In yesterday's blog, I explained to you how important learning is to me, and described my own personal experiences about how exciting it can be when it works well. I also reminded you that we've watched, in amazement, at children's inherent need to learn, and that many of us have then watched that craving for knowledge flicker and fade as they're forced to sit through year after year of mandatory public schooling.

When a child discovers these facts of life... that he is being force-fed... discovers that he is not free to explore and discover, but must instead settle down into a groove and accept what is being offered, the joy and excitement of learning disipates. When the child goes on to discover that "success" in school can be achieved aside from learning, by sitting quietly... looking attentive... asking questions... doing neat paperwork... following rules...what was hunger for knowledge can become aborted into "working" the system.

I can't blame teachers for having "pets", nor can I blame them for wishing that kids like I was had ended up in someone else's class. I understand why orderly, tidy students are subtly rewarded with better grades. Their attitudes will be useful to them in college. It's also true that such disciplined orderliness will eventually be recognized and rewarded when those students become employees.

What is the purpose of formal education?

Many would say that elementary and secondary education is preparation for college... that a college degree is the goal... the secret to lifelong success. There is no doubt that being degreed will usually result in higher lifetime income.

Ironically, it's generally accepted that the presence of a degree says nothing about knowledge or skills, yet industry clearly rewards applicants with degrees. Why? Is it because, consciously or subconsciously, businesses want employees who will accept routine... who will knuckle down and do what they're told?

Have our schools become a training ground for employees? That was very much the issue with the infamous Profile of Learning, recently rejected in Minnesota. I fear that it was rejected not because it would have emphasized and expanded the rote, orderly, PC, nature of schools, but that it was rejected only because it pushed that mode to an extreme... referring to children as "national resources", concentrating on "getting along with others", and trying to choose occupational paths for our little "resources" at an early age. It was transparent Big Brotherism, designed to create pliable workforce drones.

While the Profile of Learning, and all that was attached to it, may have been extreme enough to be recognized for what it was, it was merely an extension of what our government-controlled schools have become.

What do you want for YOUR children?

Let me give public schools their due: if you want your children to become successful college graduates, qualified for acceptance into good corporate positions, and primed to climb the corporate ladder, then many public school systems will do quite nicely. They've learned to concentrate on college-preparatory curriculum and teaching to achieve better SAT scores. They've taken counseling and concentrated it on college admission assistance.

We've all read scathing denunciations that American students don't stack up against students from other countries... claims that our economic system is in jeapordy because our school systems are putting out inferior graduates. Providing documentation for such claims is easy... the charges come from every political corner, including from libertarians. Are they true?

Don't forget for a minute that I'm being extremely critical of our schools, but the simple truth is that they do a decent job of doing what they're designed to do, and our students are comparable to those of other nations.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) measures and compares nations on reading, math and science literacy.
On the combined reading literacy scale for PISA 2000, U.S. 15-year-olds perform about as well on average as 15-year-olds in most of the 27 participating OECD countries. Students in Canada, Finland, and New Zealand outperform U.S. students. U.S. students perform at the same level as students in 19 other participating countries.

In both mathematics and science literacy, the U.S. average does not differ from the average. Eight countries outperform the United States in mathematics literacy, and seven have higher average scores for science literacy.

Our students are shockingly average... not pathetically handicapped? If that's true, why do we hear so much criticism... so many horror stories... so many negative news articles and reports?

Way back in 1983, a "blue-ribbon" National Commission on Excellence in Education presented a report on the quality of education in America and titled it  "A Nation At Risk: The Imperative For Educational Reform".
Pretty scary stuff.

If our students perform about as well as those
from other nations, shouldn't we be more satisfied?
Is this an American superiority complex in action?

Allow me to propose these answers for your consideration.

a. Education is very important to all of us.
b. We each know that it could be far better.
c. We each know ways we would like to improve it.

That last "truth" is the key to our "educational crisis".

What we're really talking about, when we discuss education, is our public school system... our ONE public school system... the increasingly federalized system of government schools... the one we pay for whether we like it or not, whether we choose to send our children elsewhere or not, whether we have children or not.

The key is ONE. With a single, entrenched, protected system to deal with... with no practical alternative, and at great expense to us, we ALL want it to be what we EACH think it should be.
Why shouldn't all of us be critical?
We're hungry and fighting over one piece of pie.

Liberals fight for what they think is important in the schools, conservatives fight for what they think is important, teachers want their desires considered, unions want more power, the nannies want it tidy and PC, and politicians want to pontificate about all of it.

Issue after issue, year after year, decade after decade, we're all fighting to make that one system what we think it should be. Because it's a government system, every group has to seek political power to effect changes, which simply increases the government's control over the schools.

Local school systems get trumped by state government, and states get trumped by the feds. Increasingly, decisions are made further and further from the object of education... the students... and the systems become a single "solution" imposed everywhere, ignoring regional and local uniqueness and needs.

It cannot be all things to all people; it is simply impossible. The result is harping and exaggeration from all sides... each side trying to make the problem seem so bad that we will jump on their bandwagon. Certainly it's true that there ARE many, many ways to improve the system, and "experts" from above are always recommending new methodologies replete with new buzzwords. Classroom teachers will tell you that such programs may be new, but they're definitely not better... just the latest forced experiment with our children.

The root problem is ONE system, and the fact that it's forced on us. Would you settle for ONE book to read?... ONE news source?... ONE view of history?... ONE blog, even if it were this one?

If not, then you too may be a "public school survivor". Our schools have tried hard to mold us into government-loving, like-thinking drones for a very long time. That was one reason why government schools were created in the first place (another was to "defeat" Catholic schools, with tax money), and that's the direction they're still headed. What else SHOULD we expect from government, but to instill trust in, and obediance to, government?

We really shouldn't be surprised that our students compare reasonably well with students of other nations; most nations have government schools, and for the same shameful reasons we do. What should make us particularly ashamed is that we consider our nation more free than others, but we've allowed our government to do the same thing to our children that totalitarian governments do to the children of their subjects.

Tomorrow - the solution that's ideal for everyone
(except the government).