Independence Day Thoughts

Bill Clinton was interviewed on CNBC’s Squawk Box earlier in the week. Two areas of the discussion are worth mentioning; both important to our understanding of the reality of our education system. First, he stated that to get our economy going we needed to graduate a lot more scientists and engineers from American universities. His solution—bring in more foreign students and allow them to stay after graduation by granting more visas. The conclusion you have to draw is that he knows that our K-12 education system is incapable of providing more graduates prepared to successfully study science and engineering in our universities. Sadly, he is absolutely right. This seems a sad parallel to the Romans who declined steadily starting with the use of foreigners to staff their legions as their own citizens were too inured to the “good life” of ease and wealth at home.

More than that, however, I believe he knows that the larger progressive goals for education are inconsistent with providing the rigorous education required to increase the supply of sufficiently well-educated students to send to science and engineering programs. The progressive practice of using the K-12 school system to create a credulous populace, the majority of which are educated at best to a mediocre level and at worst to a minimum brainwashed state is inconsistent with rigor in education.

The second aspect of the interview was related to his understanding of the “Boil the frog” process. You know the story; if you put a frog in boiling water it will reflexively jump out but if you put a frog in room temp water and slowly increase the heat it will ultimately be cooked. In responding to a comment that the interviewer talks to lots of business leaders who express concern over the level of change from the health care bill and the Dodd-Frank regulatory bill being too confusing and massive to deal with Clinton’s response was that the bills should be implemented more slowly (frog example) so the business owners would have time to get used to it.

Unsaid but the obvious conclusion was that the goal was the same to end up with “cooked” businesses in the end. This was the second point pertaining to our education system. This approach squares well with that the progressives took to acquiring total control of our education system. Their approach was so radical and antithetical to the rigorous content-rich approach they wanted to replace that they knew it would have to be done over decades slowly so that the “frogs” didn’t notice the change from a system supporting the principles of our founding to the one they wanted that prepared most of us for a system of “expert control” and nanny state incentives to compliance with little personal freedom or responsibility. Their approach was wildly successful. Clinton was reminding his partners that they should remember that radical “step function” changes as recently passed by the “bit in their teeth” last congress would raise the ire of the populace to oppose them.

This is why the current education system cannot be reformed but must be replaced. And like the frog boiler-progressives we need to remember that it can’t be done overnight but that foundational changes need to be put in place immediately that will get us on the road to the future our nation deserves and for which our founders sacrificed so much to give to us.