. Of course teachers must teach a subject, and they have objectives. What I'm describing is the regimentation taking place, directed from outside the school, that inhibits teaching and learning. Teachers in her school aren't even given time to remediate, even when the regimented testing shows it's necessary.
One more thing before I sign off for the night.When your doctor, your airline pilot, your H/VAC repairman, your mechanic took their various board certifications -- dont you hope they were taught to the test? I would hate to think the airline pilot in whose plane I am in was taught about brain surgery rather than how to fly. I want my H/VAC guy taught how to repair my system, not how to knit doilies just because his teacher had a passion in that area.
I would hope that my doctor or pilot was skilled in his profession. I would not be impressed if he had simply passed a test where the passing score was determined based on how others taking the test scored on it.
All VA SOL tests really measure is how well students in a school or district did in relation to other districts in the state. If our public schools are doing such a great job "leaving no child behind" under NCLB then why are the inner city graduation rates in the 60's and 70's if that high? How do you measure success? Would you call this success?
> The answer may well be to privatize education while
> maintaining standardized testing.
Whose standards?
Don’t let that camel’s nose under the tent.
Get the government out of education altogether. There’s no way it could be worse than it is now. At least the children won’t be brainwashed into a totalitarian, collectivist, statist mentality.
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As far as graduation rates in the inner schools? I am without advice. I don't teach in the inner city, by choice, nor do I plan on teaching there. Personally, I want a large inner city school system to fail, utterly and completely, so that an entire system must be taken over by the Feds. If these teachers, such as your wife, are doing such a bad job, let the ‘experts’ come in and explain how to teach a child who comes from a home where education is devalued, all forms of authority are to be rebelled against, and no one alive in the family has ever had a job other than signing the welfare checks.
Bring it on, show us how it's done on a large scale. My gut tells me it can only be done if the school replaces the family by keeping the kids for 5/6th’s of their waking hours, Saturday school, and summer school. I'm talking about the KIPP model. One that works, but at the cost of separating the child from the family, which sadly, is sometimes a good thing, but IMO not for anyone outside the family to decide.
I think that the idea of “teaching to the test” comes in play when the teacher knows the test beforehand (because he/she wrote it) and only teaches that material.
In the VA SOL’s, there is a large body of knowledge that must be covered in every grade. It is virtually impossible to ‘teach to the test’ since the teacher doesn’t have access to it before hand, and the body of knowledge to be taught contains skills/information that should be covered throughout the year. Teachers can and do teach outside the SOL’s, but they must cover the basics.
This is what would happen to private schools if vouchers were widely available.
So?....You have made some excellent points. I would suggest that the test be private and that the government have no control over content or administration. And...Why not turn all sports, music, theater, and art over to the county departments of recreation?
Why couldn't conservatives set up such a system of tuition-free tutors now? I believe could do this, but sadly many do not understand or recognize that our system of government education is literally freedom's most urgent and dangerous threat.
If conservatives can endow places like Harvard with its endowment of 35 BILLION, why couldn't conservatives endow private K-12 education?
Answer: Of course they could! Conservatives are simply lacking leadership.
Another problem for conservatives in going against the government schools is that government schools are a price-fixed monopoly that is giving its services away and setting the price for the parents using those services at zero. If conservatives were to attempt to set up an alternative system based on your model, these conservative educational services would also need to be free.
I suggest that conservatives set up education foundations. The foundations would award grants to conservative teachers. The teachers would set up tuition-free one room school houses, mini-schools, homeschool co-ops, and tutoring centers. The foundations would certify the teacher, test the students, and approve the curriculum. The teachers would use many of the techniques that you suggested, but most would have their “offices” in their home, professional buildings, day care centers, or store front strip malls.
The conservative education foundations would also run regions sports programs, and organize theater, music, and arts programs.
It is important not to neglect sports because teams sports dive the culture of many communities and this means loyalty to a government school. The government monopoly over team sports must be broken.
Prisons keep people out of trouble, too!
Government run kiddie prisons ( misnamed "public schools") teach children to be comfortable with being prisoners of the state. They acclimate children to being subservient to government employees and government authority.
The student loan program makes college available to MANY students that couldn't otherwise afford to go to a quality school.
So?...How did the Greatest Generation and their parents manage to invent and build all that they did in the 20th century **without** any of these loan programs?
My father was an award winning top engineer for Exide. He died this year at the age of 96. He did **NOT** have a formal engineering degree. Yet,...He designed emergency lighting for WWII submarines and was the head engineer for Exide's part in some of the largest public energy projects ( one of them a nuclear power plant)in our state and surrounding states.
How did he get his training?
As was typical for men of his age, Exide trained him on the job, in classrooms at the plant, and they sent him to Drexel at night for courses the company felt were important. In return for this training, Exide had a vested interest in my dad. He had an excellent salary, generous benefits, and a very good pension. Exide did this because they didn't want to lose an employee they had spent so much time and effort to train.
