Posted on 12/02/2011 5:15:24 AM PST by 1010RD
The American tradition of public education began in one-room school houses when frontier farm families hired dedicated teachers to teach their children.
When I attended public schools in the 1950s, I received an excellent education. American schools were rated the best in the world. Those schools prepared me for Caltech, and Caltech prepared me for a wonderful life in science. I owe my career and accomplishments to the great start I received in the public schools.
Those public schools were locally controlled and locally funded. Teachers and parents worked together on the content of curriculum, student discipline, and all aspects of school life. In addition to being academic institutions, public schools became centers of sports competition, social events, and other aspects of community life.
Unfortunately, our public schools are no longer locally controlled. They are largely controlled by federal and state agencies and special interests empowered by government. Local school boards still meet, but the most important decisions are out of their hands.
As local control diminished, so did the academic quality of our schools. U.S. schools are now rated as among the worst in the developed world. This is more than a tragedy – it is child abuse.
When 50 million American children – in whose hands the fate of our nation rests – receive poor quality elementary academic educations, the future of our country is in serious jeopardy. The federally and state controlled public schools that are ruining our children’s educations should be abolished – and replaced by the locally-controlled public schools that served our children so well in the past. No school should be permitted to ruin the life of a single student.
A vast federal bureaucracy and numerous special interest organizations it empowers now stand between our students and our teachers. It should be eliminated. All aspects of a student’s upbringing are the responsibility of the student’s parents and any professional whom the parents wish to engage. Together, they should provide the student with the best possible academic opportunities. This effort must not be imperiled by those who use education for their own purposes, rather than for the student’s best interest.
Americans have responded to the deterioration of their schools by providing more and more tax money, but more money has not worked. Much of the money never reaches the students or the teachers. It funds a literal army of non-teachers, administrators, and federal, state, and local bureaucrats – who generally spend their time making life miserable for the teachers and interfering with their efforts to teach.
Tax funding for Oregon schools is now, on average, about $10,000 per student year. Suppose that one of our thousands of great teachers were to be given 30 students, a check for $300,000, and asked to teach those students for nine months. Do you think the teacher would have sufficient resources? (Some schools receive less than the average of $10,000, but even $200,000 would suffice for this example.)
The teacher could rent the best room in town, hire an assistant, raise her own salary, buy everything the students need, fully fund all extracurricular activities, and have money left over. The teacher could, of course, do this more efficiently in a school with other teachers. This single teacher example illustrates, however, that education resources are sufficient – if the resources go directly to the classroom.
The local school board would assure that resources do go to the classroom and provide sufficient supervision, which need not cost much. Following World War II, my uncle taught school in Iowa. In addition to teaching a full load of classes, he was given a few dollars extra to be the superintendant of schools.
I have been an educator all my life. Starting with earning a little money for college by tutoring students in high school, I eventually became a faculty member at the University of California at San Diego, teaching chemistry to 300 undergraduates each year and supervising graduate students. Currently, our family business provides curricula, books, and teaching aids to approximately 60,000 home schooled students in the U.S.
In the 1950s when our schools were under local control, there was almost no home schooling in America because there was no need for it. Now, millions of American children are being home schooled because their parents want better educations for them than are provided in the academically inferior schools that are under federal, state, and special interest political control.
Not even nuclear war could “abolish” American public education. It is an integral part of our way of life. However, American schools must be returned to local control. The federal Department of Education should be closed, and education returned entirely to the states and the people as the Constitution specifies. The states and localities can collect the needed taxes. No increase in overall taxes would be needed.
Local control is close to the parents, where real concern for the student lies. Also, local control places our school districts in competition with each other for academic excellence, so students benefit.
Improvement of our public schools cannot wait. It cannot be neglected in hopes that they will gradually improve over the coming decades. The 50 million children in these schools now will not have a second chance at some future date.
Beyond high school, the U.S. system of private and public universities is also functioning below its potential because of political control. Oregon State University, located in Oregon District 4, serves as an example. This university receives more than $250 million in federal research dollars each year, including approximately $30 million as direct earmark funding from incumbent Congressmen during the last congressional session. By comparison, OSU private funding for research is now less than $6 million.
Is it any surprise, therefore, that in the 2010 election, OSU facilities and personnel were mobilized in favor of the incumbent Congressional candidate in District 4 and against the challenger? OSU courses often contain partisan political content, even science courses with no logical political purpose. OSU has become a very partisan political institution, which can lead to reprehensible injustices to students, as evidenced by my own family.
By contrast, the California Institute of Technology receives only about half of its funds from political sources. The other half is supported by income from Caltech’s endowment, which mitigates the effect of outside political influence.
Oregon State University and the University of Oregon (also in Oregon District 4) are very important institutions. Both universities would, however, be much better off if they were not completely dependent upon politicians for their immediate existence. Very large independent endowments should be built for both universities. These could be built with both public and private funds, but then be administered by the universities without political control.
Public education, from first grade to the university levels should be as independent of federal and state political influence as possible.
What I was referring to was of a much more spiritual nature. It wasn’t purely about the school system per se....but about our entire cultural milieu.
Art is familiar with the history of American forced education. Trust me on that. You and I are knowledgeable on such things and hence we home school. The average American doesn’t know and doesn’t get it.
My goal is seeing Art elected. He’s solid, very solid. He’s also big on home schooling: http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/
Yep, teachers will grasp any straw if it isn’t their money. The utter myth that tech = improvement is disproved by PBS and Sesame Street.
