“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind,” said Winston Churchill. And judging by the state of education in America, it seems both of those empires could soon crumble. The dysfunction is evident from top to bottom: from Ivy League outposts down to the secondary schools. Both are producing a generation that is ill-informed, illiterate and innumerate. In other words, a generation increasingly ill-suited to function as productive citizens in a democracy.
One might expect, then, that the creation of a raft of new universities and schools focused on doing something different would seem like a fundamental necessity. After all, young people are deserting college in droves, with enrolments down by 15% over the past decade; in the lower grades, it’s common to hear talk of “zombie schools”, the product of more than 20% of pupils being “chronically absent”.
And yet, the emergence of these still-small shoots have terrified the educratic establishment. Some claim the shift in emphasis towards classics and civics, now occurring in places such as Florida’s New College, is “sinister development” by nefarious Right-wingers. Similarly, the teachers’ unions have resisted a number of moves to create charter schools — which increase choice in the public system — because they are part of a “war on schools”.
In some cases, the defence of failure is breathtaking. Blue states such as Illinois have worked to all but eliminate charters, even as the Land of Lincoln boasts 53 schools where not one student can do grade-level math and 30 where none can do so in English. These schools are overwhelmingly in Chicago, where a significant increase in spending per student since 2019 seems to have made no impact.
Yet Chicago’s failures are wholly representative. The most recent National Assessments of Educational Progress found that only 27% of eighth graders are proficient in reading, 20% in math, 22% in geography, and a mere 13% in US History. The Covid lockdowns may have accelerated the deterioration, but scores have continued to decline since the pandemic ended. IQ scores, which had been rising for decades, are now falling even among college students.
More influential here is education’s gradual radicalisation, which has its origins at the top of the food chain. Already in 2018, one study of 51 top-rated colleges found that the proportion of liberals to conservatives was generally at least 8 to 1, and often as high as 70 to 1. Five years later, nearly three in five US professors admitted to self-censoring to avoid offending administrators and students.
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SubscribeThe issue is culture and the state of the nuclear family. Cultures with intact families with parents invested in their child will succeed. No amount of money or alternative education schemes will change it. Just look at how stable and invested Asian and Jewish Americans are in their children. American progressives have undermined stable two parent families for the last 70 years. This is what you get … growing barbarism. We need to return to celebrating and rewarding stable nuclear families.
Test
Oh of course I should have known it would be woke to blame. Why did I even bother reading beyond the headline?
Isn’t educational attainment worst in some of the red states?
Agreed. The decline, at least in public K-12 education long predates the existence of “woke”. In thrift shops and used book stores you can examine old text books. The older ones have far fewer illustrations and much more information.
No.
This has generally been true. For example, Mississippi, a completely Republican-controlled state and the U.S. state with the highest %age Black population, historically performed at the very bottom of national tests.
However, about a decade ago, a Republican governor set out to improve school performance. The major reform was replacing the “whole language” approach to reading with phonics, now labeled “the science of reading.” This actually worked. Mississippi’s test results rose from the very bottom to more or less the middle of the pack among U.S. states. It has been dubbed “the Mississippi Miracle.”
Happily, this is beginning to be noticed. The NY Times has run some stories on how promising “the science of reading” is for improving educational outcomes. So, there is definitely hope for improvement.
But change takes time. Conservatives complained about the “whole language” approach to reading for fifty years–and were routinely ridiculed for being “backward” nostalgics. But finally there is some noticeable movement in this “conservative” direction.
I remember when phonics was new. How it come to be abandoned? Major shame.
The woman who developed the ‘whole learning method’ was an excellent sales person. Google her story. She made a fortune selling her program until recently when it was revealed that it’s a disaster. That teachers couldn’t figure this out sooner doesn’t say much for learning professionals. The return to teaching ‘Phonics’ was necessary and it’s working.
What the hell is phonics?!!!
It is a return to the fact that in most words the individual letters have a sound and that these sounds when sequenced produce the word. The simplest example is, “The cat sat on the mat.” (Yes, “th” is a pair of letters, but so common that it is soon learned.) Pupils having grasped these basics can then progress to the words where letters and groups of letters, have variations in pronunciation.
