Third Party & Independents Archives

David,

Well written article. I do not disagree with the thesis. However, there are many possible solutions to this problem. Those are generally the source of disagreement and debate.

So, what are your recommendations?

Rob, thanks.

My recommendation? My recommendation is for parents and teachers and administrators and local governments to stop mistrusting each other, and work together to provide top notch secular education in our public schools.

Absent that, I recommend a national school system with national standards like every other modern nation in the world, where parents may opt out if they choose for a private school, but not at the expense of the society’s and nation’s need for an improved public educational standard.

As in every democratically elected government, the people either take personal responsibility to a high level which insures the sustainable greater good of their society, or they abdicate such responsibility to the government’s politicians. In a democratically elected government society, the people always have this choice.

Americans demand better preparation of their students for their tax dollars. But, fail to recognize that better education requires of them more than just paying taxes. American psychology is such that if people pay for something, they expect others to take care of it for them. It is not a healthy psychology in this incredibly complex, interdependent, and intertwined society of organizations we have.

It has its roots in specialization of labor as a philosophical basis for society. In reality, society requires more generalists than specialists, or autonomy, independence, and the means to control are lost. Generalists are cross trained in multiple specialties, and are capable of doing far more for themselves, and thereby, capable of saving more of their resources for a more independent lifestyle (the wealthy are exempt from this statement to some degree.) But, the more specialized we become, the more dependent we must become on other specialists and pay for their services and livlihoods as well.

It is no different with public schools. If parents are capable of getting more involved with their child’s education at home and school, some of the services schools now provide could be cut back and taxes could be lowered.

Our society however, made a decision at the close of WWII for many seemingly good reasons at the time, to move from a single wage earner family structure in which one parent was free to assist and oversee their children’s education while enjoying a middle class lifestyle, to a two wage earner family structure that seriously compromised our nation’s educational system driving up its costs and needs for additional services and leaving children without the availability to some or to a great extent, of at least one parent involved with their education at home and at school.

My recommendation is to move back to a middle class that can support itself on a single wage earner’s income. It is not a recommendation that will be embraced however, by Americans in general. Its that psychology thing. You know, “more is better, and more than more is better than better”. The price of such a psychology is, of course, being paid for by our children and nation, which has become dependent upon foreign educated to come here on H1B visas to fill jobs our own children are ill-prepared and under-educated to compete for. And dependent upon and illegal alien population to fill jobs Americans won’t take because the pay won’t afford a middle class lifestyle.

A potentially viable alternative is for the society to move toward employment at home via the internet in a very huge way, such that a vastly greater number of the middle class can provide and employed parent at home who can structure their hours of employment around the needs of their children. Simultaneously, moving toward a group internet classroom environment where students can receive a major portion of their public education from home, would allow more current tax dollars spent on brick and mortar infrastructure to be spent on academics and the social internet network to foster better academic education, with more individualized instruction tuned to each student’s needs.

The American education conflict is not just controversial, but complex as well. To improve and resolve it, America has to look at the problem as if they were from Alpha Centauri, and examine the first principles, causes and effect, of why it is, as it is, in order to grasp how to restructure it in a better way.

Otherwise, we will simply throw more money and band aid specialists at the problem without actually addressing the general underlying causes of the system’s failure and rebuilding the foundation which no longer supports the servicing structure erected upon it.

It does take a village to raise a healthy well developed child, but, our village has turned education and development over to a small group of specialists called teachers, school boards, politicians, psychologists, and the juvenile justice system.

I think the problem is, we’ve gotten big on information, and not information processing. More important than the learning of any individual fact is the learning of reason, of methods of reasoning.

Learning involves more than just the input of important facts. It involves the teaching of means by which those facts can be derived from the evidence before us, and by which that evidence can be verified, tested for its authenticity.

What we should be telling kids: Knowledge isn’t power. Understanding is power, and knowledge is only one part of that. If you want to grow up to be at somebody’s mercy, night and day, neglect your education. If you want to be resistant to being duped, if you want to have the ability to get a decent, good-paying job, if you want to have the kind of career that doesn’t leave you depressed at the end of the day, then your education is critical.

What you are today will not be how you stay, so don’t screw off on the work today thinking that you can forever be as you are now. You cannot remain a child, or a teenager, or a college student forever. You can either let that change simply happen to you, or you can take an active part in your destiny. Given the kind of awful fates one can drift into, given time and a lack of education, taking control of your life is the best option.

But it’s not the easiest, at least not at first. You will have to learn math because practically anything you do, from construction to engineering, to science, to design, to art, will require some mathematical fluency. You will have to learn English, whether as a first or second language, because you will want to be understood, and if you want to be anything approaching a manager or supervisor, where the real money is, you will have to learn how to be persuasive, logical, vivid, plain, or whatever you have to be to convince people to follow you, to be a leader. Hell, even if you’re going to play in a rock band, it might help to know meter and rhyme, words and metaphors better than the rest.

Education is the difference between bad and passable, passable and good, good and great, and great and genius. Whatever you are or are destined to be, a good education, by others and by yourself is critical to your future.

Fate doesn’t hand us all good fortune. The issue is whether we fight for what we want in life, whether we struggle to do something better in our lives.

David:

It depends on ones view. When parents look at education in America they are unimpressed, however they are satisfied with their own child’s education.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/109945/US-Education-System-Garners-Split-Reviews.aspx

Basically parents know the most about their own child’s education and are pleased. I take this to mean that they receive there information first hand about their child’s education, but receive information about the nation’s public education system through the media which is of course negative and political.

