The Failure of American Public Education
Many American critics believe that the major problem with public education today is a lack of focus on results. Students aren’t expected to meet high standards, the argument goes, and the process of education takes precedence over analyzing education results in policy-making circles.
This is a valid argument (as far as it goes). Indeed, it can be taken one important step further. We not only fail to hold individual students accountable for poor performance, we have also failed to hold the entire government-controlled school system accountable for its performance since at least World War II. Public education is itself a failure. Why shouldn’t individual students follow its example?
The history of reform efforts in American public education is replete with half-hearted measures, with almost comical misdiagnoses of education problems, with blame-shifting, and with humbug. Everyone is an expert (most have, of course, suffered through the very system they want to reform). At any one time during the course of school reform, an illusion of debate often obscures a surprising consensus on the her-aided “magic bullet” of the decade—be it school centralization or progressive education or preschool education or computerizing the classroom—that will solve America’s education problems. These magic bullets always misfire. But instead of changing their weapon, policy-makers simply put another round in the chamber, foolishly believing that the newest fad will succeed despite the failures of its predecessors.
Some critics believe that public education reforms fail because they are compromised or sabotaged by the education lobbies—teacher associations, administrators, and the legislators in their pockets. There is certainly some truth to that explanation, as we shall see. But in many cases, attributing the failure of reform to subversion merely exonerates that reform. Most reform ideas are either irrelevant or destructive of education. They would fail whether organized political interests opposed them or not.
Many conservatives believe that American public education is in poor shape today because of cultural and social trends, most beginning in the 1960s, which destroyed classroom discipline, the moral basis for education, and a national consensus on what students should learn. Again, there is some truth in this proposition, but ultimately it fails to explain why American students do not possess the communication and computational skills they need today to succeed in college or in the working world.
Furthermore, many free-market thinkers believe that applying market competition to the public schools will solve many of America’s educational problems. I’m sympathetic to this argument, but it ignores the role of government policies other than student assignment to schools, which inhibit school success. When government policy continues to impose rigid personnel rules, bureaucracy, regulations, and a mandate to use education to engineer social or political outcomes, a school cannot successfully impart the needed skills, knowledge, and perspective to its students—whether these students choose to be there or not.
Lastly, the rhetoric of school reform often ignores the crucial role of individual decisions (by students, by parents, by business owners, by educators) in determining educational outcomes. You can lead a horse to water, the old adage goes, but you can’t make him drink. It’s a folksy way of imparting an important individualist truth. Providing students opportunities at school does not guarantee success if students watch television rather than do their homework—and parents let them. By assuming that any set of reform ideas can magically create a well-educated citizenry, we oversell the role of policy-making. Education requires initiative, a trait notoriously difficult to create or impose.
A Century of Reform
Public education and public-education reform share a common history. There is no past paradise when all students excelled. There is no perfect prototype for public education hidden in history, to be uncovered today and bestowed on a thankful nation. Rather, American public education is best thought of, historically, as mediocre. It was a serviceable system for preparing students for an agrarian or assembly-line world in which only an elite pursued higher education.
Public education in America really began in earnest after the Civil War, when government-funded and – controlled schools supplanted the earlier system of private education. According to the U.S. Department of Education, some 57 percent of the 12 million school-aged Americans in 1870 were enrolled in public elementary or secondary schools, though only about 60 percent of those enrolled attended school on any given day and the average school year was 132 days. By the turn of the century, the percentage of school-aged children attending public schools had risen to 72 percent, with almost 70 percent of enrollees attending on any one of the 150 days in the school year. Most public education still occurred in the early grades—only two percent of the student population were in ninth grade or higher.
By 1989 almost 90 percent of school-aged children attended public schools. Almost all attended class daily (with some important local or regional exceptions) and the average school year had grown to 180 days—still too short, say many modern critics, but a 40 percent increase since Reconstruction. Most students stay in school at least throughout the high-school grades, while a record number are pursuing higher education.
American policy-makers and educators began to create in earnest our centralized, monopolistic public education system at the turn of the century. For example, over a relatively brief period from 1890 to 1910, public schools increased their share of the high-school population from two-thirds to about 90 percent—a proportion of public to private schools which has persisted until the present day. There were a number of factors motivating this change. During the last few decades of the nineteenth century, public education had grown steadily as a primarily locally controlled phenomenon, often emulating or taking over ownership from private schools. Education was still basically focused on learning skills, such as reading or arithmetic, and schools often reflected their communities in very obvious ways.
But by the start of the twentieth century, a number of different groups began to believe that a comprehensive, centrally controlled (at least on the city or state level), and bureaucratic public education system was crucial to America’s future. The Progressive movement, for example, sought to replace haphazard government decision-making (such as that provided by political machines or community schools) with a more standardized, “predictable” approach. At the time, they viewed such change as necessary to eliminate corruption and graft. Similarly, the child welfare movement began to press for changes in family life—for replacing child labor and family neglect with public education.
Simultaneously, American business leaders began to see a decentralized, “patchwork” education system as a liability in international competition. U.S. manufacturers, especially, saw the rise of Germany as a significant economic threat and sought to imitate that country’s new system of state-run trade schools. In 1905, the National Association of Manufacturers editorialized that “the nation that wins success in competition with other nations must train its youths in the arts of production and distribution.” German education, it concluded, was “at once the admiration and fear of all countries.” American business, together with the growing labor movement, pressed Congress to dramatically expand federal spending on education, especially for vocational instruction. Also, business and education leaders began to apply new principles of industrial organization to education, such as top-down organization and a “factory-floor” model in which administrators, teachers, and students all had a place in producing a standardized “final product.” These leaders created professional bureau cracies to devise and implement policy.
Finally, perhaps the most important boosters of America’s new public education system were what we might today call “cultural conservatives.” The turn of the century, after all, was a time of tremendous immigration. As more and more immigrants arrived in America, bringing with them a plethora of languages, cultural traditions, and religious beliefs, American political leaders foresaw the potential dangers of Balkanization. The public education system, once designed primarily to impart skills and knowledge, took on a far more political and social role. It was to provide a common culture and a means of inculcating new Americans with democratic values. Public schools, in other words, were to be a high-pressure “melting pot” to help America avoid the dismal fate of other multi-national politics. American political leaders were all too familiar with the Balkan Wars of the early 1900s, and were intent on avoiding a similar fate.
The Expanding Role of Public Education
By now, you should be experiencing a heavy dose of déjà vu. These themes and concerns have continued to dominate American public education until the present day. “Do-gooders” throughout the twentieth century have sought to expand the role of public education in all aspects of what was once family life, such as instilling moral values, providing health and nutrition, fighting delinquency and crime, and protecting children from physical and psychological abuse. Today, they are the primary advocates of Head Start and other supplements to school that intervene in virtually every aspect of a student’s life.
Business groups, especially national organizations and corporate magnates, have frequently played a high- profile role in educational affairs during this century, constantly warning of the economic threats posed by international competitors (as in the Sputnik scare of the 1950s or the “competitiveness” debate today) and supporting a professional, centralized approach to public education (in stark contrast to what the same business leaders believed was appropriate in economic policy).
Finally, a host of groups across the political spectrum have looked to public schools as a key means of accomplishing what they consider to be important political or social objectives, such as racial integration, social tolerance, democratic participation, or environmental awareness.
