By J. D. Longstreet

I was somewhat busy yesterday, along with many other Tar Heels, dodging our second attack of tornadoes in less than a month. As a result, I had little time to think and write a commentary suitable for publication. But, as I continue to be troubled by the state of our public education system in the US, I decided to re-submit to the editors an article written back in 2005 that addresses my concerns about the horrible state of public education in the US.

Even though this piece was written six years ago, it could have been written today.

A great disservice is being done our youngsters today and until the parents of our kids decide enough is enough — and demand an overhaul of the American public education system — that disservice will continue and we will continue to produce graduates who simply do not measure up to the graduates of education systems around the world. It places America at a distinct disadvantage in, well, everything. It is, in fact, a matter of national security, let alone national survival.

Here now is the commentary I wrote six years ago. I hope it will stir parents to evaluate the quality of their child’s education in the existing public education system of America and pledge to take action on the behalf of their children’s future — and the future of America.

Please – read on.

The American Public School System Is A Failure And Should Be Trashed!
By: J. D. Longstreet
***********************

The Public Schools system of the US has crashed and burned! No longer are our children the best educated in the world. Now our scholars rank among the LESS well educated even among a few of the third world countries. This is a shame we have brought upon ourselves by inviting the Federal Government and the Unions into our schools.

One-room schoolhouses turned out scholars of unequaled accomplishment when compared to today’s graduates. A high school education, just 50 years ago, is the equivalent of a college degree today. Our Public School teachers are barely qualified to teach. But, they have a Union to see that they are paid well, whether the can teach or not! Oh, you thought teachers unions were for the welfare of the students??? Surely you jest!

Our local school boards have gorged themselves from the federal trough at the expense of local control of the curriculum and the rules and regulations.

Pupils are not challenged by the courses they study and fall short of goals set by the federal government. So, the schools are now “teaching the tests.” Indoctrinate the students in the questions and answers on the test in hopes of attaining the sought after number of students passing the tests. A well-rounded education is lost to the efforts to make a good showing on the tests.

Students are forced to remain in school even though they have no interest in what is being taught and are a distraction to that handful of youngsters who really do want to learn.

Self-esteem is the number one course of study. Our students are dumb as fence posts but, by golly, they think highly of themselves! They can’t read their diplomas but they sure do feel good about it!

So what do we do about it?

Take back our schools for a start. Refuse federal money and all the strings that go with it. If we have to teach school, again, in one-room school buildings, then so be it.
Test the teachers. If they have no business in a classroom, see to it that they are removed.

Make school voluntary. If a student does not want to be there, then don’t make them. This will allow those students who do wish an education to get one without the continuous interruptions by the bored kids who’d rather be someplace else.

Having a small percentage of illiterate Americans is preferable to an entire population of semi-illiterates!

Discipline? Yes. Expulsion. Period. Expel troublemakers for a few days, a few weeks, or a full school year, or even forever, depending on the infraction. Make school a serious business again. We owe an environment, suitable for learning, to those students who are there for the purpose of learning and making a better life for themselves, their families, and for our society.

We can take our schools back. We have to want to do so and we have to be ready to make the sacrifices necessary to insure our children a good education, not the pitiful excuse for an education they are getting now.

One of a parent’s primary obligations, as a parent, is to see that their children have a shot at the brass ring in life. The first, and most fundamental, step in that process is a solid education.

Government vouchers were killed by the teachers unions because they rightly understood that the public school system would crumble, and collapse, as parents pulled their children out of those near useless institutions and placed them in private schools where they, the parents, had some say, and some control, over the quality of education their kids were getting.

In my opinion, the public school system is near collapse — right now. I don’t think a collapse of the US public education system would be a bad thing, actually. When an institution is so badly damaged, that it no longer serves it’s primary purpose, it should be trashed and a new institution begun in its place. We desperately need to create an institution to educate our kids.

Parents, we owe our kids that! We owe them a chance to make the best of their talents. We owe them a shot at a good, solid, education. Get them out of the public schools and into a private, or parochial, school where there are qualified teachers who still have an incentive to teach our kids, the will to teach our kids, and the desire to teach our kids.
The public school system in America is a failure. It should be put out of its misery.