So I disagree with your thesis that public education is controversial when parents are thinking about their child’s education, but agree with you that it’s a hot potatoe in places like this.

David - you said ‘there are no easy answers’, but I believe there are.

Education in America is simply not considered that important. Less important than trillion-dollar military spending, for example, or bailing out businesses that have no business being bailed out. (Oh, that’s good, that.)

Kids don’t even start school until age five. When they do, they’re lumped into classes of thirty or more kids where the concept of individualized care and attention is simply not possible. Teachers aren’t paid enough to attract the highest quality individuals (I make the important caveat here that many of our teachers are indeed of supreme quality, but they are attracted by a call to duty rather than a salary - some, quite understandably in our capitalist society, are interested in money and will not work for peanuts).

We’ve even tolerated the policy of refusing funding to schools that don’t live up to the (admittedly fairly low) standards that we set - despite the fact that this exacerbates the problem.

If your kid’s lucky enough to get through school, they have to decide between a debt of 50k or more in College, or going to work. For kids from a poor background, the choice is virtually automatic.

The easy answer you are seeking - and which, sadly, even Obama doesn’t seem too interested in) is to take education seriously. Commit to smaller classes, more scholarships, better conditions for teachers - and fund it by dropping a few of those red herring defense programs that cost us so many billions of dollars. (Such as the replacement for the B-52 bomber… now so far off that we’re talking about it being the replacement for the temporary replacement for the B-52 bomber.)

If we take it seriously, our children will compete in the new world economy. If we continue to regard it as an annoying drag on taxes, our downward spiral into a country that can name every participant on American Idol, but can’t name a Supreme Court judge, will continue.

Watch ‘Idiocracy’, a hilarious movie by Mike Judge of Office Space fame, if you want to see what I mean.

So, where do we stand in the world with regard to education? Perhaps we need to look at this and see what those countries are doing and what we can use of their systems.

I do believe there should be basic requirements across the board (nationwide) for basic studies, you know, the 3 Rs. Perhaps more. They used to teach reading comprehension, I don’t believe they do any more. That’s just one thing. Keeping educational decisions at the local level just complicates things and makes us less able as a country to produce a standard of education that makes sense.

If American education is so bad, then why do we have the most productive workforce that the world has ever seen?

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2007/09/03/study_us_workers_are_worlds_most_productive/

And as I stated above, why are parents so pleased with their own child’s education?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/109945/US-Education-System-Garners-Split-Reviews.aspx

There is a great answer if someone would like to know.

So my basic question is, how can our education system be so bad as reported, when parents are so pleased with their own child’s education and we have the most productive workforce the world has ever seen?

Craig: how does ‘productive’ equal ‘well-educated’? Productive simply means that the corporations have managed to squeeze more out of their workforces than anyone else. Think about it - whereas almost every western country offers four to six weeks of paid vacation, we usually offer one to two. We work harder than almost any other country to keep our jobs, because the corporations will fire you and find someone else who’s sucker enough to spend 60 hours a week making money for someone else.

We work hard, not smart.

Jon:

You are right that American’s work longer hours then say our European counterparts, however as the article shows, we also produce more per hour.

Even if you move the debate further back from there, how can we have such a productive society and have a terrible public education system as advertised?

The answer is you can’t. Education is critical to productivity.

Here is another clue.

The average age of students in our community colleges is near thirty, (29).

http://www.colleges.com/admissions/articles/commtech.html

So here are the three data points:

1. American parents are pleased with their own child’s education.

2. America has the most productive workers the world has ever seen,

3. The average age of a student in our community college system is 29.

Whether the American system is terrible or great sort of depends on when you measure. If you measure at age 30 we are about the best, if you measure at age 18 we lag behind our trading partners.

The answer is that we simply spread out education across more years. We have less seat time per year, but go to school longer. It’s no big deal, it simply allows Americans to learn our unique culture of freedom. It allows our students to have jobs in High School, or take athletics or whatever. So our kids grow up slower? In the end they are still state of the world.

A typical student in America gets their high school diploma, or college degree, then goes into the work force to learn what they don’t want to do for the rest of their life. Then in their late twenties they have enough experience to figure it out, then they reenter education for some additional training and start their career.
It’s just how we do things.

“American parents are pleased with their own child’s education.”

Craig, Perhaps the question should be asked of those in community college, after a year, how satisfied they are with the education they received in K-12 and how satisfied they are with their effort during the K-12 time frame.

It seems to me we are still teaching the basics for the industrial age,albeit with computers, despite the fact we are living in the age of the investor in this country. Our economic system is tilted to the investor class yet we are not teaching investment from an early age.

j2t2:

It is interesting where the criticism comes from. It’s usually not the parents.

I do fully agree that investment should be taught throughout the k-12 program. But I do not think it wise to have one of the best educated and the most productive workforce in history and discus what we do from weakness. There is obviously we do a few things right.

That is not to say that we should stay were we are in education as job skills is the only true way I am aware of to lift the fortunes of the lower classes. I don’t like wealth transfers because long term I don’t see the real benefit. However, increasing job skills helps everyone in that even if the wealthy have to pay for the education and training they are rewarded with better workers.

Personally I think the emphasis should come to putting the money into those in their twenties and early thirties. The ones who have enough experience to know what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Putting the dollars into younger folks with no experience is good, but I believe there might be more value later in life.

Education is important.

Education is important.

