The Myth of the Education Crisis

I think these days even a high percentage the people who end up incarcerated end up doing a GED.

Education and learning is no longer purpose in itself, expression of our natural curiosity and passing our experiences and wisdom from generation to generation, just means to an end. What end?

The purpose of neoliberal education policy is to indoctrinate our children and young into clogs in the capitalist machine of money making. The reason they give for investing in education is that higher education level is supposed to give competitive advantage in global market. No, not cooperation, empathy, responsibility, creativity, critical thinking and search for knowledge and wisdom. Competition in the race to the bottom so that the elite parasite class can keep on being parasites and cancer of our society and planet.

I agree! The idea of educated used to have nothing to do with "college and career ready", the newest meme we are being asked to follow.

What happened to learning for the experience? To be a better thinker? Wisdom?

Now it's all "ïPads for everyone!" Yeah, let's sell folks more STUFF while ignoring learning. REAL learning.

I so agree. We have so many gadgets and dodads but are getting away from what learning and education really is about

how eagerly and full of joy and effortlessly children (and child-like adults) naturally learn? When that natural joy of learning is harnessed to serve some external instrumental goal, the joy goes away and learning becomes a burden.

Treating subjects more likely to provide a higher ROI as if a higher power had sanctified them.

Sick and sad. Capitalism is the crisis.

Freedom and slavery?

should I?

Good for you and happy for you.

Should others be educated for and do demeaning slave jobs they don't love?

Accounting was never my first love. There were other subjects I REALLY loved in college, but I recognized there was essentially NO demand for them. Thus, I spent the time to find an area I still really enjoyed that would also allow me to provide for myself. Honestly, just because someone loves old films (one of the areas I enjoyed in college), I do not think they are automatically owed a job related to old films.

just because you love accounting, do the rest of us owe to you to live in monetized system where accounting makes any sense? Especially if we after taking a good look realize that monetized economy based on debt and interest is leading us all into doom?

Thus, I fail to see the logic of your question. Are you implying accounting is related to a "monetized system"

accounting as profession is dependent from something to count and that counting consider socially important.

Historical roots of the situation of course go back much further than 15th century.

Sorry, but the world you desire with NEVER exist.

EVER is big place with infinite possibilities and I've been in the Land of Rainbows and Gumdrops many times having great time. It's awesome there.

I know how money speaks - who of us doesn't? - and I realize money is now speaking with you mouth. Money hates and fears Land of Rainbows and Gumdrops because it has no power there, so being the great fraudster and trickster it is, it lies and tricks us to believe that Land of Rainbows and Gumdrops don't exist.

Sadly, someone in Florida does not give a shit about someone in Maine. Sure their are exceptions, but they are not the rule.

people who live ruled by money are not happy and want change. Those of us who've already been in the other world can at least tell that it really is possible and exists in many forms. And not a bad place at all, full of unimaginable wonders as well as familiar daily chores, so no need to be afraid of change.

Why talk at all, speak from Maine to Florida, A Finnish hippie to American accountant? Because we are the real globalization movement and neoliberals are the anti-Earth movement, because we are all in the same boat, mothership Earth. And because it's good to live and meet new people and share experiences.

The earliest extant accounting records that follow the modern double-entry form are those of Amatino Manucci, a Florentine merchant at the end of the 13th century. Another old extant evidence of full double-entry bookkeeping is the Farolfi ledger of 1299-1300.

Giovanino Farolfi & Company were a firm of Florentine merchants whose head office was in Nîmes who also acted as moneylenders to the Archbishop of Arles, their most important customer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-entry_bookkeeping_system

We're supposed to prepare ourselves to be more useful serfs to our feudal lords?

No thank you.

with no concern for financial support. Never.

The era of education-for-education's-sake has never existed for the common person. Never.

I have friend who works about four hours a day gardening, gathering etc., to satisfy basic material needs. Rest of his time he dedicates to music, physics, teaching and writing and discussing politics and philosophy.

be a 'gentleman scholar', I do believe we have now turned education into a 'bottom line' game.

