School failure, how did we get here? pt 1 (Post #4)

     Alright, so I need to pull this together a bit more as far as why the public schools are not teaching what we should be learning to function in the real world, and how that failure has come about.
     I came across this fantastically huge article by John Hood on thefreemanonline.org, and I wasn't even an eighth of the way through before I started finding what I was looking for. This article not only is chock full of stats throughout the history of public school, but dates of various types of reform measures that have been implemented and failed. While the article itself is a bit dated (1993), with the exception of the No Child Left Behind measures that came about during the Bush era, everything else still stands.
     The beginning of this article outlines the reasons why schools are failing, and states the major problem being a lack of focus on the 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."
For years, the establishment has been taking statistics of educational results, and then throwing money at the problem when they can't figure out why our system is not working. Someone somewhere always seems to have the fix-all solution. Hood has it right when he says,

" At any one time during the course of school reform, an illusion of debate often obscures a surprising consensus on the heralded “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."

     It goes on along my own train of thought about government interference in the schools and curriculum, with constant red tape, mandated courses, and teaching to the test, not the goal of a well-rounded student ready for advanced education. Teachers are being told what they can and cannot teach in their class, and while this may be a bone of contention on both sides, it would be less so if the goal were to get the kids to know the three R's, real world mathematics, science, history and some languages. I think that most teachers have forgotten what the real goal is, and are instead spending our tax dollars indoctrinating our kids into whatever world view they themselves hold and would like to mold our children into. On the subject of the free-market theory, that if we applied it to our schools, we could become competitive on a global level, Hood states,

" 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..."

And it's this social engineering and politics that is getting in the way. Our system can do without the sex ed classes, psychology, early childhood education, drama, etc. that is taking up valuable time. Time that could be spent on more academic pursuits in advanced math, science, english classes.
     So when did all this social engineering start? According Hood, it really got started after the Civil War when the government schools began to take the place 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...By the turn of the century, the percentage of school-aged children attending public schools had risen to 72 percent..." and most was for the primary grade levels, only two percent were grade nine or above. Over the turn of the century, public schools increased their high school populations to ninety percent, and at that time they were still focused on teaching the basics. Into the twentieth century the schools began a nanny crusade against the family, with studies changing to progessive programs and here enters the welfare state. The social experiment begins. "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." About the 1960's the psycho-babble began and the advent of behavioralism, the ditching of phonics for whole-language learning, and standardized testing. Come the 1980's, it was all about education reform and the failure of the schools in the newly socialized system. With no new ideas on the table, it was time to throw money into theory: specialized programs for the poor, and minority students, who were taking the blame for watering down the numbers.

Next post, we'll look at what happened with all that money, and what we got for it.

For those waiting on banking and credit, it's coming. I will be continuing this blog even after this class project is finished, if I don't find a way to work it into the blog project. If you have a mortgage or other debt, you'll definitely want to make sure you hang around for it!