Education is one of the 5 major operands in the following formula:

• Responsibility = Power + Virtue + Education + Transparency + Accountability


• Corruption = Power - Virtue - Education - Transparency - Accountability

In a voting nation, an Educated electorate is paramount.
The problem our nation faces is not IF the majority of the electorate will get their Education.
The problem our nation faces, in this era of greed, selfishness, and near-total fiscal and moral bankruptcy, is WHEN the majority of the electorate will get their Education.
The sooner, the better, because the longer it takes, the more painful it will get.

Perhaps enough voters will be less apathetic, complacent, blindly partisan, etc., when enough of the voters are hopelessly deep in debt , jobless , homeless , and hungry? (i.e. after getting their Education).

At any rate, the voters have the government that the voters elect (and re-elect, and re-elect, and re-elect , … , at least until that finally becomes too painful).

Also, consider this era of usury, debt, and general fiscal irresponsibility on a massive scale. Has anyone noticed the National Debt lately (growing by billions per day)?

That’s only one of several major abuses that have been hammering many people for several decades.

Part of the problem is that children are provided little (if any) education about the myriad of methods of usury, and other abuses (not to mention a dishonest, usurious, monetary system that is little more than a giant debt-pyramid that is most likely doomed to eventual collapse).

It’s essentially like playing the game of Monopoly, where one person can create all the money they want out of thin air. Before long, that person owns everything, and all other players are broke or deep in debt.

Perhaps enough voters will be less apathetic, complacent, blindly partisan, etc., when enough of the voters are hopelessly deep in debt , jobless , homeless , and hungry? (i.e. after getting their Education).

At any rate, the voters have the government that the voters elect (and re-elect, and re-elect, and re-elect , … , at least until that finally becomes too painful).

Craig, perhaps parents are not the best judge of their own child’s educational proficiency. Ask those same parents if they are aware of how many H1B Visas are authorized each year to bring better educated foreign students to America to fill American jobs. Ask those same parents if they are assessing their child’s educational proficiency on some standardized objective measure or just a gut feeling. I think the answers would be enlightening.

Education must serve the student, the parents, and the nation equally. Appears the only ones in this group who feel they are being well served are the Parents. And there may be a perfectly rational explanation for this. Cognitive dissonance. People don’t derogate that which they payed for, even when what they bought was a lemon. To buy something like education with taxes and then admit ones dollars were wasted casts a reflection of the fool upon the purchaser. (There are hosts of psychological research done on this phenomena, and it bears out time and again.

Example, ask how many people here lost huge in the stock markets these past 18 months. In an actual survey like this, more than half said they didn’t lose much if any at all. But, that contradicts the reality that more than 90% of stock investors lost big these last 18 months. People don’t like to admit that they lost or were cheated, or bamboozled, but they will freely admit most others were and something should be done about it.

A vast number of polls and surveys fail to correct or compensate for these kinds of response anomolies in surveys, because doing so drives the up the cost double, triple, or more. It is expensive designing and implementing really good survey research.

Jon, there are no easy answers simply because getting the people, the states, and the federal government to agree upon a consistent education paradigm and curriculum is not easy by a long shot, politically, economically, or constitutionally.

j2t2, appropriate and insightful comments. Thanks.

d.a.n, good points. There is no greater threat to a politician’s reelection than a highly generally educated electorate. We teach American history (highly biased), and structural government in our schools. We don’t teach objective evaluation and measures of government proficiency. To do so, would be political suicide for the two major duopoly parties. Hence, we have the educational system we have, and a highly manipulatable, pliable, and gullible electorate which believes what their representatives tell them, by and large. And that is by design, not accident.

One cannot grasp the dilemma of American education without grasping the underlying relationship between politics and education. Specialization of education works very much in the politician’s favor, and always has in America.

I would agree with David on many points about our education system. Mostly, I would agree with his assessment that there is a huge problem with the middle class and it is reflecting in our students. For most families, in order to actually be in the middle class it requires both parents to not only be in the workforce but to have full-time career jobs. The inability of one parent to stay home to focus full time on raising kids has left a huge gap in their education and nothing we do in the schools is going to fix that. Both my wife and I work full time and we have two small children. Thankfully for us, my mother-in-law lives with us (before anyone cringes, I am one of the lucky ones who has a totally awesome mother-in-law). She cares for our kids while we are at work otherwise we would be spending $1,200+ a month for day care or we would be minus one income altogether. This is the Reagan legacy. Deregulation, union busting, and bad trade deals have made it impossible for an average single income household to make it. Where are the family values in that?

Also, I agree that parents opting out of public education should still have to pay for our public schools. The value of having free public schools is not just for one’s very narrow self interests it is for the public good. Single people pay it, people with grown children pay it, I pay it and my kids aren’t in school yet.

However, I would caution against giving too much credence to the comparison of our education system to those of most of the rest of the world. We have among the most open public schools in world history. We mainstream students in this country that would be institutionalized in most of the countries who are beating us. That is a very good thing and makes the lives of these people a lot richer and more fulfilling. We shouldn’t let that fact go unnoticed.

There is one simple thing that all parents can do that will make a difference. Read to your children and let them see you read for yourself. Turn off the TV and the internet and pick up a book every now and then. This is one that I am having to work on my self :)

tcsned, I took the approach with my daughter of giving her one hour of choice of TV programming per day, and after that, if she wanted to watch TV she had to watch either the news, the History channel, or a science oriented channel. It has stood her in good stead, as she grew up comfortable and identifying with science and current events as impressive topics to discuss in school and amongst her friends, which bolstered her ego a lot since most of her friends looked to her for such information.