The history of public education reform is a story in which these groups—sometimes in concert and sometimes in opposition to professional educators with their own designs—jockey for position to make their indelible mark on the school policies of the day. Reform efforts have reappeared regularly, in the 1940s, the watchword was “life adjustment education.” Educators, worried about a growing dropout rate and the seemingly frantic pace of post-War technological innovations, sought to help students adjust to a changing world. One example of a class introduced in public schools during this period was entitled “Basic Urges, Wants, and Needs and Making Friends and Keeping Them.” That’s the 1940s, not the 1960s.
This “promising” development fell victim to the education scare that began when the Soviet Union put its Sputnik satellite into space in 1957. The focus shifted back toward learning basic subjects, though in new and sometimes misguided ways. A flurry of activity followed the Sputnik scare, exemplified by such innovations as new math, open classrooms, programmed instruction, and ungraded schools (which are now making a comeback). During the 1960s, these ideas began to filter throughout the American public education system (all the more susceptible to fads and trends because of its increasingly centralized nature). Some of these notions worked in particular schools, while failing dismally in others—another common result of school reforms generally. In the 1970s, some new ideas were added to this increasingly unwieldy mix, such as the behavioralism craze, whole-language reading instruction, mastery learning, and the spread of standardized testing of both students and teachers.
Finally, during the 1980s the school reform bandwagon got a new set of tires and a fresh coat of paint. Following the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983, governors instituted all sorts of teacher training and testing programs, curriculum changes, and higher performance standards for students. At the same time, states dramatically increased spending on all facets of public education. And President Ronald Reagan, promising to eliminate the U.S. Education Department during his campaign, actually helped administer a significant outflow of new federal money for public education, mostly directed toward specific programs for needy or minority students.
What Was Gained?
Despite the widespread public impression, felt every five years or so since World War II, that something “new” was happening in public school reform, education statistics tell a different story. They demonstrate very little change in student performance (and most measurable changes were downward). Here’s a brief report card on four decades of public education reform:
Many so-called education experts believe that class size—the ratio of students to teacher—must be reduced to improve learning. We’ve already tried it. From 1955 to 1991, the average pupil-teacher ratio in U.S. public schools dropped by 40 percent.
These experts also proclaim that lack of funding hamstrings reform, and that the 1980s were a particularly bad time for school finances. Wrong again. Annual expenditures per pupil in U.S. public schools exploded by about 350 percent in real dollars from 1950 ($1,189) to 1991 ($5,237). In only two years during this 40-year period did spending fall: 1980 and 1981. Spending grew by about a third in real terms from 1981 to 1991.
The average salary of public school teachers rose 45 percent in real terms from 1960 (the first year data are available) to 1991. This increase masks a more variable trend. Real salaries rose until 1974, when they began to level off and even decline. The average salary reached a trough of $27,436 in 1982, after which it rose to an all-time high of $33,015 in 1991. Instructional staff in public schools generally saw their earnings increase faster than the average full-time employee—from 1950 to 1989 the ratio of instructional-staff salary to the average full-time salary in the U.S. increased by 22 percent (although it sank from 1972 to 1980). Student performance has hardly kept pace with the dramatic increases in resources devoted to public education. While the percentage of students aged 17 at the beginning of the school year who graduated from high school rose 30 percent from 1950 to 1964, it has leveled off since then. In fact, the 1991 percentage is lower than the 1969 peak of 77.1 percent.
Evidence from the National Assessment of Educational Progress and other performance measures shows how poorly served America’s public school students really are. Just five percent of 17-year-old high school students in 1988 could read well enough to understand and use information found in technical materials, literary essays, historical documents, and college-level texts. This percentage has been falling since 1971.
Average Scholastic Aptitude Test scores fell 41 points between 1972 and 1991. Apologists for public education argue that such factors as the percentage of minority students taking the SAT can explain this drop. Not true. Scores for whites have dropped. And the number of kids scoring over 600 on the verbal part of the SAT has fallen by 37 percent since 1972, so the overall decline can’t be blamed merely on mediocre students “watering down” the results.
Only six percent of 11th graders in 1986 could solve multi-step math problems and use basic algebra. Sixty percent did not know why The Federalist was written, 75 percent didn’t know when Lincoln was president, and one in five knew what Reconstruction was.
Another measure of the failure of public education is that almost all institutions of higher education now provide remedial instruction to some of their students. The Southern Regional Education Board surveyed its members in 1986 and found that 60 percent said at least a third of their students needed remedial help. Surveying this evidence of failure among college-bound students, former Reagan administration official Chester E. Finn, Jr., wrote that “surely college ought to transport one’s intellect well beyond factual knowledge and cultural literacy. But it’s hard to add a second story to a house that lacks a solid foundation.”
Why American Public Education Fails
There are several characteristics of government institutions which, common to virtually all American public schools, inhibit the successful operation of schools. These include:
Rigid personnel rules and regulations. Those schools with little to no interference from outside supervisors or regulators on hiring and firing decisions tend to be the most effective schools as measured by student performance. John Chubb of the Brookings Institution and Terry Moe of Stanford University provided a good explanation for this in their 1990 book Politics, Markets and America’s Schools:
Among the reasons why direct external control may interfere with the development of an effective school, perhaps the most important is the potentially debilitating influence of external control over personnel. If principals have little or no control over who teaches in their schools, they are likely to be saddled with a number of teachers, perhaps even many teachers, whom they regard as bad fits. In an organization that works best through shared decision-making and delegated authority, a staff that is in conflict with the leader and with itself is a serious problem . . . such conflict may be a school’s greatest organizational problem. Personnel policies that promote such conflict may be a school’s greatest burden.
Tenure is not the only barrier to successful school organization. School organizations that call for greater differentiation among teachers and pay some teachers more than others on the basis of performance or drawing power rather than seniority clash with government-mandated salary schedules. Positions and salary levels are decided by the state without any relationship to a particular school’s situation. To foster successful reorganization of schools and more effective and efficient use of teachers, school systems or even individual schools must be able to employ their teaching staff as they see fit and pay them accordingly. If a school has a hard time finding a good science teacher (not a hypothetical situation in many districts) it should be able to set the salary for that position at a level which will attract qualified persons.
Uniform salary schedules were originally enacted to address racial and social inequities among teachers, not as a “better way” of organizing the teaching force. These inequities have largely been addressed and can be prevented by other means. But like so many governmental policies, uniform salary schedules have outlived their usefulness. Reorganization might involve paying teachers of one subject more than teachers of another subject, or paying a good teacher with ten years’ experience more than a mediocre teacher with 15 years’ experience. As education researcher Denis Doyle of the Hudson Institute wrote: “There is no mystery as to how to find and retain qualified teachers of mathematics or the sciences. Pay them what the market demands, provide them with benefits that are competitive, and create a work environment in which they can derive genuine professional satisfaction. Pay differentials are the answer.”
And yet mediocre teachers, who dominate teacher unions and the education lobbyists in Washington and the state capitals, continue to resist this basic change.
A civil service system. A related set of problems for American public education stems from the early twentieth-century view that public services can and should be delivered by a regimented, compartmentalized civil service. All indications are that the teaching profession will best be organized in the future as firms providing specific services to schools, rather than as a unionized set of government employees with tenure and little performance-based accountability. They should, in other words, come to resemble law firms. In teaching firms, more senior partners would enjoy tremendous name recognition and respect, attracting clients for the firms while imparting their proven teaching strategies to junior partners and associates. Can you imagine such a system evolving within today’s public education system?
Monopoly. It’s not an attack on teachers to suggest that they, like all other workers, respond to incentives. When a school enjoys monopoly control over its students, the incentive to produce successful students is lacking. When student performance doesn’t correlate with reward on the school level, individual teachers see no need to go the extra mile to help students when the teacher next door receives the same rewards for merely babysitting. And without the pressures of competition in education, parents are bothersome nuisances rather than clients who might potentially go elsewhere if not satisfied.
