This last election season solidified sentiment in me that the American electorate is sliding further into the devaluation of careful parsing of complicated issues and the arguments that attend them. Chains of conversation that I followed on tweet after tweet, blog after blog, column after column, evidenced a willingness to strike opponents almost immediately while committing one informal fallacy after another – principally attacking people and not their arguments; condemning the argument because of who presented it; presenting the opponent’s argument in its weaker forms; arguing from small, unrepresentative samples; suggesting someone can never be right if he’s ever been wrong; and so forth. I wish the problem were confined to Twitter.
Who hasn’t noticed the growing unwillingness of major and longstanding newspapers, journals, and media outlets to fairly expose the complexities, competing forces, and ameliorative challenges in the systems that envelop us all – especially if the other side might actually have a more sound idea? In my lifetime, going across the aisle has never been so far.
As I remember my generation’s arguments with those on the other side of issues 50 years ago, both sides meritoriously gathered evidence (statistics, expert testimony, the weight/lessons of history, and rationale galore) to merit their positions. That’s how we were taught and rewarded. Why the waning of classic argumentation? Could its devaluing be more than unwillingness, even the learned rewards of outright lying, and be rather an inability, something insufficiently developed?
Having been a life-long, secondary-school educator – public and private – I can say with some authority that, generally speaking, the current curricula and teaching corps are not sufficiently preparing the young to evaluate the controversies and disputes that pop up across our daily paths . Learning disabilities have and are receiving attention and understanding – which is good, of course -- but what about teaching disabilities? Easy, nearly instantaneous access to multiple angles and positions on most any topic is at arm’s length. Needed are those who can help students weigh information, judge the credibility of sources, discard falsehoods, and be humbled by the deep complexities of economic, socio-political, and scientific issues. But, the young are overwhelmed by indoctrination—what to think and not how to think. Relatedly, the American education system is at the root of Socialism’s growth in this country. Obviously. Systematically.
If you’re a teacher in a state-run school who had a special year or you’re a parent whose child leaped forward in that environment, rejoice! However, the data for the aggregate is not good and has not been for a while. We are in decline. And have test scores to prove it. The establishment significantly re-centered the college boards in the mid-90s to hide the decline. The state school systems subsequently developed their own tests of student progress, separating themselves from comparison with the private sector. Now many notable universities are ending admissions tests. The scores don’t fit their narratives!
Fixing it? Well, are monopolies by nature noted for correcting themselves? The creative destruction resulting from a robust competitive environment would be a function of many schooling models catering to/leading out the broad diversity of learner-types and skill sets, ones that we are increasingly able to measure and catalog (think new scales and measurements in every discipline of a university – genetic, neurological, psychological, aptitudinal). Let’s set people free. Let’s create an environment where the consumer of education models is being recruited by a grand variety of producers. Give us real, affordable choices.
In Kansas, 60% of the state’s budget is for their education system – at $16,000 per student annually. Though in a competitive market the cost would likely come down, if parents had that current amount to offer competitors for the education of their children, we would see a panoply of new schools started by folks whose education philosophies (metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics) fill the spectrum. Free markets raise quality and lower price. The education market would realize the same, if it were freed.
And the cost must come down. Recognizing the earlier onset of puberty, we changed junior high (grades 7-9) to middle school (grades 6-8) but made high school last 4 years instead of 3. College should begin at grade 12 – and does for many in dual credit courses – and then last only 3 years (so much wasted time; the length of semesters and breaks in between keeps widening.) Let’s get kids out of college – and some on to professional schools – by age 20. We need industry to be more responsible for the costs of training and apprenticing their future employees. The financial burden we have become willing to strap to the backs of our young people before they are “employable” is shameful. In 1970, I paid $155 for 15 hours of instruction at the University of Kansas. Yes, we’ve had some inflation in the last 50 years, but nothing close to what we require students to pay for the skills they need to fit into the larger culture. Again, shameful!
The young are rarely ready by age 18 to move prosperously into the larger culture. We need to pay for their development through grade 14 (high school should be grades 9-11 and the baccalaureate degree earned in grades 12-14).
The schools that will win students’ hearts and be seen by others as the ones who “taught that kid to think” will be those schools that:
Don’t tell the student what they need to know but make them think it through.
Don’t do for the student what they can learn to do for themselves.
Don’t let the student hold a position they cannot defend.
Don’t give the student an ease in dispatching other viewpoints at will.
But rather teach the student thinking, writing, and speaking skills that will make them persuasive and winsome to read or listen to.
Given our increasing understanding of the diversity of learning styles, skill sets, goals, and the means to measure humans individually – and not as a collective! – we must recognize that “leading out” (the literal meaning of education from Latin) the young requires many education models, far more than a monopoly has incentive to provide. Until then not much is going to change in the products of our state school systems.
Is school choice a likelihood? No. The forces – local, state, and national – against it are strong and covered in money. The only solution short of physical violence – God forbid – would be for thousands upon thousands of taxpayers to withhold state and local taxes (keep the IRS out of it), thereby demanding state funds for education be distributed as a voucher to parents and guardians. Then, watch a free market work wonders.