The problem predates wokism and goes back to the undermine of the nuclear family in the 1960s. It is not exclusive to the Left. You are correct that there are republican areas with poor education, These tend to be areas which are ethnically Ulster Scot. Ie Appalachia. Culture matters. In the English Puritan NE education attainment is higher.
Wokeness is merely the latest in a long list of baleful “progressive” enthusiasms that have harmed American education beginning with John Dewey’s “Progressive Education” which devalued abstract (and thus critical) thought, and was so useless that when the Bolsheviks tried it (it was after all “progressive”) they quickly abandoned it and returned to the educational methods that prevailed under the Tsars. Whole language and look-see in place of phonics, discovery learning as a replacement for, rather than supplement to, memorization of arithmetic facts and drill in the standard algorithms of arithmetic, and other idiocies emanating from colleges of education long predate the capture of those and other institutions by the intellectual idiot children of the Derrida, Foucault and Frankfurt School that we call “the woke”.
Other “progressive” policies that have harmed education also long predate wokeness: the destruction of effective discipline in schools was a left-wing, not a right-wing cause. It was a left-wing judge who turned a poverty program that was originally intended to succor widows and orphans into one which effectively subsidized the non-formation of nuclear families among the poor by paying single mothers a subsidy that would be lost if they married or even cohabitted with their childrens’ father. And that was all before the Left decided that it was racist to pursue Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of people being judged by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin, and that a woman is not an adult female human being, but any human being who feels “she” is a woman, and all of the other foolishness the woke are inflicting on society and the English language.
A lot of this was driven by lazy teachers.
Actually imparting knowledge is a time consuming and difficult task
Many teachers are either not that bright or well-educated themselves.
Look at all of the data on Ed’ Curricula for our colleges and universities. Ed’ majors have the lowest SAT scores and the lowest IQ’s.
Thus, the Ed’ ‘profession’ starts out at the back of the pack. Little wonder that their students inevitably suffer.
.
I didn’t read this to be woke to blame. How did you arrive at that?
It is unpopular to say but societies work by the lower classes imitating the mores of the upper classes. The elite turn to promiscuity, divorce, secularism etc in the sixties has led to the destruction of the nuclear family throughout society. Until the elites regain their morals, there is no hope of the rest of the country regaining theirs. At the moment the signs of that happening are non-existent.
Decadence
The “elite” always did precisely what they liked, and always will, but told others to “abide by the rules”.
Once the ruled realised that, they also decided to do whatever they liked. Of course, many decide that some rules are fine and generally beneficial so try to stick to them.
I don’t believe that to be true. While there were always some wrong’uns in the British upper classes, that was by no means usual. There was a famously high level of self-denial, Christian morality and patriotism which lasted well into the 1960s. It was a character exemplified by our beloved late Queen.
A good example of the change in attitudes of the upper class is seen by comparing the King with his uncle Edward VIII. One had to abdicate for wanting to marry a divorcee, one became king despite divorcing his own wife (after a widely known, long-standing affair with a married woman).
When the Royal Family can divorce with impunity, why would the lower orders not consider it to be fine too?
Didn’t Henry VIII start all that? The high morals of the British upper crust were reserved for each other.. they generally treated their own poor and all foreigners appallingly.
I agree partly but would suggest the higher moral standards of the elites were often a
façade, necessary to justify their greed by showing how deserving they were.
But yes, if perception does it, fine; let’s have at least the pretence of decency by the elites. They could start by paying their fair share of taxes and paying their workers a living wage.
I think the upper classes had a bit more to lose
I think moral standards, especially when they are pointedly announced or publicly “performed”, are often a facade (how do you get the apercu “c”?) whatever the status of the performers. But as you suggest, if elites (& common folk) don’t even feel pressure to pay lip service to the standards anymore, that’s worse.
Thumbs up. I’m not in full agreement with you very often, but it’s good to see you back in the fray, Mr. O’Mahony.
That wasn’t enough. The Federal government subsidized single parent households among the poor with a benefit package that was lost if there was a father in the household.
I’ve read the Communist Manifesto of 1848 by Marx and Engel’s.
