The Dirty Little Secret

Our education system has a dirty little secret that it keeps well hidden. The secret is that our system was designed to not educate our children rigorously. You may think I am full of “it.” However, consider the following facts:

1. Our kids compare unfavorably to their best foreign peers on the international standardized tests. Why? Is it because our kids are less bright and unable to learn at a high level? Not at all, it is because we use the technically wrong constructivist/discovery methods in our schools that not one of the competitor nations whose kids are scoring better than ours use. One would think that IF our educators cared about their mission they would notice that fact and move to correct that problem. Don’t hold your breath.

2. Our education system is basically a fraudulent scheme to extract ever larger amounts of money from the public to enrich educators and their “suppliers.” You see, once a lie starts being told it is very difficult for those telling it to admit it when their livelihood is based on the lies.

3. If we changed to the system of direct instruction by teachers who have a highly competent understanding of the subject(s) they are teaching we could solve this problem and serve our kids and country much better. A much higher percentage of our kids could actually compete successfully for the better paying jobs in the rising global meritocracy.

4. Sadly, the large majority of our teacher cadre does not have the robust understanding of subject matter that is required by the systems our competitor nations use and we used to use before the progressives replaced it with their dumbed-down version currently in use. This is most critical at the elementary levels where the foundation for learning at the middle school and high school level should be provided but is not. This is confirmed by the fact that the longer our kids are exposed to our system the worse they do as a group compared to their foreign peers.

5. Education schools do not provide acceptable levels of either pedagogy or subject knowledge in their curricula. Their bachelor and graduate degrees only confirm that the person has spent money and “seat time” in the diploma mill, not that they learned anything pertinent to the rigorous teaching of our kids. This problem is ubiquitous and the exceptions among education schools are very, very few. The bottom line is that if we wanted to change to a system that works (and we must, immediately) the challenge would be to retrain teachers willing and able to grasp the required knowledge and bring in people with “honest degrees” in real subjects to replace those teachers who cannot or chose not to meet the more rigorous standard required.

6. Textbooks are selected that “look good” with color glossy format and are incredibly expensive. However, they are very much dumbed-down from where they need to be if our kids are to actually learn anything worthwhile.

7. Politicians from the school board level all the way through state legislators to national legislators are loath to call for real reform because many political campaigns are “nudged” toward the candidate committed to continuing the educators place at the government trough. This happens through campaign contributions but perhaps more importantly by educators walking the precincts going door to door to convince the uninformed public that the kids will suffer if the candidate they don’t favor is elected. Of course they never admit that the kids are being harmed currently and will continue to be if the candidate they support is elected.

8. All of the costly reforms are ineffective in actually improving things for the kids. They can be accurately described as attempts to “do the wrong thing better” and spend a lot more money in the process. The educators get more money to spend on their salaries/benefits and the enrichment of their friends who support their efforts from vendors to ed schools and politicians.

9. Educators are addicted to “research” and “studies” because they carry with them large grants from government entities or foundations. This has been a huge source of the enrichment of the education fiefdom. It is also tragic because much of the research is of very low quality or slanted to make the desired point. Realistically, we already know what must be done very accurately. The educators use further research as a delaying tactic asserting that we don’t know what needs to be done. This very big lie harms our kids and wastes huge sums of valuable resources in the process. It preserves the status quo.

There is an old saying that the exception proves the rule. There are two exceptions to the constructivist/discovery approach in our schools. They are music instruction and sports coaches. You might ask why those areas use a direct instruction and drill process. Why are they allowed to do it right while the rest of the teachers use the consistently harmful approach?

I believe it is simply because both music and sports result in a data driven, short cycle, closed loop assessment of both activities. That is, when the music teachers schedule multiple programs or concerts a year for parents and the public they don’t want to depend on Professor Harold Hill’s “Think System” to avoid embarrassment. Similarly, sports coaches don’t want to consistently lose games to opponents, which is disliked by parents and the public. So they actually teach kids the skills they need to perform acceptably. Not every music teacher is Bach and not every coach is Lombardi but they still know their subjects far better than other teachers know theirs.

In academic subjects achievement tests are given once a year and the results usually come out very close to the start of the new school year when parents especially are very busy getting ready for the new school year. Educators might say that report cards are given quarterly but with the tendency of teachers and administrators to avoid angry parents, the report card grades have inflated away from reality for decades now.

Thus, educators are careful to provide respectable performance in areas like music and sports where the results of their efforts are immediate or “short cycle” but they are very good at distracting attention from their performance in preparing our kids for the globally competitive situation they will face when they leave school.

State report cards for schools only compare a school or district’s performance to others in the same state. States set their own definitions of proficiency and design their own tests. That alone is an incentive to make them easier than they should be. While national data exist it is difficult to access and the international data is slow to be reported at best and not very easy to access unless you are highly motivated to do so.

Again, the dirty little secret is that our schools are working as designed to enrich educators and harm kids. We know how to fix it, so why aren’t we demanding that it happen?