by
Al Jacobs, author of Nobody's Fool: A Skeptic's
Guide to Prosperity
July
2010
You’ve heard the accusations: American students are being
outpaced by the rest of the world. As for the proposed
solutions: return to basics, embrace phonetics, reduce class
size, establish peer review, and above all inject more money.
What you will not hear is reality¾that
what is wrong is inherently uncorrectable, partly because of
hardened attitudes and deep-seated prejudices of society toward
schooling, and partly because the required corrections run
counter to the participants’ vested interests.
One element of the problem is society's approach to schooling:
that education is something imposed, involuntarily or otherwise,
on the recipient. It is from this approach that the
difficulties arise, with never-ending unworkable proposals
offered and ineffective programs instituted. If performance by
students on standardized tests declines, the results are
rationalized and the tests manipulated. In response to an
accusation that insufficient hours are devoted to the classroom,
the school day is lengthened. To criticism that too many
non-essential courses are included, stiffer courses are proposed
. . . always a favorite. There is, of course, no involvement by
the student in these decisions. And why should there be? The
conventional wisdom is that learning is something done to
the student, not by the student.
Professionalism is the second element in the uncorrectable
nature of public education. Since the 1930s the educational
community promoted its agenda for a "teaching profession." The
implication is that an academically superior teacher will,
ipso facto, result in an academically superior student.
Though clothed in euphemisms, the emphasis focuses on tightly
restricted teacher credentialing, an exclusive self-policing
governing body, and increased salaries. None of this is
unique. Anyone familiar with professional associations knows
that their purpose is the promotion of the members' public image
and economic interests. Any benefit accruing to the public from
such professional enhancement is purely coincidental.
Recognize another fact: Except in its reflection of current
social ills, the schoolroom is no more anti-learning today than
in the past. The progress of instruction in each class conforms
to the lower range of its students' abilities. As an
unmotivated student many decades ago, certain incidents are
still vivid in my recollection. The classroom of years gone by
proved capable of turning off a mind, though it never occurred
to me at that time to ask why. A Harvard mathematics professor,
who himself had an undistinguished high school record,
verbalized the reason: "It's remarkable how tough a subject can
be when you are forced to study it in slow-motion."
Furthermore, uninspiring instructors are not a new invention.
Think back for a moment to your school years. For every "mean,
old Miss Grundy" back in the fourth grade, there will be some of
her former students who feel they have a long-standing score to
settle with the school system generally. Although education may
be important, educators are considerably less so, and teachers
perform, at best, a marginally useful function in society. Most
of what goes on at the primary level, and to a somewhat lesser
extent at the secondary level, is merely marked time, and most
adults and students instinctively know this to be so.
How can it be that an institution employing a huge work force
and consuming a staggering amount of the nation's resources can
function in such a manner? A major impediment to learning is
that the school system was neither designed nor does it operate
primarily to deliver an education to its students. Instruction
in America is, at best, a peripheral goal of the public
schools. In reality it operates for the benefit of many diverse
and conflicting groups including elected public officials,
administrative hierarchy of the schools, the teachers and their
representatives, non-credentialed employees, textbook publishers
and distributors, and a host of groups and individuals too
numerous to mention. The brutal fact is that students are not
among the many groups to whom the benefits are bestowed. And
why is this? The students are children and, as such, possess
neither financial nor electoral influence. As they cannot
enforce demands, they may safely be ignored.
On the whole, the public schools in America are as expected.
Many of the students presently impressed into the classroom,
whether due to intellectual deficiency or emotional instability,
have no legitimate reason to be there. Under such
circumstances, is it unreasonable to expect an anti-learning
atmosphere? The misery now afflicting our schools is the result
of refusal by an entrenched educational establishment to
acknowledge the basic scholastic unfitness of many pupils.
There is an academic corollary to Gresham's Law, the
economic principle that bad money forces good money from a
monetary system: it is that bad students force good students
from an academic system. As a result educational level falls
and, with it, the reputation of the educator. Given the
system’s limitations and basic human nature, it is gratifying
that a fair number of students emerge from the school maze with
some ability to read, write, and calculate. No doubt much of
the learning is based upon the mud puddle principle: If
you hang around long enough you are bound to get splashed.
And as for the future, expect no changes. All is well in the
public classroom—the system is working exactly as designed.
à
à
à
Al Jacobs
has been a professional investor for four decades. He is a
nationally syndicated columnist and appears regularly on
ProducersWeb.com, DrLaura.com and SheKnows.com. He
is the author of
Nobody’s Fool: A Skeptic’s Guide to Prosperity.
Subscribe to his financial column, "On the Money Trail," at no
cost or obligation, at
www.onthemoneytrail.com.
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