Centralized decision-making. When decisions on such issues as the makeup of the history curriculum or the daily school schedule is mandated from above, school leaders lose initiative and school policies become disconnected with the students and teachers they supposedly exist to serve. At a time when American industry is abandoning the factory model and top-down management as hopelessly irrelevant to modern enterprises, so too must schools seek better lines of communication and a more effective way to make decisions about everyday problems.
Tinkering around the edges of the public school system might reduce the impact of one or two of these government characteristics, but they’ll never be eliminated without substantially limiting government interference in education.
There is much disagreement about whether these characteristics have become more pronounced over the last few decades. But the trend lines aren’t the point. In a world in which the returns on education dropped off fairly rapidly in the upper grades and college—in other words, when a junior-high school education was enough to obtain gainful employment and function in society- America could basically afford to have an inefficient, bureaucratized, and ineffective system of public education. When students fell through the cracks, they had a fairly soft landing. Today, however, technological innovation and a host of other factors have dramatically increased the returns on education. All students must be able to compute, communicate, and think to make their way in an increasingly complex and confusing world.
The Triumph of Politics
What has clearly been on the rise in recent decades is the use of America’s public schools for the purpose of engineering some social outcome deemed desirable by political leaders. This is an unavoidable, and perhaps insurmountable, failing of government-run education.
Both liberal do-gooders and conservative culture warriors look to public education to achieve public goods. In the 1950s and 1960s, a national focus on the problem of racial segregation helped steer education policy away from questions of excellence to questions of equity and access. In the 1970s, activists bent on such diverse causes as environmentalism, humanism, spiritualism, and even socialism began to target the school curriculum. They produced all sorts of programs, handbooks, textbooks, and other materials, and used political influence to have these adopted as part of the school day in many jurisdictions. Meanwhile, America’s developmental psychologists and early childhood experts, deep in their environmentalist (in the sense of non- genetic) phase, got the attention of educators and political leaders. They argued that formal education should be supplemented with special counseling and self-esteem programs, that formal education should be extended into the preschool years, and that the federal government should be involved in funding these early- intervention and compensatory education programs. Policy-makers believed them. So we now have Chapter 1, Head Start, in-school counselors, and other “innovations,” the usefulness of which is now in great doubt.
When every call for fundamental change in American education is rebutted not by arguments about student achievement but by arguments focusing on race, class, social mixing, and other social concerns, it is difficult to imagine real progress. When teachers spend much of their day filling out forms, teaching quasi-academic subjects mandated from above, and boosting student self-esteem (as contrasted with serf-respect, which is earned rather than worked up), learning is difficult if not impossible.
While government is wholly unsuited to teach America’s students because of all the characteristics listed above, private schools offer an example of what American education could be. After trending downward for decades, private school enrollment increased during the 1980s. This year, private schools accounted for about 12 percent of America’s students. The fastest-growing segment of the private school market is the non- religious school, but Catholic and other parochial schools continue to supply excellent education opportunities to poor children and minorities both in inner-cities and in rural areas. Studies show that private schools produce better students than public schools do, even when you take into account for the selectivity of some private schools.
It’s true, as some public-education boosters charge, that even private school students have shown some declines in achievement over the past half-century—but that proves only that other influences in society besides schooling can have a significant impact on student performance. Private schools provide a better education than public schools even though American families generally do not sufficiently value education and students often lack initiative and concentration.
By any reasonable measure, America’s monopolistic, bureaucratic, over-regulated system of public schools is woefully unprepared to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. Political, business, and education leaders continue to talk about “reforming” the current public education system. They should, instead, be discussing how to replace it.
Comment by ART on 7 May 2009:
The US educational system is failing, I agree, because of over-regulation, unions, uninspired teachers, antiquated reward systems, etc. However, the author fails to make a cogent case dismissing discipline as a primary explanatory variable by saying that \’it fails to explain why American students do not possess the communication and computational skills they need today to succeed in college or in the working world\’. Although I agree that discipline alone cannot explain the k-12 system failure, it is abundantly clear that if students don\’t respect their teachers, schools, principals, or indeed even themselves, then attempts to teach them anything will fall far short of success. Up through the late 70s students were taught that some things just needed to learned for their own good. Yes, learning about diagramming sentences in the 6th grade would now days be argued to somehow demeaning or irrelevant, but in fact it was a step in the development of our critical thinking skills–which aren\’t taught today. I know of where I speak because I used to teach in major university, which is ranked in the top 10% of all universities in the US. My students were a representative cross section of the college and had only average academic writing abilities and even poorer critical thinking skills. Now, that being said, it has never been easy to teach students how to think, in fact, holding a doctorate in education along with 7 other degrees in 5 other fields has not revealed to me how one might actually teach others how to think. Yes, you can teach logic and other related skills, but you cannot teach anyone to know exactly how to generalize logical skills to a given situation at given moment, except in specific fields. That is, mathematicians, physicists, historians, etc. can learn how to think in their fields, but may be hard pressed to apply equally rigorous skills outside their chosen areas. This is why we have need to teach thinking in many areas–so that thinking in any area becomes easier with time and experience. However, since students these days know that they are in charge (in any real sense), then anything that is too challenging they can deem to be unfair, or gender/race biased, etc., and have removed from their educational experience. Simply put: everything was harder when I was in school and in university. I was taught that if I wanted to get an A or anything else, then I had to earn it–an idea that infuriates students today. When students grow up in a society in which they get a trophy for simply showing up to an event, what incentive do they have to actually work for something? Our teachers and principals know it; our lecturers and professors know it–American student want \’something for nothing\’, indeed they feel they are entitled to such. This is a lack of DISCIPLINE, period. The author also left out the monumental effect that feminism has had on virtually all aspects of this problem. It was feminism that progressively evolved our K-12 system into a pre-school mentality where there are no grades, no comparisons, no competitions, no winners or losers, no angst, no unhappiness, and no male behavior–and consequently, no standards. Another disastrous policy that feminism brought us is the idea that everyone is supposed to go to college, or even to graduate high school. Should everyone have the opportunity to do so–absolutely, but the fact is that spending hundreds of millions of dollars to provide largely unsuccessful programs aimed at making sure that unqualified, and indeed unmotivated young people get diplomas or degrees is ridiculous and just being politically correct. If you look at, for instance, the level of academic qualification for college students in the 1970s and compare to today, there is a vast difference, along with there being many fewer students going to college in the 60s and 70s compared to now. Ask any college professor of significant tenure and they\’ll tell you that what were undergraduate level programs in the 70s are now graduate level programs, and that tests in virtually any subject were much harder then than now and that \’harder\’ means requiring more critical thinking skills. Over-simplistically, a vast increase in the number of students meant that each student would be given less attention and that standards had to fall. Feminism along with the \’revolution\’ of the 50s and 60s also brought us the idea that no one should not have to obey rules if such rules made them feel uncomfortable in any way. I had a coed demand to know why I insisted that all submitted papers have page numbers!! We used to be taught to critically examine our world in order to understand it better and therefore make better decisions. Now children are taught to simply criticize their world in order to make it understand THEM BETTER. Now, let\’s go