The Efficacy of Public Education in America

[Chris_Wendt]

Whether you find yourself agonizing over Donald Trump, or over Hillary Clinton as the two candidates for President, or, whether your angst is over whether or not to allow your kids to watch the next ""Presidential"" debate on Wednesday, I think that the entire specter of the 2016 election cycle can be reduced to the vestiges of an epic fail of American public education over the seven decades covered by the lives of our ersatz candidates and the two major political parties that are hosting them for our consideration (or, foisting them over on us, as the case may be) as "Presidential" contenders.

Having mentioned two political parties, I must immediately correct myself, as I am now convinced that there is but one meaningful political party in the U.S, - the party of big money, which actually controls both the Democrat Party and Republican Party, and all the various factions within each of them. Money talks; everybody listens, right down the food chain. Bottom line on this point: if you don't like Clinton (I mean really like her), and if you don't like Trump (I mean really like him), tough; you've got NO OTHER realistic choice, because one of them will be our next President..

I am sick over this; I can't vote for Clinton, and I don't want to vote for Trump, but I am compelled to vote in this election. I will not have made up my mind until I step into the voting booth on election day.

How is our entire nation so intractably mired in this foul mess? I don't know all of the myriad specific answers; I do know that better, different, more serious public education could be the cure, but no instant remedy, meaning, not for this election which, for all practical purpose, is LOST for all of us. There is no good outcome, and even the less-worse outcome will still be a very bad outcome for the future of our children's children..

Another way to look at this is to re-state the question, thus: Have we lost America?

The title of this, one of my very last posts, here, is "The EFFICACY of Public Education in America". Efficacy is perhaps my favorite word, and it means whether or not something actually does what it is supposed to do. The best way to measure efficacy is by looking at the results, and I am not talking about test scores, graduation rates, college acceptance rates, or so-called "scholarship" metrics, by which attributes the educational establishment likes to measure itself. What I am talking about is the collective ability of the citizens of our country to function together cohesively for the greater good, and to act, behave, and function as one nation, once the leading nation on this planet. It appears that we have lost this ability to actually be the United States of America, both among ourselves, and before the rest of the world.

Correcting this through our educational system will NOT yield to any more of the same old curricula that we have been recycling and metering out to our kids for about the past 45 years. Common Core is not going to be the answer either, and I believe that the Common Core Concept as currently envisioned may further hasten our demise.

Now, I could ramble on, but in the end, and this is it, the end of my post, I do not have and have been unable to find the answer. But I am smart enough to realize that continuing to do the same things we have been doing in public education will not change anything, not is any positive, meaningful way for our country or our world.

Chris Wendt
Email Chris Wendt

[lilly]

Are you referring to Common Core's goal to promote critical thinking skill or its flawed, politicized execution? I have always believed, since I was a high school student, that the goal of education is to develop the capacity for critical thinking. The rest of the education stats are just a game.

Lack of critical thinking is just one reason we are in the place we are in this election. A Kardashian reality culture and the internet's influence on the state of our "news" also contributes in addition to the usual factors. We have a generation that doesn't know what the five newspapers of record are, much less read them. And you can't even blame it on the young, adults are guilty as well. There is a plethora of social media memes for both parties that aren't fact checked. And my personal pet peeve is blogs/entertainment sites that purport to be "news" that slant, sensationalize and mislead if they are not downright incorrect. People share these away on social media like it's gospel. Quite frankly, it's an embarrassing indictment on the U.S. collectively.

This election has been absolutely awful. I feel obliged to make an informed vote and I will but what's going on in this election makes me sick.

[Chris_Wendt]

Of course, I am referring to the flawed implementation of CC, rather than the perceived (hoped-for) value of its most basic kernel, "critical thinking" skill development..
Yes, I could not agree more that critical thinking, or rather its absence among our populace, is a primary factor in what we have been witnessing in our political system and national discourse about almost anything that is part of any national discussion.

Unfortunately, even the most crucial kernel (to instill critical thinking skills) of the most (theoretically) promising concept (CC) cannot ignore the foundational reality that public education is a state responsibility, and as such should not become the subject or target of Washington politics, or, placed in the clumsy hands of academic fascists such as I believe U.S. Education Secretary John B., King, Jr. to be.

Nice to hear from you, Lilly.

Chris Wendt