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1. What’s keeping us down?
We have the money, a vast infrastructure,
and ambitious standards going back centuries.
But Pew Research concludes: “U.S. students’ academic achievement still lags that of their peers in many other countries.”
Even in middle school and later, millions of Americans can hardly read, they can't do simple arithmetic, and they lack the basic knowledge that everyone needs.
Something went off the rails mid-20th century. Our Education Establishment no longer wants to educate children. Even stranger, we put up with this malfeasance year after year.
2. There is a clear pattern.
American education professors
seem to prefer inferior methods.
Here are the big examples. You can't teach reading with sight-words; children need phonics… You can't teach content courses (history, science, etc.) with Constructivism; children need direct instruction…. You can't teach arithmetic with New Math, Common Core Math or any of the other pretentious gimmicks; children learn more quickly if they are taught basics with mastery.
If our Education Establishment is absolutely devoted to some particular method, I would bet it does more harm than good.
Our schools are often hostile to the theories and methods preferred by successful schools, for example, memorization, homework, sequenced instruction, orderly classrooms, systematic explanations of topics (not spiraling from one to another), and teachers who are themselves well educated.
We need to reduce the dangers and disruptions in our classrooms, while increasing intellectual excitement. A school without maps is not a school at all. Fun is vital, as is exercise. We could have a renaissance.
3. I’ve been investigating
our failing K-12 system
for more than 30 years.
Our public schools teach as little as possible, and even that is jumbled. Geography and history are scorned, so students have little idea what happened and when. Children are rarely told to memorize names, dates, and places. The result is a sort of cognitive mush. (Many surveys are reported on the Internet where young Americans can't name the three countries in North America, what country we broke away from in 1776, how many stars are on the flag, and what 3×3×3 is. Scary.)
Years ago I read about a teacher in Maryland who told his students about Machiavelli’s The Prince. Some of these students would be in college in a year or two; they would be better off knowing about The Prince. The teacher was suspended. The school said that we must have "uniform instruction.” That was a big epiphany for me. People who will use any pretext for dumbing-down whatever they can reach.
The problem is, we put up with mediocre performance from an Education Establishment that has been corrupted by socialist rhetoric. The focus is on social engineering now, not academics. The ideologues in charge are obsessed with creating a new kind of person.
All this adds up to less capable workers, more ignorant citizens, and millions of unhappy students who don't enjoy being in school and rarely learn much. The proper goal for every student is to reach his or her potential. The tragedy in the US is that so many of our students endure a great deal of stress and humiliation but still end up sub-educated.
4: I’ve written a million words
(more or less) trying to explain what
went wrong and what we should do about it.
Even 20 years ago I still hoped that the media could save us, if they would report honestly on the various debates. Then I fully realized the media and schools are controlled by the same sort of people.
So where do ordinary parents and community leaders go to find out what's working and not working in our schools? Check the archives of your local paper and you'll probably find that nothing useful has been published in a long time.
I started writing articles (hundreds of articles) about education because almost nobody else was doing it and because I'm a good explainer. For me, K-12 is a bizarre crime scene. There are lots of dazed and injured people. I like the challenge of figuring out what has happened to them. Then I enjoy explaining my conclusions.
5. The real difficulty was to reach beyond
a narrow audience. I can’t help education
unless I communicate with a lot of people.
I started trying all the available options for reaching a bigger public: websites, blogs, videos, press releases, advertising, boosts on Facebook, etc.
I’m a writer/artist/designer, so I can exploit these new technologies. But you always need to promote and advertise, much more than I can typically do.
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Saving K-12 is a 190-page book that explores all the basic problems. A good, lively read about serious topics, it’s an excellent present for your smart friends. Amazon has 20+ reviews.
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Two years ago I started a podcast called Let's Fix Education. Published every Wednesday, each episode is 5 to 10 minutes long and focuses on the nuts and bolts of our educational decline. Experience a few and you'll know if this is for you.
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I’ve placed articles on a number of sites but most impressive for me is American Thinker, which has more than 150 of my best articles in their archive for anyone to read. Usually about 900 words. Articles: Bruce Deitrick Price Archives
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I created 50 graphic videos for YouTube. Here are two of my favorites. Total running time is less than 8 minutes.
