Quote from IanMacQuaide:
Probably the most destructive power within our communities, and our nation, is our "mind chatter" we carry on throughout our day, as well as what we hear from those around us.
"The rich get richer blah blah blah..."
"The "MAN" keep me down"...etc..
"I can't seem to get ahead...etc.."
As airy-fairy as it might seem, I wish we could have classes in our grade schools to teach us to think, and believe, that we can accomplish anything we wish.
We usually get exactly what we concentrate on.
Good or bad.
IMO this is a very astute comment.
The problems in mainstream U.S. education are very well covered in this thread, but the underlying causes are little mentioned.
My personal list of problems would include:
1) Many good, or potentially good and dedicated teachers wanting to exit their jobs and not come back;
2) Disrespectful and non-attentive students;
3) To few capable and bright young people wanting to go into education at the primary and secondary levels, especially the secondary level;
4) Too few qualified teachers in some areas;
5) Blaming of schools and teachers for poor student performance;
6) Grade inflation;
7) Social promotion;
8) Inefficient districts with too high a ratio of administrators to teachers;
9) A misguided believe that we could regulate and test our way out of our educational problems;
10) Etc..
But these are all symptoms of underlying causes. Unless the causes are understood, attempted remedies will very likely prove wrong and ineffective.
To find the root causes one has to look back in time to the more effective education system existing prior to Johnson's Great Society and draw conclusions accordingly.
(By the way, what I am referring to has nothing to do with integration of the schools --a long overdue recognition during the Kennedy-Johnson era that relegating a segment of the population to inferior, segregated schools was morally reprehensible, and an indefensible stain on humanity. Nor does it have anything to do with the amazing technological advances between that former time and now.)
In a nutshell, the main underlying causes of the above symptoms of failure are attributable to well-intended but mistaken "thinking" that was part and parcel of the "Great Society".
Most damaging is the popular, politically correct, but wrong, notion that one can be anything they aspire to so long as they put their mind to it! This is obviously not true, so why do we continue to parrot this ridiculous and absurd mantra. Nothing could be more harmful and unproductive then planting a nonsensical idea in the marvelously receptive mind of a third grader. Years later that child will be in the office of their freshman physics professor explaining that their failure is impossible because they are an "A student", by which they mean to imply that any performance defects on their part must surely be a fault of the Professor's. In pre-Great Society America, teachers helped students discover what they were good at and then encourage them in that direction. College students in that prior era, although they would have been reluctant to approach their Professor (not necessarily a good thing), would have at least been more capable of recognizing their own shortcomings.
Ever since the Great Society and Johnson's prosaic notion that a Great Nation is one with two cars in every driveway, a television set in every home, and everyone's a college graduate, we have been on the wrong track, trying as it were to pound square pegs into round holes.
To be fair, Johnson's idea wasn't that every child should go to college, but that every child should have the opportunity to go. But even this latter inspirational idea could not be realized in a pre-Great Society America. It was not lack of means, but reality that thwarted these dreamers for a more perfect nation.
Although the notion that every child should have the opportunity to go to college could be accommodated, even welcomed, by pre-Great Society colleges, the understandable expectation of the post-Great Society students that somehow going to college would lead to a college degree ran squarely up against reality. Though the colleges did their part by expanding their admissions, they found that the new students often struggled with traditional liberal arts courses. What to do? The only thing that could happen did happen: colleges and universities changed to accommodate the aspirations of a post-Great Society America.
Besides the influx of students who previously would have fallen outside the 38% of high school graduates going on to college. And here it is critical to recognize that previously those going on to college did so not just because they had the desire to go, but because they had been in the college prep track in junior high and high school, and too they scored well enough on the SAT or ACT. The other 62% of students were mostly either not in the college prep track or scored too low on the admissions exam, but for some sub set of these students cost would have been an issue preventing them from going on to college.
The mistaken premises of the Great Society led to the end of tracking in junior high and high schools, a watering down of curricula, and grade inflation. The same effects were seen in colleges and universities but were perhaps less insidious there. And too, the increased use of blind-eyed funding formulas by college boards was another factor that contributed to grade inflation and larger class sizes in higher education.
As time went on few seemed to notice that about 38% of the students in the expanded post-Great Society classrooms of colleges were performing on approximately the same level as students from pre-Great Society days. The other 62% were poor to mediocre performers in English literature and composition, history, mathematics, and science. But what was very noticeable was that college grads could no longer be counted on to be able to write a simple sentence without grammatical or spelling errors, to do basic algebra in their heads, let alone on paper. The reputation of colleges sank with the quality of their graduates. The colleges blamed the high schools. The high schools blamed the grade schools. People were outraged and began to blame the teachers. Teacher unions became more attractive to teachers who felt they were under attack. Taxpayers revolted. Budgets were curtailed, class sizes ballooned. Students complained, discipline deteriorated. The worse things got, the more blame was shifted onto teachers and schools.
While this was going on, the trades suffered as well. It seemed to be harder to find craftsmen who took pride in their work.
Should we return to what worked much better? I think we should at least consider going back to what seemed to work in the past, making the appropriate changes to accommodate today's reality of a highly technological world with global markets.
At the minimum, we should go back to tracking, while greatly beefing up the curricula for educational paths that do not lead to liberal arts degrees but do lead to useful and rewarding careers. We should stop trying to put square pegs in round holes.
We should stop wasting time and money on remedial classes in college and instead shift these same resources into the early grade school years, where small class size is essential. And too, we need first rate preschool programs.
We need to stop ignoring what educational research has shown over and over to be true. And that is simply that language, music, art and abstract math need to be emphasized in the early years. Science and history can wait if need be. For example, there is no reason why the standard grade school curriculum should not include six years of a second language. As educators have long known, that's where it belongs. And we need to bring back physical education!
Finally, we need to put responsibility squarely on the student's shoulders and stop the unproductive blaming of our schools and teachers for poor performance. This has to occur gradually starting about the fourth grade. We absolutely should stop tolerating student disrespect for teachers. There must be in every school district an alternative educational path for students who are not suited for the regular classroom because of their demeanor. They must not be expelled and not put on the streets. It also seems to me that nowadays all students desperately need a first grade course in manners!
