THE DISASTROUS STATE OF AMERICAN EDUCATION
* SAT score decline
* High School dropout rate
* Quality of Education
* Quality of the Teachers
* Futility of Reform - Principles underlying government schooling
* Tragic consequences
* Education - Home Schooling
* Science Fiction as an introduction to the study of Science
* Books about Science
* SAT score decline
For the decade ending in 1962 the mean scores on the Scholastic Aptitude
Test varied within about a 10 point range (from 471 to 479 on the verbal
section and from 490 to 502 on the math section).
In 1963 these scores commenced a decline which continued for almost 20
years:
YEAR VERBAL MATH
1962: 478 502
1981: 424 466
-11% -7%
From 1981 to 1991 the scores leveled off, holding within a few points of
425 Verbal and 470 Math. Some of this decline can be attributed to the fact
that a wider range of students now take the test than took it in the l960s,
but the Wirtz Commission concluded that about half of the decline represents
an actual decline among students with qualifications similar to those taking
the test earlier.
However, in early 1990 a nation-wide scandal came to light: it was
revealed that school administrators and teachers, in their attempts to
improve their standing in the community and to earn for themselves and their
schools "improved student achievement" bonuses offered by the state
governments, had been cheating on the achievement tests by providing their
students with the answers prior to testing. This makes highly suspect the
"leveling off" of the SAT score decline that was reported in the mid-1980s.
(In any case, the issue will be sidestepped in 1995, when the College
Board will recalibrate the "average" combined verbal and math score
(supposedly 500) to the median of the test group of that year. This will
result in that year's group having a combined score 98 points above that of
their predecessors.)
During this two-decade period there was also a precipitous drop in the
number of students scoring at the top 1% level (700 or higher) in spite of
the fact that the total student pool increased by more than one-fourth:
YEAR VERBAL MATH
1966: 33,200 55,500
1979: 12,300 38,900
-63% -30%
To say less than words can say is to commit an intellectual crime. Today,
the shriveled fruits of that crime are dropping off the vine of education,
in the form of millions of students who have been prevented, by their years
of schooling, from developing their capacity for thought.
The situation is further aggravated in the field of higher education.
Observe the number of new Ph.D.s in science:
Physical Sciences Physics Mathematics
1971: 4500 1970: 1500 1978: 619
1984: 3400 1986: 900 1988: 341
-24% -40% -45%
And this sorry situation is by no means restricted to the scientific
fields. It is taking a terrible toll in the arts as well. Between 1966 and
1989 there was a reduction of 77% in the number of public school students
enrolled in music courses.
More than a fourth of the science Ph.D.s and 60% of the engineering
Ph.D.s awarded in 1986 went to foreign students, and two-thirds of
postdoctoral appointees in engineering were foreign citizens. In early 1989,
only 7 in 1000 American university students were studying engineering. In
Japan the ratio was 40 in 1000. The percentage of American students pursuing
a degree in any science dropped from 11.5 in 1966 to 5.8 in 1988. This
paucity of American science students extends down into the high schools:
among the winners of the 1990 Science Talent Search, 57% were foreign
students. And again, the arts are affected along with the sciences: in 1993,
thirty-seven percent of the students at the Julliard School of Music were
foreigners.
During the 1960s, American colleges and universities expanded as if the
post-War baby boom that produced the massive youth cohorts of that period
would last forever. (But what else could they have done, in view of the
demands placed upon them?) It did not, and institutions of higher learning
are now confronted by sharply declining enrollments in a period of economic
hardship and insecurity. Faced with this potentially devastating situation,
most undergraduate institutions, including some of the most selective, have
lowered their admissions standards and many have abandoned them altogether.
A 1978-79 College Board survey of 2,600 colleges showed that only 40%
required any minimum grade point average for admission and only 30% set
minimum cut-off scores on the SAT. As a result, percentages of applicants
accepted were very high:
91% at public two-year colleges
86% at private two-year colleges
79% at public four-year colleges
77% at private four-year colleges
The inevitable overall result is that virtually all literate and numerate
students and many semi-literate or even illiterate ones can find some
college which will accept them, if they can somehow arrange to pay the fees.
This is illustrated by University of Wyoming president Terry Roark's comment
in September, 1988: "My plan to stiffen UW admissions standards will not
prevent any high school graduate from entering Wyoming's only university."
