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Educational System
This article was posted by Ben F Kushner on: 29 09 11 - 00:00
The US and the world are currently engaged in taking desperate measures to stabilize an economy that has yet to begin to recover from the crash of 2008. The economy suffered a crash landing and we remain on the bottom. Talk of a double-dip recession is a joke for most people who are wondering why they missed the recovery. In our nation, the President waited three years into his term to introduce serious measures to produce jobs and reduce the deficit. Members of congress have shown no willingness to subordinate their political successes to solving the problems of a nation that is in its worst economic shape in 80 years.
The high unemployment rate and trillion-dollar deficit are our immediate crisis issues. But any successful fix is only temporary until we address the long-term problem that will result in a stable, and economically viable society. While lack of jobs and crushing debt are our immediate problems, the pathetic state of our educational system must be fixed to help us to endure as the number one civilization in the past 10,000 years.
People tend to blame teachers for not making students smarter, parents for not getting their students to study, unions for protecting teachers who should be ousted, the economy for causing Draconian cutbacks, government for everything and on and on.
The problem however is that a student who does very well throughout his/her education including earning a college degree has earned good grades in a system that has intentionally dumbed itself down so as not to be too demanding on our boys and girls.
A quarter century ago, John Adams and his contemporaries read Homer in Greek and Cicero in Latin. They had to memorize long passages of classic works in the languages they were written. They had to memorize the math and science of the day and do long problems without the benefit of any device except their brain and a chalkboard.
The classical educational system continued in some form well into the 20th century. It then should not be surprising that the very difficult and demanding regimen of the classical education coincided with the Enlightenment, the Industrial revolution, breakthrough revelations in electro-magnetism, the atom, cosmology, relativity, mathematics, and great music and literature. The period produced "superstars" such as Lincoln, Curie, Edison and Einstein and Hubbell. There was no fame or fortune for characters like Paris Hilton, Kasey Anthony or Real Housewives. Dickens was the Dancing of the Stars of his era.
Today the classical education has been reduced into the quantitative education. It is not about the quality of education that the system focuses, it is about how many progress and graduate using the minimalist approach when it comes to what they learn.
Approximate answers to math problems in some elementary schools are acceptable. Unless one is considering quirks in the quanta, there are no approximate answers in math. It is either right or wrong. Critical thinking, critical problem solving, communication skills are not emphasized. As we saw in the recent City of Atlanta Cheating Scandal, goals are all about numbers and percentages. Budgets depend on achieving these numbers. The goal of achieving higher test scores for funding and personal advancement sparked Atlanta teachers to go to the ugliest, most hypocritical extremes to accomplish their goal.
Teachers who lose their integrity should be fired but teachers cannot turn straw into gold. Not all students are going to do well. Not all kids who have reached their sixth birthday before September 1 are ready to begin school. Children who have not had the benefit of good parenting may not be ready to be in the same learning environment as kids whose parents have given them the advantage of a proper foundation.
Some disadvantage children have special needs. They should be in an environment that will prepare them or offer them the opportunity to advance. There is nothing wrong with a 7 or 8-year-old entering first grade.
We tend to appease to the lowest common denominator. This is wrong.
Again, in the Enlightenment, kids who could do well in a rigorous academic environment went to school as long as they could progress. Otherwise they learned trades and skills that many academics could not perform. It is doubtful if the rotund and portly John Adams would have been very good at tasks that required physical or dexterous skills.
Restoring or implementing a system-change as radical as being described will not occur through agreement or legislation. Only a cataclysmic occurrence necessitating a new direction can do that in a society so gridlocked on direction.
Too many of the 10 millions who are out of work have the same skills and similar resumes. Hopefully, a more diverse society where people gravitate to where they are best suited will emerge.
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