Modern Schools are not smart
As the probable cause report on Adult Arrested Adolescent gets closer to its end, schools must be the last and most sensitive area of concern.
It is because nice people and dupes have allowed the National Education Agency, which is not national, not education, and not as the word seems to imply, part of our government — to function as if it were.
The National Education Agency is the poster child for a progressive group that is hidden by its name. The NEA is a union in the style of the old brass knuckles AFL/CIO and Teamsters. It is not about educating children as much as representing teachers. If it were appropriately named it would be the Progressive Teachers Association. Its self-undertaken role to make schools subject to centralized style, top-down control is the problem for America and our school systems. By now, the evidence that the left has no boundaries to how they will skew things should be evident. It is no stretch then to look at the National Education Agency and find more than one hobgoblin in their activity. The American Federation of Teachers has similar clout, financing, and progressive bent. Both groups are some of the biggest donors to primarily progressive, Democrat political campaigns.
There are numerous books, journals, articles, and online stories on modern education that say our schools are failing. Before we go into describing the sins of those who purposely misuse and purposely design failure into our system there is something else that is important. In 1981, almost 40 years ago Ronald Reagan had a study made that you should find interesting – read it as your time allows. One of its major findings was:
Secondary school curricula have been homogenized, diluted, and diffused to the point that they no longer have a central purpose. In effect, we have a cafeteria style curriculum in which the appetizers and desserts can easily be mistaken for the main courses
The single biggest problem with fixing them is the concept that “there must be a way for us to follow.” Most famously, in recent times is Common Core. The problem is not that specific system regardless of who designed it. It is the idea that there is a way, common, singular. It is not, “No Child Left Behind,” ” Montessori, ” or “Every Student Succeeds Act” either.
There is no one-size-fits-all method that applies well to anything. Did you know the first shoes were neither right nor left? It did not matter what foot you put them on. The idea did not last long. The average thinker who has tried multi-tools, do-it-all cooking pots, or similar gadgets sold on late-night TV should be aware of that. You don’t work on the Space-X rocket with a cheap sloppy adjustable wrench. You use tools designed for the situation. Teaching should focus on local needs and the teachers should be allowed to design their own methods within a set of learning goals. Those teachers are much more likely to reach high goals than a loose-fitting government blob of data.
The public assumes that someone somewhere has created a well-balanced set of educational attainments that prepare our children to be good citizens, good employees who know how to manage their money and deal with bills and a household. We want children to be comfortable with science and mathematics well enough to do a good job or advance to higher-order skills in college. Graduates should also read and write well. To large a number are leaving schools with diplomas and with few or none of those skills.
Each community has different needs. The children who will make their lives in those communities need to be educated to meet community them. To attempt to force-fit an adjustable education to Chicago and Southern Louisiana with the same curriculum is a poorly thought out plan. It is an attempt to make education easy. The only way teaching is easy and applicable is within a family setting in a community where children are safe and supported by extended members. It worked quite well that way for many years either side of the Revolutionary War. That changed with government control of education after the Civil War. This can be substantiated by a short review of how schools have worked in the past. Applicable teaching is not easy for a centralized government source – so they dumb it down. Local school systems must take their own educational needs seriously and many do.
Over the last several decades, social meddlers have attempted to design education with a little bit of everything or a lot of only the things that are universal to all children’s needs. That did not work well either. There are of course some parts that are common, but just the common things are not education. Most importantly, schools have been playing babysitter too long. If it takes twelve years to educate children when the basics can be attained in only 100 hours, as experts have claimed, there is something wrong. What are they learning?
In times of change, learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. Eric Hoffer, Ordeal of Change[1]
They are fully indoctrinated to believe in contradictory messages. These are poorly substantiated Green movements whose goals are not what they seem to be. They teach racial inequality by teaching equality – each step defines a more difficult level of equality to reach, making perpetuation of racial unrest the norm. They teach anti-violence while simultaneously enforcing class division with tests that separate the higher scoring to the lowest scoring. The actual effect is for the students to easily see who the “dumb” ones are; and that is how they view it. Their non-violence goals also ignore the validity of the Constitution and the amendments that enumerate areas government is not allowed to regulate. Then classes devalue human life while teaching sexual education in fringe courses. Schools teach no moral codes or the need for personal codes of conduct. Instead, they expect all of us to look to government authority as the judge of human behavior. Then they attack the foundations of America – especially religion, the character of our founders, and the actions of people by rewriting history in textbooks and publications like the 1619 Project. The trouble with all of this stems from those around thirty-five years of age who are primarily taught in progressive schools and are fully Adult Arrested Adolescents. They have been taught to think they should apply 21st-century values to those who were living in 18th and 19th-century conditions they know nothing about.
The NEAs stated goal is to change America from a country of individual free thinkers to one of inclusion, collectivism, and decision making based on feelings, e. g. progressive.
A part of the progressive educational process is to always keep the students in a lower rank, having little power, and therefore in many schools, the students live by a code that tells them that to be “too smart” is not a good idea. This is an unintended consequence of an education system in which the inmates recognize the lack of coherence and shallow content of the program. Therefore, they think they should just shut up, get out of school any way they can and do as they please. They have no idea how they will get on with their lives unless their parents continue to support them, or luck intervenes.
Parts two and three will follow this blog in the week August 17 – 21. Sign up, give us your email and we will notify you of upcoming offers, new books, and good news. Thanks for reading. We welcome your comments.
[1] Hoffer, Eric, Ordeal of Change, 2006, Hopewell Publications, LLC., Titusville, NJ