I work, have been at the same job for 29+ years, but I also have a life of the mind. I have a liberal arts degree, and took many, many classes that have not put a dime in my pocket (at least that you can directly trace) but these educational opportunities have enriched me immensely.

I would argue that we have turned being educated into ONLY a vocational endeavor. We will all have to work to put bread on the table and a roof over our heads, but what breathtaking poverty we will be living in if our intellect lies fallow.

It doesn't help if students reaching the age of majority are allowed to drop out or forced to drop out because of their parents.

seeing how much more they learn, and starting at earlier years, it amazes me that people buy into this crap. schools doing fuckin everything to appease critics and meh.... same meme, different day.

i find that the parents and families of my students are very supportive of teachers and the educational process, yet the national media noise machine continues to bark about the failures of public education.
bill gates is our local education raider in the northwest.
what these corporations are doing to education is the same thing bain capital did to the businesses it took over. they are squeezing the life out of teaching staffs and pocketing tax monies that have been earmarked to teach our young people.

every parent i know that have kids that excel and succeed are very supportive. and continue to demand and expect more and more of our kids and the teacher is there to do exactly that.

i am tired of parents expecting the school system to do the parent.

i can only discuss the area i live in and the years of kids and my personal experience.

67% of the students in my building are on the free or reduced lunch program.
the students have so many needs that we can not meet but the families want the best for their children and offer what support they can provide. admittedly, the support is not always helpful but they are trying to do their jobs.
i know of parents, like those you describe, but i have never been targeted in such a way myself (knock on wood).
i guess the parents of my students are as tired as the teachers and don't have the energy to point the finger at others.

What's funny is that my position that education does need to be reformed is based on the current Florida educational system, which looks more like what reformers want to create. Despite what Governors have claimed since JEB!, Florida children who graduate do so functionally illiterate and lacking basic knowledge, such as geography and civics. Ask a Florida teacher. Florida is also a "right to work" state, so the unions are basically impotent.

and I am not talking only about four year colleges. Post high school education such as associates degrees and certification programs are required for many good paying jobs in fields like health care. A high school diploma is not enough to guarantee a good paying job with benefits like it used to.

The problem with education is that it does not provide the skills the new economy demands - not that there are not enough high school graduates.

What are those, what is new economy?

and which are going away. The economy is constantly evolving - the latest change is the end of low skill, low tech manufacturing. The growth is in health care and tech (software development and security in particular.)

Here are some links:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/04/the-best-paying-jobs-of-t_n_948405.html#s349731&title=10_Personal_Financial

http://money.usnews.com/money/careers


Here is a list of the 20 top jobs for people without college degrees.

http://www.careercast.com/jobs-rated/20-great-jobs-without-college-degree

But I don't want an insanely berserker economic theory running rampant to decide and dictate my childrens future. What I wish for them is chance to live full human lives in dignity and love and to express and contribute to society and life in general what they have to give with free will and from the bottom of their heart.

to the point where what job you have determines your standard of living then the educational system needs to be sensitive to issue and ensure our kids are prepared for whatever their futures hold. The system is failing our kids right now.

Chasing paper has resulted in significant damage to the planet and suffering for the majority of the people on the planet.

We know people will still invent things and improve things for other reasons besides getting as rich as possible, so why is this system maintained?

then there will be no change - people will still have to imagine, design and build all those things a society will need. Right now our education system does not create those kinds of people in sufficient numbers.

I'm not sure what kinds of people you are referring to, or what tools you seem to think are necessary.

I'm sure the world doesn't need more people to create more new phones faster than they are made now.

our present technology does not permit that. We will require tremendous advances in energy technology, agriculture, medicine and transportation to support all those people and give them a adequate quality of life.

It has absolutely nothing to do with consumer goods.

If that 10 billion figure is based on current trends, the rational response isn't to further strain an already failing ecosystem, but to educate people. As education rises, fecundity drops.

the poorest parts of the world are also the least educated. They also have the highest birthrates. There is a direct link between how economically advanced a society is and how educated their population is.

