Is public education failing our kids? (A good question for an election year)
Most of us don’t take our responsibilities as voters as seriously as we should. In election years, we focus on whatever Bret Baier tells us is important while ignoring so many other offices and issues that more directly affect our lives — school board, city council, state legislature, county board of commissioners, etc.
Public education ought to be at the forefront for ALL OF US. This system is training the generation who will be taking care of my generation when we’re too old to do much ourselves. This system is supposedly training this generation to competently support our nation’s competition in the world economy.
Sadly, too many young people are making it past the 12th grade and into college while seriously lacking in basic knowledge and skills. (You know — reading, writing, arithmetic. That kind of stuff.)
Don’t just take it from me. Look at these interviews with college kids at the beach for spring break. Scary, scary stuff.
It appears some teaching professionals have decided to go public with their concerns. Here’s a teacher from Houston, TX frustrated over how poorly his 12th grade students read and write.
How did the education establishment and teacher unions respond to this guy? They attacked him and his credentials. (They were fine with him before he started speaking his mind.)
Here’s a college professor – who teaches advanced math at Berkeley – talking about how she’s having to help her students with middle school math.
This happens right here in North Carolina TOO. I’ve taught and tutored at the community college level. An awful lot of my students had not been out of the K-12 system very long. I had students who could not perform basic math (i.e., 12 x70) in their heads. They had to use the calculator.
I also encountered students who did not appear to comprehend basic rules of punctuation. There was one young lady in particular who had me proofread an essay for an upcoming class. Her paper was typed in single-space. The only punctuation she used was a period at the end of PAGE TWO.
I regularly had students turn papers in to me featuring slang terminology typically used in text messages.
History was also a struggle. I had students who could not tell me which came first: The Great Depression or The War of 1812. *Seriously.*
I remember students giving me blank looks and confused stares in response to my mention of The French & Indian War.
Others could not give an accurate definition of *capitalism.*
I’ll never forget an assistant basketball coach from a prominent program escorting a very large young man into my classroom one day. The young man appeared to be over seven feet tall. (It was one of those rare occasions where I was not the largest human being in sight.)
The coach pulled me over to the side and started telling me what a great guy and a great player this fellow was. He had graduated from a Charlotte-area high school and was set to play for the coach’s team — but he was having academic eligibility problems. Hence, his attendance at a community college. I got the impression the coach was urging me to take it real easy on this kid. I stopped the coach and told him the young man would do fine if he: showed up to class, did his homework, participated in class, studied and asked questions. Just like everybody else.
I’ll never forget the young man’s first class with me. I regularly had the students take turns reading aloud case studies and then participating in discussions about said case studies. It was painful to watch – and listen to – the young man read the four-paragraph case study. It was even more painful to read the first homework assignment he turned in to me. It looked like something produced by a first-grader or perhaps someone who was not a native English speaker. (Again, this guy had just graduated from a Charlotte-area high school.)
He disappeared from my class – never to be seen again – about two weeks later.
I’ve seen examples just like this right here in Moore County – and at Sandhills Community College – as well.
A common refrain we often hear in discussions about education policy? $PEND MORE MONEY.
That’s a nice thought, but WHAT ARE WE GETTING FOR OUR MONEY NOW ???
Some school systems in North Carolina have instituted technology-free days. These are occasions where math has to be done in heads and answers to essay questions need to be hand-written. This is a good start, but there is a long way to go.
I’ll never forget some Chinese students who regularly popped up in my classes while I was pursuing my MBA. A personal friend taught one of my courses. One night, after class had ended, the professor and I had a brief talk. I told him how impressed I was with how the Chinese students were grasping the material.
“It’s as though they could teach this class,” I remarked.
“They could,” my friend responded. “They had this stuff years ago. They’re not here to learn the material. They’re here to learn about me, you, US, the opponents.”
Education is of vital importance to the future of our country. We can keep careening down the same road as we prepare for and accept our impending subservience to our Chinese masters. Or we could step up and credibly defend our long-held status as a world economic power.
Serving on a county board of education is about ensuring taxpayers and other stakeholders are getting the biggest bang for our bucks. It’s not about keeping the teachers and the central office bureaucrats happy. It’s not about *civility* or *diversity* or *belonging.*
It’s all about where we want to be as a country in the not-so-distant future.
Good commentary, Brant. As a county school board member, I concur with your points.
The big challenge is that the state Board of Education is controlled by liberal political appointees of our Democrat governors. They adopt state curriculum standards, that local boards are expected to “align” with. A few years ago, when they rewrote the Social Studies (history) standards they filled them with a lot of “woke” mush. The two ex-officio Republicans on the board fought it hard but they were outvoted.
There was legislation in this General Assembly session to make the state Board of Education elected by the voters of the state by district. This would have been a hugely positive change and give the control of our education system back to our citizens, but it did not make it to passage.
There is a work around,, but it takes a local school board with a strong backbone. As pointed out by the legal staff of the General Assembly, local school boards have absolute authority to decide what :aligns: with the state standards, and neither the state Board of Education nor the Department of Public Instruction can overrule or veto their decision. There is a cavaet for “tested” subjects like math and science because anything in the state standards might be on the standardized tests given to students, so to do well on those tests, that material would have to be covered. On the other hand, that does not present a problem for subjects that are not on the standardized tests such as Social Studies (history).
A couple of years ago, a major French polling firm ran a poll in twenty countries around the world asking parents what the major problems were in their educational systems. Their results for the US showed the biggest concern of parents was political and ideological bias in the classroom, followed by the physical safety of students in the schools. Neither of these was among the top parent concerns in any other country. A few months before that poll a Locke poll for North Carolina found that a significant majority of NC parents said they were concerned about political indoctrination in the classroom. A proper curriculum is the solution to this problem, but it is going to take strong local board members with a solid backbone to attain that.
The school board on which I serve recently adopted a new science curriculum. We found that all of the textbook / curriculum companies (much of it is by computer these days) presented the climate alarmist CO2 theory as scientific fact, even though many scientists disagree with it. The climate alarmist narrative is part of the “woke” agenda. Our workaround was to add supplemental materials that presented the other side of the issue so students could learn both sides of the scientific dispute and make up their own minds. The climate alarmist narrative is part of the state standards, as it is part of Democrat political orthodoxy.
I like your suggestion of technology free days. A few years ago our own system was not teaching cursive writing even though it is mandated by state law, something that was corrected. However, with the emphasis on computer learning, that skill will be lost after it is taught in 3rd grade.