In it they describe the traditional nuclear family as ‘child abuse’ and demand that children are ‘educated’ by the socialist state. They’ve never hidden their aim of undermining the family and wresting children from their parents.
In many areas of the west this has been achieved, with predictably bad outcomes.
The most amazing thing about the Progressive March through the Institutions is how it increases Inequality. The whole point of Progressivism is resolving inequality through “equitable redistribution of outcomes.”
The Cobra Effect is when the solution, here Equity, actually exacerbates the underlying problem (disparities) because it creates an incentive to lower the standards in order to hit “target goals.” Equity sets up minority students for failure through the soft bigotry of low expectations.
I see no way out of this problem other than progressives admitting their entire vision was a mistake and relegating themselves back to the margins of Academia. Fat chance (or should I say higher weighted chance) of that happening.
Come on T Bone – they are succeeding, that is the plan.
Another part of the plan is to destroy Middle Class and Skilled Working Class. Those two groups traditionally have enough money they do not have to sell out themselves to the politicians. They are moral, hard working, patriotic to a degree, they have the luxury of voting for the best of the Nation both for their own self interest, and for the Societies interest.
Break them so they become ‘Clients’ of the State – and you own them. Just wait to see how this is going to be done over the next decade. The Elites have a new weapon – one coming on fast, AI and other tech.
You have a few years to vote a change and then it is too late if you vote more of the same. MAGA, and hopefully soon MBGA, it is the only hope for the world.
This is happening in the Netherlands. Anyone who saved enough for a second home is now being forced to sell it by a slew of contradictory municipal and government policies. Home owners who leave a house empty for longer than six months risk receiving five-figure fines. However, with the new caps on rents, renting properties out has also become extremely hazardous. There is a very real risk that tenants can remain indefinitely on a property and pay a rent price that is substantially much lower than the landlord’s expenses. The logic behind this is that there will be more affordable housing, but the opposite is proving true. The rental market is drying up as properties sell up. Any leftover social housing tends to go toward immigrant families with children rather than Dutch students or professionals. The Dutch people don’t stand a chance. Their government is either so out-of-touch or willfully ignorant of what they are doing to their country. It is no wonder that politicians like Geert Wilders are growing in popularity.
Genuine question, how would that lead to a shortage of rentals? Surely if the landlord is selling up then the house has either been bought by another landlord, or by somebody who was previously renting, therefore the overall numbers remain unchanged?
It would take a few years for to show up for sure, but what happens is that old properties simply don’t get refurbished or replaced. If it is no longer profitable to make the investment in rental housing, then rental housing doesn’t get built.
So it’s a problem of lack of houses being built? That’s not a problem unique to the Dutch
New housing is being built, but unfortunately most of it is not affordable for the average Dutch wage-earner, hence the housing shortage. The Dutch working- and middle-class are being driven out, to be replaced by very high-earning professionals and benefit-seeking immigrants. This pattern is being repeated in other major European cities.
The result of this is and will be growing economic inequality and a growing homeless population, much like that seen in American cities. Eventually they become unlivable and the productive people move out like we now see in big cities such as San Francisco and New York.
So again, it’s not the tenancy laws that are creating the problems, it’s the influx of people pushing up prices, and large investment companies outbidding families
Vulture funds and giant hedge fu ds are buying housing at an alarming rate. All part of the “own nothing and you will be happy” agenda. The happy few will own everything, and “clients” and “serfs” will do as they are told. Breaking the middle class is happening apace but like a frog boiling….slowly. we will wake up when it’s too late.
So again, how does that cause a shortage of rentals? The houses are still there, they’re simply owned by a different landlord
Houses are removed from the rental sector when they become owner occupied.
But so is the person who was previously renting. Say you have 10 houses, and 10 families renting. A landlord decides to sell one house, which will either be bought by another landlord (in which case it’s still 10 house and 10 renting) or by somebody previously renting in which case you now have 9 houses but only 9 families need a rental. Unless you’re demolishing the house when you sell it then whoever owns it makes no difference at all to the housing stock
No, it doesn’t work that way. There is always a fresh crop of people who want to rent: students, graduates, professionals, divorcees, immigrants. There is an endless supply of renters, but a very finite supply of rental properties.
