One of the saddest aspects of American society is how little most people know about education and how little they seem to care. We need to fix this.
In fairness, we have to assign a lot of blame to our Education Establishment. They are great at confusing the public and sapping everyone’s spirit. Even the simplest activities are transmuted into murky mysteries. As many parents have found, they cannot understand the explanations provided by the school when children fail. They cannot help their children with even elementary-level homework.
Secondly, we have to assign a lot of blame to our media. They report hardly at all on education. So how are parents supposed to understand what is being done to their children?
There was a time, more than 75 years ago, when education was a straightforward activity. Almost anyone could do it and anyone could understand it. Meanwhile, the media reported on it in depth. With that kind of transparency, the Education Establishment couldn’t get away with very much. Now they can get away with almost anything. They can mount a PR blitzkrieg, swearing to everyone that X is the future of education and the only way to go. That's what they said about Common Core, and the media jumped right in there to sell this bogus message. I think it’s fair to say a lot of lies were told.
Typically, our local papers will report on the new superintendent, the new test scores, the new school. In other words, the papers do report on the surface matters. They report on all the things that don’t really matter.
But none of this reporting explains the deep malaise in our public schools. None of these articles go behind the scenes to explain why third-graders can’t read. None of this coverage helps parents deal with the intellectual wasteland that their children confront each day.
I have contacted the editors in my area over the years, and pointed out there’s a lot that parents need to know. Why don’t we explain it to them? I’ve said hello to most of the other media here, the talk show hosts, the educational institutions such as Regent and Old Dominion University, just to wonder what we might accomplish together. All of them showed the same level of interest as the Virginian-Pilot, that is, zero.
Meanwhile, no surprise, things get worse each year. Education officials are always tinkering around with statistics and test scores; but the pattern is very clear that nothing gets better and it probably gets worse. How in the world do they do it??
Bad education is a passion of mine. I like trying to figure out who is responsible and how they achieve their dismal results. As a consequence of this passion, I have 400 articles and videos on the Internet. I can help start a discussion of what’s really happening in the public schools. Most parents would welcome this discussion. People are confused and angry; they want to know what’s going on. It is presumably the job of our “free press” to tell them.
But the media have chosen silence. They have chosen tacit support for the dumb side of education. Judging simply by appearances, you would have to conclude that the local media want to help keep the public in the dark. They want to help the Education Establishment continue its incompetence and malpractice.
What is your local paper doing? Are they silent? Have you tried to nudge them into becoming more involved? Have you tried to awaken their conscience?
I’m really curious about the mechanism here. Sometimes I think the explanation is simply a lack of professionalism. Now that they’re all liberals, they have forgotten how to be journalists. Other times I suspect that our journalists and politicians are ashamed to admit they don't understand what's going on. Finally, I think the explanation is a fear of crossing the NEA.
Whatever the explanation, why not consider moving past it?
Why not do what’s best for the children and the community? Newspaper editors have a code, or they used to, that requires them to report the news honestly, and to do what’s best for the entire society.
Education is perhaps the most important single social issue. The schools are dumbing children down from K to 12 and then up through college. We have ignorant teenagers and ignorant adults, and you have to wonder how they can sustain the complex society they have inherited.
Specifically, parents need to know why their children don’t learn to read (there are still many remnants of Whole Word). They need to know why their children can’t learn arithmetic (because Reform Math is an awkward way to teach arithmetic). They need to know why children don’t acquire any basic knowledge (because our Education Establishment doesn’t care much about knowledge and now insists that teachers stop teaching, this being an axiom of Constructivism).
Oh, no question, the entire field of education is a tangled web. The main activity appears to be deception. The media need to rescue us.
If the media won’t do it, then each individual citizen needs to do it. And what would be the easiest first step?
Pester your local paper until they start to do their job!
Second, discuss these issues with your friends, until either of you can explain the issue to a third person. We must raise the level of the discussion, one person at a time if that's what it takes.
Here is a short video that sums up all the more obvious problems in 3 minutes: “
Nine big reasons why public schools wallow in mediocrity.”
