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8/27/2007
The dumbing down of education
Victor Davis Hanson has it right when he decries our nation’s “epidemic of ignorance.” He places the blame squarely on 1) the disintegration of the nuclear family and 2) various aspects of the education hierarchy. He’s worried, as are many, about the U.S. losing its education edge, losing its “global primacy.” (Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.)
I’ve written about the tragedy of Doyle’s huge public display of largesse in much too prematurely offering up The Wisconsin Covenant to our young people. It’s one thing to make promises to adults – we know better than to believe politicians. It’s another thing to make promises to kids – with no assurances the program will be funded. Very bad form.
It really has happened in Colorado. According to the Denver Post earlier this month, high school kids – before or after they graduate – can take college classes paid for by the state. (Appleton has a similar – though much scaled down – version of same.) According to one supporter, the state-paid classes would “cut down on the number of students who need to take remedial courses in college.”
What? So now our kids are learning in high school what they used to learn by the eighth grade – and we’re being asked to subsidize even more college class work that kids of yesteryear used to master in high school?
A short column in yesterday’s New York Times wrote of a recent survey of 100 human resources executives. Nearly half said entry level workers lacked writing skills, and 27% said new workers were deficient in critical thinking. This isn’t new; you’ve certainly heard of it in one form or another.
Read the Hanson article. You know of it. Kids (and surely, tons of adults) who can’t make change at the cash register, can’t read simple instructions, can’t calculate a best buy in the grocery store – much less write a decent business report. Hanson’s not the first to raise the red flag, to point out the canary in the mine shaft, but he does it with his customary frankness and aplomb. We’ve got a problem folks, right here in the land of education excellence, where “No Child Left Behind” may soon become “Every Child Left Behind.”
COMMENTS
Jo, the problem is not only the "dumbing down of education" as you put it. The problem is also what we teach, and how much of what is taught is written by people with a strong liberal leaning. In a current economics text for college freshman the following paragraph was found regarding taxation:
If the government reduces a person's taxes by $100, he will usually save about $25 and spend the remaining $75. Therefore only $75 of that money goes back into the economy. If the government keeps the $100, the entire $100 goes back into the economy which is more efficient.
Is this what we want taught on the college level? Eeek! JE
David (Mon Aug 27 07:45:18)
It all begins in elementary school. Soon I will begin my 5th year as a Math tutor of 4th & 5th grade students in Appleton. Though this program is wonderful and succeeds in getting most of the children to grade level at the end of a school year, I continue to ask the question, "Why, at the beginning of their 4th grade year, do these children not know how to add and subtract??"
The answers seem to range from "...well, they fell through the cracks until they got to multiplication/division..." to "it's a self esteem issue: the parents don't want their child held back..." and on and on.
Self esteem? WHAT on earth does that have to do with learning? Does anyone ever think that if learning became the priority,increased self esteem would follow??? Clearly,if the self esteem issue could disappear, students wouldn't be learning in high school what they should have learned in grade school.
Wow. I am with you. Nuts. JE
lkp (Mon Aug 27 08:23:49 2007)
Education needs the 50 rules.
Hear, hear. Here's the Journal-Sentinel's take on Charlie Sykes' latest book. JE
Mark A Framness (Mon Aug 27 11:23:41 2007)
Are you referring to the actual education of a student rather than the psychobabble bureacracy we now call education? I fully ascribe to an educator by the name of E.D. Hirsch who created(re-created) the notion of 'cultural literacy' and a book of like title.
While his ideas require more space than can be given here, the school system could cure most of its ills through his approach to literacy. Some day I will elaborate to Jo and it may be published. Its simplicity is sublime and his ideas speak to the basics of writing, mathematics, history, reading - topics we no longer call by their historic names. E.g., it's not history, it's social studies. What a damn pity, this thing now called education.
Richard (Mon Aug 27 14:13:42 2007)
What credential does this guy from a right wing think tank like the Hoover Institution have to comment on education in the first place? Any more than Charlie Sykes or the Bircher mag called The New American? But thanks for acknowledging the source.
No doubt this classicist and historian would like to turn the clock back as do those at the New American and the rest of the reactionary press which is trying to undo any progress made in education since the Civil Rights movement.
The truth is that, as teacher and author Jonathon Kozol has written, there is a new segregation well under way to destroy public education and privatize what is left after the No Child Left Behind gang are through. Then the alternative is Jesus Camp (as in the documentary available at the Appleton Library). 70 percent of home schooling is done by Evangelicals and worse (read white supremasists and other isolation and ignorance mongers) who can keep their kids cloistered at home and explain how evolution is just a theory and how Fred and Wilma actually did coexist with the dinosaurs.
Unfortunately I am not making this stuff up. The teaching materials sold at home education fairs have this sort of content.
If my memory were better I could cite the book where the author who writes for Salon.com actually went around to see these things for herself.
There is a dumbing down. It is purposeful, spiteful and malignant. But it is not being done by public education.
Oooh, struck a chord. Dr. Hanson is a renowned educator and researcher. Too bad you had to attack home-schooling to get any point across about public education. We'll agree to disagree. JE
Lon Ponschock (Mon Aug 27 15:24:53 2007)
Perhaps if schools were allowed to focus on education instead of being the community's primary social service agency for children, more cognitive learning would occur. Ask a teacher how much classroom time is dedicated to academic disciplines versus time spent on government(federal, state, local) mandated social development agendas.
Yes, Dr. Hanson's article acknowledges the societal ills impacting education today. JE
Dennis (Mon Aug 27 21:03:33 2007)
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