| |
|
|
| |
1) UNEXPECTED JOURNEY: I’ve been writing about education
for 25 years. There was never intent or plan. Typically, I would read some startling detail in a magazine that didn’t
make sense to me. I would wonder: so WHY can’t these kids read? so WHY are people showing up in college who don’t
know what 6 x 7 is? so WHY do schools use techniques that turn out counterproductive? Etc., etc. I enjoy working on these
puzzles.
|
| |
2) UNEXPECTED CONCLUSIONS: I’ve long been wary of our
elite educators, because they didn’t seem to be good at their work and they tended to use a lot of jargon, which I think
is a symptom of intellectual decay. But I didn’t anticipate that the more I researched, the more negative my verdict
would be. These people, I concluded, became obsessed with social engineering, and slighted education. As a result, they have
been dumbing down our country for 75+ years, and getting away with it to a remarkable degree. We have a lot of work to do
if we hope to fix this damage.
|
| |
3) UNEXPECTED ACCOMPLICES: Perhaps the most disgraceful thing
is that the mainstream media and big universities stood mutely aside while the country was being dumbed down. (If anyone knows
of a single Ivy League professor who jumped into the reading wars beside Rudolph Flesch, I want to hear the name.)
My local paper, and probably yours, covers education in a trivial way: as community affairs, bureaucrats hired and fired,
test scores up and down. There is never curiosity about why, for example, test scores might be down.
|
| |
4) UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES: American educators created 50 million
functional illiterates, and high school graduates who can’t find this country on a map. I’ve recently discovered Arthur Bestor’s book “Educational
Wastelands --The Retreat from Learning in Our Public Schools.” Bestor was a distinguished professor and historian. You
may sometimes think that I’m too critical, but I promise you that Bestor was more so. Consider how direly he worded
his title. Wastelands. Then consider that this book was published in 1953!
I urge everyone to do what
they can -- in the community, at work, through politics and the local media-- to put pressure on the public schools. Support
diversity in education--private schools, vouchers, charter schools, homeschooling. Especially support the teaching of basic
knowledge and a greater concern with making sure kids learn to read in the first few years of school.
|
| |
5) UNEXPECTED BOOK: I woke up one day with the thought, why
not make a book out of all these articles I’ve got on the internet. That book is titled "THE EDUCATION ENIGMA--What
Happened To American Education." Naturally I hope you’ll go to Amazon and order a copy. It’s a good gift.
This little book presents the information which people need to understand that the country’s schools were dumbed
down deliberately, and now we have to improve them deliberately. So this book is a strategic weapon; spread it around, help
it if you can.
|
| |
6) UNEXPECTED VISTAS: I think there are three sets of victims
in education today: students, parents, and teachers. A lot of times, unfortunately, teachers don’t realize they have
been co-opted into helping with their own degradation. If schools were run intelligently, teachers would have a better life.
A formative anecdote from about 1990: A young teacher told me that she was having problems with her seventh graders.
She asked the principal for help and he said: “The classroom is your problem.” I was tremendously offended by
this. It’s his job to set the tone for his school and to back up his teachers. I thought he should be fired. I sensed
something else. An Education Establishment that would create principals like this wasn't serious about education. Well, it's a drastic
summary but what I write about throughout this site is that the Education Establishment talks a good game but, in truth, they
are not very interested in education as most parents define the term. Our top educators are slaves to ideology. In the last
few years I've become especially interested in reading because it seems to be a paradigm: an essential skill that everyone
must have but educators somehow devise methods that don't work very well. If you doubt me, please see "42: Reading Resources"--the
opening portion explains why we have so many millions of functional illiterates. |
| |
|
Bruce Deitrick Price
|