In the Netherlands, renters enjoy too much power. Years ago the Dutch government tried to open up more rentals by imposing a two-year limit to how long renters could temporarily rent. This meant that after two-years, renters had full rights to a property and, in theory, a landlord could never get rid of them. Rather than creating security for renters, however, this rule had the adverse effect of making landlords evict tenants every two years in order to bring in new ones. Each time they did this rent prices went up to match inflation and rising costs. As you see, because of government intervention, tenants living circumstances became even more precarious.
The Dutch government has now stopped the two-year contracts and passed a law that all rental contracts will be permanent at start and rent prices will be capped at around 800 euros. This may change again soon as the government keeps changing the rules from year to year. Any landlords breaking these rules, even retroactively, will face very stiff financial penalties. No-one with a brain is going to rent out properties under these circumstances and that also includes housing corporations. The only people who will continue to rent out are those with no scruples, who don’t care about breaking rules or risking fines – mostly landlords who live abroad. These kinds of landlords are also notorious for letting out derelict and decrepit properties.
The only rentals exempt to these rules are those that are deemed luxury apartments. These are very expensive apartments usually in exclusive locations, most of which are owned by the Dutch royal family or by companies such as Sotheby’s.
Net Zero policies and green regulations have also made house construction very expensive. This means that construction companies will focus more on luxury living than affordable living as these will have greater ROI.
The Dutch government is full of highly educated, naively idealistic, self-righteous people. Unfortunately, hardly any of them have a shred of pragmatism or common sense. The country is facing unprecedented levels of emigration as bright native Dutch people leave for sunnier and friendlier shores. Those left behind or unable to leave are angry and frustrated with their politicians hence the popularity of Geert Wilders.
So it’s a case of not enough houses being built to cope with the increase in population? The tenancy laws are irrelevant because even if the landlords hadn’t sold those properties you’d still have a shortage
Who is going to build the new houses if nobody is willing to buy them at a price to make it worthwhile. Presumably most tenants will not be able to afford to buy them or they wouldn’t be tenants. If potential landlords cannot make enough profit through rental income to justify the cost they will not buy them. You will be reliant on existing owners renewing if they can afford to as existing stock gradually crumbles or converts to commercial property. The incoming immigrant numbers are not likely to be a significant customers, mostly adding to the demand on existing rental stock. It will fall upon the tax payer to decide how much they wish to contribute to the cost of a loss making building enterprise as they deal with the various other difficulties of over burdened existing services and infrastructure.
Landlords’ expenses exceed the rental income?? ..are you joking? ..at today’s rent levels? Pull the other one!
And you don’t take into account capital gain? Even if a landlord only broke even on rent-v-expenses (impossible) he’d still make a killing on capital gain such is the inflation on house prices.. far, far more than deposit rates in any bank! Usually far more than investment rates too.
You only get Capital gains if you sell a property. You’re talking about unrealized gains.
The question you have to ask is would the new landlord charge a cheaper rate for the existing tenants. Of course not because housing costs keep rising. We’re in a cycle of government interference that just continuously increases prices in private markets.
The Marxist notion that all private landlords=bad and all tenants=good drives a false reaction and ignores how prices function in the real world.
The new rent caps are way below landlord’s expenses. For example, an apartment in the center of Amsterdam that is not considered to be a luxury residence, cannot be rented for higher than c. 800 euros. It’s simply not good economics to rent out a property under these circumstances. As a result, properties are being sold off and bought either by the very wealthy or by housing corporations, thus negating the very reason these arbitrary rent caps were imposed in the first place.
So the property is still there, and being used as a rental to house a family. So why is it causing a shortage?
There is no shortage of houses, for sale or for rent, if you have the money. Most people, however, are not in a position to spend 3000 euros or more on rent each month. I should add that the Dutch government tells landlords if their properties fall under luxury housing or social housing. It is not up to individual landlords. If a landlord is told that his properties fall under social renting, he/she will very likely sell when their current tenants leave rather than continue to let out. No-one can afford to rent out indefinitely and at a loss.
