Scott Ott, on the disastrous state of the American educational system, thanks to the unions and collectivists. They’ve achieved Dewey’s dream.
And this seems related:
There’s good news for American education. About three-quarters of residents — 74% — know the U.S. declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776. The bad news for the academic system — 26% do not. This 26% includes one-fifth who are unsure and 6% who thought the U.S. separated from another nation. That begs the question, “From where do the latter think the U.S. achieved its independence?” Among the countries mentioned are France, China, Japan, Mexico, and Spain.
Actually, as a commenter points out, it raises the question — it doesn’t “beg” it (a phrase that confuses many people). Which is also a symptom of deteriorating education, even among the supposedly educated.
Of course we’ve heard the education collapse stories for decades – one wonders how much of it is educational structure and how much is immigration – legal and otherwise. When more than a third of the people in LA county have not been born in this country, you’re going to get some wacky answers in polls about people’s knowledge.
The default response to these kinds of polls is that we’re not spending enough. One wonders when, if ever, the response will be to end the public employee unions and dismantle the education department.
Every time I try the link it sends me to the Illinois finance story.
Fixed now, sorry.
K wrote how much of it is educational structure and how much is immigration
Here in Vermont, it’s the union. I serve on the local school board and we’re being asked to cut 2% from FY12 even though we’ve level funded for the last two years. Of course, this includes absorbing the increased costs of health care and wages (Teacher’s Union), at the expense of class size and programs.
We want more seat time but end up sacrificing it to “cut the deal” with as little impact on the students as possible. It’s not easy, and MUCH harder in most other states.
From the linked article: All candidates at Ben Venue must pass a basic skills test showing they can read and understand math at a ninth-grade level. A significant portion of recent applicants failed, and the company has been disappointed by the quality of graduates from local training programs.
The company struggles to fill 100 positions.
Anything is possible if you lower your standards far enough. Can’t find people to pass a simple test? Lower your standards! Besides, the test must be racist, right?
Or if you pay more. I still think a problem here is that the employer isn’t willing to pay enough to pick up the employees. That might be a lot less of an issue, if we didn’t have various things like taxes and regulations artificially driving up the cost of employees.
For a simple example, Social Security drives up the cost of almost all employees by 15%. The recent changes in health insurance probably will drive up the cost of health benefits by a bunch. Even if the employer drops health benefits, they’ll probably still pay a few percent extra in taxes.
Years ago and to our founding, American grade school kids learned calculus and Latin before they ever went to college.
This is actually the earliest evidence that a state of war has existed with a shadow for quite some time. Was that shadow simple negligence or was there intent? I suspect both. It’s so deeply ingrained now you wonder if it can ever be cleansed.
Education is the foundation. All else is derived from that. It’s never too late. I used to believe in a thing called ‘intrinsic value’ never knowing the source of that false teaching. Iron sharpens iron is proved by the great commentators and host here. All hope is not yet lost.
For those who groove on reading about teachers’ union hijinks, the Education Intelligence Agency covers that beat. Be sure and check the “blog” and “Communique” sidebar links. (You can get the weekly Communique sent to you via email.)
One of the great Communique Quotes of the Week:
“We don’t lobby as a special interest; we lobby in the common interest.” – Carl Korn, spokesman for the New York State United Teachers. (April 26 New York Post)
Happy Independence Day.
I have seen the future and it looks like Greece.
I grew up hearing about how Communists were plotting to destroy America by infiltrating our education system, our news media and our government. I’d kind of forgotten most of that until I read Witness by Whittaker Chambers several years ago.
Those infiltrators, if they were real*, seem to have been more effective that the system they were working for. The damage is still progressing 20 years after the USSR imploded. Once you get a set of ideas planted in one or more of those sectors, it seems to kind of self replicate without much help from outside.
* The popularity of Communism and Nazi/Fascism during the 1930s might have been due more to the enthusiasm of youth for new ideas, but there’s also no doubt that the subversive underground in which Chambers was active was real as was the Weather Underground and various other revolutionary groups that flourished during my high school and college years. They never seem to have really learned how wrong they were, if the response to the Iraq War to overthrow Saddam was any indication. The UN should have backed us there just on humanitarian grounds, but not even the Oil for Food scandal seemed to matter to all the aging hippies who showed up just for old times’ sake.
No, no, we won’t try to declare independence from China until 2037, a few years after they take a cue from the Emperor Napoleon III, and seize the Federal government as compensation for default on outstanding debts.
I think that a lot of this is more ethnically and geographically based. For instance, hispanics are likely more familliar with the idea that western states (as well as Texas) used to be part of Mexico under Spanish colonialism. Likewise, the Louisiana Purchase territories were purchased from France, and Florida was once a spanish colony as well. So the question isn’t really that “wrong” if you look at it from a territorial basis taking the lower 48 as a whole.
Don’t even get me started on Russia’s Alaska or the Royal Kingdom of Hawaii….