https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/12/a_half_century_of_miseducation.html
December 17, 2024
A Half Century of Miseducation
By John M. Grondelski
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The New York Times reported December 4 that math and science test scores for U.S. fourth and eighth graders have been essentially stagnant since 1995. Nor have they have been stagnant near the top — lots of countries outrank us — but rather in the middling middle. American elementary/middle school students perform behind Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, England, Ireland, and Poland.
“’This is alarming,’” opined a Department of Education commissioner.
Yes, it is, but perhaps not just for the reasons the article identifies.
The spin of the article is that scores are down and American kids have lost significant ground as a result of the pandemic. Author Dana Goldstein says the results corroborate “a large body of research showing significant academic declines since the Covid-19 pandemic began.” “Experts are debating potential causes,” reports Goldstein, including maybe the fact that American public schools were shuttered comparatively longer than in other countries.
Let me argue that spin is far too limited and selective.
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I’m not an “educator”, but I can observe some factoids that do NOT inspire confidence.
- Everyone might have seen the 8th grade tests from the turn of the century. Some of those questions even I couldn’t answer. As a fat old white guy retired injineer, I should have been able to “nail” the math and geometry questions. Not so.
- There’s a meme on Facebook that talks about a circa WW2 car owner’s manual that decribes how to adjust the valves. Today’s say “don’t drink the battery acid.”
- The amount of money spent on education in 1988 per pupil was enough the send kids to the private Petty School in Princeton. Those amount have gone up from there.
- Teacher’s pay has stagnated. But budgets keep rising. Teachers’s unions in the Pepuls Republik of Nu Jerzee dominate the state legislature.
- All the stats say either we are birthing stupider children or “education” ain’t educating.
- Asian children seem to be doing just fine. Indicating that non-Asian parents are not motivating their children to excel at anything other than “feeling good about themselves”.
- And, my perpetual gripe, “participation trophies” that denigrate accomplishment and fail to teach children to deal with setbacks early in life.
In summary:
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” — attributed to Einstein
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” — attributed to Einstein, Ben Franklin, and Rita Mae Brown
So what can we change?
- Eliminating the Department of Education seems like a reasonable start.
- Returning “education” to the local communities’ control
- Disempowering teachers’ unions
- Ending “public education”!
Seems “simple” to me.
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