Charter schools will solve a lot of problems. Education dollars follow the student. Many of these schools, if not all, do not hire unionized teachers. And it’s the unions at the root of the problem. We have a major issue with public service unions across the west, and teacher unions are the worst.
That’s certainly true in the UK. The progressives abolished Grammar Schools for being ‘elitist’. In truth, they were the only ladder a clever working class boy or girl could use to climb into the higher classes.
We used to have PMs like Harold Wilson, Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher who rose that way.
Now we get Johnson and Cameron (Eton), Blair (Fettes College) or Sunak (Winchester)
See the pattern?
I retired from teaching high school English in 2018. This might surprise some Unherd readers, but a lot California is actually red. I taught in a very red district and it was the Republican (Christian) teachers who did the indoctrination, especially the social studies department. One government teacher said Obama was “a f+++++g idiot” at least 10 times per period for eight years. (My weary seniors told me.) Another told his students that my husband and I were terrorist sympathizers because we were against the Iraq war. We complained. Anyway, California is a vast state with many different cultures. But I will defend it, even as the woke takeover irritates me. For example, the Los Angeles school district has students that speak 54 different languages. How do you work with that? I would get a 17-year-old student who had been in the country for one week and couldn’t speak English. What was I supposed to do with them? I think there are many problems in education now—dumbing down is a big one—but I think the author offers few real life solutions. Some charter schools are great, but many of them are drill and kill schools that exist for high test scores. Some of the for profit ones turn out to be scams. I could write a book on this very complicated problem and what I would do—destroy all cell phones—but turning it into a “who is indoctrinating our children “ problem will get us nowhere.
Like much of the U.S., I think it’s basically the major cities that are blue and everything else is red.
There’s no doubt teachers face unprecedented pressures and obstacles to actual teaching, but clearly the status quo is an utter failure. Students are much better off in a drill and kill school than what passes for public education today.
If you throw most college and university towns–of whatever size–into the blue pile, you’re close to correct.
Destroying all cell phones is a knee-jerk reaction. Perhaps all cell phones in school. I have so much respect for teaching as a profession and I sympathize with the language problem, it sounds like a nightmare.
I heard a great story: A teacher with that sort of problem decided to break her class up into study groups; making sure that no two kids in any one group had the same native language. English was their only hope when they needed to communicate with their class-mates. They figured it out for themselves real fast.
For example, the Los Angeles school district has students that speak 54 different languages.
How did NYC, Chicago, Cleveland, etc deal with that in the 1920’s or in the 1950’s? They taught in English and the kids adapted. It’s the parents that object and expect coddling.
I’m concerned by the use of the phrase “drill and kill”. These were the exact words used by teachers and administrators in my children’s public school when I asked why they were not memorizing multiplication tables.
Teachers don’t like memorization exercises because they don’t want to be held accountable for failure. Instead of a student learning 8 x 9 = 72, they are asked how they feel about the numbers 8 and 9.
We moved to a private Christian school shortly thereafter where 8 x 9 = 72 whether you felt good about it or not.
“Instead of a student learning 8 x 9 = 72, they are asked how they feel about the numbers 8 and 9”.
Too close to the truth!
I mostly teach the other “2 Rs” but I have a 10-year-old ‘rithmetic tutee who hasn’t learned her multiplication tables and won’t make much of an effort to do so. I unapologetically “drill them in” in the remaining available time and try to get her to recognize their indispensable importance.
Her mother insists on a prep-for-the-next-test approach but she and the student’s regular teacher seem to do nothing about her core computational deficits. I’m trying, with slight progress after several sessions, but the kid lacks self-confidence & discipline, with plenty of sulky attitude. Argh!
Amen. Indoctrination and blockheadedness of approach is far from unidirectional.
Many outsiders don’t realize how vast and varied California is. Many of the children I tutor here in the Silicon Valley “region” of the state, have parents from India or China, or were born there themselves. Too often, the approach from age 6 or so onward–both at the private elementary and middle schools they attend and in the home–is on relentless prep for elite college admission, sometimes in a way that makes that less likely to work out.