* High School dropout rate
While the SAT scores decline, the high-school dropout rate increases: NEA
data for the '85-'86 school year reveal that 30% of America's teenagers are
not graduating from high school. (In 1965 the percentage was 24%) In the
large cities, the dropout rate is 35-50%. Indeed, in Boston for that year
more kids dropped out (52%) than graduated! Perhaps partly through actual
physical fear: many classrooms require two teachers, one to talk and keep
the pupils amused while the other tries to keep them from killing each
other. This is no joke! In Chicago, 258 students were shot and 32 were
killed during the 2009-2010 school year. Teaching someone the difference
between velocity and acceleration is irrelevant if that person is hungry and
scared. The social cost of this phenomenon is staggering--in part because
these dropouts tend not to enter the labor force. In 1987, 19% of the labor
force had college degrees, up from 10% in 1963. Only 18% had less than a
high school diploma, down from 45% in 1963.
"So where are all the dropouts?" you may ask. More than half of the
nation's prison population is comprised of these dropouts. The dollar cost
of confining a prisoner can be up to $25K/year, a figure higher than the
cost of a year of attendance at either Harvard or Yale.
And this dismal situation exists in spite of an enormous, and growing,
financial investment: government spending on education consumes 7% of GNP
($240 billion in 1984). The cost per student of public elementary and
secondary schooling was $2279 in 1980, $4810 during school year 1988-89, and
$4929 the following year. Between 1950 and 1976, per pupil spending
increased nearly 300% (inflation adjusted). In the five years from 1971 to
1976 total professional staff in US public schools went up 8%. The number of
administrators increased 44%. The cost per pupil went up 58%. While the
number of students went DOWN 4%. The number of school districts went down by
17%, continuing the trend to greater centralization. These massive changes
produced not a nation of scholars but the least educated generation in our
history.
The cost of education is more than just taxpayer and parental dollars; it
is also the students' time, much of which is wasted. For example, does it
really take 12 years to produce high school graduates who cannot read, who
cannot find the USA on a world map and who do not know when WWII was?
Couldn't the same results be achieved in a lot less time? Is it likely that
better results will be achieved with longer school years and extra years in
school, as many educators advocate?
The conjecture that schools are primarily custodial institutions is
corroborated by the observation that in most school districts children are
forbidden to take the high school equivalency exam sooner than the age at
which they would complete high school. If a child can demonstrate at age 13
that she knows what is required of a high school graduate, why shouldn't she
be able to take the exam and be done with school?
* Quality of Education
For those who stay in school, the quality of education leaves much to be
desired. I have seen estimates of functional illiteracy ranging from 25% to
33% of high school graduates, and up to 13% of the entire adult population.
The National Commission on Excellence in Education found 23 million adult
functional illiterates, and Daniel Boorstin, head of the Library of
Congress, claims the number is growing at an annual rate of 2.3 million. A
1992 study by the National Center for Education Statistics found that 17
percent of U.S. adults have only the rudimentary ability to pick out facts
in a brief newspaper article; 4 percent are unable to read at all.
(But do they need to? In America today, one in every five people can't
read well enough to understand this sentence. So what? At the one-in-five
level you are talking about people with IQs of about 80. It is simply not
justifiable to expect them to engage in sophisticated literary behavior, nor
do they need to do so in order to live successfully in modern society.)
Critics of schooling rarely attempt to define the term "functional
illiterate" but I believe a distinction can be made between two groups of
people: those who are not able to read/write (correctly described as
"illiterate") and those whose educational experience has traumatized them
into a state where they are not WILLING to read/write, even though they are
able to do so. This is the group being described as "functional illiterates"
but I believe either "aliterate" or "scriptophobic" would be a more accurate
term. These are the people who eschew independently initiated literary
behavior. They have been so thoroughly indoctrinated to passive obedience
that their intellectual initiative is almost extinct.
An NSF survey in 1997 showed that one in 7 American adults--about 25
million people--can not locate the USA on an unlabeled world map. This
finding was also made by the National Council for Geographic Education and
by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Says James Vining,
executive director of the NCGE: "We have a situation where Johnny not only
doesn't know how to read or add, he doesn't even know where he is." And, I
would add, he can't figure out what's going on: the NCEE also found that 40%
of 17-year-olds are not able to draw a simple inference from written
material. And as time passes they have less and less access to even the
simplest written material: In 1950, virtually all American households
received at least one daily newspaper. In 1970, 98% did so. But by 1993,
that had fallen to 63%.
In 1850, when Massachusetts became the first state to force children to
go to school, the literacy rate in that state was 98%. Today, after nearly
150 years of compulsory government schooling, the literacy rate is 91%
(See Rothbard's FOR A NEW LIBERTY, chapter 7, for an interesting
exposition of the history of government schooling in the USA.)
An NSF poll in 1988 revealed that 55% of adult Americans do not know that
a year is the time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun. Perhaps even more
frightening is the fact that 25% of Americans do not even know that the
Earth goes around the sun.
The Third International (among 21 countries) Mathematics and Science
Study, held in February 1998, showed US high school seniors performing third
to last in general science literacy, second to last in advanced mathematics,
and last in advanced physics.