J. D. Longstreet

 

WesternFront America

Most of the problems of modern public education originate outside the school building. The locus of the worst influences are schools of education that turn out teachers and administrators who have absorbed four to six years of fantasy–based theory and practice.

If these dreamy theories were confined to Ed schools the situation would be tenable, but that’s unfortunately not the case. Implementation of these fads and fancies does real damage.

The most recent example takes place in West Potomac High School, located in Fairfax County, VA, where Principal Cliff Hardison attempted to deal two body–blows to education standards by first eliminating the ‘F’ from report cards and following that with a policy banning zeros for students caught cheating on tests.

I don’t think anyone with a mere bachelor’s degree would have the necessary woolly–headed thinking process required to formulate and then implement two policies like this, so I’m guessing Hardison has at least a master’s degree in Education. Maybe even a doctorate.

Cheaters and the indolent were strongly in favor of these changes, once someone woke them and read the announcement. Unfortunately for Principal Hardison, outraged parents formed an organization called Real World, Real Grades to fight the changes. Parents were joined by teachers who could see how making high school an academic consequences–free zone would undermine their authority and the student’s motivation.

Evidently the backlash took Hardison completely by surprise (another indication of a man with a rich fantasy life) and he was forced to backtrack on both.

His explanation regarding his reasoning pretty much makes my point. Hardison is an acolyte of “mastery learning” one of the newer Ed school fads. Most parents were under the impression we already had a very successful system commonly known as grades for indicating “mastery” of a subject. An ‘A’ indicates complete mastery, ‘B’ somewhat less “mastery” and so on.

But in Ed school grades are “punitive” and can be “false” measures of what students know. So what’s “false” about an ‘A?’ At my house the son earns ten bucks for each ‘A’ on his report card and the grade is a useful rule of thumb for evaluating if he learned anything.

As for cheating, it is back on the forbidden list — along with bullying, drugs, weapons, OTC medicine, prescription medicine, traditional views on sex, traditional views on sexual orientation, traditional views on sex education and Christmas. Cheaters will once again receive a zero on their test.

Prior to Hardison’s backtracking, his views on cheating had been influenced by “grading experts” producing a belief on his part that cheating should “result in a disciplinary consequence separate from an academic consequence.” So under the new regime test cheaters would be given a chance to take an alternate test, but would also be denied privileges and be required to take an “ethics” study accompanied by a series of self–esteem booster shots.

This is the academic equivalent of allowing embezzlers to retain the money thereby keeping the incarceration consequences separate from the economic consequences. This soft tolerance for dishonesty also devalues the hard work of the students who studied for the test and made their grade without resorting to cheating.

This refusal to adhere to standards and recognize absolutes is not confined to secondary education. It permeates higher education, too. A recent study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni revealed that students graduate from elite schools, including Yale, Brown, Cornell and Amherst, without being required to take any courses in math, science, history, economics, language, literature and composition.

Dean Katherine Bergeron, an apologist for academic apathy, told the Washington Post her goal is to teach students how to think, solve problems and change the world, not “download a compendium of facts.”

But what do students think about when they are ignorant of the basics of history, philosophy, economics and literature? It’s like building the most powerful computing hardware in the universe, yet not providing the finished product with any programming. You produce potential without purpose.
Closer to home, the redoubtable Principal Hardison suffered a setback but has not given up. This particular parent rebellion is only a small bump on the road toward his goal of a “smoother transition” to new learning and grading approaches.

In his public statement Hardison explains, “This initiative is a paradigm shift that conflicts with traditional grading practices… We will examine how we can avoid using grades punitively because our transformation into a Professional Learning Community (PLC) compels us to define essential learning, reward mastery learning, and tackle necessary teaching about responsibility and personal accountability in different ways than we have done in the past.”

Translation: I’m waiting for the furor to die down, so I can complete West Potomac’s transition to buzzword–based learning.

Michael R. Shannon is a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe. He’s a dynamic and entertaining speaker and can be reached at michael–shannon@comcast.net.