One step at a time. Liberalism is a disease that starts at the Federal level. Think about the average American. They’re conservative at a core level, but liberals have been able to contravene them through national funding and control.
He gets it completely. I presume you’re familiar with this book?: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/
Yes, I have read quite a few books on the history of American education, including Gatto’s.
Epecially when you consider there is zero in the U.S. Constitution that education is a federal function.
And these two along thoe lines:
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
“Much of the money never reaches the students or the teachers.”
Here in NJ much of the money reaches the teachers; they are very well-paid, and their retirement benefits liabilities are drowning many municipalities. What pensioners did to GM in Detroit public employees (most teachers) are doing to NJ; the tax burden on any individual, business, or property makes it a terrible place to be.
Great timing, could ya’ll also take a look over here at the issue of Standards Based Grading creeping into middle schools and high schools?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2814935/posts
I think the assertion that homeschooling wasn’t necessary in the 1950s due to the public school system is off base; while the public schools were better then than today, the fact is that there were a lot more PRIVATE education opportunities than today.
When my father was in elementary school it was required for Catholic parents to send their children to Catholic schools; imagine the size of a Catholic education system that could mandate that. Today it is a shell of its former self, and the state of education today reflects that.
What is worse is having millions of teachers each trying to ‘innovate’ at the kids’ expense. Attempts to innovate are by definition going to include many failures. The material to be learned in K-12 doesn’t change every year and it doesn’t change from one locale to another. There is no need to constantly reinvent the wheel. Today’s technology lends itself to sharing the best teachers amongst every classroom on that subject. The “Teacher” should be an interactive video game that includes lectures, textbook, video material all presented as needed and in response to the student’s input to frequent pop-up quizzes. Each student could learn at their own pace and explore in more depth than any live body could support with individual attention. The adults physically present in the classroom should be relegated to Aid or Tutor, and not trying to create their own curriculum while setting a pace that is limited by the slowest student in the class.
Also, it should be impossible to “teach to the test” and impossible to cheat on a test. Each student’s test should be created separately so the questions are in a random order and although the entire class has the same 50 questions, those 50 questions were randomly selected at the last minute from a database of thousands of possible questions on that topic. (If somebody can memorize the answers to thousands of questions on that week’s topic, then their effort to cheat will result in them learning something despite themselves.) This way the “teacher” has no idea exactly what questions will be on the test, and the students can’t crib off each other because their neighbor’s test problems are in a different order. This will force the teachers to teach the actual subject matter rather than “teach to the test” and students to learn the subject matter rather than counting on cribbing off somebody else.
He doesn’t say so, and it would probably be election suicide for him to say so, but I think public colleges and universities need to be audited thoroughly to determine why costs keep going up. I expect that professors are spending less time per class/student and so more teaching staff is used than necessary. Likewise, the administrative staffs are hugely bloated.
They suffer the same problem that any government bureaucracy does — larger staffs justify higher pay for supervisors, so there is a disincentive to improve productivity.
Basically, they spend more money because they CAN, because students are so desperate and student loans are so easy to get, that universities raise their fees and tuition and the students keep paying. Students complain, but keep coming and paying. The government should stop guaranteeing student loans. Public universities should not be using price to try to decrease demand, they should be using merit to fill their spaces and then either expand the school or reject the extras. Charging people up the wazoo and then just blowing the cash on lighter workloads for professors and bloating admin is bad policy. Especially when every extra $1 the student pays is matched by $3 the taxpayer must pay.
The unavailability of student loans and leaner operating costs at public universities will lead to lower fees at both public and private schools as they must compete with the public schools.
I would bet that professor and administrator salaries go up every year, even though the economy has been terrible.
Tax funding for Oregon schools is now, on average, about $10,000 per student year. Suppose that one of our thousands of great teachers were to be given 30 students, a check for $300,000, and asked to teach those students for nine months. Do you think the teacher would have sufficient resources? (Some schools receive less than the average of $10,000, but even $200,000 would suffice for this example.) The teacher could rent the best room in town, hire an assistant, raise her own salary, buy everything the students need, fully fund all extracurricular activities, and have money left over. The teacher could, of course, do this more efficiently in a school with other teachers. This single teacher example illustrates, however, that education resources are sufficient -- if the resources go directly to the classroom.
Yes, and their hours actually teaching go down.
conservative teacher here, FL. . .its tough. I could easily spend my entire day, every day, all year trying to UN-do the crap some of these liberal teachers fill your kids head with. You have no idea.
Furthermore, what we are NOT teaching anymore is far more detrimental to our society. History classes are watered down to PC love-fests. Like our history was made by holding hands and singing kum-bay-yah??? ridiculous.
Money$$ I spend on average, 2,000-2,800 on necessary supplies for my classroom and students every year. If you think your kids benefit in any way from your tax payer dollars you are highly mistaken. High-paid babysitting my friends. Not at all, the schools we grew up in before unions ruled the world. I say, cut the head off and let it bleed.
I am a graduate of the South Carolina public school system, class of 1960. I live about fifty five miles from the school I attended. We have a university here and I have spoken to recent graduates of that university who majored in history. I was amazed to learn that they don’t know the history that I was required to learn in the first seven years. I am not exaggerating at all. If a university graduate cannot pass the test he would have had to pass to ENTER HIGH SCHOOL in my era and I am referring to a test on his MAJOR subject then he does not even have an eighth grade education in reality. What are they doing in class?
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