I agree with most of your observations, but particularly with mastering the three R's, plus reasoning.
My personal experience in elementary school was that I was a competent reader by grade 3, and then I was launched. My local library had a good selection of books, and since we had no TV at home, reading was our primary leisure activity. I never looked back. Thank you Burk's Falls Public School.
I think I became a well-functioning adult by my early twenties, and I have continued to improve my reasoning and knowledge over the years. I am now 75, and there is nothing like 75 years of reading to make you well informed. It's great to be an older person.
Great read today. I enjoyed each point made and was tempted to say yes, and it is worse. Unions in schools and government as well are powerful and their benefits protected over and over again. No doubt a lot of covid relief will go into those funds as well. Even FDR and Meany were wary of the power of public unions bargaining with others who also tap the public purse. And the failure of families who are often handicapped by the poverty of their imagination and ability is an avenue worth going down.
Your assessment that "A young person today should concentrate on mastering the basics: reading, writing and ‘rithmetic. And the most essential fourth R, reasoning." This applies as well to your readers, myself included!
Thanks for this one, after your showing it might be useful to put into book form with guides to other sources you use. Your real time witness to the things considered here is rare. Few have you courage and depth of dedication to the ideas you represent. So more that mere thanks for this writing; thanks for dedicating your life to underscore the messages.
"Mass schooling of a compulsory nature really got its teeth into the United States between 1905 and 1915, though it was conceived of much earlier and pushed for throughout most of the nineteenth century. The reason given for this enormous upheaval of family life and cultural traditions was, roughly speaking, threefold:
1) To make good people.
2) To make good citizens.
3) To make each person his or her personal best.
These goals are still trotted out today on a regular basis, and most of us accept them in one form or another as a decent definition of public education's mission, however short schools actually fall in achieving them. But we are dead wrong. Compounding our error is the fact that the national literature holds numerous and surprisingly consistent statements of compulsory schooling's true purpose. We have, for example, the great H. L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not
to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. . . . Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim.. . is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States . . . and that is its aim everywhere else.
Because of Mencken's reputation as a satirist, we might be tempted to dismiss this passage as a bit of hyperbolic sarcasm. His article, however, goes on to trace the template for our own educational system back to the now vanished, though never to be forgotten, military state of Prussia. And although he was certainly aware of the irony that we had recently been at war with Germany, the heir to Prussian thought and culture, Mencken was being perfectly serious here. Our educational system really is Prussian in origin, and that really is cause for concern." http://wesjones.com/gatto1.htm
That's from 1924. Upton Sinclair wrote a number of books about American public schooling and university education about the same time - one of which, "The Goose Step", I'm currently reading - which offer the same critiques. The only difference in 100 years is that the educational level of the teachers has steadily decreased, for most, it's a sinecure from the Employer of Last Resort, the government. Real education takes a lot of hard work, it's far easier to tech rote nonsense, so that's what you get from these places, especially now. 35 years ago, the students in my freshman chemistry lab section from the School of Education were barely literate - they got degrees in Education because most of them were unable to get proper university degrees in the fields they would be teaching. One of my students was the valedictorian of her high school class in Liberty City, Florida, and she was totally illiterate - couldn't read or write - but she was black and got lots of self-esteem, but no education. I doubt that things have improved - in fact, in Kansas, roughly 20 percent of graduating seniors read at grade level by graduation and just 30 percent are proficient in reading and writing by that time. By the time I graduated high school, I'd read most of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Twain, had read more history than most public college graduates of that time, and had gone far beyond what the public high school had to offer in math and science. I was lousy at sports, though, and that's what really counted. My education was in spite of my schooling, not because of it. I've been opposed to public schooling since I was 14, in fact I think I wrote a piece for a local underground paper about it - maybe about 1972 or so...
The exclusive use of textbooks is a mistake, in my opinion. I homeschool using living books, and only need textbooks for math and science. Even for math and science, I use living books to supplement the textbook.
The reason I use living books is because they ignite a child’s imagination and wonder, something sorely missing in education.
Textbooks, with their dry writing and lists of facts and dates do the opposite...boring the student to death.
My oldest son has an engineering degree, which in my mind proves the value of living books.
Check out the Charlotte Mason method of education and living books.
I agree. The Ukrainian textbooks are good, but we have a stack of Russian and Ukrainian language books about biology, in addition to Smithsonian Natural History. Geography ditto. Eddie and I read Marco Polo and the Smithsonian Geography books last year.
A good read. Thanks, Graham.
I agree with most of your observations, but particularly with mastering the three R's, plus reasoning.