Good School? Bad School? How Do You Know One From The Other?
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Which brings me to my main site Improve-Education.org, founded in 2005. It has 70 important articles on about 200 pages. This site is now off-line because the index page was damaged. Hosting company says legacy software can't be fixed.
I want to rebuild the site. This is the primary reason for seeking funds.
And I would like to promote the other components (just described) of my reform project.
Please read a few items at random and decide for yourself if they would be helpful to society.
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6: The goal from the start
was to create a resource
for parents and community leaders
My hope was that some wealthy people would think, well, this is a worthy addition to the public forum. A place where parents can go to understand what has befallen their children. We should help this guy.
One surprising problem is that even rich successful people do not grasp what's going on in the schools. For the same reason that teachers often don't know what they are teaching and why. There's a lot of dishonesty and deception.
Remember that Mark Zuckerberg wanted to give $100 MILLION to the public schools of Newark. Guess what happened. He got a lot of bad advice, probably from people who are in charge of creating the problems. Several years later, the money was gone and nothing had changed.
So everyone’s first challenge is to find people you can trust. I believe the field of education is full of charlatans. I was delighted several years ago to find a book titled "Quackery in the public schools.” Back in 1951, somebody figured out that a lot of our socialists are equally capitalists. Suppose they put a new theory into the schools and it fails. Is anybody fired? No, other professors restate the theory, they have conferences and meetings, they produce publications of all kinds, they get sabbaticals and promotions, and they string it out as long as they can. (This excellent book is on Amazon with a single review, 2009, by me.)
The Education Establishment is a jargon factory and a concoctor of counter-intuitive whimsy. Don't let them confuse you. Try to learn a little about each method. Parents should always consider the option of providing parallel education. Many schools will go on doing a crummy job and you probably can't stop them. But you can counter-balance; you can supplement; you can mention other ways of looking at situations.
When in doubt, check to see what the local private schools are doing. Copy them.
Still in doubt, check to see what the homeschoolers are doing. Copy them.
Still in doubt, I hope you’ll trust me.
I should add that I have never worked in the field of education. I came up through the arts and humanities. I've published eight novels and had lots of art shows. I lived in Manhattan for many years and ran a micro ad agency. I was drawn to the field of education because of the rampant chicanery, as I saw it. The main thing is I love knowledge. I love learning new things and I think students could be encouraged to do that instead of being numbed and cauterized before they start.
What occurs in literary education is the essence of all good education. You look at a document of some kind, you understand it, you explain it to other people, you analyze and critique the ideas in the document. This is what executives, managers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, scholars, and critics do all day. Originally I thought that a literary education was too specialized and removed from real life to be appropriate for most students. Now I think I was wrong. Ordinary students don't need biographical details. But analysis of the text, any text, is central to all serious study.
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7. We Are In A War Of Ideas.
Do you believe in genuine education for everyone, or should the masses be given only empty indoctrination? I favor more education for everybody.
I believe that each child should receive as much education as that child can handle. If you give them less than that, you’re stealing from them personally and you're stealing from the whole society.
Facts are fun and knowledge is power. We confine kids to dumb, boring schools for 12 years where they learn little. Think what they could easily learn if the schools were sincerely organized to make it happen.
There is so much wonderful free stuff on YouTube, to give a single example. There's no reason why there should be dull schools.
Fight against the bad ideas and promote the good ones. Support education reform.
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In closing, here is Edwinna Educator explaining
why her school was not nearly as good
as she thought it was.
Only three minutes.
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background
information
about
bruce deitrick price
—-Lit4u.com is his literary site
—-Muck Rack is journalism site that lists biographical info and many of his articles
—-Endorsements included in Saving K-12.
—-Quora is a Q&A forum. He has answered more than 3000 questions. Read a few. You'll see there is no airy theorizing, just straight-forward, practical advice. Anyway, that's always the goal.
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ADDENDUM: For education topics, search "Bruce Deitrick Price" + topic. Search engine will probably find a few items..
