Who is stupider? It’s pretty tough to choose. But this is a point I hadn’t considered:
…as smarter people abandon public schools, the dumber ones who remain have more impact. They should be subjected to public humiliation, in the hopes that they’ll learn, or at least serve as an example to the others.
I wonder if we aren’t already in a death spiral in that regard.
We, for allowing it.
Government schools are designed to churn out voters who’ll vote for more and bigger government. Any actual education they provide is a pure coincidence.
I believe the current crisis with public education has several foundational reasons, most of them unintended consequences of society, ideology and policy.
It’s not just the near universal acceptance of idiot policies which equate aspirin with heroin and a pointing finger with a loaded gun, and the endless progressive, green and social justice indoctrination. These are serious issues, but there are other more troublesome structural problems.
1. Decline in the quality of teachers and administrators.
Once upon a time, not that long ago, women were essentially limited to a career in teaching. As such, many of the best and brightest of 1/2 the population became teachers. Exceptional teachers became principals, and that was about the extent of management. But something happened. Women’s lib opened doors which were closed. The best and brightest abandoned teaching. Teaching became a haven for the not so bright as ed-schools diploma mills embraced the “failure is not an option” approach of inflated grades and lowered expectations. Those less than great teachers began to populate the system, flushing out the competent who could not abide by the fact these idiots got paid exactly as much as they did. Instead of a meritocracy, administrators were selected by credentialism, with meaningless degrees from those same ed-school mills. Multiple layers of incompetent administration flushed out most of the competent staff left.
2. “Failure is not an option”
Back in the day, people who didn’t do or had trouble doing the work got D’s and F’s. Their parents (plural) did not respond well to these report cards and made sure these slackers studied. This system pretty much made sure that most did the best they could and we had students who deserved A’s getting A’s and those who deserved C’s got C’s, and D’s. And those who got F’s got another year to work on it. And if they got to age 18 or so and STILL couldn’t get it, they became janitors and meat cutters. But somewhere along the way, those incompetent edu-crats were taught liberal pseudo-psychology. Failure is bad, everyone is above average in some way. So the criteria changed. Teachers who gave deserved F’s were fired and the grades changed to C’s or better. Where once 95 was an A, 90 became and A and papers were graded not 0-100 but 50-120 (permanent extra credit). Kids learned that slacking still got you B’s, perhaps even A’s. The increasingly harried single parent (mother) or the two-income nuclear families (enabled to have full time working mothers by that women liberation of #1) looked at the report card and said “way to go!” and those slackers grew up to be teachers. In many schools, students with a B in “Algebra” on their transcripts could not do fractions. But since everyone MUST get a high school diploma, those who had no business receiving one got one anyway.
3. The unintended consequence of racial integration (even more controversial)
Once upon a time, not that long ago, most of the nation had racially segregated schools. In the south, they were REALLY segregated with incredibly poor and underfunded black schools literally down the street from the well funded white school. In northern cities, de-facto segregation by ethnic neighborhoods accomplished the same thing. Most of those black schools were poor and their product, black students, were often not-well educated, certainly in the south. Lower standards prevailed in black schools.
When those black schools were closed and those more poorly educated students were integrated into white schools, something interesting happened. EVERY grade had to separate populations with separate distributions of educational achievement. But the IDEOLOGY of post-racist (trying) America could not accept two distributions of grades, so the solution was found in #2, lowering the standards of almost ALL schools to those poor standards which previously had been seen only in the inferior “separate but equal” schools for black Americans.
No one meant harm or evil. In fact, they had the very best of intentions.
Equal opportunity for women, egalitarianism, the end of segregation, the massive explosion of self-esteem needed for a liberal utopia.
But here we are. And it’s not a good place. What’s worse, to even attempt to discuss these issues and literally any issue in education which is contrary to lockstep liberal edu-crat ideology results in instant charges of sexism, racism, classism, levelism, pick your ism.
Standardized testing is revealing some very uncomfortable truths, some having to do with the racial distribution of grades vs test scores and the failure of entire school systems to teach. In Detroit, nearly 80% of 8th grade students score “below basic”, this term was once called “Failing”.
But since we can’t even discuss them, testing must go. It’s so unjust anyway.