For example, one intelligent-but-lazy eight-year of Sikh parentage has a mother who demands that he only focus on next week’s English quiz, drilling and re-reviewing whether he needs it or not. Nothing else, in 3rd grade! I slip him other instruction here and there but it is frustrating; the student needs to improve his vocabulary and overall reading comprehension, not “game” the quizzes. And this is a kid who’s having a great deal of money invested–though with a shortage of sensible focus–in both his daily schooling and tutoring with “Mr. AJ” and others. Let’s not even get into public school students (like I was) whose parents are not well-educated themselves (semi-true of my own folks)–a smaller percentage of the students I’ve encountered.
Thanks for the opportunity to vent about this.
LA school district has students speaking 54 different languages. Therein lies some of the problem. That problem shouldn’t exist. Public schools funded by US citizens should teach in English, period. If wealthy philanthropists want to educate Spanish speaking kids, let them finance Spanish speaking schools. So, based on your testimony, Republican teachers in red-leaning parts of CA are the cause of failure and progressive-run LA-Bay Area schools are producing good results? Sorry, but that begs credulity. Finally, Obama is a f#&%ing idiot, so where was the teacher wrong?
If only all our kids could all be taught by level-headed, goodhearted guys like you.
I cannot believe it – what is basically the most pressing and hidden story in the West finally gets the blase gaze of Unherd’s attention.
Throughout the Covid years it was totally apparent that the Teaching Unions are actively out to destroy any children they have power over. Weird and twisted – but I have watched Teaching Unions working this psychotic plan for decades. Naturally the Administrators are actually responsible as they work together with the Unions to further this goal.. Naturally any government overseeing education is also complicit – much as the Bio-Pharma Industry captured all regulators, Doctors, MSM and so far – so the ”Education Industry” is 100% captured by the postmodernist Globalist agenda, or sheer evil has captured them all. Imagine – they closed schools although young do not suffer from covid – neither do teachers as much as other jobs – seemingly their are less susceptible. All to ”save” an older demographics who are past the average lifespan in age. Monstrous!!!!!!!!!! Destroyed or Harmed a generation of the children.
5th generational War. That is the now state of war – it is from the inside, not Kinetic, but lawfare against the society in order to destroy it. Destroy Morals and Ethics, the sense of fairness, destroy the understanding that rights only work when tied to responsibilities. Break the Family – get young to not marry, to not even be bisexual if possible. Create mental illness (phones, entertainment Industry, the ‘Health departments, vax), Increase Crime, increase anti-social behavior, import a vast number of unsuitable people, cause them to not absorb in the native culture to fragment society. Destroy Religion! Destroy Patriotism.
Remove Enlightenment Liberalism (the writers of the USA Constitution, say) and replace the philosophy with Postmodernism, which is basically Satan’s creed. Grow debt past the ability to pay to service it, award entitlements to the public sure to bankrupt the nation as they have to be borrowed to pay them out – then have to borrow to ‘service’ that debt’s interest payments, which is called a ‘Doom Loop’, borrowing to pay interest on debt….. Make home ownership unaffordable to young so they do not have Families. Basically do everything the Unipartys if all Western Nations do – abetted and run by their ‘Deep States’ and Globalist Masters. Keep ‘Forever Wars” burning to justify a secret Police state, the ‘Security Services’ are now watching You, their resources turned inward..
But enough listing – I am sure you know 100 more insane things being done – and even enforced, to destroy us all. (Kneeling?) drugs, homelessness, just endless.
At the hart of it all is to destroy Enlightenment and Classical Education. One which has Good and Evil – not ‘correct and incorrect. The people are utterly powerless once you replace that with Postmodernism Liberalism. No Morals, No Ethics, nothing of Ultimate importance.
Aristitle ”
‘Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man’
haha you Liberal Lefties – look on your works – you have destroyed all which was great and good, and replace it with a woke nightmare.
These topics have been covered extensively by Unherd.
I think you need to relax a bit sunshine. Switch the computer off for a few days and go for a pint, chat to somebody in real life
That’s the ticket. Simon surely can’t really believe that the ‘Teaching Unions are actively out to destroy..children..’? They just have a fundamental difference of opinion, from him and many of us, about what is good for children, and they have the power (because they are actually putting in the hours in the teaching business) to get their opinion put into action. Everybody calm down.