back and examine all the institutional traits the author attributes as causes for US educational failure–monopolistic, bureaucratic, over-regulated. Were these not also the case in the 50s and 60s? There were teachers unions then; there was tenure then; there were uniform salaries then–but there wasn\’t social engineering then and there WAS discipline then. In fact such social engineering could not get traction until the discipline was gone–so feminism started to take significant hold in schools as the 70s and school discipline became extinct. The author also fails to consider a major possibility: that the failure of American schools is, in fact, by design. Feminist social engineering is an attempt is gain control of American society by taking men out of the picture. Of course getting men out of the picture meant systematically reducing their ability to think. Thinking less means relying more on sexual politics or emotions in relationships, which is where women know they\’ll always prevail. Emasculating men meant a slow decline in men\’s abilities to be good husbands and fathers. And, so the process was complete by the mid 90\’s. Look at the statistics or trends regarding the current social status of men and women: 70% of divorce cases brought by women (who claim men can\’t commit); 75% of students from broken families; 90% of child custody going to women; 22% more boys not graduating from high school; 70% of women wouldn\’t marry their current husband again; fathers on a regular basis made to pay child support for children who are not biologically theirs; most domestic violence perpetrated by women, who are rarely jailed; an increase of false rape accusations that go unpunished, etc. Women are unhappy with men for not-so-ironically becoming the very thing that they–women–created through sabotaging the educational system. American society is now a solid reflection of the narcissism that feminism has been constructing for the last 30 years–full of itself, unaware of its own needs, unable to think, unaware of what others in the world think, childish, and desperately in need of self-discipline. Thus, what in the end is really different about the 60s US k-12 educational system vs. that of today? Well, in essence: social engineering = feminism; a lack of discipline = feminism; poor standards = feminism; too many students who all have to be placated = feminism; a lack of rigorous thinking skills = feminism; a focus on narcissism = feminism; and a depraved indifference toward the welfare of our children at the behest of meeting a social agenda = feminism. All this being said: should women have every right to a good education, to good jobs, to good careers, to control over their destiny? Of course, but what radical feminism has done to the US is nothing short of Nazi-ism. And, where they started was our educational system. Take away men, families, and the ability to fight back using critical thinking skills and you have met your goal. Of course had this not been backed by the government-wealth complex to break up families and make us all more dependent on the state (at a financial cost of course), it would have never seen the light of day–but that\’s another story. AS
Pingback by NEA Robert Chanin bids Farewell with a Suprise Admission :: The 912 Project Fan Site on 5 October 2009:
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Comment by Gary Mullennix on 14 February 2010:
Extremely well written and thought through. Size matters and when it is too big, it ceases to work well. I’ve always lamented the consolidation of schools for all the many reasons noted in the article. Consider that as the schools get larger, the students disappear at a greater rate. It is easy to not be noticed, it is easy to not participate. In fact, it is hard to do either of those two or to learn from the act of doing things in school. In my county schools system in Indiana (mirrored across the country) we went from 5 small high schools to 1. That means one Valedictorian, not 5. One Prom Queen and King, not 5. 5 starting basketball players, not 25. 1 Captain of the team, not 5. One debate club, not 5. And, on and on. That was a poor trade off for sensational new lab equipment, great new stages for the school play (one lead, not 5) and swimming pools.
Comment by Roose on 18 February 2010:
so parents that care send their kids to private schools, and all the kids whose families don’t care are stuck in the public schools, how does that help? a school full of kids that don’t care.
private and charter schools are simply funneling the “good” students away. To ignore the economic impact of students’ families is absurd.
Comment by Uche Jynin Udjombala on 21 February 2010:
love conguers all!
Comment by Teacher in Maryland on 3 June 2010:
As a teacher, I ask you this question: Will you hold me accountable for the performance of a student who is chronically absent? a student who never completes homework? a student who has chronically bad behavior and his or her parents make excuses for that bad behavior? a student who, no matter how hard he works, is unable to make “adequate” progress due to a mental processing issue?
As a teacher I have control over how I teach (though not what I teach). I can control what I present. I cannot control the minds of the students, making them magically find the work interesting. I cannot magically make any student desire to be an intellectual. I cannot control what happens outside of the school day. I can encourage, support, and try. In the end, as we all know, it isn’t enough.
If anyone out there has the “magic wand” that will make all students, regardless of ability or desire, achieve the same high level of generic skills, please pass it my way. I doubt anyone will or there would be no education debate at all. The world isn’t that generic. If it was, everyone would be a doctor, lawyer, or some other high-paying professional. No one would be poor.
I leave with this final comment. Those that are ever so critical of our educational system should remember that without it, they would not have the jobs and skills that they have today.
Public education is NOT a fix for poverty. It is an opportunity. Some choose to take it. Others do not.
Comment by LG on 24 June 2010:
ART is an idiot, it’s not discipline that’s the problem, because teachers these days have too much power especially when it comes to authority, besides most students just sit down and obey the teacher anyway, that is respect that’s already given. It’s the idea that in order for a person to learn they must sit through a classroom obeying the teacher after he/she lectures and gives out work for 1-4 hours. Some people are just not meant for school, that does not mean they cannot be educated or be successful in life. The author is right about rigid schools, teacher unions, and government involvement. There should be a separation between education and state as much s possible. Also the economy and education goes hand-in-hand. Back when the economy was doing well you only needed a HS degree or a GED to get a decent living and a decent a job. Nowadays the pursuit is to get a college education to enjoy the “American dream” which is own a mansion-like house, a Mercedes, and have a nice family. Not everyone can achieve that, because not everyone can hack the school system and ace every course. The solution is less government involvement, that means no ED, no and compulsory education laws.
We don’t need strict abusive teachers like you advocated because students don’t need to respect the teachers if they are offensive and abusive. Schools should belong to the free-market with no government involvement so there would be more alternatives. And with today’s technological advancement it is entirety possible.
Comment by matt on 11 July 2010:
It’s a cultural problem plain and simple. Yes there are many other smaller problems but in the end what us needed is a father and mother who are care, who and encourage and expect effort and hard work and who support and love their children. Or does that sound too old fashioned? Societal decay and the attack on family are the root of our educational failings.
Pingback by I sense a disturbance in the educational force… « The Stay-at-Home Geek on 14 September 2010:
[...] don’t agree with everything this article says, but this article in The Freeman, in 1993, best expresses a lot of my thoughts on public education in America. Yes, the article is 17 years [...]
Pingback by Welcome to English 2 | SCAT English 2 on 14 September 2010:
[...] children who are afraid of nobody.” Anonymous I chose this quote because, I believe that the public educational system has flaws that need to be addressed, some schools have completely lost all control of their students. I [...]
Comment by William on 21 September 2010:
I’ll tell you, I started 1st grade in 1958 so you’ll know where I’m coming from. I walked to school for my first 6 years (walked home for lunch too) because it was one of those neighborhood elementary things. I’d be guessing if I said there was 25 kids in each class. From my first day of school, discipline was NEVER a problem. Get there on time, sit down, shut up or,,,,, you got your ass beat. And,,, God forbid my Dad found out. If he did, I got my ass beat again because I was an embarrassment to him. I lived..
Some kids were smarter than others,,, go figure. The teachers really tried but some kids needed to be held back. I think that was a motivating factor for the rest of us. NOBODY wanted to be held back and if you didn’t earn the grade, you didn’t get it. I think most of us finally graduated.
I can agree with almost everything that is written here, as far as what’s wrong with schools but,,,,,, for the most part, I think it is the disintegration of the family that is at the core. Things would certainly improve if the government were to keep their collective noses out of education but children left to their own devices will act or behave like children. The parents are the key.
Why aren’t the parents involved?? Whether single or married, they’re more than likely working.
