Education Morbidity

US Education is overpriced and underperforming. The problem is government overfunding. Schools and universities operated much better without it and costs were low. The more government spent, the worse it got.  Education became “communitarian” when public schools became mandatory. Their goal was to force all students to go through the same curriculum and then they started to dumb it down to make it possible.

 

Before education was taken over by government education was individual and largely self-taught and home-schooled. Literacy was high in the US before 1900, because every family read the Bible and parents made sure that their older children learned how to read and do math, so they could teach the younger children to read and do math. 

 

Not all children were good at learning to read and do math and they still aren’t.  Schools with low graduation rates are full of students who aren’t good at learning how to read and do math. These students need to be motivated to learn these skills and until they are, no amount of money will raise the graduation rates at these government schools.

 

Education has become bureaucratized and needs free market reform. Government needs to back out of the education business before it kills it permanently. Further government funding just perpetuates the failure.

 

Good schools have good students. The secret to good education is self-education. Students who are high-energy, curious, skeptical, inner-directed, self-motivated and confident are the best. Having students apply what they have learned reinforces their incentive to do more.

 

Obama’s war on Christianity resulted in millions of students leaving public schools to attend expensive church-based schools.  The imposition of Common Core was another event that prompted students to leave public schools. Add to that, the endless “politically correct” rules that can get First Graders suspended for playing guns and you have it. Finally, Muslim indoctrination was the final straw making public schools a hostile environment for many students and parents.

 

Aside from the ideological suicide the public schools have engaged in are the unfunded liabilities in union public school teachers pension plans.

 

There are many good schools, in good neighborhoods, with good parents and good teachers and good administrators who have under-implemented the DOE’s hostile rules and they will applaud the end of these regulations.

 

Schools will still need protection from frivolous law suits. That should give these parents some incentives to lobby for protection and the repeal of these predatory laws.

 

Public schools need to be able to refuse to admit students that can’t perform with their age group. Non-English speaking immigrants and failing and disruptive students should be sent to schools that are set up to handle them.

 

Public schools need to terminate their defined benefit pension plans and transfer the funds to individual 401K-type accounts. Public schools need to be able to terminate teachers.

 

Public schools need to concentrate on reading and math and courses that support individual student aptitudes. Courses need to prepare students to perform the tasks that will be required of them as adults and to select occupations that suit them.

 

Public schools need to teach age-appropriate courses that allow students to do things. Course content should be useful. Science should allow students to identify facts vs. theories.  History should include the actual consequences of actions.  Literature should include the consequences of human behavior. Student’s skills and interests should be identified.

 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader