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.