Excellent article David and very good responses from the WB family i can only add that I believe education should be one of the highest priorities of this new administration and congress, I believe President Obama will address this issue in the near future classrooms are overcrowded and that certainly is a priority and when the economy picks back up hopefully it will be addressed Priorities we have very good schools here they have spent great amounts to improve the conditions and efficiencies of our schools but they did not provide pencils and paper last year at the beginning of the school year to the K-6 graders and many of the teachers were buying them the word got out then the local groups and businesses went out and bought them and delivered them it became a hot button issue mostly because local media made a big brew ha ha about it and many of the local citizens became enraged this was so silly but it causes a disconnect between the school administration and teachers and parents and students in the wrong times clearly school management dropped the ball on that one that’s a big problem i see with many schools today is the relationship with management bridging the gap between the teachers and school boards and parents and students just as it had done with business in the last decade i hope this is addressed i also know that a vast amount of the monies were absorbed by the extremely high costs of heating and cooling and lighting because of the high costs of natural gas and fuel oils and diesel fuels last year .

Rodney, thanks for your comments. Education is the foundation of a society. If it crumbles, so too does the society. Atop great education must be built great good will. Education, without the will to use it for great good, is the structure atop the foundation that cannot withstand the winds of change.

To reside in a great society, one must have great education and great good will amongst its leaders and citizens. America has yet the opportunity to salvage her future potential greatness; to dispossess it from the clutches of the myopically self-interested and greedy persons in powerful positions today. Only the voters and citizens can accomplish this.

Let us all work to insure that the 2006 and 2008 elections were but a first stage in voters and citizen’s intent to take back this nation’s future for their children, and their children, insuring it becomes even greater, and not diminished. Trading a future of tomorrow’s for this day’s gain, is the antithesis of wisdom and enlightened self-interest (paraphrased, Adam Smith).

Apologies for the brief tangent, but I wanted to answer Craig once more on his point about productivity. Craig - almost every state in the union has an ‘at-will’ employment relationship with the employee, meaning that the employee can be terminated at any point and without cause (even statutory exceptions are few and far between, and when they exist the burden of proof is on the employee which is costly and likely to fail).

An at-will relationship means that the power - almost all of it, in a recession - lies firmly with the employer. Want to close a factory? No problem! Want to get rid of that guy with the ginger hair because he looks goofy in front of a client? No problem!

The implied threat in our relationships with our employers is one reason why Americans are so productive and willing to settle for poor benefits. That’s why we’re so productive.

Interestingly, when an employee decides to leave, they almost always give notice. Weird.

Even weirder, the corporations have managed to persuade employees of the evil of unions, even though union contracts are essentially the only way of holding an employer to an equal partnership in the employment equation. Again, weird.

Jon:

My point is that it is hard to reconcile a terrible education system with high productivity rates. Why are the American workers more productive than our trading partners if our educational system is inferior?

The answer is that it’s not inferior just different. With the average age of 29 in our community colleges it is obvious that we value continued learning.

Also we have the belief that everyone should be able to go to college should they desire to do so and have the funds. That is a huge advantage to cultures that shut those options off.

There is always room for improvment, but I refuse to argue from a standpoint that is here and across the press that our education system is in shambles.

David:

Craig, perhaps parents are not the best judge of their own child’s educational proficiency. Ask those same parents if they are aware of how many H1B Visas are authorized each year to bring better educated foreign students to America to fill American jobs. Ask those same parents if they are assessing their child’s educational proficiency on some standardized objective measure or just a gut feeling. I think the answers would be enlightening.

I don’t have a clue what you mean here. Parents have been informed for decades with things called grades and standardized tests and parent/teacher meetings.

Wow. Very confused by your comment. “gut feeling?”

I would guess that they are in a better position to judge their children’s education, than we are here in this forum. I would also say that they have more information about their children’s education than you do as well. They know so much more than we do.

However if you ask the same parents about our nations education system they would very much reflect the views here. Basically the closer people are to the educational system the higher the approval ratings.

Education must serve the student, the parents, and the nation equally. Appears the only ones in this group who feel they are being well served are the Parents.

Well you don’t put up any facts so I think it’s probably just your opinion. However, remember we have the most productive workforce in the world. That is inconsistant with our nation’s needs not being served by our education system.

Cognitive dissonance.

Help me here David. Are you saying that over 70% of parents in America have “cognitive dissonance?”
Very puzzled.

Craig:

You keep saying we have the most productive workforce in the world. Are you implying that that means our education system is the best in the world? I would like to see what you consider the source for the correlation between productivity and education, considering that people have to work harder and longer for less pay, two folks have to work in many families to get by, and still we have people who can’t read or write acceptably enough to get more education or even decent jobs.

It makes me suspect that you are in or have some connection to education and are somewhat defensive. My own experience has been that our children are learning less than they were earlier, and that education has become less a priority. Just basing this on my own personal experience, but isn’t that what most of us do? I remember my mother complaining that her children were not taught things she was taught.

I sure would like to see studies or statistics of us compared to other countries.

Hi womanmarine:

Well first of all as per above, Americans are more productive by the hour than all but I think Finland. We do work longer hours to, but if we worked the same hours we still would produce more.

Our system is different because we basically raise kids slower. Typically studies that show how terrible our education system is will compare students at the same age. The problem with that analysis is that Americans keep learning and pass by our counter parts.

Our tradition is to put less academics on students as they grow up, but continue on into their twenties. In fact it really (personal opinion here) takes someone until about 30 to really have enough experience to grasp the freedom of our culture. (That is why community colleges average at is about 29).

We are training our children to be Americans, which is a unique world experience. The freedom and diversity in our culture is huge compared to around the world. That is why instead of heavy academics american youth have time of sports, work and the arts etc. Those extra activities teach unique american values of competition and working in a diverse environment.