Education requires resources, trained educators and the ability to devote hours every day to non-productive labor. In a desperately poor country those things are not there. Breaking centuries of custom and ignorance is not easy - for one thing you are assuming that the people want to change.

does correlate with education - or lack of Western education in form of cultural imperialism, if we talk about indigenous peoples who have known how to live sustainably for millennia. Economical advancement is different situation depending on how you define economy and advancement. Socialist society populations such as Cuba, Kerala etc. are also well advanced in benign population curve, even though by the measures I imagine you are measuring, they are anything but economically advanced.

UN predicts benign population peak at 9 billion around 2050 and predictions are what they are, predictions.

In a sense you are right that our present technology - or rather technocratic attitude - to technology and environment does not permit satisfying basic necessities of all people - even now. We live in world of abundance and scarcity is artificially created, by technocratic technology and fetishistic worship of abstract money symbols.

We waste and destroy half of all food produced because of money, we keep houses empty when people are homeless because of money, we destroy the carrying capacity of the ecosystem we depend from because of money.

We do have all the necessary know how to give adequate quality of life not just to 10 billion but even 50 billion, if necessary, and it isn't. Very low tech know how is more than enough, very little gardening land is required. I've studied this issue deeply, and know how and available resources is not the problem. The problem is between ears, the problem is that we suffer from collective suicidal insanity and first requirement of getting healthy is admitting that we are insane. Nature can be cruel, that is subjective evaluation depending on situation, but nature is not the enemy, nature is not hostile, we are not outside nature and we cannot control nature. We are organic and integral part of life on Earth and this is amazingly beautiful and benign place. Especially so when you stop trying to destroy the life your life depends from.

Being prepared for whatever future holds would be primarily be about gardening, wood-working, textile work, herbal medicine etc. etc. basic practical skills of self-subsistence. And guaranteed access to productive land and membership in community that can live or learn to live as part of ecosystem without destroying the carrying capacity from which the lives of our children depend from.

Not projections of growth system of systemic failure and evolutionary dead end.

considering how billions of people live in areas with little or no productive land, how would communities survive in such places?

we need to learn from available examples - how e.g. Cubans and Russians survived their collapses - and do even better.

We are gardening species, homo hortoculturist, and our abilities in that field are amazing. When given chance and if we so want, we can change deserts into forest gardens, not from outside, but as organic and integral parts of ecosystem.

their infant mortality rate is shocking for a so called developed country.

The only thing that keeps the Russian economy afloat is oil, gas, and other natural resources.

massive die-offs during the multiple collapses they experienced was not oil industry but the fact that people were and are still largely self-reliant. Half of all food produced in Russia comes from small home gardens in cities and countryside ("datchas") and social networks of mutual aid remain very strong as social life has never been really monetized, people didn't stop working as doctors, teachers etc. when they received no money for their work. I live in country next to Russia and they are also very eager gatherers of berries and mushrooms and spent much of their free time in woods, picknicking and drinking (they are Russians!) and they can magically create a feast anytime, anywhere.

As Dmitry Orlov (http://cluborlov.blogspot.fi/) points out, Russians are much less alienated from basic necessities of life than for example Americans. And as we are talking about education, this is what we need to educate ourselves and our children, that economy does not mean moving money and letting money pull your strings, but first and foremost satisfying basic necessities of life. That real success is not measured by money, but beauty and dignity of your life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Russia

and what does the fact that the 10% household plots produce half the food tell you about effectiveness of corporate high tech industrial agriculture?

"During 2003, peasant farms accounted for 14.4% of Russia's total grain production (up from 6.2% in 1997), 21.8% percent of sunflower seed (up from 10.8% five years earlier), and 10.1% of sugar beets (3.5% in 1997). Corporate farms produced the remainder of these crops, with hardly any contribution from the small household plots. However, household plots, with a maximum size of 2 hectares (4.9 acres), produced 93% percent of the country's potatoes and 80% of the vegetables, either for family consumption or for sale in the local markets. They also produced 51% of the milk and 54% of the meat in 2003, with the rest coming primarily from corporate farms (the contribution of peasant farms to livestock production was negligible)."