 

WesternFront America

I was enroute to someplace, or other a few mornings ago, when I had to stop my truck for a school bus to load some reluctant students.

As I sat, waiting on those youngsters to board, I thought how unfortunate they are. They were being transported, “free”, to a “free” public school for a “free” education. Of course, that depends on how, exactly, you define “free”. But a “free education” is for another article another time. I am more interested… no… maybe the word should be… “concerned”, or even “troubled”… by the quality of the education or children are receiving in our existing school public school system today in America.

For the few short minutes I sat there, I thought back to an article I wrote some years ago about this very thing. Later, when I returned to my office, I rambled through my files until I discovered it, read it through, and saw that nothing much had changed. So, I have decided to post it here today.

This piece was written back in March of 2005. Now that I have two grand kids in the system I speak of here, believe me when I tell you I am very troubled by the quality of the education I am afraid they will receive.

Here is what I wrote back in 2005:

***************************************
The American Public School System Is A Failure And Should Be Trashed!
By: J. D. Longstreet
***********************
The Public Schools system of the US has crashed and burned! No longer are our children the best educated in the world. Now our scholars rank among the less well educated even among a few of the third world countries. This is a shame we have brought upon ourselves by inviting the Federal Government and the Unions into our schools.

One-room schoolhouses turned out scholars of unequaled accomplishment when compared to today’s graduates. A high school education, just 50 years ago, is the equivalent of a college degree today. Our Public School teachers are barely qualified to teach. But, they have a Union to see that they are paid well, whether the can teach or not! Oh, you thought teachers unions were for the welfare of the students??? Surely you jest!

Our local school boards have gorged themselves from the federal trough at the expense of local control of the curriculum and the rules and regulations.

Pupils are not challenged by the courses they study and fall short of goals set by the federal Government. So, the schools are now “teaching the tests”. Indoctrinate the students in the questions and answers on the test in hopes of attaining the sought after number of students passing the tests. A well-rounded education is lost to the efforts to make a good showing on the tests.

Students are forced to remain in school even though they have no interest in what is being taught and are a distraction to that handful of youngsters who really do want to learn.

Self-esteem is the number one course of study. Our students are dumb as fence posts but, by golly, they think highly of themselves! They can’t read their diplomas but they sure do feel good about it!

So what do we do about it?

Take back our schools for a start. Refuse federal money and all the strings that go with it. If we have to teach school, again, in one-room school buildings, then so be it.

Test the teachers. If they have no business in a classroom, see to it that they are removed.

Make school voluntary. If a student does not want to be there, then don’t make them. This will allow those students who do wish an education to get one without the continuous interruptions by the bored kids who’d rather be someplace else.

Discipline? Yes. Expulsion. Period. Expel troublemakers for a few days, a few weeks, or a full school year, or even forever, depending on the infraction. Make school a serious business again. We owe an environment, suitable for learning, to those students who are there for the purpose of learning and making a better life for themselves, their families, and for our society.

We can take our schools back. We have to want to do so and we have to be ready to make the sacrifices necessary to insure our children a good education, not the pitiful excuse for an education they are getting now.

One of a parent’s primary obligations, as a parent, is to see that their children have a shot at the brass ring in life. The first, and most fundamental, step in that process is a solid education.

Government vouchers were killed by the teachers unions because they rightly understood that the public school system would crumble, and collapse, as parents pulled their children out of those near useless institutions and placed them in private schools where they, the parents, had some say, and some control, over the quality of education their kids were getting.

The public school system is near collapse right now. I don’t think a collapse of the US Public Education System would be a bad thing, actually. When an institution is so badly damaged, and no longer serves it’s primary purpose, it should be trashed and a new institution begun in its place. We desperately need to create an institution to educate our kids.

Parents, we owe our kids that! We owe them a chance to make the best of their talents. We owe them a shot at a good, solid, education. Get them out of the public schools and into a private, or parochial, school where there are qualified teachers who still have an incentive to teach our kids, the will to teach our kids, and the desire to teach our kids.

The public school system in America is a failure. It should be put out of its misery.

 

WesternFront America