My personal experience in elementary school was that I was a competent reader by grade 3, and then I was launched. My local library had a good selection of books, and since we had no TV at home, reading was our primary leisure activity. I never looked back. Thank you Burk's Falls Public School.
I think I became a well-functioning adult by my early twenties, and I have continued to improve my reasoning and knowledge over the years. I am now 75, and there is nothing like 75 years of reading to make you well informed. It's great to be an older person.
Great read today. I enjoyed each point made and was tempted to say yes, and it is worse. Unions in schools and government as well are powerful and their benefits protected over and over again. No doubt a lot of covid relief will go into those funds as well. Even FDR and Meany were wary of the power of public unions bargaining with others who also tap the public purse. And the failure of families who are often handicapped by the poverty of their imagination and ability is an avenue worth going down.
Your assessment that "A young person today should concentrate on mastering the basics: reading, writing and ‘rithmetic. And the most essential fourth R, reasoning." This applies as well to your readers, myself included!
Thanks for this one, after your showing it might be useful to put into book form with guides to other sources you use. Your real time witness to the things considered here is rare. Few have you courage and depth of dedication to the ideas you represent. So more that mere thanks for this writing; thanks for dedicating your life to underscore the messages.
Monty
"Mass schooling of a compulsory nature really got its teeth into the United States between 1905 and 1915, though it was conceived of much earlier and pushed for throughout most of the nineteenth century. The reason given for this enormous upheaval of family life and cultural traditions was, roughly speaking, threefold:
1) To make good people.
2) To make good citizens.
3) To make each person his or her personal best.
These goals are still trotted out today on a regular basis, and most of us accept them in one form or another as a decent definition of public education's mission, however short schools actually fall in achieving them. But we are dead wrong. Compounding our error is the fact that the national literature holds numerous and surprisingly consistent statements of compulsory schooling's true purpose. We have, for example, the great H. L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not
to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. . . . Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim.. . is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States . . . and that is its aim everywhere else.
Because of Mencken's reputation as a satirist, we might be tempted to dismiss this passage as a bit of hyperbolic sarcasm. His article, however, goes on to trace the template for our own educational system back to the now vanished, though never to be forgotten, military state of Prussia. And although he was certainly aware of the irony that we had recently been at war with Germany, the heir to Prussian thought and culture, Mencken was being perfectly serious here. Our educational system really is Prussian in origin, and that really is cause for concern." http://wesjones.com/gatto1.htm
That's from 1924. Upton Sinclair wrote a number of books about American public schooling and university education about the same time - one of which, "The Goose Step", I'm currently reading - which offer the same critiques. The only difference in 100 years is that the educational level of the teachers has steadily decreased, for most, it's a sinecure from the Employer of Last Resort, the government. Real education takes a lot of hard work, it's far easier to tech rote nonsense, so that's what you get from these places, especially now. 35 years ago, the students in my freshman chemistry lab section from the School of Education were barely literate - they got degrees in Education because most of them were unable to get proper university degrees in the fields they would be teaching. One of my students was the valedictorian of her high school class in Liberty City, Florida, and she was totally illiterate - couldn't read or write - but she was black and got lots of self-esteem, but no education. I doubt that things have improved - in fact, in Kansas, roughly 20 percent of graduating seniors read at grade level by graduation and just 30 percent are proficient in reading and writing by that time. By the time I graduated high school, I'd read most of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Twain, had read more history than most public college graduates of that time, and had gone far beyond what the public high school had to offer in math and science. I was lousy at sports, though, and that's what really counted. My education was in spite of my schooling, not because of it. I've been opposed to public schooling since I was 14, in fact I think I wrote a piece for a local underground paper about it - maybe about 1972 or so...
The exclusive use of textbooks is a mistake, in my opinion. I homeschool using living books, and only need textbooks for math and science. Even for math and science, I use living books to supplement the textbook.
The reason I use living books is because they ignite a child’s imagination and wonder, something sorely missing in education.
Textbooks, with their dry writing and lists of facts and dates do the opposite...boring the student to death.
My oldest son has an engineering degree, which in my mind proves the value of living books.
Check out the Charlotte Mason method of education and living books.
Thanks. That was my experience at very middle class Castro Elementary School 1950-54.
Did you get a chance to look at the Unz piece on American education?
https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/dumber-than-the-average-human/
I agree. The Ukrainian textbooks are good, but we have a stack of Russian and Ukrainian language books about biology, in addition to Smithsonian Natural History. Geography ditto. Eddie and I read Marco Polo and the Smithsonian Geography books last year.
Well done Graham.