I believe, with all my heart, that like everything else that’s wrong with this country and the rest of the world, that having everybody struggling to survive, not having time to be involved, the dumbing down of our children, is by design. Keep people occupied and dumb. It’s that simple.
See Federal Reserve Act 1913.
All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.
John Adams
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
Comment by Akademos on 10 October 2010:
Decent historical background, though unnecessarily long-winded. Unfortunately, what began as seemingly promising analysis deteriorated into wrong, dumb, and unsubstantiated conclusions. In other words, a long, long waste of time. Sorry.
Comment by kmagreb on 13 October 2010:
I agree with all the points ART brings up, especially the fact that American Students expect good grades without working for them.
However, to say the failure of American Public Education is all due to feminism is simply an allegation.
Foreign students at university level generally work much better than American students, and as a result, do well due to their strict upbringings (by schools and families).
As a college student, I’ve noticed many of my friends interested in becoming teachers for the WRONG reasons. Frankly, i can’t do this. Pursuing my ambitions and doing whatever makes me happy are irrevocable principles i live by. Plus, if I become a teacher and I can’t/won’t adequately teach my students the material, I’d inherently feel guilty.
But apparently, these ‘settlers’ are OK with it. They remind me of the good pay, vacation, and ‘chill-out’ work environment! this is evidance teachers should be held more accountable for their performances – not necessarily fired, many are just lazy.
Also, the level of elementary and middle school math and science in the US is HORRIFICLY low. I moved to the US when i was a 5th grader, and for almost 3 years i didn’t learn anything in math .
The US GOV should refrain from further investments on education, that’s not the issue or the solution. Kids in India, China and across the World are learning on minimal budgets. What’s important is addressing the issues, finding viable solutions and carrying them out!
Comment by toney mc mahon on 23 November 2010:
this comment is for the teacher in maryland.How to get the magic wand to controll the minds of the students.The biggest challange for students is that there are no clear directions to really prepare students with focusing skills they need .Learning is difficult for everyone but without the ability to pay attention it is impossible.It is somewhat surprising and discouraging with all the great minds in the department of education ignore the one ingredient simply how to focus your attention.for more information please visit http://www.learning simplified.net there you will find the magic wand that will help all students achieve learning skills.
Comment by Madeleine White on 14 December 2010:
I would like to draw attention to the fact that a major study by the CED released today has matched findings by the OECD, released earlier this week. Findings: if states continue their current pace of progress, in narrowing achievement gaps between different races, ethnic groups and income levels, it could take decades for lagging student groups in some states to catch up to their better-performing peers.
When linked to the PISA study (of 65 countries) showing a very wide gap between the top 10% and the bottom 10% of 15-year olds in the U.S these are stark, as is the fact that the U.S. has dropping below the OECD average in mathematics (rank 25) for the first time.
The issues around inclusion and social equality are becoming ever more pronounced, with just the UK and Luxemburg showing greater social division. Authoritative papers have shown that parents of certain ethnic and social groups are less likely to engage with the school. Schools that offer support to these parents are more likely to engage them in their children’s learning. Online tutoring is able to do this and can therefore complement the lack of specialist teaching in early years math.
Some facts:
o Children are self-motivated, however as they get older their confidence dips, which can lead to very negative attitudes towards Maths at the upper age range.
o Maths-Whizz and Education City report a 1.2 million collective world-wide online monthly usage
o The State of Hawaii has adopted Math-Whizz on a State wide license
To combat the US numeracy loss, Maths-Whizz the world’s leading online early years (5-13) personalized math tutor would like to invite comment via free trial registration at http://www.whizz.us, with findings to be incorporated into a funded white paper on the importance of early-years online tutoring.
Comment by RobertTheBruce on 15 December 2010:
From what I have seen so far the American Educational System is failing largely because of our desire to maintain a one-size-fits-all curriculum. In the attempt to make things “fair” on the same level for everyone has resulted in ineffective classes that aren’t applicable to the real world and terrible teaching methods. We are, quite simply, too rigid. Schools must conform, not the students. The average Chineese student does not score 200 points higher than the average American student because of an intelligence gap. Each one of those students are proof that our Educational system needs to see a radical change. It is not because us students expect good grades without work- that would simply be stupid, as we ALL are aware that grades reflect effort. Yes, some teachers don’t help the situation, but they are hardly to blame.
Plenty of students come across as lazy or un motivated because they are discouraged by their failure to fit into the educational system (and nobody bring up IEPs because they have almost no power to directly address the real problems)I have been called lazy and apathetic by teachers. To the contrary, I love to learn and have published a book, won state writing contests and several poems. In the right individual circumstances, I would bet that 70% of students that have been called lazy would have a radically changed work ethic. More than half the under achievers I know could have the potential to get As in my AP classes too.
Putting the word “discipline” next to the other factors seems moronic to me. Some kids are simply “inherently” obnoxious, but students I know act out AS A RESULT of being in a system that makes them feel opposed and bored.
Its all about TEACHING. I am both diagnosed as gifted and learning disabled, and until I could pry the accomodations from the hands of those who could provide them for me (took seven years) I was getting no grades higher than Cs and Ds.
Yes, I am only a high schooler, but seeing as I’m currently IN this system, my opinons should be regarded, as they are mutual among many of my friends and aquantinces.
Comment by Clagrone on 18 December 2010:
I appreciate the historical background on our antiquated system designed to produce quality factor workers. Unfortunately, we no longer have large numbers of factories in this country. We need to focus on educating the children to be equipped to live in the 21st century. No, throwing more money at the problem will not make it better. But, not funding Head Start programs and priming low income children to be able to learn, are you joking? No, we need to encourage early childhood intervention in the absence of parental guidance. We need to make teacher salaries competitive to encourage the right kind of teacher. We need to stop teaching to the standardized tests and refocus on teaching critical thinking. We need to decentralize the power of the teacher’s unions who continually muck up the works and prevent the administrations from dismissing poor educators. We need to stop this back-stabbing and finger-pointing between teachers and parents. There is literally no respect between parents and teachers anymore because the union people want to give the teachers a scapegoat (blame the parents) and the administration wants to give parents a scapegoat (blame the teachers) so the two groups with the most contact with the children are fighting amongst themselves. Meanwhile the kids are losing out…daily! But this goes back to my fundamental question does the government really want an educated populous? No, of course they don’t. Is feminism to blame? No. Is taking prayer and corporal punishment out of the classroom to blame? No. Do we need to right this ship so we can compete on a global level? Yes!
Comment by Ms. Cristina on 3 January 2011:
Intelligence is not something one can be taught. It is something you are either born with, or without. Knowledge can be enhanced, but you can’t teach someone brilliance. Some have strengths in certain areas where others are weak… yet the education system measures our intellectual credibility on our ability to perform their tests. At what point do we begin to focus on what each individual is capable of and build on that rather than force feeding society one method of learning then placing labels on people according to their standards? Screwed up system.
Comment by Ms. Cristina on 3 January 2011:
Intelligence is not something one can be taught. It is something you are either born with, or without. Knowledge can be enhanced, but you can’t teach someone brilliance. Some have strengths in certain areas where others are weak… yet the education system measures our intellectual credibility on our ability to perform their tests. At what point do we begin to focus on what each individual is capable of and build on that rather than force feeding society one method of learning then placing labels on people according to those standards? Screwed up system.
Comment by Ms. Cristina on 3 January 2011:
RobertTheBruce.. very, very well written!!!
I am a mother of 3.. I actually dropped out of high school in the 10th grade due to my belief that I would better propel myself into adulthood if I were to be self taught and disciplined.
