Some Thoughts On Fixing Public Education

Yesterday, we talked about two major issues facing the country that the American political class has been totally unable to resolve. In the late 1960s, President Richard Nixon declared "War On Drugs" to combat the illegal use of drugs in the country at that time. As we discussed yesterday, that war is currently not going well as the examples we reviewed starkly illustrate. In 1986, the U.S. Congress ordered the National Guard to secure our border with Mexico within 45 days. That deadline has not been met, twenty four years later.

Today we will talk about public education in the United States and the failure of the American political class to resolve that problem also. But first, consider the following facts:

• As documented in Step 27 of "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," in 2006 the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) released its periodic study of education performance from around the world. The 2006 study covered 57 countries and reported on how well students were being educated in science and math. The United States finished twenty third in science and thirty second in mathematics, scoring below the international average in both categories.
• In 1983, President Ronald Reagan's Commission On Excellence In Education released its landmark report, "A Nation At Risk" that concluded public education in America was not adequately preparing American students to compete in the world. The Commission and its report laid out a series of specific steps and recommendations that should have been implemented to fix the problem. In 2008, the Strong Americans Schools organization concluded that"stunningly few of the Commission's recommendations have been enacted."
• The Yankee Group recently estimated that within three years, 54% of kids aged 8 - 12 years old will have their own cell phone.
• C&R Research recently reported that 22% of kids aged 6-9 already have their own cell phone, 60% of kids aged 10-14 have their own cell phone, and 84% of kids aged 15-18 have their own cell phone.
• Although I could not find any hard numbers, how many kids do you know who do NOT have at least one presence on a social networking page (e.g. Facebook)
• An article by Katherine Mangu-Ward in the August, 2010 issue of Reason magazine reported that 1) per student spending on education has more than doubled (in real dollars) over the past 30 years with no academic improvement to show for it), 2) today, kids spend about 7.5 hours a day in front of some type of screen, and 3) according to Ms. Mangu-Ward, the "price of a decent laptop and the price of a single hardback biology textbook will soon converge. Books full of nonhyperlinked text already must seem like a cruel joke to the congenitally connected."

How are all of these points related? Namely they expose a number of problems of why kids are not getting educated properly in the country today. First, the political class has not taken the necessary steps to fix the problem even though they were handed a blueprint on how to do it almost three decades ago. It is one thing to not know how to fix a problem, it is entirely unacceptable not to fix a problem when somebody shows you how to fix it. It is even worse when you double the amount of money that is spent on the problem without getting it fixed.

Second, kids today are much different from kids long ago but the education process has not changed to account for the difference. Today, kids march into a class, 20 to 30 at a time, sit at desks, and listen (or not listen) to a teacher lecturing. Gee, sounds like it was the same for me during my education experience forty some years ago. Kids today are tuned into amazing technology, technology that is not being fully deployed in the education process. If kids are in front of screens 7.5 hours a day, why not use that screen exposure to help educate them?

That is the basic theory of Ms. Mangu-Ward's article. While I will not go into the details of this great article, suffice it to say that she makes a great case of leveraging technology and blowing away the ancient and out of touch process currently used to educate our kids. On a positive note, she reviews how many thousands of kids are already getting at least some of their education through cutting edge technology. By dealing with the education process through technology, smart kids are freed from waiting for slower kids to catch up in the classroom and can learn even more. Slower kids are not ashamed to ask questions and ask for help, something they may not do in a traditional classroom, lest they be thought of as less smart than the other kids. Ms. Mangu-Ward does a thorough job of reviewing the past experiences and positive potential of marrying education and technology in our modern world, breaking free from an ancient education model that is not working, as evidenced by the points listed above.

She also points out the major obstacle facing this movement: teachers' unions. Teacher unions have usually been strong opponents of this approach since they perceive it may result in fewer teachers being needed. They are still stuck in the old education model, regimented classes with minimal technology learning, an approach that we know usually does not work in today's world. The unions also like to insist that schools helps develop the social skills of kids. However, the reality is that kids develop social skills in all different types of ways these days, not the least of which is through technology. Cell phones, texting, email, instant messaging, etc. are just as important to kids social development today as sitting in a classroom was for us.

The dangerous aspect of the union opposition is the sway they hold over the political class. The teacher union cartel is big enough to influence elections and who gets elected. As long as that link is in place, it appears it will be difficult to break out of the current, inadequate model into a more technology oriented and effective model. Unfortunately, status quo gets us unprepared students that become unprepared adults in the world wide economy.

I do not pretend to be an expert on education. However, in my reality, the current process of educating our kids is failing them miserably while the technology to do much better is available but not being utilized due to the political class being too close to teachers' unions. That is why Step 27 in "Love my Country, Loathe My Government" is so important. It would update the Reagan administration's approach via a national commission and come up with an updated set of steps needed to fix our schools, especially in light of the wonderful technology we could deploy in this area. Step 39 is also critical in that it would impose term limits on all Federal politicians, hopefully minimizing the impact of the teachers' unions in determining who gets elected and who does NOT improve our public schools. Twenty seven years, much like the time frame relative to our War On Drugs (42 years) and our leaky border (24 years), is much too long to wait for the political class to solve a problem.

Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/