In an examination of 17 countries, the International Association for the
Evaluation of Educational Achievement found that US 14-year-olds ranked 14th
in their knowledge of basic science. (Hungary was first and Japan second.)
US students were also among the worst at age 18. A 1989 international math
test included the statement "I am good at mathematics." The Americans led in
their agreement with this statement: 68% answered "Yes." (In another survey,
30% considered themselves to be not just good, but "among the best.") But
when the test was scored, the Americans ranked LAST in their actual math
performance. American students do not know their math, but they have
evidently absorbed the lessons of the newly-fashionable curriculum wherein
kids are taught to feel good about themselves, thus American kids feel good
about doing badly. The US high-school grad used to be highly educated
relative to the rest of the world. This is no longer the case, and the
economy is now much more globally-extensive. Thus the US grad is relatively
dumber.
Only nine of the states require a geography course for graduation. Thirty
percent of US high schools do not offer a physics course, twenty percent
offer no chemistry, and ten percent offer no biology. Almost 75% offer no
earth or space science courses. In 1990, fewer than 50% of the graduates had
taken chemistry, and only about 20% had taken physics.
A 1988 survey found that half of those who had never taken a course in
biology did as well in tests as 40% of those who had; apparently, biology
courses taught most of those taking them almost nothing. But this is not too
surprising when you consider that four out of ten students studying
chemistry, physics or earth science are being taught by teachers who never
studied the subjects themselves.
In 1997, only 20 of the 435 members of the House of Representatives had a
science or engineering background. There were 9 among the State governors,
only 2 in the Senate, and none in the Cabinet. Keep in mind that these are
the people who make the decisions regarding automobile pollution standards,
approval of space programs, funding of the superconducting supercollider,
the human genome project, and developments in bioengineering such as the
possibility of human cloning. NASA administrator Dan Goldin cites a question
he received while defending funding for the space agency: "Why are we
building meteorological satellites when we have the Weather Channel?"
Can Americans choose the proper leaders and support the proper programs
if both they themselves and those leaders are scientifically illiterate? In
the long term, uninformed control over scientific endeavors is the
equivalent of denying ourselves and our children the future.
What can you expect from an educational process in which reading,
writing, arithmetic and science are delivered to students in much the same
way as tires, windows and doors are attached to the frame of an automobile
on an assembly line? A student moves along this assembly line, at each stage
having an additional "education module" slapped onto his mental framework.
It is supposed that the end result of this agglomeration process will be a
comprehensively educated person. But nowhere during the process does the
student acquire the ability to integrate the modules into a coherent whole.
In the public schools the students are, at best, merely memorizing facts--
they are not integrating ideas, and are certainly not learning to do so.
Good teachers are as much victims of this situation as are the students.
They are forced to comply with government and school administration
"guidelines" instead of determining them. The result is that students are
"exposed" to subject material instead of being taught it.
But the kids ARE learning something: the fraction of schoolchildren
believing in astrology rose from 40% to 59% between 1978 and 1984.
The institutionalized ignorance described here has another really tragic
consequence for American teenagers: partly as a result of grossly
inadequate--or nonexistent--sex education programs, the rate of abortions
rose 70% between 1973 and 1988 among American girls under the age of 20.
A culture is a collection of values and the behaviors required to
achieve those values. Schools do not transmit the culture because they do
not teach children how to set long term life goals in the context of a
political and economic environment. In fact, what the schools are actually
doing is culturally retrogressive, as they are instilling a philosophy of
value-deprivation/depravation. A 1989 survey by the National Endowment for
the Humanities showed that nearly one quarter of college seniors believe
the words "from each according to his ability, to each according to his
need" are found in the US Constitution.
At the time you graduate from high school, everything you know about
government you learned in schools which are owned by government, operated
by government, staffed by government employees, financed with government
money, teaching courses of study which are selected by government
committees, and which you have been compelled to attend by government law.
Can you really trust what you supposedly "know" about government? Or about
any of the ethical ideas which government considers to be important?
Sooner or later America will have to face the fact that angry
denunciations of public education and innumerable studies by committees
with prestigious appellations have left us blue in the face but have
produced not one whit of change. In no field is there more rhetoric about
change, and in no field is there less actual change reflecting real
improvement.
Many parents turn a blind eye to these phenomena because they don't want
to face (for example) the prospect of having minority students who should
be in the seventh grade attending fifth or sixth grade classes with their
children. People who support this view point to the overwhelming percentage
of minorities in remedial classes as evidence that it is a genuine concern.
But when the "right to an education" becomes the "right to a diploma" many
students are graduated who haven't received an education.
* Quality of the Teachers
The National Commission on Excellence in Education remarked: "If an
unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre
educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as
an act of war."