Also, main part of the corporate grain production is for export, not for domestic production. Gathering of mushrooms, berries etc., and hunting and fishing are of course included in the those statistics, and as private small scale gardening is not officially surveyed and controlled, it is more likely to fall out of statistics than large scale corporate production.

The estimate of half of food I have adopted from Dmitry Orlov, but I don't have link available.

It is a common myth that industrial high tech agriculture is efficient, but it's just a myth and nothing could be further from truth. Technocratic Green Revolution monocultures meant only quick one-off mining of top soil and depletion of ground water with aid of fossile fuels and poisoning soil with chemicals. Technofix to what was in reality no-problem that caused only more much severe problems. We are people and one thing we know - when left in peace from "blessings" of technocratic civilization - is how to feed ourselves. Multilayer permaculture food forests are high grade biotech - as old as horticulture - that need only minimum of simple gardening tools that can be made on spot if and when needed. Plus observation skills and sense of belonging to local ecosystem.

No other first world country tolerates the levels of poverty and inequality that we do. Our middle-class and rich students are competitive with middle-class and rich students from any other country.

It's hard to give a shit about algebra when you're hungry, the roof is leaking, and you have to take care of yourself and your little sister until your Mom gets home from her third-shift job at Wal-Mart.

Nobody wants to deal with this issue, and yep, teachers are handy to blame. And of course, the corporatists at licking their chops at the idea of making tons of money out of the ruining of public education.

And often our education system doesn't make things easier. Our local news recently ran a story imploring people to donate school uniforms for our local urban district, because it was noted that when a business started a uniform drive, truancy levels dropped, because parents were keeping their kids home when they couldn't afford the required uniforms. "Uniforms" is a loose definition. What it really is is an extremely strict dress code that can be hard to shop for, requiring two sets of clothes, which is an extra financial burden. I have an idea. Let's not require the stupid uniforms in the first place! Why set up these unnecessary barriers? Our suburban district, with wealthier households, doesn't require them. It's stupid.

involving badly-behaved Gen-X kids in school stemming from some book or report (Crisis something something) published by a RW think tank.

"A Nation At Risk", a report pushed heavily by Reagan.

I had to sign in at work so I could give this a DU rec, and find it later.

I agree with the posters who point out we have a POVERTY and INEQUALITY problem here, and nobody seems willing to talk about it or do something about it in this country.

about educating independent and responsible generations, gardening, gathering, woodworking, textile work etc. basic skills of self-reliance would be important part of the curriculum, not forgetting artistic expression.

Here in Finland much of the discussion has been about not making school too theoretical and uniform but meeting the needs and preferences of individual variation. For example it is often difficult for especially boys in certain age to sit still in classroom and pay attention to theoretical teaching, when they would learn better with their whole bodies in practical work. The trend has been that public schools specialize in certain fields, such as arts or languages or mathematical sciences etc. My older son just moved to language oriented school on 7th grade.

the data can look better or worse than it is based on how you scale the Y axis.
At least at first glance.
this is not necessarily true here, but be careful.

I'm less critical of graphs when what they indicate agrees with my assumptions, but that's not a good mental habit.

be a bit critical, if not to change one's assumptions, but to better understand and/or argue the contrasting opinion.

Well done!

A diploma means nothing if standards are constantly lowered to keep the numbers up. A much better way of measuring is by comparing test scores between nations and in that arena the US is failing miserably.

It doesn't matter if you have a high school diploma if all that signifies is that you have an education equivilent to that of a fourth grader in other countries.

Our schools are failing! It is not the teachers fault it is not the administrators fault it is not the parents fault and it is not the governments fault. It is all of them combined. It is a continuing failure to value education in our society.

The metric you espouse to prove there is no education crisis is fantasy.

1) HS graduation requirements can be & are fudged, but there is a national measure of proficiency that has been in use since the early 70s, and it shows NO DECLINE -- and, in fact, improvement in all subject areas -- DESPITE the fact that the nation's schools are educating a higher percentage of school age children than in the past and a higher percentage of low-income/minority students than in the past.