I was right and wrong.
Though I have been able to find work, and make a reasonable living, I believe I would have faired better from being able to expand upon my abilities, had the right educator taken me under their wing and helped me to find my own way. Rather than being pushed through a system of people who not only didn’t genuinely care about me or the outcome of my future, but whom were very obviously to me, only there to do their job and then go home.
At a very young age I felt as though the ‘system’ had very little to offer ME as an individual… so therefore I rebelled.
Now I am in a predicament where I have a 13 year old daughter who is exhibiting some of the same sentiments that I once did, and is having trouble conforming to the school system’s requirements. She is extraordinarily bright, but lacks the confidence and or desire to push through unnecessary and ridiculous courses which are not only a waste of time and effort but completely useless to her as an individual. As a parent I am supposed to encourage her to fight on, when I am completely sympathetic to her attitude and way of thinking.
A difficult situation.
Pingback by american education system statistics « education webs on 19 January 2011:
[...] 3.The Failure of American Public Education | The Freeman | Ideas On During the 1960s, these ideas began to filter throughout the American public education system (all the more susceptible to fads and trends because of its increasingly centralized nature). Some of these notions worked in particular schools, while failing dismally in others—another common result of school reforms generally. [...]
Comment by brutus2011 on 19 January 2011:
I believe the wrong questions are being asked, or that we are all looking at public education from an “educational” perspective. Public education is administered by municipal governments with the attendant political processes. By that I mean, people are elected and then appoint people to administer the different functions of local government. Almost by definition, the resultant public education system is focused on itself and its own perpetuation rather than the kids that the system is supposed to be preparing for the future. No one looks at the problem of the achievement gap in this way. Why? Those in charge of educational policy are invested in keeping their jobs and those of their associates. Does it not make sense that if you keep trying the same or similar things, you will achieve the same or similar results? In short, one needs to turn the problem upside down. Instead of focusing on the bottom (parents, students, teachers), perhaps the focus should be on those at the top (superintendents, district supervisors, principals, consultants, university education departments, etc.). If those who are the leaders of a failed system are not replaced then why is it so mysterious that the system goes through the convulsions of reform over and over again? Do I have a proposal for positive change? I think so. Why not have teachers run the schools buildings? Why not eliminate school principals and replace them with (much) cheaper business administrators who make sure that safety is efficient, the heat stays on, and the roof does not leak? Why not identify and/or recruit master teachers who can design lessons and delvier them electronically? Why not train/recruit assistant teachers from local communities to facilitate sane learning environments? Why not begin to think this way? And, I bet that the emergent system would be much easier on the taxpayer who is footing the bill.
Pingback by problem american education « education webs on 24 January 2011:
[...] 10.The Failure of American Public Education | The Freeman | Ideas On Mr. Hood is a newspaper columnist, a contributing editor of Reason magazine, and the research director for the John Locke Foundation, a state policy think tank in Raleigh, North Carolina. … Many American critics believe that the major problem with public education today is a lack of focus on results. http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/the-failure-of-american-public-education/ [...]
Pingback by Ten ways public school destroys free thinking (Opinion) « It's Better Now on 20 February 2011:
[...] http://www.thefreemanonline.org/col… [...]
Pingback by Ten ways public school destroys free thinking (Opinion) « Eclectic Thoughts on 20 February 2011:
[...] Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. Published by New Society Publishers. http://www.thefreemanonline.org/col… [...]
Comment by Corby on 2 March 2011:
The absence of the parents responsibility in the article was troubling. I was a grammer school student in the early 50′s and I was a motivated student. I do not claim that I was self motivated I had the motivation of my mother who supervised home work assignments and if it really went off the rails my fathers very hard hand applied to my brain stem, that I sat on.
The very best teacher can only do so much and then it is up to the parents. We in our mad pursuit of the material good life have taken the parents out of the education equation. Mom is more Murphy Brown than June Clever. Dad to hold on to his job now works 60 to 80 hours a week instead of 40. Th elimination of the draft did nothing to help the system. How many of you remember hearing study hard to get to college or you’ll be drafted. And if you were drafted you learned real quick the value of education. The social reformers and politicians can take a bow as to the destruction of the viable school system because they have their paws quite dirty in the mess.
How to fix it at this stage unknown. But it says something that the majority of this country doesn’t trust the people we elect to office and then allow them to play with our school systems.
Comment by Mrs. Preston on 4 March 2011:
The answer is homeschooling, charter schools or private schools. If enough people take their kids out of public schools, they will be forced to change.
Comment by Ray on 10 March 2011:
The 3 problems I have with US public schools is that: 1) Many so-called teachers are to the left of the curve themselves. The major factor is the lack of respect and pay. Which person with a 120+ IQ would want to teach primary/secondary education for barely-middle-classed salary? This results in a country where teachers are unqualified to teach Honors and AP classes – they themselves were only regular or low level students.
2) Many American parents take no responsibility in the education of their children. They believe that B’s are acceptable grades. This is just a hoax to make kids feel “special” when they’re below-average compared to other nations’ students.
3) American teachers are irresponsible because of the lack of incentives for them to do better. In many schools, kids can study for hours, but the teachers will put something he/she never taught on the board. This goes into another point: TEACHERS SUCK AT TEACHING! In my school, the math teacher literally told us to go home and read the math textbook since there was nothing he could teach us. The ironic part is that he originally went to community college after doing horribly in high school…I wonder why? Even if we fail standardized tests (SAT,ACT,HSPA,Regents,etc.), the teachers don’t get fired or even reprimanded. MOST TEACHERS DON’T deserved tenure.
Comment by ... on 17 March 2011:
there is no one to save us…we are done.
Comment by A concerned mother on 13 June 2011:
All I know is that the education I received is not being provided today. My son is in the 6th grade, and he has never had to write a book report. He has been unable to take information, process it, focus his thoughts, and clearly present the information in a paper. The school lets children turn in work late and still receive full points. There is no accountability. I have to supplement over the summer to teach my child what is not even being presented. I have had to make him write book reports over the summer so he can learn how a paper is written. The school system allows students to put forth minimal effort, and they pat the students on the back for mediocre progress. I am saddened by the state of education in America, and I will continue to supplement my children. I feel sorry for the children who do not get additional support and must slip through the cracks today. It is horrendous to see these kids graduate from high school without the ability to form a proper sentence.
Pingback by Sheldon Richman, Public Education & Reason.tv « FEE tv on 17 June 2011:
[...] the Free Market Provide Public Education? by Sheldon Richman School Choice by Walter E. Williams The Failure of American Public Education by John Hood Disestablishing Public Education by Anna David Homeschooling and Educational Choice by [...]
Pingback by Barry: Blame the Bad Jobs Market on ATM's and Airport Kiosks! - Page 3 on 17 June 2011:
[...] The Failure of American Public Education | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty [...]
Comment by JH on 19 June 2011:
To the parent that wrote “The school lets children turn in work late and still receive full points.” You have no idea how much teachers have complainted about this. Even parents and the Teachers’ union have an issue with this. But we are between a rock and a hard place. If we don’t accept late work students may fail and the state of Texas Education agency will give the district a hard time and it flows down hill from there. You see in Texas it more important that the students stay on the football team, that cheerleaders cheer, and the band plays on. Sad but true. Then we wonder why Bill Gates hires experts from other countries!
Pingback by Lehigh Valley Conservative » Blog Archive » Reasons For Public Education Failures on 30 June 2011:
[...] found a good article on this subject by John Hood. It is a must read! His credentials are [...]
