So a while back I saw this meme a few times:
Well, looking for an actual picture of the meme I read a bit about Joseph Sobran and I just read a bit more about it. Politically the guy (who has now died) ended up being some weird iteration of Libertarianism, but the thing that gets most people's goats is that several of his columns can easily be construed as anti-Semitic (which you can probably figure out how I feel about that) and/or Holocaust denying. The point is, Sobran was controversial, but I think he has a point here.
What are we actually teaching children these days?
I tutor my nephew with his math and English a little bit, and I try to keep my eyes open for other goings on in education (just because you don't have children yet doesn't mean that kind of thing doesn't effect you, right?).
Education right now looks, to me, a whole lot like indoctrination to create unthinking and compliant adults.
One thing I've read, by someone trying to point out the flaws in Sobran's statement is that, a hundred years ago, only about 20% of the population could afford to go to secondary education. Now, I think that the person who wrote the article missed the point of the quote he was trying to refute. Sobran wasn't talking about who could afford to go the high school but about the actual curriculum of it.
The point is this: In the last hundred years, we have stopped teaching subjects that force people and students to learn and employ actual critical thinking, discipline, and other skills important for functioning adults in the real world.
And it certainly isn't like money is really an issue with most school attendance anymore. According to this article I found by the Heritage Foundation, the Federal government spends, on average, $9200 per student every year, to the tune of several billion dollars of about 4% of GDP.
Heck, since the Education act that was passed in 1965 spending per student has just about doubled
And yet scores have remained pretty flat. Kind of reminds me of the whole War of Poverty thing (also started by President Lindon B Johnson) where we still have 20% of the population below the poverty line despite trillions of dollars thrown at the poor. But... that's a different topic...
So money certainly isn't the issue here. And I find it interesting how standards keep getting lowered and yet test scores basically remain the same.
Maybe the problem is that there are too many students now and not enough teachers? This... might actually have some ground to stand on. Driving around town it certainly seems like every elementary (except this one in Salt Lake City that looks to be about twice the size of my high school) has multiple portable class rooms because the schools weren't built with so many students in mind. Of course, this could also simply be because I live in Utah which has the highest birthrate of all the states and fourth highest birthrate of all US territory.
Huh, a short aside. The birthrate needed to maintain a population is 2.1. Only five States in the Union have rates that high or higher. That's... concerning, for more than a few reasons.
To get back on topic, I suppose that there could be too many students per teacher, and in some places that could certainly be the case but... when I was going to college, I could swear that every other girl I met there was getting her teaching degree. So I only partly buy there not being enough teachers.
Honestly, the problem has the be in the way that the whole system has been set up. I mean, we always hear about how stupid Americans are but...
So here's my attempt at a solution. First off, we need to get the Federal Government out of education. The Feds are completely incapable of not mucking things up and I think history backs me up pretty good here. Especially recent history involving, you know, the health care debacle. Second, we need to take a good long look at the curriculum(s) that were taught before the Feds got themselves involved and update subjects like science and add in things like computer technology where necessary. Third, relax the grading scale a little so that students can focus more on actual learning and less on stressing over what are essentially meaningless grades. Finally, in places where there are too many students per teacher, the States could look into additional incentives to... lure... I guess is the word, more people into the career.
Now, I know that there are plenty of students who have learning disabilities, and they should be attended to with the proper care, but overall, I think that I have a pretty good approach here.
Thanks for reading! Now enjoy a comedian making my point.
As a teacher, there's a bunch of great topics here in your post that'll get me going, like grades, curriculum, purpose of education, and so on. I'll have to post a more extensive comment in a bit.
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