>
>While it is certainly common and popular to put down the American public
>school system, this highly negative attitude has precious little basis in
>reality. Without getting too far into this topic, which is certainly beyond
>the bounds of this list, may I suggest a quick look at the current issue of
>"American Heritage" (that well-known commie-pinko-radical magazine published
>by that well-known commie-pinko-radical Steven Forbes) where this is
>discussed in more depth. The article's bottom line is that things have not
>really changed all that much in our schools over the years, that most
>people's nostalgic views of the educational systems of the past are not born
>out by test scores or other statistics, and that as a country we are giving a
>better education to a higher percentage of our population today than ever
>before in our history. People who say otherwise are either unfamiliar with
>the historical facts or have some political axe to grind, such as shrinking
>government to achieve some social agenda that the current government
>structure discourages.
>
What Andrew says is essentially true. We have more literate people than
ever before. However, what is left unsaid is that people's expectations
have drastically altered while education and results have not. The
percentage of jobs requiring low skills has dropped drastically, and while
people with high school educations could once get factory jobs that would
support a house, wife, and children, increasingly this is no longer so.
Once college was for the fortunate few, now almost everyone is pushed in
that direction, and quite a few never got around to preparing themselves to
do so. Our educational system has not suddenly gone sour (many of the
people who are having difficulty now would have been working in the fields
in the past), but the expectation is that somehow it can educate all the
people all the time. I have done extensive work with low income students
who are several grades behind in their skills, and they are not about to
work harder to catch up. Our school has been given failing marks because of
test results on students who have only been there for six months. Many
educational programs are based on what will look best on paper rather than
what is actually best for our students. Like many issues, education is a
complex issue that everyone thinks they understand in very simple
terms...but they don't. Sadly, many well-intended efforts to make things
better seem to me to have only made them worse.