Former
Education Secretary Admits US Students are Failing Because Education System
‘Runs on Lies’ "We're not top 10 in
anything," said a former education secretary who is calling out
politicians for creating a public education system that "runs on
lies.", by Rachel Blevins, 8/7/18.
Editor's
Note: Well, yeah! It's an indoctrination system, not an education
system! It's part of the reason I've encouraged parents and grandparents
to educate the younger generation at home, and how they
can start for free.
Typically,
when Americans hear someone say that the education system in the United States
“runs on lies,” they would expect the statement to come from
a disgruntled parent or student—but now it is coming from the
former Secretary of Education, as he admits that the U.S. lies
to families on a daily basis by promising them a quality education through
public schools.
Arne
Duncan, who served as education secretary for the Obama Administration, now
appears to be calling out all sides of the spectrum for failing to prioritize the next
generation. In an interview with CBS’ Face The Nation, Duncan
argued that politicians are never held accountable for failing students and
teachers.
“We say we value education but we never vote on education, we never hold
politicians accountable local, state, or national level for getting better
results, higher graduation rates, more people graduate from college,”
Duncan said. “We say we value teachers but we don’t pay teachers,
we don’t support them. We don’t mentor them, the way they need to do their
incredibly important, tough, complex work.”
“As a nation, we’re not top 10 in anything,”
Duncan said. And he has a solid point—the U.S. Department of Education released
a troubling set of statistics in May, which showed that the majority of eighth graders in public schools are not proficient in
reading or basic math.
According
to a report from the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP), only 34 percent of
eighth-grade students in American public schools were proficient in mathematics
in 2017. That number varied by state, with proficiency rates as high as 50 percent in Massachusetts and as low as 17 percent in Louisiana.
The
reading report from NAEP revealed that last
year, only 36 percent of
eighth-grade students in American public schools were proficient in reading.
That number also varied by state with proficiency rates as high as 49 percent in Massachusetts and as low as 24 percent in New Mexico.
Duncan
also noted that the U.S. has “raised a generation of young
people and teens who have been raised on mass shootings and gun violence.”
While he said that the U.S. is set apart from other countries because it does
not value its teachers and its students through funding or care, he is one of
many government officials to claim the answer can be found in new gun control legislation.
However,
Duncan did not address the fact that many of the suspects in school shootings
struggled with depression and anxiety and were prescribed powerful,
addictive psychotropic
drugs that came
packed with a host of dangerous side effects, including aggression, violence
and suicidal tendencies.
Duncan
also did not mention that a significant portion of the violence that is seen is
public schools is perpetrated by the same individuals who are tasked with
keeping students safe—the school resource officers who are stationed on campus.
As
The Free Thought Project has reported, there are a number of incidents in
which officers were caught on video assaulting mentally ill and disabled
students, assaulting students for wearing the wrong uniform to school, and
assaulting students who posed no threat to them or anyone else.
A
2015 report from the Rutherford Institute
further illustrated the point that American public schools are becoming
increasingly similar to prisons, noting that more than 3 million students are suspended or expelled from
public schools each year, often for minor and ridiculous offenses:
Many state laws require that schools notify law enforcement whenever a
student is found with an “imitation controlled substance,” basically anything
that looks like a drug but isn’t actually illegal. As a result, students have
been suspended for bringing to school household spices such as oregano, breath mints, birth control pills and powdered
sugar.
It’s not just look-alike drugs that can get a student in trouble under
school zero tolerance policies. Look-alike weapons (toy guns—even Lego-sized
ones, hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening”
manner, imaginary bows and arrows, even fingers positioned like guns) can also
land a student in detention.
Former
Education Secretary Duncan is spot on when he says that the U.S. Government’s “values don’t reflect that we care about
education or we care about teachers or that we truly care about keeping our
children safe and free of fear.” However, the truth is that in
order to fix these problems, it is going to take a complete overhaul of the
education system and the “prison” it has become—up to and including dissolving
it entirely—and that will never come from politicians who care more about
appeasing lobbyists than the fragile minds and lives of the next generation.
Comments
Education is
overpriced and under-performing. It is full of left-wing propaganda and fake
narratives. Continuing to throw money at the problem is not the answer. The fundamental
problem with education is that it is over-subsidized by tax dollars and the
price is not controlled by consumers. The other problem is that the bloated
education bureaucracy doesn’t focus on teaching necessary skills. Self-education
on the internet is far superior.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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