Not Just Cracked, Shattered, Scrambled, and Rotten

Ignorance is bliss, or so it seems. According to the LA Times, American 15-year-olds know less science than many of their counterparts abroad, but they think they’re smarter. The Times writes, “This is the real trend in American education. No one can match us when it comes to self-esteem. So what if American students ranked 21st out of 30 industrialized nations? So what if we're even worse in math—25th?” Not only that but “Test analysts found that the less students knew about science, the more optimistic they were that the challenges of global warming can be overcome.”

I’m sure if we asked, the educators and bureaucrats would tell us we need to spend more money on schools, teachers, and technology. Of course, the reality is that the more money we’ve spent, the poorer the results, unless we’re counting self-esteem. I’m sorry, but in my world, self-esteem comes from excellence, competing and out-performing, and being the best you can be. Believing you’re smart when you are actually stupid isn’t healthy self-esteem; it is delusion, one step from insanity. As far as most educators are concerned, I don' t trust them and you shouldn't either.

This demented public education system is beyond fixing. Private schools generally do a superior job with much less money. School choice is an alternative; but, as long as the union dominated, left-leaning education establishment holds its influence, its interference will undermine any attempt at solving the problem. We’re long past the time for mandatory public education, given the results. Far too much of the current system is counter-productive. As with the post office, private enterprise could do the job better and cheaper. We have known for quite some time that monopolies are bad, and government monopolies are worse, with the government’s power to tax, control, and compel, especially when agenda-driven types are in charge.

Some will say that poor children and inner city kids will suffer, but they suffer already in the public system. I have every confidence that local people will find ways to assure that their communities’ children get an education, and it will be a far better education than they receive now. As a teacher and tutor, I see how miserably the schools function now (especially for foreign students as I have written here, here, and here), and they fail the least powerful, most vulnerable children worst of all. The system has few academic schools; they are mostly indoctrination factories, doling out politically correct ideas like multiculturalism and global warming, and ignoring what most people assume to be the priority, basics like reading, math, science, and patriotic history. Those who manage to succeed would succeed in almost any environment because they are naturally gifted, intelligent, and curious. A vast middle population is bright enough, but the mind-numbing approach of modern teaching often destroys their desire to learn. They least capable often get plenty of attention, but they also suffer from the experimental approach to education that has been fashionable for the past half century or more, experiments conducted by technicians often ill-equipped really to teach anything.

The evidence is easy enough to obtain. Talk to the kids. Visit the schools. Look at the textbooks. Get to know the teachers. Pay attention to information like the LA Times story. For all the hype and rhetoric, American schools are no longer the best in the world. Most teachers are nice folks, but many of them are embarrassingly ill-equipped to do their job and frequently confused as to what their job really is. Sadly, like their charges, they think they are well-trained and competent, but the proof is in the results. Inept teachers with high self-esteem are no more useful than poorly performing students who think they’re smart.

Having said that, I wonder what John Adams would say, today: “Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates... to cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them” (Thoughts on Government, 1776). I wonder how many of you, educated in the public system, can comprehend what he said already.

Remember Humpty Dumpty? Once broken, not all the government officials available could put him back together. That's the problem here. As with so many things, governments are better at breaking than fixing, spending more and more money, creating bigger and bigger bureaucracies, but slipping further and further from a solution. If we want schools that give kids more than empty self-confidence, then we need to get the government out of our schools and unleash the American spirit and creativity. We have the no-how; we just need to get it back into schools that really want to educate rather than indoctrinate.