And what of the soldiers who are waging this war? Observe:
The state of Texas recently heaved a sigh of relief that only 3.3% of
its teachers flunked a basic "see-Spot-run" competency test. Still, that
was 6579 teachers unable to read, write, or cipher--all early grade-school
material. And you wonder how they managed to finish college and get hired?!
Medals given to the winners of a Los Angeles scholastic competition in 1992
misspelled the word "academic" (acadumbic?)
Using data provided by ETS, Ron Hoeflin compiled this list of median GRE
advanced achievement test scores for graduate school applicants in various
fields. It shows clearly the intellectual position of teachers relative to
other professional groups:
Mathematics 630
Physics 628
Philosophy 627
Biology 609
Chemistry 606
Economics 590
Engineering 583
Geology 569
English Lit. 549
Spanish 549
French 544
German 535
Psychology 533
History 529
GRE (total) 509
Political Sci.498
Geography 486
Music 485
Education 464
The decline in the SAT scores of educators has been just as acute. In
1973, future education majors scored 59 points lower than the national
average on the combined SAT; by 1982, they scored 82 points lower. The
negative selection of those going into teaching has been aggravated by
negative selection among those already in the field: the 1972 National
Longitudinal Survey of high school seniors shows that the mean SAT score
for those who enter the field of teaching and then leave it is 42 points
higher than the score of those who enter and stay. Those who remain
permanently in the profession have a combined SAT score 118 points lower
than the score of those who have never taught.
In the words of teachers-union president Albert Shanker, "For the most
part, you are getting illiterate, incompetent people who cannot go into any
other field."
And if you should ask "Well, why can't they clean up their act?"--
consider this: The American Association for the Advancement of Science is
attempting a radical redefinition of science curricula. The first phase,
intended to establish what high school graduates should know, was intended
to last six months, but took five years! Many teachers who are honestly
looking for ways to improve their techniques walk away without any answers.
In view of the widespread concern for "classrooms without education" the
simple alternative of "education without classrooms" ought to be readily
apparent, but no one seems to be aware of it. The belief that classrooms
are a prerequisite to education leads to the belief that education comes
only from classrooms--that education is a prerogative of the schools. How
many times have you heard the remark "When will you finish your education?"
when what is meant is "When will you get your diploma?" It is unfortunate
that many people, strutting off the stage while clutching in their hot
little hands that decorative piece of wallpaper, think "at last my
schooling is finished" and then commence to stagnate intellectually for the
rest of their lives.
Merely sitting in a school room for a period of years is not equivalent
to receiving an education.
And for those ambitious students who manage to cope with this state of
affairs and graduate from high school, what awaits them when they do get to
college? (52% of the graduates of American high schools go on to college.)
Just what is the educational philosophy of the modern university? As David
Kelley remarked, "Anyone who sojourns even briefly in the academic world
will have frequent occasion to hold his nose."
Here are some representative examples:
In metaphysics, the University of Delaware offers a course titled:
NOTHING. "A study of Nil, Void, Vacuum, Null, Zero, and Other Kinds of
Nothingness. A lecture course exploring the varieties of nothingness from
the vacuum and void of physics and astronomy to political nihilism, to the
emptiness of the arts and the soul."
In epistemology, New York University offers THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE.
"Various theories of knowledge are discussed, including the view that they
are all inadequate and that, in fact, nobody knows anything."
For ethics, we go to Indiana and attend the course SOCIAL REACTIONS TO
HANDICAPS, in which the students will "explore some of the different ways
in which the handicapped individual...has been regarded in Western
Civilization. Figures from the past such as the fool, the madman, the blind
beggar...will be discussed."
There was once a time when college students studied facts, knowledge,
and human greatness. Now they study nothingness, ignorance, and blind
beggars. The resulting technical incompetence and moral relativism is
producing a generation of young people who are intellectually impoverished,
lacking the knowledge, moral standards and the commitment to reason
necessary to sustain the technologically sophisticated civilization they
have inherited. They have become innocent people stumbling through a Rube
Goldberg world and trying in vain to make sense of it.
This may seem like an exaggeration, but some philosophers do not shrink
from spelling out the final consequences of the modern skepticism: "There
is no truth," holds Richard Rorty, "there is no such subject as philosophy,
there are no objective standards by which to evaluate or criticize social
and political practices. No matter what is done to the citizens of a
country, therefore, they can have no objective grounds on which to
protest."
In spite of--or because of--the above observations, the importance of
Objectivism gaining a foothold on campus cannot be overestimated. Many
people of student age still preserve some vestige of innocence and
idealism. They haven't yet totally succumbed to the cynicism of the adult
world, nor have they had their thinking processes totally subverted by
their education. In the past such idealism would have been channelled
mainly into Christian and/or Marxist directions. Objectivism offers young
idealists something far more edifying--a living, vibrant, reality-based
philosophy that can both provide a comprehensive world view and guide one's
own personal life.
