Many practical people say the situation is hopeless. The Education Establishment controls the country's public schools with an unyielding grip.
Unfortunately, these educrats seem to be socialist ideologues. (That's not surprising as their Godfather--that is, John Dewey--was a socialist ideologue.) They are obsessed with social engineering, not academic gains. The school is for them a laboratory where they can design the brave new child that will populate their Brave New World. Whether these new children can read, write, or do arithmetic does not seem to be a major concern.
Just as unsettling, our Education Establishment has created a far-reaching support structure which seems to include much of the media, higher education, unions, scores of foundations, and great chunks of the government. This is a vast interlocking network perhaps better called The Octopus For Our Time. In short, nobody corrects the Education Establishment. They do what they want; and the American people can eat cake.
So is there any way these ideologues can be removed from their Marie Antoinette throne? Yes, the public-- i.e. everyone-- must be 1) better informed and 2) more demanding. That's the formula.Aristotelian traditions argue that people "overcome ignorance and pursue knowledge through investigating into the causes of things." There is also a religious tradition asserting that God ordered, "Let light shine out of darkness." That's what we desperately need: knowledge, understanding, and light.
The shocking thing about K-12 in America is that most parents understand nothing about what goes on there. Even the teachers probably don't know how to explain or justify the methods used. The media, government agencies, and big universities seem oblivious. You probably never encounter anything in the media which explains K-12 machinations. (Search the archives of your local paper and see for yourself.)
We learned in 2018 that CNN can spend entire months on the tiniest smidgen of an allegation about Trump, but not one minute on the proven collapse of literacy in our public schools. Is that not odd? What if those priorities were reversed? Let CNN investigate illiteracy for months. The country could be transformed in that short time.
Our Education Establishment has done a brilliant job of controlling the education debate, the jargon, the lies, the propaganda, the shuck, and the jive
Reading is just one subject but definitely the most important. All that's necessary is that parents realize that the Education Establishment promotes methods that don't work. We should not let them get away with this nonsense.
Our professors pushed Sight-words--that is, non-phonetic instruction to teach reading--into public schools starting in 1931. The method is counterintuitive, counterproductive, and counterfeit. Rudolf Flesch explained all this in his famous book,Why Johnny Can't Read (1955). But our Education Establishment never seemed interested in what worked, but what they could get away with. So for the last 75 years we have been weakened by a parasitic hoax.There, that's the kind of unpleasant knowledge we need. If only teachers would bother to learn what damages they are inflicting on their students. If parents would take a few minutes to grasp what is happening to their children at school, the classrooms could be fixed.
If every American understood, personally and viscerally, what is going on in the schools, then maybe we can roll back the tide. For sure, more knowledge is the necessary first step.
Our Education Establishment has done a brilliant job of controlling the education debate, the jargon, the lies, the propaganda, the shuck, and the jive. Ideally, the Education Establishment moves past its fixation with John Dewey, and starts to look at classrooms not in terms of ideological hegemony but in more human terms: are children learning what they need to succeed in our complex modern society?
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Bottom line: we need to raise the level of the education debate in this country. At present, it's basically infantile, like children discussing the national debt. That's because the average American knows so little about what goes on in K-12, which in turn is because our Education Establishment is brilliant at protecting itself from criticism.
The Education Establishment works tirelessly to promote inferior ideas and to stifle criticism. We have to work around them.
If millions of typical citizens suddenly realized, "Oh, so that's why my kid can't read," everything would improve. Parents and community leaders could become a force for genuine education.
It's amazing that the average American has contempt for politicians, journalists, used-car salesmen, televangelists, politicians, and such. But I suspect that the people running our public schools are bigger scoundrels. They keep selling us Chinese drywall and we keep putting it up. Enough.
Many practical people say the situation is hopeless. The Education Establishment controls the country's public schools with an unyielding grip.
Unfortunately, these educrats seem to be socialist ideologues. (That's not surprising as their Godfather--that is, John Dewey--was a socialist ideologue.) They are obsessed with social engineering, not academic gains. The school is for them a laboratory where they can design the brave new child that will populate their Brave New World. Whether these new children can read, write, or do arithmetic does not seem to be a major concern.
