State of Education

by Javier Aguirre | WeaponizedNews.Com | February 23, 2015

The current trend in education is to find someone to blame for the inconsistencies in graduate rates, low academic performance rates, and the high incidence of social conflict on today’s high school campuses. To this end, there are multiple strategies being proposed, both for identifying the deficiencies and mitigating the problems. The bottom line, however, is that the proposed solutions are floating around in left field while the issues are defined at home base.

The graduation rate is a prime example of how society measures the academic success of today’s student. While focusing on the numbers of graduates, society tends to overlook the quality of the graduate. Most of the graduates of today are graduating with what is euphemistically known as a “D” or low “C” grade point average, over their four-year stint in today’s high schools. This is the majority of students and including the total population of students in today’s secondary schools. This also includes those ‘honor’ graduates who achieve a 3.0+ gpa during their final rush to the finish. This fact is not taken into consideration by society as society congratulates the student who makes it through school without an attendance deficiency, with a mediocre passing grade, and who for whatever other reason is deemed qualified to be called a graduate.

Take this question into consideration: What is a student? “Student” is the title automatically granted to any child who is enrolled into school on the very first day they are enrolled into kindergarten and carried throughout their, hopefully, 12 years of attendance through school. In actual fact, the child can best be termed an “attendee” or at the very best, an “enrollee.” Herein lies the first erroneous assumption by America’s schools: that a child becomes a ‘student’ simply by signing on the dotted line. This ignorance can be forgiven, given the arrogance of an American society that is based on presumptions such as Manifest Destiny and plausible deniability.

“Student” couldn’t be further from the truth. If we expect these children to live up to social standards and expectations, then we must recognize that the title of “student” should be earned, not arbitrarily granted. The title of ‘student’ should be granted only to those who have achieved a status of professionalism that merits the title, much as Social Workers or Teachers or Psych Techs have earned their titles. The bearer of a title must have the skills, knowledge and ethics to appropriately bear the responsibility of the title. This assumption may seem ludicrous to educators of today’s schools. At one point in time, as president of a classified union of educational employees, I issued a challenge: let every teacher blow up and post their high school transcripts on the wall of the classroom where all students can see them. Then, ask the students to meet or exceed the teacher’s performance in a similar setting. Four teachers rose to the challenge. Why just four, you may ask. The answer is that most high school teachers are asking their students to achieve a level of learning which the teachers themselves failed to achieve. Transparency is the greatest equalizer. This requirement should carry over into the college level, where college professors actually demonstrate that they are not asking their students to achieve a level of learning which they themselves failed to achieve.

Teachers are expected to deliver a level of learning that is also measured by standards that are either politically or financially motivated. Take, for example, the debacle that is known as No Child Left Behind. First of all, it is based on assumptions and declarations that are relatively beyond the reach of society unless society itself changes: culturally, socially, philosophically, and economically. Second of all, it is designed to function in the Land of Oz, totally separate from societal reality. In spite of this, a group of legislators actually believed that the design was feasible and that the outcomes would result in form and structure. The general population of adults actually allowed the debacle to become law, despite the unknown impact and influence it would have on society’s children. When failure became evident and imminent, the blame was placed, first on teachers then on school systems. Failure was measured, not in terms of the stupidity and lack of forethought by those who proposed the legislation, but rather because society did not conform to the laws of the Land of Oz. When the government stepped in, threatening to stop tax-generated funding to tax-funded institutions who did not meet Land of Oz expectations, it was more a threat to conform than it was to improve. As the government continues to fail to remedy what it sees as problems in education, it continues to point the finger of blame not at itself but rather at the entities and persons it has guided erroneously. Government continues to nurture the monster it created for the simple purpose of political expediency.

Government failed to take into consideration some very important factors. First of all, in line with American arrogance, it separated those in government from the general population. It considered those in government “smarter” than the common man. Secondly, it relied on crony-ism, corruption, lobbyists, and friendly consultants to provide the infrastructure of such a program. What it failed to see is that those instituting policy and those on the receiving end come from the same population of high school graduates. While they may not have graduated from the same schools, they are products of the same culturally-defined system of learning. The result is a culturally incompetent design.