What is also very unique is that we choose our profession. We are so non compliant. For instance in many cultures if you do not pass a standardized test you cannot go go college, you are going to a trade school. Try telling an American they cannot (as in are forbidden) from going to college.

All of that has a cost. The cost is that it takes longer to mature enough to be productive (age thirty thing again), but when Americans freely choose their profession, go back to school to fine tune their education, quite frankly we kick butt.

There are some very important points brought up here. For instance income inequality. The only real way I know to address this issue is through impoving job skills. We are going exactly backwards right now as we are cutting college budgets left and right. May the tents of community colleges increase!!

When we “take” money from the wealthy it slows job growth. However if we put that money into job skills it increases productivity, which benefits everyone. It’s the one “robbing the rich and giving to the poor” that helps the rich as well.

I am ever for improving education. And there is much to be improved upon. What I “fear” is throwing the baby out with the bath. Unless we recognize that we do some things well, we will try to have our system look like those that create less producing work forces than our own.

Build on our successes, and increase job skills

womanmarine:

It makes me suspect that you are in or have some connection to education and are somewhat defensiveIt makes me suspect that you are in or have some connection to education and are somewhat defensive

I served on a school board for 10 years. Have been off for four years. Some of the best 10 years of my life. I love public education. I don’t feel defensive inside, hope I don’t come across that way. I am very proud however.

Craig asked: “Are you saying that over 70% of parents in America have “cognitive dissonance?”

Cognitive Dissonance is a psychological defense mechanism. We all have it and come by it naturally. And yes, a majority of Americans don’t even know what it is, or how to tell if they are engaging in it, therefore, they can’t choose not to engage in it.

Same phenomenon as Congressional representatives, hate Congress as a whole, but about 70% will say their Congress person is not as bad as the others. It is a contradiction, yet the majority of voters engage in it, incapable of resolving the difference between the national polls on Congressional approval ratings and national polls on personal representative approval rating. Inherent contradiction within the minds of voters. Same as the inherent contradiction in the minds of parents regarding their school vs. the nation’s schools. NIMBY gone psychological, via the cognitive dissonance defense mechanism.

I have yet to meet a parent who feels they are a bad parent. Most have doubts about their ability to parent, but few vocalize this to strangers.

I personally was satisfied with my own public education until about 9th grade. I was very bored in high school and not challenged. College was like an awakening to me.

As I understand, the average American operates at approximately an 8th grade education level. Of course, these people would be satisfied with public education.

The problem lies in math and science skills above this level. To me, it is largely a cultural issue.
When both of the major parties appeal to the likability of their candidates, and decry elitism, it speaks to a cultural bias against education.

We are still the “frontier society”, fiercely independent, and “practical”. Rather than revering the nuance of an educated mind, we belittle this in our culture as “over educated”. The candidacy of Sarah Palin comes to mind. Rush Limbaugh speaks to this culture as liberalism. He defines it as egg headed “intellectuals”. You see pieces of this in conservatism and libertarianism, though I’m sure there will be outcry from posters here that this is entirely false. Elevating a “moral agenda” above the liberal tolerance and inclusiveness of “liberalism”, and abandoning classic economics for neo economic ideas promoted by conservative think tanks has led this wing of politics down a very dangerous path.

Until we change this cultural bias, we are doomed to be a last place entrant in the race of technology and science. The Wright Brothers, Edison, Franklin, the age of enlightenment, and Einstein were symbols of America. Now we have Reagan and Bush?

WWII gave us the boon of being the last safe place for intellectualism, the culture wars led by evangelicals has eroded that image of America. Personally, I see education as a cultural issue more than an issue about lack of ability to train.
We have the ability to achieve, but we spend our time arguing over intelligent design, and prayer in school. We decry a lack of morality, but actually lack critical thinking skills.

If Barack Obama wants a long term legacy, he should address this cultural issue head on. Our survival depends on it, even more than the deficit. Not so much give us your poor, huddled masses, as give us your repressed intellectuals. Liberalism isn’t a bad word, and until the right begins to see that, we will have issues.

Liberalism can coexist with some conservative ideals, just not the stupid ones.

David:

Or they just believe the press verses what they know to be true. We know (or should) our local representative, but when we don’t know them we accept the press version or propaganda. It’s much easier to hate people we do not know.

When people are actually in the school,know the teachers and the program, support rises.

Education Solutions …
Other Solutions …
At any rate, the voters have the government that the voters elect (and re-elect, and re-elect, and re-elect , … , at least until that finally becomes too painful).

gergle:

Until we change this cultural bias, we are doomed to be a last place entrant in the race of technology and science.

I think you have believed a myth. How do you get that America is a last place entrat in the race of technology and science?

Here is a quote from 1981:

Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world

Nothing that they predicted came true. They gave almost no research to back up their famous article called “A nation at Risk”.

Then it was the Japanese who were to overtake us, now the chinese. So 28 years ago the Reagan administration said the same thing you just said. Since that time the Soviet Union is gone, Japan has had flat growth and we created the technolgy revolution that you are now reading from, the Internet.

So how could they be so wrong? And why am I the Republican the one defending public education when “A Nation At Risk” was such a load of crap?

David R. Remer wrote: There is no greater threat to a politician’s reelection than a highly generally educated electorate.

Ignorance paves the way for politicians to easily plant things in the minds of so many voters.
Too many voters are so easily seduced into wallowing in the blind, circular, divisive, distracting partisan-warfare.
Too many voters are unaware of the abuses that have been causing the deterioration of the economy for several decades.