Nowadays we hear much about the value of colleges and universities,
their importance to the nation, and our need to contribute financially to
their survival and growth. In regard to many professional and scientific
schools, this is indeed true. But in regard to the arts, the humanities and
the social sciences, the opposite is true. In those areas colleges and
universities, with a few rare exceptions, are now a national menace; and the
more distinguished (and therefore popular) the university, such as Harvard
and Berkeley and Columbia, the worse its effect is. Today's college
faculties are hostile to every idea on which this country was founded, they
are corrupting an entire generation of students, and they are leading the
United States thereby into slavery and destruction.
Most of the colleges of this country have simply classified ignorance
and are peddling it as knowledge. There are very good reasons to believe
that the money you pay to a college could be much better spent in other
investments for your future. (See Chapter 13 - An Alternative Lifestyle for
an Individualist.)
See reference
I have asked several students, "What does it cost you to spend a year in
that school?" And in every case the answer is an amount of money that would
suffice to support me comfortably for at least two years, with plenty left
over for the purchase of all the books, journals and educational materials
that I normally consume during that time. College is a financial rip-off.
Consider also that if you take a degree, you will then probably enter
that particular field of professional endeavor and spend your life pursuing
it. This tends to make you educationally restricted. I have a vastly
broader education today than I would have acquired if I had spent my life
pursuing only the scholastic specialty I began with.
Self-education IS a viable alternative! The personal experience of many
people who have successfully educated themselves proves this conclusively.
"I never let schooling interfere with my education." .... Mark Twain
* Futility of Reform - Principles underlying government schooling
The NEA boasts that in 128 years its goal has never wavered: "Excellence
in every classroom, for every child." The dismal picture painted here
suggests a more appropriate slogan: "Ignorance is our most important
product."
The effects of NEA policies, and of five generations of John Dewey in
the public school system, show clearly that that system has failed. Public
schools have failed and will continue to fail for a very simple reason:
there is no economic motivation for success.
Because children HAVE to be in school and HAVE to do what they're told,
teachers almost never get any quick and reliable feedback about their
teaching. By contrast, people teaching their own children, even if they
make many mistakes, are soon likely to become effective teachers, because
they get from their children the kind of unmistakable feedback that tells
them when their teaching is helpful and when it is not. But public
education is accountable to no one. Taxpayers must support it and the
majority of parents must accept its product, like it or not.
Much of the legislation concerning educational reform, particularly that
directed toward "minority" accomodation, is no more than ideology
masquerading as reform, as conflicting pressure-groups fight for control
over the school system.
Competing educational systems would offer the consumer a wide choice in
his purchase of education for himself and/or his children. This would end
forever the squabbles over curriculum (sex education? more athletics? more
academics? Black Studies programs?), student body (segregated or
integrated?), control of education (should it be in the hands of parents,
teachers, voters, the school board, or the colleges?), and all the other
questions which are unsolvable within the context of government's coercive
control of education. If each consumer were free to choose, among competing
schools, the type of education he valued most, all these problems would be
solved automatically. But the government school system preempts the options
of the citizens who are obliged to finance it, so that alternatives are
dependent on the arbitrary decrees of government committees.
The government has not solved the education problem because government
IS the problem.
If the government got out of education, would all parents make the best
choices for their children? Of course not. We don't live in a perfect
world. But we SHOULD live in a free country--one in which each of us is
free to make his own choices, good or bad. And those parents who are
capable of making good choices shouldn't have their children held prisoner
in government schools because other parents are less competent.
As American public schools slowly sink under waves of violence, drugs,
and illiteracy, supporters search frantically for salvation--but there is
none. The internal chaos and increasing politicalization of public
education are inherent in its government ownership wherein, without the
necessity to compete for customers, and lacking the profit motive, there is
little incentive for improvement. As long as local school systems are
assured of state and federal financing, it would be sentimental, wishful
thinking to expect any significant increase in their efficiency.
The application of individual rights and cognitive competence to the
educational system is necessary before sanity can return to the classrooms.
The Japanese educational system demonstrates some interesting contrasts
with that of the USA. In the mid-1960s math tests were given to 18-year-
olds in 12 countries. The AVERAGE Japanese scored at the same standard as
the top 1% elsewhere. A second run of these tests in the early 1980s had
similar results. Another comparison (in 1981) of 17-year-olds in Japan and
in Illinois showed the average Japanese scoring better than 98% of the
Americans.
