How America Keeps Its Citizens Uneducated

How America Keeps Its Citizens Uneducated
With the Department of Education??

Perhaps they should just rename it to the Ministry of Education????

 

temporarily delete - I'll wait for more replies before commenting.

 

After going through the public school system in the 60’s, experiencing our children in the 80’s, and watching our grandchildren in the last few years, there has definitely been a downward spiral imo

 

One of the unqualified successes in my life is raising a daughter who made the transition from 10-year federal employee to a rookie school teacher.

Donald J Trump managed to accurately convey one simple truth the other day.
Out of the 'top' [sic] 40 nations, we're dead last in every meaningful category - except ONE.

We lead the world in money spent per student on education.

Even if this statistic is wildly misrepresented, and we're 'only' 20th and 20th the DOE should be abolished and outlawed and any building dedicated to it purpose should be razed and the earth upon which it once stood, salted.....

TOMORROW.

 

I was educated in Canada. My wife was educated in the US in the 70's and that was one of the reasons she studied in college to become a teacher so she could improve the system, She ended up as a Special Education teacher before H1N1 caused her to retire. She said Special Education is just the good education everyone should have.

We homeschooled both our boys through high school. Both graduated college and are very successful in their fields. I guess we dodged some of the education system decline.

 

And now this decline is leading to Americans listening to 'Chinese/Russian' sources cause they can't make proper judgements on source trustability. An aim to make a population more controllable also makes it suspectible to outside influence.

 

I actually have no problem eliminating the department of education, as long as you have a better option ready to take its place.
Other than some hand waving about other departments picking up the slack, I haven’t seen any details.

This is similar to the attempt to get rid of the affordable care act. No better replacement was offered.

If you want be to jump off a plane, give me a parachute, don’t tell me “we will figure it out”.

 

Always at least two points of view.

Or, sometimes you need to just rip off the band-aid to see what wound is festering underneath so you can actually determine how to cure it.

 

Easy.
We do not have a gendarmerie in the United Sates - or at least we're NOT SUPPOSED TO.

Why?

Because in every STATE....there are COUNTY and LOCAL authorities that have what mariners call 'local knowledge.'

Would you want AlaBAMA and Louisiana school administrators trying to run schools up in Minnesota?
Probably not - but NOT for the reason that I suspect might come to mind!!
This, despite the fact that those two MUCH looked-down-upon states actually over-performed in the Nation's last report card.
The Nation’s Report Card Is Clear: States Matter
Either way - you do NOT want a Mississippi school system trying to tell the good people in the Commonwealth of Virginia HOW TO RUN THEIR SCHOOLS - just as I suspect that many parents in Duluth would not want the folks in the Twin cities pushing THEM around.

Even if you're one of those people who suddenly do not trust the most hated human in America right now, Elon Musk is right about a few things......

Sometimes?
The best part is NO part.

 

One major loss we saw over the years was tracking, where the best and brightest were moved to advance placement, is now everyone must be the same’.
Also, special needs students were moved into regular classrooms, causing disruption that teachers were unable to overcome

 

Some of that is parents insisting that their kid should be in a normal classroom.

 

Absolutely, and then, there are all the ‘normal’ students coming from family issues causing disruption as well

 

Our public (K-12) education system really is in need of some serious overhauls. My sister is an assistant manager in a Lowes home improvement store and has to teach kids out of high school how to count change...didn't know a dime is 10 cents, a nickel is 5, etc. (Pretty sad.)
When I was an Air Force technical instructor, 1990-1995, I'd get kids who were high school graduates yet couldn't read. We had a separate school where we'd send them to learn to read. How does a High School graduate someone who can't read?? My course wasn't hard, at all, and they earned 15-college hours but they constantly complained at how challenging it was.

I advise the young folks to look into a trade school into something you enjoy. One of my daughter's friends went into HVAC repair and is working for a company that services large buildings and he's pulling in well into the 6-figures area. Electricians, plumbers, mechanics are all in high demand.

Parents who send their kids to poison Ivy League schools are just throwing money away. How do you justify spending $500,000 for a BA in things like cultural study or classical languages? Who do these people think will hire them?

Our universities are also in need of improvements. After I got my master's in computer science, I had GI Bill money leftover in my account so started my PhD studies which was going to take three years. (While working full-time.) But all the professors, sans one, were older life-long career teachers, had never had an IT job EVER! So they'd lecture on IT topics without a clue of how the real-world operated. I got straight A's but could only last a year.....research, study, and regorge data into papers was all we did with more emphasis on style than content.

 

Students come to the USA from all over to study and get PhDs at research labs in USA universities. It isn’t the department of education or the teachers, it’s the parents.
Especially now we have the example of don’t listen to or do what someone tells you by the highest elected official’s personal example. His minions think the same way, never do what anyone says, even if you are breaking the law.
The power of the current USA was due to funding research and education to become the most technically advanced country on earth. During republican Eisenhower the wealthiest were paying north of 90%tax rate.

 

I had the opposite experience. My daughter was 1+ years ahead of school in the 60’s in the 80’s and 90’s. We joke about in kindergarten I learned to tie my shoes and we had show and tell. Now kids are reading. High school advanced classes in math and science are at least one year ahead of what they were in the 60’s. Senior high school is like first year of college, and many are in those advanced classes.

 

I agree, absolutely!
However, let’s have a plan in place for who is going to do the things DoEd does.

Who is going to aid states in providing low cost, or free meals for kids?
Who is going to provide student loans and Pell grants?
Who is going to pick up the slack for funding for disabled children?
WHO provides fund to help students get back on track from the pandemic (although I hope that job is almost done).

Or are we simply not going to do any of those things and let the local governments try to cope?

 

Why not let the individual states do that.
As it turns out?
My own beloved home state has it's OWN DOE!!!!

Instead of over paying for a redundant federal department why not just send the money to the individual states without putting up with the feds dipping their beak?

Remember, we're #1 of 40 in cost and #40 of 40 in academics.

SOMETHING has to change.

 

Ditto with medical & drugs, though the outcomes are a bit better.....