Perhaps enough voters will be less apathetic, complacent, blindly partisan, etc., when enough of the voters are hopelessly deep in debt , jobless , homeless , and hungry (i.e. after getting their Education)?

At any rate, the voters have the government that the voters elect (and re-elect, and re-elect, and re-elect , … , at least until that finally becomes too painful).

We spend a fortune on education and some of the worst school systems, such as DC and NYC, spend the most.

I think that David is right about parents, but how do you get parents involved when they have other priorities or they just don’t care. Apologists tell us that some people are just too poor to afford interest. Of course, how do they explain the results in countries full of people poorer than the poorest Americans or even among immigrants from Vietnam or China who arrived with nothing but their desire to work hard and make a better life for their kids.

We face problems we don’t like to talk about. Problems that money alone can’t solve. We have a great many children of single mothers and as middle class families have fewer children, the proportion of kids from less successful families rises and they bring the attendant problems of their parents. There are growing numbers of immigrant kids who don’t speak English well. We have lowered standards in the pursuit of equality of outcome and bowdlerized our history in the interest of making everyone feel better about themselves. These are the obstacles we have to remove before we can have the type of school systems we want. Unless we do that, all the money in the world won’t change things.

Christine:

It’s hard when children move between school districts sometimes several times in a year. Some elementary schools see turnover rates of over 50% a year.

Craig

Yeah. It is hard when people move. Maybe they should move less.

Disorder & disordered lives are the cause of many problems. It is the root cause of poverty.

Of course poverty exacerbates disorder, but it can be overcome, as immigrants who arrive abysmally poor but resolute demonstrate. Orderly lives always and much precede development.

Sorry – the last sentence should read: Orderly lives always do and must precede development.

Craig,

Until we change this cultural bias, we are doomed to be a last place entrant, not “America is a last place entrant.”

Perhaps, a slight difference , but an important one.

I don’t think we are in last place. I do think we have lost ground in being a draw for talent. Europe is building bigger accelerators, for one thing that bothers me. We have serious competition on many technology fronts.

The culture that the right seems to advocate is anti-education, pro indoctrination, IMO. It seems many of their so-called leaders are more reminiscent Mao or the Khmer Rouge, than of the enlightenment. That is a dangerous tone. It is a warning, not a prediction. Candidates like Sarah Palin, scare the crap out of me.

I will give you there is rigidity on the left, as well, but seemingly less strident.

Obama is in a great position, given the stark difference between himself and our former president, to change that tone. I hope he seizes the opportunity.

Christine,

I think there are issues with hard core poverty and ignorance that go beyond simple culture or money. Humans behave in Bell Curve ranges, and there will always be outliers. The solution to these issues, it seems to me, is in redefining society in a way that includes these normal distributions in a way that is humane and tolerant of differences in basic values.

Sorry about the tangent, but standardized testing has always hit a nerve with me. Although there should be basic standards that students must be held responsible for, standardized testing is not the answer. This only trains students to cram for tests, and regurgitate facts. Standardized testing also forces teachers to quickly touch on a large variety of topics in a short time. Students are then held accountable for information only mentioned for 3 minutes in the classroom. K-12 will not learn this way. Schools need to focus more on teaching students how to RETAIN information.
Back when I was in high school, my history class learned 15 chapters in two weeks trying to prepare for the material that going to be on a standardized test. Each student was assigned a chapter to outline. The teacher then photocopied each students outline and gave it to the rest of the class. None of the material in the outlines was ever discussed in class. Not to mention that method of teaching is not very eco-friendly, as each student went home with about 200 pages of their classmates scribble.

gergle:

Let me throw a monkey wrench into all of this. It that the purpose of public education?

When our country was formed it was a radical thought. Common people voting to elect officials to govern them? What do common people know? Shouldn’t that be left to the ruling classes?

Of course public education follows as a natural result of our constitution. One of the basic debates in public education is it’s purpose. Is the purpose to provide skilled workers for our economy or is the purpose of public education to prepare the next generation to vote with intelligence?

Let me give you a specific example. When I was on a School Board I was walking through a high school on parents night. It was the third week of September in 2001. Of course we were pushing for higher standards in schools. Our staff had presented a plan to cut high school civics from on credit to .5 credits. This time would be used to increase chances of students to pass our stardardized test.

Imagine the timing. At that time, I didn’t know if these high school seniors were going to be drafted or not! I couldn’t rule out an experience like WWII where millions got their draft notice. 9/11 was only a few weeks in the past.

I came back with not just a no to the change but a very loud no!! I needed to protect high school civics even at the expense of your concerns because these kids deserved all the help we could give them to be prepared to vote intelligently.

As we push for higher computation skills we need to be very thoughtful. Liturature, the fine arts, all these things are critical for our country.

So there is a tension between teaching our children to compute, and teaching them to think. I have long been a proponent of the whole child. I have to tell you that if you push me to choose between teaching a student to compute and teaching them to think for themselves and vote with intelligence, computation looses.

We need to create ways to have both.

Stephen,

You said, “I think the problem is, we’ve gotten big on information, and not information processing. More important than the learning of any individual fact is the learning of reason, of methods of reasoning.”, and I could not agree more.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend’s father who is an executive in a technical field a few years ago as the Internet was finding its legs. Our conversation was that the internet should change our overall approach to education as a whole. The smartest kid in the class (or company executive) is no longer the one that knows all the right answers, but the one that knows all the right questions.

While fact based education is still necessary in order to provide people with the ability to form good questions, knowing the answers is no longer necessary to succeed. This form education was previously left to post-graduate studies, but it now needs to be moved to the high-school level.

