Posted on 05/09/2010 5:04:41 AM PDT by reaganaut1
The Great Depression did not have too many silver linings, but it did change the way Americans thought about education, clearly for the better. In 1930, only 30 percent of teenagers graduated from high school. By 1940, after a decade in which there often was nothing better to do than stay in school, the number had jumped to 50 percent. The Depression didn’t just make Americans tougher. It made them smarter.
In the years that followed, these newly skilled workers helped create an economic colossus. They were the factory workers, office clerks and managers who built up General Motors, U.S. Steel, R.C.A. and I.B.M. So when our own Great Recession began more than two years ago, it was reasonable to hope that something similar, if less extreme, might take place.
In a historical echo, the share of young adults in recent years who graduated from college happened to be about 30 percent. By any serious reckoning, that number was too low. The gap between the pay of college graduates and everyone else has grown sharply over the last three decades, reaching a new all-time high last year, which suggests that workers with a degree are too scarce a resource. There may indeed be a natural ceiling on how many college graduates a society should produce, but the United States does not appear close to it.
A deep recession has the potential to change that. It can keep people in school, or drive them back to school, in two main ways. First, it reduces the opportunity cost — to use the technical term — of attending college. When times are tough, you are less likely to be missing out on a good $20-an-hour job by being in class.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“Conservatives though have NO LONG TERM PLAN TO RE-MORALIZE THE NATION.”
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Nobody does, young people who have been brought up on political propaganda presented as truth have no way to know the real truth. They may awaken to the fact that they have been lied to all their lives and realize that our so called mainstream media is only a propaganda arm of the left but that won’t make them know the truth, in and of itself such an awakening will merely leave them confused and unwilling to trust anyone. I certainly don’t have the answer. I feel as if I have been transported to another world. The world I grew up in no longer exists except in memory. In a few more years it may not even exist in memory.
I wonder if I can go back to school and major in Vikingology.
“Have a BA/BS degree today is probably the equivalent of a HS diploma circa 1950.”
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Oh, if only I could agree! I am convinced that on average it is actually equivalent to no more than tenth grade at best. I ENTERED public school in 1950 and have no college, only a high school diploma. I would be willing to wager that if I could sit down and take a 1950 high school final exam now I probably wouldn’t pass it but would most likely outscore almost any Ba or BS holder I know who is under forty years old. Most recent college graduates would fail miserably in English, in History, in Biology, in Civics and in Literature (these were all required subjects in my day).
Just from reading the posts here on Free Republic it is appalling to me how many conservatives believe that government schools can be reformed. UNBELIEVABLE!
I see the following:
**Government schools would be fixed if they eliminated the Department of justice, banned unions, taught phonics and the basics, stopped indoctrinating, had a sprinkle of prayer in the morning, fired all the teachers, went back to the 60s, 50s, 40s, ran for the school board, had more conservative teahers ....(pass the barf bucket)!
Another good one is “This isn't happening our child's school!” Yeah! Right! ( with eye roll)
It is amazing to me how few conservatives even recognize that government schools ***ARE** the very essence of socialism! Of course the children will learn to be socialists if they become comfortable with taking their neighbor's money to pay for a service that their parents want for FREE!
I am EXASPERATED!
If our nation's children attended private conservative schools, in 10 years our nation's college classrooms would be filled to the brim with youth who were well prepared to defend their faith and our nation's founding principles. There would be strong conservative and Christian clubs, fraternities, and sororities. Their Marxist professors would wither before their righteousness.
In 15 years righteous young adults would be taking their places in academia and all of our cultural institutions.
In 20 years the nation would be RE-moralized.
I suggest the following:
Conservatives should organize education foundations. The foundations would award grants to individual conservative teachers who would open one-room schools in their homes. (This would be a tremendous cost savings since their would be no building expenses.) The foundation would test the students, certify the teacher, and approve the curriculum.
The foundation would start community wide sports programs ( as well as the cheer leading “rah rah” that goes with that) and run community-wide music, theater, dance, and art programs
Universities and colleges across the nation have endowments in the BILLIONS. Harvard alone has an endowment of 35 BILLION! If government had never interfered with the private education market perhaps by now we would have equally endowed K-12 education. It is possible that by now no child in the U.S. would ever need to spend a dime in K-12 tuition.
If conservatives can endow colleges and universities I believe they could be persuaded to endow K-12 education.
BTTT and a hearty AMEN! Government school indoctrination is what inevitably produces sheeple who will vote in Comrade Obama.
It is like aiming a water pistol at a raging Marxist forest fire. Homeschoolers are only 2% of the nation's K-12 population. ( At very best 5%.)
“If conservatives can endow colleges and universities I believe they could be persuaded to endow K-12 education.”
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I hadn’t thought about it but I am sure that we would be better off if most of the millions given to universities had been given to fund tuition at private K-12 schools. If every student who wanted to learn were given an honest high school education we could close most of the universities keeping just enough of them to handle those who really qualify for advanced education. As it is we have thousands going to universities to become credentialed so they can get a job of the sort that used to be done by high school graduates or even high school dropouts. Much of our current university system falls under the heading of high priced scam.
When my mother, who is 96, graduated from **8th** grade she knew far more than many of today's high schoolers and college grads! She did go on to graduate from high school which was very unusual for women in those days.
If we had seriously endowed private **conservative** K-12 education we would have no need for the wasted money and YEARS out of young people's lives that are now spent in college.
There was a time in our nation that it was **common** for young teens to be admitted to college. Why? Because they had been privately tutored, or attended small academies, and were fully prepared for serious college level work.
By the way, my homeschooled kids entered college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. They finished all college general courses and Calculus III by the age of 15. Two earned B.S. degrees in mathematics by the age of 18. The older of these two earned a masters in math at 20.
The oldest of my homeschoolers did is doing equally well and is working on an M.B.A. in accounting. He chose to go to school part-time while training full time in a sport. He also worked full-time for our church in Eastern Europe for several years and, as a result, is completely fluent in Russian.
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