As rabscuttle385 pointed out, its real **knowledge** that counts. There are far more efficient ways to acquire knowledge and to certify that knowledge than by attending college. Charles Murray is right. We should move away from using colleges as a means of issuing degrees, and move instead to private certifying exams.
Finally, it is to our country's advantage to **efficiently** teach our nation's kids, and get them out into the workplace creating wealth and health for the world to enjoy. We should NOT adopt the European model where our young adults languish in college into their thirties. While sitting in these halls of ivy, these overly big 30 year old adolescents are not adding anything to the GDP.
By the way, my homeschoolers entered college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. Two had B.S. degrees in math at the age of 18. One had a masters in math at the age of 20. In her masters program, my daughter was **teaching** college level math courses at the age of **18**!!! If certifying exams had been available ( instead of degrees) they could have been certified in mathematics at even earlier ages.
You're a regular Horace Mann. You should be writing a child raising "how to", rather than wasting your time on political chat boards.
rabscuttle385 and I are suggesting that we move to a system of private K-12 education where one on one tutoring would be the norm.
Have you looked into any online college degrees?
I believe that, by the time we need them, they’ll either be widely available,
or homeschooling will have to go underground because it’s illegal.
When schools were first compulsory here in America, they came with GUNS to get children whose parents did not want them to attend.
How can ‘compulsory’ preserve/ teach the understanding of individual freedom?
‘Who can blame the kids?’ you ask.
I have pictures engraved in my mind’s eye of the High School kids where I volunteered. I ran a program bringing speakers in at lunchtime to tell about their jobs. A dozen or so kids would show up. The rest — you guessed it.
Those kids did not want to be in school. They did not CARE to learn what was taught. They are given the opportunity to have LIVES, by getting a free education. Does it have to be fascinating? NO, it does not. Does it even have to be the best teachers in the world? NO, it does not. It is just life skills — how to add, how to read, the history of our country.
That school was turning out bottom-feeders by the droves. And, guess what? I DO blame the students. Granted, there were many poor, passive teachers putting in their time, thinking union thoughts — ‘That is not my job.’ ‘I don’t stay after school — I don’t get paid for that.’ The Principal was great, and he asked much of his staff. The union slugs resented him for that very reason.
BUT — still, with all the mediocrity, those students still have something that young people in many parts of the world do not have: a free education, books provided, buildings to cover them in bad weather, electricity.
Oh, it was so disgusting. I homeschooled AFTER teaching in public schools; this was a brief foray back, and I will NEVER return.
No child is prohibited from supplementing his/her education at the public library. Andrew Carnegie accomplished more for American education through "free" public libraries than the entire membership of the National Education Association.
Socialized medicine is a nightmare and so is socialized brainwashing posing as "education."
Of course, I have again failed to keep in mind the good guys like Softball Mom in Viginia who struggle within the government school system to produce quality results against all odds.
Doesn't an ordinary K-12 public school also represent a socialist redistribution of wealth? Taxes are collected from the public (including those who do not have children in the schools) and are spent to construct, maintain, and operate a facility that is only used by a portion of the children in the community.
With vouchers you seize money from the public and cut a check to select individuals, with public schools you seize money from the public and use it to pay for a resource that only select individuals will access.
Both seem equally socialistic in principle, although one may be slightly more efficient than the other.
Government schools are basically arenas for sporting events for children and for adults to relive their childhood through sporting events. Yes, I guess there are a few classes on the side somewhere.
Yes, there is no constitutional reason for public schools. I guess they do keep some criminals off the street for a few more years, but we could more efficiently use the money for law enforcement and prisons instead.
Now take that concept and expand on it with your comments. It matters little if your high school is in the rough part or the tony part of town - if you have no love for learning, then you will ultimately fail unless you develop that along the way. Conversely, those kids in rotten high schools are still surrounded by libraries - with internet - and therefore access to the great texts of the world. In fact, anyone can log on to a number of universities and learn the knowledge tied to a degree. No, a degree doesn't come in the mail, but the knowledge stays - and amazingly, it is free!
What just annoys the heck out of me are students that have so much given to them intellectually and materially, and all they want to do is play. Zero intellectual curiosity. You describe high schools that frankly don't exist in my county, but I don't doubt that they exist in richer communities. But all of that wealth doesn't go to creating a better person.
We have a nation of horses standing at the trough of knowledge and a scarily high percentage of them turn their heads and refuse to drink.
I don't see this as a public school/private school/home school phenomenon. This attitude cuts straight through all cultures, all sub-groups, all income catagories. However, since most kids are in public schools, it's very easy to point the blame there. And believe me, the schools should bear their share of the blame. But they don't stand alone, they have plenty of company
Thanks for the kind words. I do my best with God’s help - but every day I see ways I fall short.
I will say this though, if and when the day comes that I am asked to do or teach something that violates my core Christian beliefs, that is the day I walk out the front door and to the superintendent’s office with my quitting papers in hand. It has never happened, but I’m not so naive to think it never could. The world is an evil place and we know it’s not getting better.
As all of us know, the answer is “no!” The public schools have been filled with chicanery from their first days, and the American public is worse off for it.
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