The State of Education - Part II

This is the second and final part of my blog on "The State of Education."

Unfortunately, we do not educate our children in a vacuum today. In other words, it’s no longer just about passing on facts and knowledge; it’s now all about achieving certain ends through education which is another word for indoctrination.

Today, most of what is passed off as learning is actually outcome-based teaching, or better stated, outcome-based indoctrination. Rather than teach the facts and let the facts influence the student to understand and make a decision about events, today we teach in such a way as to assure that the student arrives at the politically correct outcome, whether true or not. If such an outcome is not arrived at by the student, the exercise is deemed a failure from the viewpoint of the one doing the indoctrination…er, I’m sorry, the one involved in the ‘so-called’ teaching.

There is a stark contrast between attempting to educate by revealing the facts so the student can know the truth about what happened and the indoctrination of students by influencing them to believe in so-called facts that have no basis in reality other than the teacher’s opinion. Real education is directly supported by data derived from facts whereas indoctrination uses language usually populated with terms such as "all" or "every" as though the indoctrinator’s insights are a statement of fact. “The rich have too much money, they most likely gained their wealth by cheating and abusing other people, and they don’t deserve what they have or what they’ve earned because it has obviously been acquired unfairly.” So, we "learn" that income inequality is evil and thus remove the incentive to do well and become an innovator—something in the past that made this country great and the shining star of the world economy.

Education has moved to a place where there are no absolutes. While some of our educators would like to push this idea, the majority of people in the US just don’t believe it. Whether you have been raised as a Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu, and the list goes on and on, or even if you’ve abandoned most of your beliefs, you still most likely hold to some of the tenants of the religion in which you were raised. Thus, no matter how much our intelligentsia tries to convince us that religion is antiquated, every government that has tried to quash religion has failed. People are religious! That being the case, it is fruitless to try to educate our children and ignore all aspects of religion. Can we really teach US history, African-American history, world history, English history, Arab history, etc., and ignore religion?

Has the usefulness of public education truly passed? Why are public school teachers a protected species and somehow above criticism? Why aren’t charter-school teachers, parochial-school teachers, and private-school teachers granted the same status and respect? Any mention of public monies given to anything other than a public school, including charter schools which, by the way, are public schools, is met by a cacophony of weeping and gnashing of teeth. I think if it really comes down to it, the facts will prove that parochial school teachers work for less salary and benefits than public school teachers and sacrifice much more of their time doing so.

Is there an alternative to government-controlled schools? Our school system should be privatized and most of the taxes used to prop up the public schools should be returned to the taxpayer. Some portion of taxes collected for education could possibly be retained to help all schools and/or parents who find themselves unable to pay for their children’s education of choice but, otherwise, with tax money in hand, parents can decide to send children to the school of their choice. Religious schools will flourish and parents who want religiously based education will have what they want. For those who choose not to mix education and religion, charter schools will flourish. All schools will be controlled locally by administrators influenced by the parents who are paying to have their children attend such schools.

Standards can be established but those standards should be controlled locally. How is it that some bureaucrat in Washington or Trenton, for that matter, knows what is good for your children in Gloucester Township? Given the track record of Washington and the state of our schools today, it becomes evident that the experiment has been an abysmal failure. If we desire that children grow up well-rounded and with the skills requisite to find employment suitable to live and raise a family in the world of tomorrow, we will see to it that our children are educated rather than indoctrinated. Since when has the federal government ever known how to raise my children better than me? If you feel inadequate to the task of raising your children, maybe you should have thought about that before you had children because that is a very irresponsible practice that must stop.

Finally, one recent example of the state of public education in the United States today: What is it that would prompt Lowndes County, GA, school administrators after talking with teachers to agree that for students in the third- through the eighth-grade no “zeros” should be awarded? Actually, it gets worse. The decision referenced in the article found through the link above states that every student shall be entitled to retake any test until a passing grade is obtained. Is that really the strategy that will regain what we’ve lost in the global marketplace and again put the students of the United States at the "head of the class?" Or is this why our public schools continue to offer an inferior product that results in the “average” American reading at a 7^th or 8^th grade level?

The story about the Lowndes County, GA, school system referenced in the preceding paragraph is not an isolated incident; such reports come to light all too frequently and add to the mountain of data that cries from the mountains that our educational system is broken. My suggestion of school privatization is one answer to the problem; rather than tear me up and down and call me names, which I know will happen anyway, how about showing us what your fix would entail unless you are quite happy with the dismal state of affairs as they exist now.