If human nature weren’t as it is, I’d be perfectly content with tearing apart America’s educational system, root and branch, and starting over from scratch. Compulsory schooling? Gone! Federalized K-12 standards? Fini! Stafford Loans? Kaput!
But, given the fragility of such deep-seated things, I’m wont to hold back, arguing for cautious reform toward a more prudent position.
I guess that makes me a Burkean. Maybe a sucker. Perhaps both.
Anyhoo, a recent piece in the periodical National Affairs got me reconsidering why our education system is such a mess, and what it means for America’s future in the age of automated labor, eroded institutional authority, Chinese tiger moms, and vast economic anxiety.
In “The Fog of ‘College Readiness,’" Chester E. Finn, Jr., a former assistant U.S. secretary of education for research and improvement, gives a grim diagnosis of how well public schools prepare students for college. Spoiler alert: They don’t.
From the first day of kindergarten, children are told if they go through the rigor of schooling, pass the exams, get good grades, and impress all their instructors, they can matriculate to a university of their choice. Along the way, teachers, from first through twelfth grade, bolster the delusion by padding the path with grade inflation, coddling, inculcating an entitlement mentality, and outright gaming the system.
The fruits for such proactive college preparation? “[O]ur K-12 education system has never gotten more than one-third of young Americans to the ‘college-ready’ level by the end of the 12th grade,” Finn writes, deflating the great expectations of education enthusiasts.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