These are national assessments, consistent across generations and localities.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest continuing and nationally representative assessment of what American students know and can do in core subjects...NAEP results are designed to provide data on student achievement in various subjects, and are released as The Nation’s Report Card. There are no results for individual students, classrooms, or schools. NAEP reports results for different demographic groups, including gender, socioeconomic status, and race/ethnicity. Assessments are given most frequently in mathematics, reading, science and writing.

NAEP is a trusted resource and has been providing valid and reliable data on student performance since 1969.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Assessment_of_Educational_Progress





There has been improvement in all areas and all populations, including low-income and minority populations.


2) Those 'international comparisons' touted in the media are profoundly misleading.

a) The populations being compared aren't the same. For example, education in china is only mandatory (& funded) for 9 years v. 12 in the us. Only 80% of age-appropriate kids attend middle school & fewer than that go on to the chinese equivalent of high school (or voc school, another option). Because most chinese are still -- peasants.

Conequently, chinese students who take those 'international tests' are an elite bunch, particularly in the higher grades.

There are similar apples to oranges issues for most countries.

b) Regardless, when you look at the scores by income, the US leads the field when you compare non-poverty students.

However, since the US also leads the field in poverty in the developed world, & is on a par with some of the less developed world (21% of all american children live below the poverty line), scores overall are lowered when compared to most developed countries, which have poverty rates half to 1/3 of that.

The most certain predictor of below-average school achievement -- everywhere -- is coming from a family living below the poverty line.

c) The US position in international education rankings has not changed from when we were leading the world in science and industry. We were NEVER the leader (largely because of the poverty issue) in education achievement.

c) If you follow the international news, you'll find the other countries that we are supposedly so inferior to -- are hyping the same nonsense: "Oh, our students are failing! We must change our education system!"

does not get you what it used to get you.
A four year degree is more like what a hs diploma used to be (or almost at least).

At my public high school,where I graduated in 1996, more math, social studies, science and total credits required have increased. Much of it reflects increased state requirements. There are also tests that are required to be passed for graduation. I'd sat that public education is as good or better than it was 20 years ago.
Now that the US has a high high school graduation rate and many BA/BS graduates, there are a number of jobs that require or prefer a 4 year degree that did not in the past. That doesn't mean that a high school education is not as good as it was in the past. It means workplaces want to be pickier about who they hire. By the same token, most jobs require a high school diploma even if an average middle schooler could do them because employers figure that there is something wrong with an adult who does not have a high school diploma. It does not mean that they did not get enough education to actually do the tasks.

thus bringing the relative value of the hs diploma down.

The percentage of students receiving diplomas is fairly useless without a metric as to the worth of the diploma.
For instance, we could make education harder and decrease the number of diplomas issued.
Likewise, we could ease graduation requirements and make receiving a diploma easier.

Either way, this data says little about the actual education of the populace.

the new deal consensus.

notice that during the 'neo-liberal years that trendline flattened considerably. as did all social trendlines.

looking only at the chart...maybe, or maybe not.
The point is this chart is just a statistic that can't stand on its own.
Any attempt is hyperbole.
one needs to show other data with it... curriculum, for instance, or some other metric to do a relative compare.

conditions. The need for trained workers supported by government initiatives that also encouraged college (e.g. GI Bill), the optimism of the culture, the availability of jobs, etc.

The notion that it's all about *how* education is delivered & measured is crap IMO. It's about the total social conditions.

over the last 50 + years and making conclusions is useless.

it can't be reduced to soundbite size, being multi-factorial.

Those that make the reference of supporting data should be the ones to at least link it.

Until then, one should view the statistic for what it is, just a statistic, with cause and effect left for hypothesis generation.

of studies.

But a poster here has brought up one aspect of the New Deal/post-war era's support for education. S/he says there wasn't even a high school in her area until the 1940s. Ergo, if people there wanted to attend high school, they'd have to travel long distances.

