I came across a commentary while browsing this morning which discussed a show that aired last night on Fox. Called "Stupid in America" it was hosted by John Stossel. The topic was the status of education in the U.S.
It caught my eye because, as regular readers of this blog must surely know by now, I have two separate and distinct opinions about our public educational system. On one hand, as a parent, I had very little regard for the quality of the schooling, feeling that curriculum's have been watered down, adapted and degraded over the years. Therefore, we always bolstered our kid's knowledge by supplementing the system's shortfalls ourselves at home.
According to the article, the host made the point that "School spending has gone through the roof and test scores are flat." Going on to state, "While most every other service in life has gotten faster, better, and cheaper, one of the most important things we buy -education- has remained completely stagnant, unchanged since we started measuring it in 1970."
The host thinks the stagnation's because "K-12 education is a government monopoly and monopolies don't improve."
On the other hand, the government-school monopoly claims: Education is too important to leave to the free market. "Competition may be okay for selling movies and cell phones, but education is different. Learning is complex. Parents aren't real "customers" because they don't have the expertise to know which school is best. They don't know enough about curricula, teachers' credentials, etc. That's why public education must be centrally planned by government "experts".
As for me, I think the quality of public education has actually diminished, primarily due, I believe, to unions which permit a continually lowering of educational standards because teachers themselves have job protection despite the fact that their own capabilities, knowledge and skills have reduced to practically nil.
Consequently, if the educators themselves are intellectually worthless, how can what they teach have any value at all? If you want proof of that premise, it's quite easy to do without even visiting a school. Just listen to one of those bozos try to make a point in a broadcast interview. The majority of them sound like morons, however I must say they do sound light years brighter than the union reps, most of whom majored in strong-arm tactics, picket line formations and throwing rocks at the press. So I guess it's no wonder that a considerable amount of the verbiage on their picket signs is mis-spelled.
Despite the preceding, as I noted above, there is something about public education I appreciate greatly. Because over my professional career in sales I competed with folks who'd gone through that system themselves. And as a result, since most of them knew practically nothing, had difficulty making their cases or sounding intelligible, it not only made my business life considerably easier, I had great fun winning deals from them regularly and enjoying practically guaranteed success.
But after all the give and take of last night's show was reported, and each side's opinion was thoroughly discussed, I think the last quote in the article summed it all up best. The words came from Albert Shanker, the teachers' union president who, years ago, first turned teacher's unions into a national political force. Here's what he said, "When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children." And I think that pretty much sums public education up.
That's it for today folks.
Adios
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