In attempting to understand this disparity, it should be noted that the
financing of state-owned senior high schools in Japan is about average for
economically advanced nations. But 30% of Japanese high schools are
privately owned, and although compulsory schooling extends only to age 15
in Japan, 94% of Japanese adolescents voluntarily continue their education,
even though they are all required to pay fees for this continuance--whether
they choose to attend a state-financed high school or a wholly private
school.
Thus, while the American government-controlled schools are barely able
to attract half the nation's adolescents, the Japanese experience suggests
strongly that schools sensitive to consumer requirements by virtue of their
market orientation provide a service which virtually all adolescents
(and/or their parents) are not only willing to avail themselves of but even
to pay for. AND which has fabulously successful educational results!
We should make the public aware of how much better educated their
children would be from reading things produced by private institutions
rather than from studying the social sciences at a university. What happens
in the American Sociological Association is trivial, but what's coming out
of think tanks like the Cato Institute is much more central to the real
problems of American society. The Laissez Faire Bookstore undoubtedly
provides a better selection of useful educational material than can be
found in any university's social science department.
The erosion of confidence in government resulting from continual policy
reversals, irresolution in the face of electoral whims, and stifling
bureaucracy may eventually lead to a trend toward private funding of
education.
To ensure the supply of trained talent, business will have to invest in
the private educational system. And to some extent, it already is doing so:
the NSF estimated in 1992 that employers in the US spend about $100 billion
a year retraining high school graduates in basic skills. Of 200 major
American corporations, 22% teach employees reading, 41% teach writing, and
31% teach arithmetic. The Savannah symphony orchestra players sign two
contracts, one to play in the orchestra, and the other to teach music to
high school students for 20 hours per week.
Educational policies in America--from pre-schoool to graduate school--
are turning out students who are not only intellectually incompetent but
also morally confused, emotionally alienated and socially maladjusted. The
destruction begins in the primary and secondary schools, with content-less
classes designed to inculcate relativism by encouraging students to express
whatever it is that they happen to FEEL about a subject, rather than teach
them the facts about the subject. Students taught under this curriculum are
given no techniques for dealing with facts. They are not taught logical
principles, nor even any concept of right or wrong answers. It is not
merely that Johnny can't read, or that Johnny can't think. Johnny doesn't
know what thinking is, because in the classroom thinking is so often
confused with feeling.
While schoolchildren in Japan are learning science, mathematics and
languages, American children are sitting around in circles, unburdening
their little souls and expressing themselves on scientific, economic and
military issues about which they lack even the rudiments of knowledge.
Worse than what they are NOT learning is what they ARE learning--
presumptuous superficiality, taught by practitioners of it.
American schools are failing in every subject and on a fundamental
level; they are doing it methodically, as a matter of philosophical
principle. Their courses are a hodge-podge of random and contradictory
information that can't possibly be integrated into a consistent whole, and
one of the first things they teach students is not to bother to try. The
anti-conceptual epistemology that grips them comes from John Dewey, who
stands on the shoulders of Immanuel Kant, the philosopher who dedicated his
life and his system to the destruction of reason.
About 1900, psychologist William James developed what came to be called
the "pragmatic method." It maintained that the value of anything is to be
found only in terms of its "usefulness" or actual consequences. It denied
the existence of "absolutes" of any kind. Shortly thereafter, philosopher
John Dewey seized upon this concept and developed the theory of
Instrumentalism. It holds that thought is simply a method of meeting
difficulties--that its goals are wider experiences and the solving of
problems. To Dewey, knowledge equals experience, and there are no universal
truths of any kind. To Dewey, anything in life which satisfies a want is a
"good." If one concedes that good and evil have no other connotation than
satisfying or failing to satisfy an individual want or need, then it
follows that there can be no positive standards of child behavior, no moral
code except a relative one. Knowledge, in this gibberish doctrine, is never
worth pursuing for its own sake, only for the sake of problems it might
solve for the individual. Dewey's pragmatism held the main goals of
education to be these: To aid the child to live the life of the peer group,
and to enable him to adjust to unknown and constantly changing
environmental conditions. There is nothing here, you will note, about the
basic essentials of knowledge, or about teaching children to use the
intellectual tools which the human race has found to be indispensable in
the pursuit of truth. Or even simple literacy, for that matter. The
American education establishment has continued to embrace this balderdash
long after its failure has become blatantly apparent (except to that
establishment), and no matter how many kids emerge from its clutches
illiterate and ignorant.
The world has long observed that small acts of immorality, if repeated,
will destroy character. It is equally manifest, though rarely said, that
uttering nonsense and half-truths without cease ends by destroying
intellect.
* Tragic consequences
Incompetence in cognition creates a caste system. Those who can use
language are able to think and therefore be independent, rational and
productive; those who cannot are more ignorant, less productive and more
easily manipulated, intimidated and controlled. Thus the American school
system has produced generations of citizens who eagerly embrace the very
principles which are being used to impoverish and enslave them.