David,

I agree with the basic premise of almost all of your posts, but I think it is worth remembering that cognative dissonance can cut both ways. When we are asked survey questions on the overall state of the American education system, most Americans inform our answers based on inferences we draw from the news. As we all know, if it doesn’t bleed it doesn’t lead. The idea that as a nation we answer with negative impressions of the educational system is not surprising. We inform our responses based on school shootings, school failures, and national eductational ranksing and the resulting post-game analysis. However, when we are asked to form our opinion of our children’s schools, we form our opinion based on the face that we see every day.

There is no doubt that we likely overestimate our children’s success. But don’t you think that it is also likely that we overestimate the failure of the schools across the country as well.

I have to agree with tcsned as well. National rankings are also misleading because they do not take into the cultural differences among the industrialized world. We do simply allow more students to be educated than other countries. Additionally, our country as a nation of immigrants and cultures also poses challenges to our educational system that other countries just do not face. While this lowers our National rankings, it enriches us in immeasurable ways.

That said, we definitely face challenges. However, I believe that the challenges are not best met by a National approach. It can be guided and augmented by National standards and funding; however, the challenges faced by local districts are inherently local and need to be defined and met at that level.

Kathryn

Standardized tests have their place but are not the end all. Some people are excellent learners but do not test well. I think standardized tests are great for examining the school district or the state but not the individual.

Here in Washington State for instance it was mandatory to pass what we call the WASL in order to graduate. I remember getting a letter from the govenor congratulating my son on passing all portions of the standardized tests, the exact same day I grounded him for having “D’s” for his mid term grades. Something about turning in homework!!

So I had that cognative dissonance thing in reverse. There are many ways to be successful in our society, doing well on standardized tests in only one of them.

Craig, your second to last comment above was very well stated, and I agree with most every posit. I don’t think, however, that even a majority of schools attempt to produce intelligent, rational, inquiring, and critical thinking voters. Quite the opposite in fact. Our schools in general are scared to death of being accused of being political in their curriculums, and that leads to shying away from any kind of voter preparation curriculum.

Despite the fact that it is really not difficult to teach voter preparation in a non-partisan way - i.e. teaching students to note campaign promises and then government results when that same politician runs for reelection, for example. Certainly wasn’t in my daughter’s curriculum, nor mine as a student.

Standardized Tests: The quote from Carl Rogers sums it up very well:

If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.”

But, of course, Carl Rogers’ prescription is considerably more expensive education than the assembly line model we have in place in most public schools today. Those who say money won’t make a difference, are not cognizant or in agreement with Carl Rogers on the objective of education.

America is losing competitive advantage in innovation and technological creativity as reported this morning on the business news channel, CNBC. A Carl Rogers approach to education would help our nation overcome that declining status, but, not without serious monetary investment and increases to double the amount of teachers and increase their quality, permitting a more individualized curriculum tailored to each student.

Gergle

I think we are sometimes TOO tolerant. It does kids no favor to be permitted to remain substandard. We do ourselves no service to when we pretend that disfunctional families are just okay.

I read a study about school in Sweden. They pushed equality by making standards “adjustable”. The result was that kids from good families still did well because they got standards and discipline at home. The kids less successful families declined. Mind you, the differences in Sweden are not even that big.

I grew up poor and disadvantaged, the first generation in America. It is just that we didn’t know at that time that we were supposed to be disadvantaged. My parents demanded that we keep up and not complain. They made sure we went to school on time every day and had library cards and used them. And despite our poor background, my sister and I did well on those standardized tests w/o any special training. IMO - a kid growing up in a more “forgiving” environment today would have trouble overcoming the disability. When you provide excuses you provide excuses to give up.

Life is harder for the poor. But there is more to poverty than lack of money. The poverty of habits is a worse disability than poverty of money. We create poverty of habit when we ask to little from some of our citizens.

And, BTW, w/o poverty of habit few people stay in poverty of money.

Craig,

I was in no way implying that mathematics should be the sole focus of a public education. Liberal arts ARE important, but a liberal arts education without an understanding of sciences isn’t really an education, in my opinion. Not today. I don’t think the subjects are antithetical.

Motivation is important in education. My brother in law is a principle and my sister was a teacher. I’m certainly no expert on education, but I think teaching is really as much art as a science. Standards certainly need to exist, but how exactly those are applied becomes highly debatable.

Another issue is those students that aren’t going to benefit beyond eighth grade, why do we force them into school? Teaching them a trade would be far more beneficial. It makes little sense to me. I do believe we need to make adult education more available and accessible. I’ve known several poorly performing students, who later in life, become more settled and amenable to education.

I’ve yet to meet a college grad that actually knows anything real world applicable. I don’t think schools really teach a trade. They do give people basics with which to apply to skills. Apprenticeships are the way to teach those skills.

I want to add, I think ANY education is better than none, but I know lots of students who avoid math and science like the plague. They obtain meaningless degrees and then feel an air of self importance in life because we treat degrees as some sort of caste system in this country. Revering education is not the same as using a piece of paper as a badge of elite club membership. Sadly, these people are often less educated than working stiffs who did not have college available to them for largely economic reasons.

Our bureaucracies, both public and private, are filled with these morons.

David:

I am not for any direct voter education in public schools. (well, “any” might be too strong).

However, a stong liberal arts background certainly is important to create the thinking skills needed to vote with intelligence. A sense of history,literature, writing skills etc. Right now the push is away from these things.

If I am pushed to choose between preparing a student to vote and preparing a student for a job, I will come down on the side of preparing a student to vote.