Teachers’ unions are not actively trying to destroy children. They have good intentions – but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
They are ignorant/blind to the results of their intentions, intentionally avoiding any true measures of their performance, hence the lowering of standards, ridding of the SAT, and replacement with ‘feel good’ racial and social measures. They believe that more money solves all problems. But problems of behavior, culture, and respect are NOT subject to monetary improvement.
We need a 2020’s “To Sir, With Love”
Teachers unions are interested in teachers – nothing else. If the interests of teachers happen to align with students, then all good. If they do not align, teachers will throw students under the bus.
It depends what we mean by ‘destroy children’. If we mean we are not giving them a good education, then sure we are. The whole process is cyclic, partial educated children, became partial educated teachers who teach a even more dumbed down curricula.
…not sure if your intent was to signal that more “sirs” in schools and colleges would be a good thing Terry. But I would suggest their significant absence from teaching is a major factor in education’s fall from grace. I agree that the profession’s nominal intentions are ‘good’ but the unintended consequences of the gender imbalance is that it has hastened the state assuming [s]mothering proclivities in education as in other spheres.
“Teaching unions” are actively out to… benefit teachers. That’s literally their stated raison d’être. Like all public sector unions, the unions get away with it because the “consumer” has basically nowhere to go when they are dissatisfied. So you end up with a workforce that faces no competitive pressures. What would one expect to happen in such a situation?
It’s not that unions want to destroy students, but they have no incentives (other than rainbows, unicorns and ‘noble intentions’) to sacrifice themselves to benefit the “consumer.” Individual teachers might, of course, but systemic incentives, bargaining processes, procedural remedies, etc. are all set up to insulate teachers from the repercussions of their failures.
This is basic Public Choice Theory and has been well understood and articulated for decades. And yet you still get people conflating the good intentions of an individual teacher with the collective bargaining outcome of teachers unions.
PS. Having said all that… the failure of our schools has very little to do with the teachers unions, and everything to do with the increase in divorce and single-parent homes. The data is clear – and the rationale completely intuitive anyhow – that students from single-parent homes do much worse in school (and in life) than students in homes with a biological mother and father. It ain’t complicated folks: kids needs parents… way more than they need teachers.
Or as the Catholic church says “Give me the children until they are seven and I will show you people brain-washed for life”.
I think with the Catholic Church it was simply “Give me the children until they are seven”
After that the priest wasn’t interested
Ha-de-ha! ( Anyway, I thought “Love is love”? ) At least in Catholic circles the media considers pedophilia a disqualifying act.
It was the Jesuits
True! Happy, educated, fulfilled, prosperous, outward-looking, and choosing to believe some remarkably effective life-affirming maxims. Brain-washed if you say so :-D.
The article says that Catholic schools in the US achieve better academic results than their secular equivalents, and the same is true in the UK. Is this the result of brainwashing?
ARISTOTLE.
Charter schools are a rort, at least in NZ anyway. They want the freedom to run as a private school but without putting their hand in their pocket or carrying the risk of finding funding to do so. It’s just another example of privatising the profit and socialising the risk.
Funding should follow the student. That will create a marketplace with schools competing for those dollars. Charter schools may have issues, but surely anything is better than public schools at this point.
We complain about grade inflation now with universities dumbing down in order to attract more high paying foreign students, wouldn’t your solution simply create a similar situation with schools?
No, because the grammar and high schools are not extremely high priced places – they are paid with local tax dollars and some from the individual state. Foreign students are not flocking to the US for high school.
The problem in the US is that government funding comes with government mandates. Christian schools and colleges are very badly funded, largely because their belief system makes them ineligible to receive government funding.
If they’re not going to teach the curriculum why should they receive government funding? If you didn’t do what your boss asked of you would you expect him to keep paying you? It’s not as if the church is short of money anyway.
This isn’t to say I think the curriculum isn’t in need of reform, but that’s a job for our elected officials to decide. If a majority don’t like what’s being taught they can elect somebody who promises to change it, but if you want to receive taxpayer money then you have to teach what they want you to teach
Churches in the rural south tend to be very poor. Many of their donations go toward low- or zero income families, pot roast gatherings, and children’s activities. Unfortunately, many people associate churches with angry old men ranting at their congregations about the Jews and the queers. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is mostly a media distortion intended to divorce people from a common spirituality.