Pingback by Twelve Progressive Policies That Make the Rich Richer and the Poor Poorer | Rogue Operator on 28 July 2011:
[...] schools have been shown to be an unmitigated failure, non-competitive, overly expensive, and simply inadequate preparation for either the work force or college. Speaking of college, even though more Americans [...]
Comment by kirox on 9 August 2011:
…very interesting responses to a grave and complex problem, which shows the enormity of the situation. From a father that was an average student, who produced 3 valedictorians of 4 daughters. I see many good ideas from all of you, yet I think the problem goes beyond what many have written.
One problem is very little in involvement by families in the process.The family must prepare the student to want to learn.
Two; we must regain discipline,and respect to the system. Not a simple task considering the political correctness of our society.
We must remove the unnecessary paper workload our teachers have become required to do with NCLB, and Federally mandated social engineering programs.
Even schools here in Iowa; teachers must try and get students from different cultures who speak many different languages on grade level. This takes so much time away from actually teaching students that can comprehend what they are teaching.Think what it would be like in New York or L.A.!The Department of Education was implemented in 1980 at a time that Iowa was ranked number one nationally.We have steadily gone down hill since then, and took a nose dive after the implementation of NCLB.
I don’t know what the final answer will be, but I’ll bet it will come with the ending of the DOE, and the merging of business leader and educator minds, without the interference of Government leaders who most probably could not pass any teaching certification exams.
Pingback by Are Teacher’s Responsible? « Let Children Achieve on 13 August 2011:
[...] it may be fair to say that parents are more responsible than teachers when it comes to the problems with America’s educational system. Is it true? Others might say that it is the government bureaucracy that is still more responsible [...]
Comment by FailedStudent on 14 August 2011:
Just an example of the system’s failure: I am 22 years old. I graduted 6th in my class from a “good” public school system. I am a junior in college. I do not know my multipication tables. ( I am working on that on my own.) I was not taught Roman numerials (again working on that on my own). My school’s ranking system was based on quality points, not GPA. My Jr year I was ranked #1 because I took all the honors classes. Senior year I wanted to prepare for the real world. I took business classes, personal finance classes, business management classes, all instead of advanced English and History. These are all classes I use day to day. I graduated #6, if it was based on GPA I was #1. The valedictorian and I worked together at a grocery store. He was checking me out because I was buying my lunch. I started writing a check, and he laughed, looked at me, and said, “I don’t know how to write a check or manage a check book.”
Comment by Ryan Winston on 15 August 2011:
What an interesting read! I’m currently working towards earning my Master’s of Education at this site: http://www.cu-portland.edu/ and these kinds of articles are very interesting! Our schools have become a public place to shove all of our social improvement programs, instead of it’s original purpose: education!
Comment by Jane Middleton on 2 September 2011:
I think American math education is rigid and stupid. When I was a graduate student in a US university, I taught remedial math, algebra, finite math and calculus to freshmen and sophomores. I tried to make my students think. I asked simple questions which tested their concept but not calculation skills. But my students hated me, thinking I was confusing, because I did not follow the textbooks. All they wanted was formulas they could memorize and plug numbers in. They loved their calculators. For example, if the answer was 1/3, they would punch the numbers in and happily wrote down 0.3 as the answer. They didn’t even know 0.3 is different from 1/3. By the way, many of them convert 1/4 to 1.4 when I asked them to convert a fraction to decimal. I can’t blame them. At that age, they already lost their skills to learn math.
As a graduate student, I also tutored a high school boy who was quite smart. With high hope in him, his parents wanted a better teacher, and found me through my professors’ recommendation. In one year working with him, I saw his math skills sharpened quite a bit. However, sometimes his answer on the tests was rejected by his teacher, because it did not stick to the rigid standard his teacher set. I believe his teach does not know math, and just treated it as a set of rigid formula.
I saw those education majors in my grad school. They were much inferior to the non-edu majors. Actually, their math level did not even match mine when I was a 10th grader. It’s a shame that such low performers became math teachers. But why should smarter people get into teaching? I’d get a meager pay, and I probably would be a misfit in the teachers’ group because I would want to change their stupid teaching method.
I am thinking about starting my own math class called ‘math without formula’ for kids between the age of 11 and 13. I am sure I can improve their math skills, but I am not sure if they can make better math scores in school – as long as they’re graded by their mediocre math teachers. If they cannot, why would their parents keep them in my class?
Comment by euler man on 3 September 2011:
_____I am an engineering major and when I look back in time I wonder as to how exactly I gained the prowess in math that I have. They do not teach science and math in schools, they teach social studies and lots of other fuzzy underpants subjects. The children that have to go through it recognize that these subjects do not pertain to any real person’s life, not even the politician who shoved it into the curriculum. They aren’t stupid.
_____The fact is that the kids who go through AP calculus think that they have it made. But when they get into merely their first year of calculus in college, they find that what they learned was a joke. Those students aren’t necessarily any better off than the guys who climbed the entire ladder inside the bounds of college.
_____The lack of math extends even into the college environment. The English major has his lot and he seems to glide through fine. But the engineering student is tasked to complete both his natural lot AND a good deal of his English major counterpart’s load. It most certainly is not the case the other way around. I’ve pursued this major for a long time now and I can tell you 70% of my time spent here as a college student was spent learning things on flashcards and writing endless papers. I can tell you that they were NOT mostly spent pounding away at those glorious endless droves of derivatives and integrals. The math and science majors know it, the physics teachers gripe and complain.
_____Ladies and gentlemen this is a line of commentary on how badly our school system sucks. It is inappropriate for there to be any spelling mistakes, grammatical hang-ups or massive run-on paragraphs with no indentations. You have to admit – It looks bad.
Comment by Allison on 10 September 2011:
“The fact is that the kids who go through AP calculus think that they have it made. But when they get into merely their first year of calculus in college, they find that what they learned was a joke.”
You fail to realize that the standards of each school in America varies so widely. I was one of the few people to ace my AP calculus course; most of my classmates dropped out of calculus after only a few weeks. When I took calculus at my university, I found calculus to be a complete joke compared to my high school calc class. I never did a single homework problem and aced every test. This isn’t to say that this class was known to be easy–far from it. I had many classmates who struggled to even get D’s. It’s just that I was held to a much higher standard in high school, so university was a lot easier for me.
Comment by The_Galp on 12 September 2011:
I don’t know if I buy into the poor reputation U.S. public schools have. This is due to a lingering question which has not been truly answered; If the high schools are so bad how do these same students attend AND GRADUATE, from globally respected U.S. universities. The same universities that are so sought after by international students.
Something is not adding up here…The drop out rate is a good culprit but if you crunch the numbers it does not add up to an answer.
Comment by Gary on 13 September 2011:
The_Galp, here’s a possible answer to your question. The end of a university experience is entry into a ‘good old boy’ network with a sheepskin emblazoned with the logo of that world renowned school. You are recognized as one of the ‘chosen’ and your place in the network is assured. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know!
Comment by Darth Maul on 18 September 2011:
Hey failed student, your parents did a horrible job participating in your education if you can’t multiply. That’s your parents fault you got through high school without simple skills. And Euler Man saying History is an “underpants” subject? Not mastering history or any other social sciences, with the excuse of “children that have to go through it recognize that these subjects do not pertain to any real person’s life” probably has more to do with the fact they are too stupid to get it and critically think and so they justify it with that drivel. Expediency, or the “Golden Parachute” is what our culture bases it’s morals and principles on nowadays. The kids recognize it. Our politicians use it, our athletes use it, our entertainers use it, corporations use it, parents use it and the only people combating it are the teachers. That’s why they “SUCK” and are the escape goat for everything today.