Roosevelt began funding assistance for the building of rural schooling during the depression, and that support increased post-war.

Ergo, an increase in graduations simply because of provision of facilities & funding.

That's only one of the factors. Forgive me if I haven't got time to write you a dissertation. Perhaps if you're interested you'll look into it.

My mother's second husband's mother didn't go to high school for that reason. My grandparents criticized her for that because they went , making big sacrifices to go. My grandfather, who lived in a rural area, actually did walk 10 miles each way to school. My grandmother, who lived in a big city, went to "night" school after a full day of her domestic work. For my other set of grandparents, my grandmother and her brother boarded with a family in another town so they could go to high school. Ironically, my paternal grandfather who lived about a half mile away from the high school that he would have attended and had parents that were doing well economically did not go to high school during his teen years. He did get a diploma via correspondence school in his early 20's.
I don't know if they changed the requirements or not, but it was hard for some students to physically get to high school in the earlier part of the 20th century. For others, who weren't from the professional class, it was considered more important by their families to work than get education beyond the 8th grade level. Considering that a number of students were still educated at one room schools, I can't imagine that the average high school student in the 40's or 50's were completing a more academically strenuous program than current students. It may be that there were large variations in high school programs, depending on the district, just like or maybe greater than right now.

that increased post-WW2. That's the reason.

Clearly in such cases mere access increased graduation rates.

This is from the conservative cato institute. They paint increased federal assistance to state education as a bad thing. But it was clearly one of the most important reasons high school graduations increased.

That started changing with the New Deal in the 1930s. The federal government launched an array of temporary funding initiatives, such as programs for school construction and repair, the hiring of unemployed teachers, loans to school districts, and aid to rural schools.

Many bills were introduced in Congress between the 1930s and the 1960s to make permanent grants to state and local governments for K-12 schools.... dozens of bills were introduced in Congress in the post-war years to finance local school construction in response to the post-war baby boom....

http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/k-12-education-subsidies

much, either--it's just a baseline requirement for many jobs, including administrative assistants and mail clerks.

and just have to give a mad kick to this thread. I thought of it all day today....

My good friend in Chicago called me today from the march to let me hear some of the excitement. I so wish I could be there.

I was downtown, taking my daughter to a class she's taking. Since it was her "first class", and she's only 15 years old, I took the train with her to ensure she knew the way. So I had 5 hours to kill. I was torn between going to a museum or just heading to the waterfront to read by the lake when I saw the rally forming in Union Park on a news feed.

That was it! I had to go! It was inspiring. I was so glad to lend my voice and feet to the crowd!

Solidarity

I just posted the video on my Facebook wall. She was incredible.

What also matters is the fields that are being studied. America needs more focus on STEM (Science, Math, Technology and Engineering) and less focus on the arts and humanities. I am not saying that the arts and humanities are not important, but rather, that when you're competing against the world's best in a globalized economy with the likes of Japan, China, Russia, Europe, etc. you have to put a strong focus on sciences.


Americans are simply less and less willing to go into the sciences. Show mathematical equations and scientific formulas to a classroom of American students, and the reaction of 95% of them is probably "Yuck! Ugh."

level. Many BS science majors have a hard time getting a job in their field and if they do, the jobs really don't pay that well. Advanced degrees can help, but often jobs want the graduate student to have concentrated on a specific topic and matching the graduate to job can be difficult. There might be a distribution problem in that there are many graduates looking for jobs in states with fewer jobs and vice versa, but it could be corrected with better recruiting techniques. Companies could also be more flexible with their requirements. Often they want specific training or experiences, but coming from a related field could bring valuable experiences to the company as well.
I don't think that requiring fewer arts and humanities courses would help. To be a good scientist, studying different subjects and being exposed to different styles of thinking outside one's specialization is really useful.
I think that this country needs more jobs in scientific fields. I think that if there are more jobs that pay more that more students will be encouraged to study science and stay in the field. A significant number of science and engineering majors have jobs that aren't related to science. Often it is because they make more money outside of science.