For decades the majority of Americans, most of the so-called 99 Percent, have been getting a basic education inferior to what their parents received.
To meet the required budget cuts, schools are forced to cut out arts, music and other non-core courses and after school activities. Bare bones programs leave students uninspired as they sleep walk to graduation, not much wiser than when they started.
In many parts of America, pro-science is regarded as anti-religion, or worse yet, pro-religion is ipso facto considered as antithetical to science. To demand that religious concepts be taught on equal footing with science – as creationists have done in their fight against Darwinian evolutionists – is to leave young minds poorly prepared for a productive adult life in a technology driven world.
Immigrants from China, India and Russia, in particular, come from cultures with a deep respect for learning and science. They have not been in America long enough for the anti-science mentality to alter their values.
BS. Have you taught in a public K-12 school? Not only am I a teacher, I am also looked upon to be a parent (I do have that qualification and have proven successful results), a psychologist (NOT qualified), and a nurse (NOT qualified other than Dr. Mommy) to students who come from broken homes or homes with drug-dependent parents - most of whom have nothing but contempt for “education”, instead relying upon the “government” to provide for their most basic needs. I TRY to reach these young people, and I teach/reach to the best of my ability.
I AM NOT A MEMBER OF THE TEACHERS’ UNION!
BTW: the school system in which I teach and where my children attend have wonderful arts programs! Of course, those programs are not deemed as “important” as the athletic programs...or the academic programs, as far as that goes...
NO, I DO NOT HAVE A PhD (piled higher and deeper). What I do have is a sense of FREEDOM from government tyranny and a desire to instill in the young people I teach an understanding of what our forefathers meant by “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.
On another note: I am giving/receiving a MUCH more thorough education than was available in the 1960s-70s.
I would claim that the only possible path to our USA recovery and success begins with a Congress and a President that absolutely puts only the interests of the USA first, and not the wealth of globalists and other nations.
You can’t have company run by those who put other companies first, and you can’t run a country by those who do the same.
We need a major flushing of the toilet in the USA.
There’s manufacturing in the US?
We need to quit pushing every kid towards college and start pushing many of them to Tech schools. The ones that do go to college need to become engineers. I work in the Defense industry. We have a hard time finding people off the street that can do the jobs. Many are filled by former military guys like myself, but there just isn’t enough of us. There is a huge shortage of skilled labor in this country. We have too many kids getting Liberal Arts degrees.
There, I said it. Now the True Conservatives(tm) will be after me.
Part of the problem is that the teaching methods of American public schools are intentionally random and boring. They actually teach their students to hate learning and they do it by design.
Perhaps the Homeschooling community can find their own solution to this problem. IMHO, homeschoolers are one of the few hopeful signs of our nation’s future.
The author is ignorant of what is really going on in schools, all most all of it caused by federal and state level interference in what should be under local parental control.
What passes for science education is neither science, nor education. It is indoctrination into the envirowacko religion of Gaia worship.
Not only do arts and music education get cut but core classes in math and reading are shortened and replaced with liberal indoctrination in the latest educational fad du jour in human development, sexuality, bullying, sensitivity training and on and on. All taught by education majors who can’t spell or write or do basic math.
Fact: you can’t control people who can think for themselves. This is why schools focus on indoctrination rather than education.
No it doesn't.
It begins with driving a spike through the heart of the H-1b visa program.
H-1b means Americans have to compete on price with foreigners who are willing to live four to a 2-bedroom apartment.
It also means import tariffs to at least partially equalize the cost of labor between here and China.
I saw a story recently about the Apple/Foxconn factory in China where some change came up, so Foxconn rousted THOUSANDS of workers out of the dorms at midnight, gave them a cup of tea and a biscuit, and set them to work on a 12-hour shift. In that factory $22 PER DAY is considered good money.
"Education" is going to make us competitive with that?
There is no way the U.S. can compete with China when the Chinese are playing to win by playing currency games and not having to meet the same rules that the United States and Europe do.
They have 400 million more people who can be employed at wages that make Foxconn look generous, and they will be ruthless about copying, stealing, and extorting manufacturing technology from whoever, however and whatever they can.
You can babble all you want about "education" and if you go back 50, 70, 100 years you'll read the same thing.
It's not a matter of education. It's a matter of one group playing for keeps with a plan to put everyone else on the mat economically and militarily. And they got the humans to do it.
"Innovate" all you want. You'll end up seeing your own innovations coming back at you for pennies on the dollar within a year if you don't have protection.
Absolute utter CRAP.
It is not that hard to fix US manufacturing...
1. Promote trade schools and community colleges. I went to a university and it was right for me. There should no stigma for people wishing to go on a different path. Line supervisors should have training and not just be people that think they have good people skills. The factory technicians should have 2 year degrees in an appropriate trade.
2. Incentivize production. The factories I have worked in that were most productive gave all the people in the factory (not managers) bonuses if they hit the goal and an extra bonus if they passed the goals. The goals were set at the right level so people were motivated. The bonuses might be only $20 a week, but it gave people a sense of accomplishment...plus they get something the managers do not get.
3. Engineers, engineers, engineers. Engineers are needed to trouble shoot problems in the factory. I am an engineer and I will be the first to say that nearly all of them should never supervise people, they should stick with their education and solve problems or create new widgets. The few engineers that aspire to be manger must take management courses...period.
4. Last but not least. No unions. Enough said. They instill under-performance.
There might be more, but this is what I have learned from actually working in factories....note, not one things is required by government.
It speaks very poorly for our education system if third world countries are stealing jobs because of poor education. Our public education system has poor quality teachers and too many poor quality students. You choose who to blame
US workers will lose from three reasons: multinational mentality of corporate CEO’s; fanatical EPA disciples who live in isolated communities with no connection where or how goods and utilities are created; deliberate decision by the Fed Reserve with politician approval to inflate their way out of debt. If workers in America want a fighting chance, eliminate all three because no matter what you do you will never get ahead.
Example lower taxes and regs may keep corporation in the US for a short while because CEO’s will tell the Chinese and Indian workers to lower their wages again before US will reopen the factories in their land. If the Chinese and Indians agree, CEO will demand US workers to lower their wages and gov to eliminate more regs/lower taxes. This cycle will keep going until the gov no longer has any ideas what CEO’s do, corporations will pay no taxes, accountable to no one and American/Chinese/Indian workers will be slaves.
You can have the most educated work force in the US, lower taxes and lesser regs, corporate America will play us against the Chinese and Indians until everyone has very little and corporate CEO’s have everything.
Education ancedote of the weekend for me:
20ish cashier at the grocery asked me “what are these?” when I handed her a couple of silver dollars for the purchase.