Of course the government doesn’t want an educated public. The 4th branch of government, corporations is in it for human capital and corporations own the government. Look at all of the mules that are being created in our public schools.
As for saying math and science are the only things that count is one of the most ignorant comments ever. That philosophy was used in the 1800′s. How much cotton is needed to produce enough goods from that new invention, the loom = how many slaves(mules) are needed in the fields. Yeah those damn abolitionists that took too many social science classes ruined it for everyone.
Pingback by Our Lost History « Without Eyes on 25 September 2011:
[...] way. Of course, the reality of State run education is anything but successful. It is a litany of failure on top of failure as students are expected to learn less and less while schools struggle to teach [...]
Pingback by News Worthy Education - Opinion: Who’s Job is it to Fix Our Education System? on 8 October 2011:
[...] to make our children smarter. That’s really what we’re arguing about in the fight for education reform. We can argue about whose job it is to fix the system, but it’s also important to look at the [...]
Comment by math tutoring on 5 November 2011:
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Comment by linkedin cursus on 17 November 2011:
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Pingback by Our Nation and Education | Imperative Education on 1 December 2011:
[...] “The Failure of American Public Education” by Josh Hood Feb. 1993-Vol. 43- Issue: 2 http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/the-failure-of-american-public-education/ [...]
Pingback by Five Reasons Why Obama Shouldn’t Be Re-Elected | Duh – The Operative Ethic is Dumb… on 5 December 2011:
[...] public education is in decline while student debt continues to rack up across the board. Consequently, we’re not [...]
Comment by Clay on 1 January 2012:
I’m a high school student, and let me tell you why I know the education system here in America is doing so bad. Control. At my school my princeables and teachers care more about control and power then teaching. They do that by making unnecessary “school laws” that we are forced to follow, which is a bunch of bull shit. One of them is tucking in our shirts. They make such a big deal about it. One of my princeables has a motto, “It’s not a big deal u less you make it one.”
Let me tell you something! We don’t make it a big deal, they do! Having it all over the fucking walls and reminding us every fucking minute. Forcing us too, and giving us “lunch detention” if we don’t! I thought we went to school to learn, we already have a bunch of stupid laws to follow, and now rules? We can get suspended just for not tucking in our shirts, but whatever.
Another think I must talking about is the lack of caring. Nobody cares. The teachers dont, the students don’t, the only people that do are the princeables. I think they feel cool, being in control of 1000+ people. Last year in my class, my teacher cared so little that she made fun of her job. She would just go to iTunes and let us watch movie trailers. In middle school my teacher told us that even if we failed a class we’d get passing grade because our school wanted to look good, academically, which we weren’t.
Pingback by Free Speech on 2 January 2012:
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Comment by MM3 Greenberg on 19 January 2012:
I remember my high school education (which ended only three and a half years ago) pretty well for the most part. I did a lot of complaining, as I was constantly being held back indirectly by the “idiots” of my school. Why should the general curriculum be dumbed down so that everyone can understand it? That’s how you achieve mediocrity, not excellence. You don’t get Einstein’s from passing everyone through a broken educational system where everyone is a victim to the hand of the Government. The No Child Left Behind Act did a fantastic job of standardizing our tests in the worst way possible. I don’t understand how people thought that trying to make sure everyone in the U.S. knew the same amount of information (noticably less of it) was a great idea. Especially in our modern society where there are so many different types of jobs, each requiring different skill sets and areas of expertise.
Of course you can always put some of the blame on the parents. Everyone is so afraid to stand up to their own kids these days. I would agree that beating your kids everyday is not good parenting, but a good smack across the face when your kid is out of line, can go a long way. It sure did for me. If I know that I’ll get slapped for acting out, I’m statistically much less likely to act out. I’m in the Naval Nuclear Power pipeline now, and the rules here are much more strict. If you cheat on homework, you can get fined, deranked, extra days of “military instruction,” and kicked out of the program and possibly discharged from the Navy. Knowing that, I make sure to not cheat on anything, or do anything that even comes close to it.
Instead of worrying about how kids might react emotionally to a rule, think about the future of our society. My generation is the imminent future, and it’s looking pretty bleak. Life has become all about getting a piece of paper that says you have a degree, not obtaining the knowledge and skills we need to be successful in life. What’s the point in having…say…90% of Americans go on to college, if 60% of them don’t actually possess the knowledge and skills to succeed. It entirely defeats the purpose of degrees and belittles their credibility. I’d rather be a C student in an environment where I am constantly challenged, than a A+ student in an environment where the goals are mediocrity and passing students along.
Comment by Wow on 20 January 2012:
This is complete garbage. You should study more about sociology and feminism before you make the insane claims you are making.
And by the way… if 70% of divorce is brought on by women because men are unfaithful that is men’s fault. Look how many strip clubs, massage parlors, escorts, and whore houses you have at your disposal. How many businesses are alike these for women? Are the numbers comparable? NO. More men cheat and they even pay money to do so. Money that should be spent helping their wife to support their family.
Comment by Wow on 20 January 2012:
Oops I guess all the crap parts were in Art’s comment
My apologies to the author that didn’t say all the horrible stuff that was racist, anti-feminist, etc!
Comment by Wow on 20 January 2012:
Our education system needs to change in order to be more exciting for people! New technologies have changed our world so much. Sitting at a desk and listening to boring lectures etc. are not working. Good teachers are creative at teaching. I have seen speakers talk like this at seminars. Why is everyone getting ADHD all of a sudden? Cuz our world is so exciting but school is so boring! Brains are not working the same as they did way back when. The industrial revolution is over!
Comment by SISI on 27 January 2012:
It is neither a problem with elite schools and private schools, nor a problem with public schools in well-to-do communities, but mainly a problem with the public schools in poor communities. The students in those failing schools are overwhelmingly blacks. Thus, fairly to say, the national public school problem is mainly a problem of black communities.
There is a clear correlation — our public school rankings have been declining exactly since 1960th when Dr. King died. There has no single leader who can lead the black people to the right direction which is self reliance by pursuing education. Since Dr. King died, black leaders have been the leaders of welfare and complaining. Today, half of the nation’s African-American students drop off from high school.
Our public school problem is not a result of poverty. It can’t be resolved by welfare. The black communities were poorer in the civil right movement era, but black people then established their own schools and fought for better education.
Our public school problem is not a result of lacking fund. It can’t be resolved by putting more money. There are thousands of schools in developing countries having much worse physical condition and less resource but producing much better education result than our public schools.
The public school problem is not a result of racial discrimination. It can’t be resolved by complain. Today no one prevents black people from going to school, not mention Affirmative Action. At times in American history, Asian immigrates were in the bottom of the society, even below blacks. Today, Asian population has the highest income on the average, because they have the highest education level. The public schools in the communities that have high percentage of Asian population are more competitive and do well above average.
The root cause of our public school problem is the degenerated culture in black communities which has no leaders with vision. Therefore, the solution of our public school problem has to come from black communities.
If Rosa Parks didn’t do what she did in December 1, 1955, there won’t be someone voluntarily let blacks sit in the front seats of bus. If black kids failed at school, there won’t be any bright future given to them. The only way that a person, a race or a country wins respect from others is to have self respect and do better. Mr. President and the first lady are good examples of that. I am very disappointed that the President has done nothing to lifting black comminuty up except telling his brothers to “pull up your pants”, and no one listened.
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