Education and Ignorance – Solution or Destruction?

This post was started on April 7, 2010 and finished on May 10, 2010.

Today on Alternet there were articles about the hate groups being egged on by FOX News and Glenn Beck, and the revision of history by the current Texas State Board of Education.  As I read the articles I found myself thinking about why would people want to commit such acts in this country.  For someone like Rupert Murdoch who was given the opportunity to build his fortune here as an immigrant, it is repugnant to think he would use his opportunities to support what is nothing more than sedition in this country.  For someone like Glenn Beck, it is truly just about fame and money by preying on the fears of others and his own paranoia.  For the Texas Board of Education, it is about pandering to a group of religious zealots and Confederate losers in order to forward an agenda on the rest of the country that the rest of us have rejected.  So what is the reason behind all this insanity?  Is it about education or about ignorance, solutions or just blatant destruction?  And what should the rest of us be doing about it?

Education was something that Thomas Jefferson (yes, the same one that the Texans are taking out of there textbooks) felt was an imperative in a free democracy.  He believed in a free public education for every citizen, and in this he was considered liberal and radical by his fellow leaders.  But he understood that an educated electorate was the only thing that could, and would, sustain a strong democratic republic.  Just as Plato and Socrates believed that such education would insure a strong democracy in Ancient Greece, only to see it supplanted by war and irrational thought, as we see today in this nation.

We have become a less educated society starting with the youngest baby boomers and all our children and grandchildren that followed.  Why?  For many reasons, but mostly because we allowed ourselves to be sold out to teacher’s unions (yes, before you scream foul, I agree you need more money and better tools and more supportive parents and administrators, but your union leaders supported No Child Left Behind and sold you out as well as the children) who negotiated for smaller class size while negotiating pay raises that did not even come up to a decent standard of living for teachers.  Parents objected to paying more for education where their children were getting a poor education through bond issues forcing school districts to cut services or comply with odious federal policies to get money.  It was a vicious series of cycles that essentially weakened our education system, until No Child Left Behind was instituted that put the final nail in the coffin of educating our children.

I am 57 years old, my class sizes were never under 35, and without exception, my classmates and I did well on tests, could spell, do math in our heads, and write papers using good grammar by the time we were out of sixth grade, and our teachers did not have classroom helpers, it was just one teacher and 25+ students.  We understood the basics of music, art, history (both American and World) as well.  We understood the connection between genetics of peas and the animal world, and we were physically fit because of mandatory physical education.  We built on these basics as we moved into algebra, research papers in history, English, biology and chemistry, health education and sex education, and a variety of other subjects, including music appreciation and art and theater appreciation.  And we did it all in classes of never less than 25.  So why are teachers upset at having to deal with this number of students?

Ironically, as the class sizes have reduced, instead of getting better educated students, we have segregated out those students that educators do not want to be bothered with so that only the top students are allowed to excel, instead of forcing the poorer students to work to achieve their potential.  The result:  70% of our students who enter high school do not graduate.  The ultimate result:  this group is prey for the likes of Murdoch, Beck, and the radical right/religious zealots – and a nation on the brink of violence.

So now the argument becomes is the current educational system leading to ignorance rather than knowledge; is it offering us solutions or is it sowing the seeds of our destruction?  By all appearances, it is not helping and when the Texas Board of Education can rewrite our very history as a nation to meet their twisted sense of priorities without an outcry across this nation to the publishers to stop this insanity, this level of ignorance is only going to increase.  We as citizens of this nation can step back and let this kind of education continue and walk blindfolded into the kind of future that many Third World nations are experiencing today, or we can change how we approach education.

There are many dedicated and wonderful teachers in our schools today who are frustrated and going broke trying to teach our children.  They need the support of parents and students, not administrators or school boards or unions, to do their jobs.  They need to be able to encourage children to think through problems and lessons, not just memorize facts like they were computers, not human beings.  They need to know how to teach, not just coach to a test.  They need to know that the children are not going to be drugged up or dangerous to others because they have been strung out on prescription drugs.  These teachers need to stand up and say that their classes are for educating children, and these children deserve better than what we as a community are doing for them.  It may mean standing up to your unions who have allowed this to happen; to the administrators who encouraged it to happen; the politicians and corporations who were more than happy to let this happen; and finally, to the parents of these children who stood by and trusted that you and the others would care for, teach, and protect their children while they went on about their adult lives of feeding, housing, and clothing these same children.

Our current educational system has failed.  On that I think there is little doubt.  Charter schools are nothing more than publicly subsidized private schools, and they are a tool for teaching only the elite of our nation, not future generations of children as a whole.  (Any doubt about that is stopped when you look at the voucher program and its qualifications, leaving the rest behind in underfunded public schools.)  Many of them teach along prescribed religious or corporate ideologies that essentially deprive many children, even the elite, of the ability to function in the rest of world because of a skewed view of that world.  These schools are not the answer.  I am not sure that there is any one answer, but I do know this, unless we find a way to re-educate our society, from the bottom up, we are going to continue in this cycle of destruction until there is nothing left.

On my website, which has changed focus recently, I have proposed a new form of educational approach that takes both the kind of education I had as a child and couples it with modern technology and a broad based philosophy to teach our children to think critically and creatively, and to stress physical and emotional fitness as well as knowledge acquisition in creating a new kind of citizen and person.  It is not an easy program and it is not one that will appeal to many people, but my goal is to create a system of free schools eventually where these goals can be met by those who wish to create a different, healthier, sounder approach to how this nation moves forward.  (See <a href=”www.letfreedomring.community.officelive.com”>Let Freedom Ring.Community</a> for the information)

Education can be the building blocks for a great civilization or it can be the seeds of its destruction.  Our current system of education, which only coaches children to take tests effectively in order to avoid school closures or teacher layoffs, is sowing the seeds of destruction by failing to produce children who can think, be creative and innovative, and who will not settle for being a third world declining nation.  We need to create new building blocks for education that can offer growth into the future, not of an empire, but of a nation that is honorable, hard-working, charitable, honest, and compassionate while moving forward as a world leader and great power for good.  We do this by creating those kinds of leaders through excellent education and encouragement of all our students to strive to be the best that they can possibly be, not drones to a corporate system that is failing.

Please join me in trying to create this kind of change in education and to work within your communities to institute similar programs in your public schools if possible.

<a href=”http://www.letfreedomring.community.officelive.com”>Let Freedom Ring.Community</a>