If improvements are not made in the educational system, the divisions
among people in this country will only become more extreme.
A nation that does not teach freedom will not survive in freedom, and
will not even know when it has lost freedom.
A few horror stories:
City government departments such as Fire, Police, Ambulance, Hospitals,
Parks, Electricity, Water, and Streets need to employ people who are at
least moderately literate and who possess sufficient education and self-
confidence to make reasonable judgments in everyday situations. It was
disheartening to call 911 to report a crime at the playground in Riverside
Park at 91st Street, only to have the responding city employee ask
plaintively: "But what is the house number? We have to have a house
number..." I had managed to get hold of a person who wasn't familiar with
the geography of her own city, probably didn't know how to read a map, and
didn't realize that private homes with numbers are not part of the layout
of the public parks and playgrounds. This is not so unusual. Incompetent
public service does not contribute to a high standard of community living.
A Missouri couple took their local public school to court for failing to
teach their child to read and write. The judge ruled for the school on the
grounds that the law specifies compulsory attendance in Missouri, not
compulsory education.
A survey of 600+ hospital consent forms found that 25% required college-
level skills and 9% required postgraduate education in order to fully
understand the risks and benefits of a given medical procedure. Having
uncovered the cause of some puzzling doctor-patient relationships, the
survey takers went on to find that, on average, the patients were reading
at a 7th grade level. So they redesigned the consent forms to this level.
They then discovered that, although most patients preferred the simplified
forms, those who read them didn't seem to gain any better understanding of
the implications of the proposed treatment.
The social sciences are "disciplines" whose connections with reality
seem to get more and more tenuous every year. This can be frustrating for
graduates who depart college full of a social science know-how that leaves
them knowing only how to teach the same stuff to others. A political
science professor tried to convince me to go to graduate school and get a
Ph.D. in political science:
"What could I do with a political science Ph.D.?" I asked.
"Well," came the answer, "you could lecture to other students getting
political science degrees."
"And what would they do with their political science degrees?"
"Well, they could teach others..."
It sounded like a giant Ponzi scheme, so I left college immediately.
As Martin Gardner remarked: "If you're a professional philosopher,
there's no way to make any money except to teach. It has no use anywhere."
One woman, looking back on her scholastic experience, remarked that
school "was too stifling for me and," she maintained wistfully, "the wrong
place for people who need freedom and who want to use the energy of their
youth to ask naive questions. You may be using up a time in life that will
just never come again."
During the 1994-95 school year, the administrators of a high school near
Boulder, Colorado, decided to rent its wall space for commercial
advertising. In an attempt to quell the inevitable opposition to such a
decision, they held meetings with the students in which they explained their
reasons. When the students were told that the local voters had not passed an
increase in the school tax base for over 20 years, the response of one
student was rather surprising:
"Why do you hate us so? You force us to spend 12 years in these schools,
but then you refuse to pay for their operation. When we go into the
community we see signs on doors saying 'You are not welcome here if you are
under 18 years old.' You have recently passed a curfew that forbids us to
move about in our own community at night. The tone of moral outrage and
vilification used by the conservatives when they talk about teenage
pregnancy makes it perfectly clear to us that they hate these young
parents. Why do you hate us so? In a few years WE will be the adults who
run the world, and YOU will be old folks whose economic well-being will
depend at least in part on us. We will remember then what you are doing to
us today."
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,
It expects what never was and never will be.
.... Thomas Jefferson
* Education - Home Schooling
"The Scholastic Achievement and Demographic Characteristics of Home
School Students in 1998" by Lawrence Rudner, makes this observation:
In every subject and at every grade level of the ITBS and TAP batteries
[standardized tests], home school students score significantly higher than
their public and private school counterparts.... Because home education
allows each student to progress at his or her own rate, almost one in four
home school students are enrolled one or more grades above age level.
Home Schooling is really quite easy in the state of Wyoming. A law passed
in 1986 (Wyoming Statute 21-4-101,102) specifies that parents desiring to
home-school their children need merely inform the local school board of
their decision and, each year, specify the curriculum they will use.
Private schools in Wyoming are not required to register nor be
accredited in order to operate. They may award their own diplomas, and are
not required to have certified teachers.
There are many excellent materials available to home schoolers, and home
schoolers' flexibility in their curricula enables them to benefit from
these. Here is a partial list:
(As of early 2006, many of these sources are rather ancient. A search of
the Internet for "home schooling" will be very informative.)
THE SYCAMORE TREE - 2179 Meyer Place Costa Mesa CA 92627 (714)650-
4466 www.sycamoretree.com The Sycamore Tree provides educational
services and a HomeSchool program. Send them $3 for their excellent 100+
page catalog of materials for home schooling your children, from pre-school
ages all the way through high school.