Craig, I agree. With wise voting. It is a matter of priorities. If the government or economy fails, then there are no jobs for 10’s of millions of Americans. Ergo, jobs depend upon a sound government and economy. And the government and economy depend upon wise voter decisions. If the last couple decades of voting have demonstrated anything, it is this.

Voter education should be limited to the process and evaluation of issues for that level of government. Voter education should NEVER be allowed, by law, to instruct students whom to vote for whether it be party, candidate, or cause.

David:

I do want you to know however that right now liberal arts are being cut back in order to make room for trying to increase scores on standardized tests. One the scale of “do we teach children to compute, or teach them to think” the push is to teach students to compute.

gergle:

Another issue is those students that aren’t going to benefit beyond eighth grade, why do we force them into school? Teaching them a trade would be far more beneficial. It makes little sense to me.

What you are saying makes a great deal of sense around the world. (Europe for instance).

In America if you tell parents that their child will not have access to a high school education or college for that matter, you will be handed your head on a platter. In America we believe in access to higher education to every student who can afford it.

Actually this value is a major reason why SAT scores have gone down over the years. We keep increasing enrollment in colleges, which means move students take SAT. The reason more students taking SAT drives down the scores is because now “C” Students are taking them!! In years gone by it was only the elite who took SAT’s. Correctly understood SAT scores declining is a badge of honor for our country as it mean the masses now are attempting to attend college

Sadly Craig, you may be right. That is the problem I have with the relatively new college degree “caste system.” If you don’t have a degree, then you are one of the untouchables. Yet, we have people with degrees who can’t think above a junior high school level. It’s a bit of madness. I have no problem with some sort of continuing education for those that want it, but it seems we are devaluing college by making it into some sort of remedial program. I certainly don’t want US colleges to become jokes. There probably have always been shady universities, but I once had an employee who was a graduate from a nearby college (Lamar University), who could barely read or write. I’ve been told since then, students pass around tests and papers quite freely there.

On the other hand, in construction, I find many older tradesmen with real and highly valuable skills that are treated like morons. They aren’t.
They may not understand the physics or chemistry behind what works and what doesn’t, but they do know how to build something of quality, as opposed to some of the engineers, not understanding anything related to their supposed area of expertise.

When it works right, both people work together.

In reality, reputation and experience means a lot. There are no short cuts.

I think the same applies to many areas of life. I worry when we think a piece of paper, or letters after a name on a resume become substitutes for knowing who you are dealing with. Erosion of the US workforce is having long term negative consequence on society as a whole.

I don’t think education is failing, but there is a greed leading us down a path of false status, as opposed to real integrity. I think, in general, people are more knowledgeable than in say, the 1940’s, but there seems to be more people with the facade of education, rather than the real thing.

Craig, I have been aware of the cutting back on liberal arts in our schools since the 1980’s. Quietly, and surreptitiously, our colleges and universities began sculpting specialization fast track degree programs paring back on liberal arts requirements. Only a few at first, but now many, many more.

It has trickled down into many of the high schools now.

The causes are many. Among them, the attempt to cram more needed specialization requirements into 4 year baccalaureate programs. And the acceptance of the fact that a majority of high school students would never be prepared or capable to enter and graduate from college. Hence, the need for more specialization and vocationally oriented curricula. In and of itself, not a bad thing. But, what got sacrificed was current events, civics, higher math and heavy reading courses.

The dramatic drop in heavy reading courses is the most disturbing for our high schools. But, it is a result in many school districts of the lack of reading readiness coming from the elementary schools.

Like I said, education a controversial and complex topic. I am impressed however, that the level of debate regarding it here has devolved as it does on so many other debate sites.

gergle, knowing information is not knowledge. Linking that information into a broad construct of human knowledge and theory, is knowledge. Putting that knowledge to useful and beneficial purpose is what I call wisdom.

Doesn’t have to be academic either. A person who reads small engine repair manuals by day while repairing them, and connects a high school chemistry class information to the know-how of small engines, to come up with vegetable oil as both a fuel and lubricant for combustion engines, demonstrates they are both knowledgeable and wise during a time of $150 per barrel oil prices.

Our schools could do an enormously better job of stimulating this kind of connectivity in thinking and information and knowledge systems. It is not valuable for all students. But, all students should be exposed to it, and those with an affinity for it should be permitted electives that go far further in that kind of education.

Remember the Burke program called Connections? Absolutely brilliant, if not always historically factual, and sometimes speculative. America absolutely needs to cultivate that kind of cross-disciplinary and generalized education along side specialized education, which combined can apply models from one discipline to other disciplines with modifications for an entirely new way of viewing something and approaching problems with entirely new solution sets.

It is the answer to doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result.

The NYT had a funny and illuminating article today on physics that made me think of this discussion of knowledge.

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/the-physics-of-nothing/?hp

gergle, thanks. That is a hilarious article.

“And it costs how much?” Mr. Hockenberry interrupted.

Dr. Wilczek, rolled his eyes and grinned. “Billions,” he said, “to take really good pictures of nothing.”

Maxwell’s equations wow what a mind that man had and Spinoza was no slouch either for a lens grinder!

“”Remember the Burke program called Connections? Absolutely brilliant”” It sure was David, Burke is a genius, Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” was to, They were all on PBS Tv for free Loved PBS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos_(TV_series)

Netanyahu accepts limited Palestinian state”” saying it would have to be disarmed. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_israel_palestinians “”“Netanyahu also said the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and he declared that the solution of the Palestinian refugee problem must be “outside Israel.”