THE TEACHING COMPANY - 7405 Alban Station Court, Suite A107,
Springfield, VA 22150-2318 www.teachco.com Call (800)832-2412 and ask
for their free catalog of high school and college courses on video and
audiotape.
THE RUTHERFORD INSTITUTE - a service that monitors state schooling
regulations throughout America. Information on any state can be obtained
from The Home Education Reporter, Box 510, Manassas VA 22110.
The McGraw-Hill Homeschool Catalog contains 4000 educational products.
ALPHA OMEGA PUBLICATIONS (800)622-3070
HOME EDUCATION MAGAZINE Box 1083 Tonasket WA 98855
PRACTICAL HOMESCHOOLING MAGAZINE (800)346-6322
AERO-GRAMME, 417 Roslyn Rd, Roslyn Heights NY 11577 (516)621-2195
TAKING CHILDREN SERIOUSLY - Sarah Williams, 23 Whitley Road, London N17
6RJ A bi-monthly British journal on home schooling and other parenting
issues.
DR. MONTESSORI'S OWN HANDBOOK - Maria Montessori - Schocken SB98 For
working with children aged about 3 to 6.
LIBERATING SCHOOLS - Edited by David Boaz
FAMILY MATTERS - David Guterson
SUPER PARENTS, SUPER CHILDREN - Frances Kendall
HOW TO RAISE A BRIGHTER CHILD - Joan Beck
HOMESCHOOLING FOR EXCELLENCE - David and Micki Colfax Contains
appendices filled with valuable reference materials for homeschoolers.
Two little books that teach economics:
CAPITALISM FOR KIDS - Karl Hess
THE OX CART MAN - Donald Hall - Viking Penguin Press A children's book
portraying free enterprise.
* Science Fiction as an introduction to the study of Science.
One of the best ways to engender an interest in science in the minds of
young people is to introduce them to it through works of good science
fiction. Arthur Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and James Hogan are
authors who combine science fact with thoughtful scientific speculation
into well-written, intelligently imaginative stories.
These seven books are by James P. Hogan. (All are Ballantine Del Ray
books.) All are a rare combination of excellent science and excellent
fiction.
(The first three are a trilogy)
INHERIT THE STARS - #31792
THE GENTLE GIANTS OF GANYMEDE #32327
GIANTS' STAR #32720
THE GENESIS MACHINE #30576
THE TWO FACES OF TOMORROW #32387
THRICE UPON A TIME #32386
CODE OF THE LIFEMAKER #30549
RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA - Arthur C. Clarke - Ballantine #345 24175 4
The investigation of an uninhabited space ship wandering through the
Solar system. Excellent science exposition in this book.
THE SENTINEL - Arthur C. Clarke - Berkley #6183
THE DEEP RANGE - Arthur C. Clarke - Bantam #28925
A FALL OF MOONDUST - Arthur C. Clarke - Signet #9795
TRUE NAMES - Vernor Vinge - Bluejay #94444 For computer programmers,
hackers, and those interested in Artificial Intelligence.
ROBOT VISIONS - Isaac Asimov - Penguin #45064
An integrated collection of both science essays and robot stories. Many
of the stories are parables illustrating the problems in logic encountered
when dealing with machine intelligence, and the essays deal with the idea
of computer intelligence and its significance to human society.
THE PAST THROUGH TOMORROW - Robert Heinlein - Berkley #10223
* Books about Science
Isaac Asimov has written dozens of volumes of science essays. I know of
no better way to get a broad general education in science than by reading
those essays.
THE INTELLIGENT MAN'S GUIDE TO THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES - Isaac Asimov
Pocket Cardinal #95004
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN Box 3186 Harlan Iowa 51593-2377 $34.97 per year
This journal offers special classroom subscription rates and a free
Teacher's Kit. Call (800)377-9414 or go to www.sciam.com
RELATIVITY FOR THE MILLION - Martin Gardner - Macmillan, 1962 This is
a clear and simple exposition of the Special and General Relativity.
WHEELS, LIFE AND OTHER MATHEMATICAL AMUSEMENTS - Martin Gardner - W.H.
Freeman & Co., 1983
TIME TRAVEL AND OTHER MATHEMATICAL BEWILDERMENTS - Martin Gardner - W.H.
Freeman & Co., 1988
THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE - George Gamow - Bantam #5863
QED - Richard Feynman - Princeton Univ. Press. A non-mathematical
presentation of Quantum Electro-Dynamics (the way in which light interacts
with matter).
RANDOM HOUSE BOOK OF 1001 WONDERS OF SCIENCE This one is for children.
Society for Amateur Scientists
4951 D Clairemont Square, Suite 179
San Diego CA 92117
S. A. S.
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