If the church wants to seperate children from mainstream education then they should fund it, the same as any other special interest group. I’m not anti church but ultimately it needs to stand on its own two feet. If not enough people want to financially support it then tough luck, it’s not the taxpayers job to pay for it
Good.
The author misunderstands what Churchill meant. The slightly less abridged quote is “Such plans offer far better prizes than taking away other people’s provinces or lands or grinding them down in exploitation… The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”
Churchill was speaking from the perspective of an empire builder. Where once he and his fellow ruling class controlled land and the labour of people for profit, now he saw science allowing them to control the minds of the people for profit. Not an empire made from your freely offered mind, but an empire conquering your mind for their benefit but without the vast expense of an occupying force. The same old divide and conquer, but we would occupy ourselves.
An empire of the mind as talked about by Churchill does not need a great education system for the masses. It needs some very well educated people, and a mass of people educated to consume the products of the empire. Imperial preference replaced by behaviourally controlled consumer preference. Such a future society would be a lot like the empire and patrician order Churchill was part of and wanted to preserve.
Churchill began working on variants of the quote in the late 30s, and hit upon the magic one we now know in 1943. He was influenced by Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and by the wartime’s great industrialists and “boffins” that he met after becoming PM in 1940.
With the less abridged quote and an understanding of Churchill’s motivations, the present trajectory of our education systems (and the new divisions they inculcate in the minds of our children) makes perfect sense.
Well, Clover, it seems you adhere to the old Education = Indoctrination trope. A handy and adaptable trope that works for both Left and Right. To be educated then is to fall under the exploitive control of empire-builders determined to control the masses for their own selfish ends. Anything we learn can be used by them to turn a tidy profit.
There is only one way to escape from this deadly trap. Ignoramuses of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but their exploitive knowledge!
Or maybe you have a better idea – but you prefer to keep schtum.
Where did I write or imply education equals indoctrination?
I implied poor education permits indoctrination, and this is self-evidently true. The UK teaching profession oversee a well-funded system that is more radical than ever and yet somehow manages to churn out ever fewer students capable of good reading and writing. A basic literacy rate of 99% (itself falling) masks the fact that 1 in 6 (16.4% / 7.1 million people) adults in England alone have very poor literacy skills (a figure worse than when King George VI sat on the throne nearly a century ago) and school leavers over the last 20 years have fuelled this decline.
Ironically, in a system divided between good education and bad education, even good education can become indoctrination. Being reserved for a privileged few, access to a good education becomes a tool for conformance, and if that is the case then only the wisdom and mores of the gatekeepers stands in the way of using education for indoctrination.
The only way to avoid empires of anyone – mind, body or soul – is the emancipation of citizens through good universal secular education delivered by a diverse number of bodies and organisations. Sure, not everyone will care for the education, and there will still be disparities, but a large number of ordinary well educated people is needed to keep rulers in check. And that is before we mention the civilisational good that comes from social mobility.
You might have a look at the list of autodidact Nobelists.
A minority Ms Barrows. Not enough self-taught geniuses to keep the wheels of industry and commerce turning. Anyway, such work is sure to be beneath those lofty minds.
Sorry to sound a heretical note among the august company of UnHerd’s below-the-line professors but the developed world needs more competent mediocrities and solid reliable conformists and not the legions of independent thinkers the educated classes claim to wish for (but would actually resent).
By the way, think how much better things would be if Roger Hallam had taken his farming failure like a man and just had another go at it. Instead he opted for the standout role of prophet of doom with a world-changing cause. Instead of being a reliable asset (albeit a conformist) he becomes a public nuisance.
Given the state of universities and their leadership, it looks to me like students and faculty alike have been “educated” into imbecility.
Winston Spencer Churchill KG was the greatest disaster ever to befall this once renowned country in the 20th century. He should be consigned to the sin-bin of history.
I wouldn’t go that far. Like all men, he had biases and self-interests but at least he wasn’t shy about them. It was his biases and self-interests that worked in European civilisation’s favour and kept Britain in the war against Germany when the rest of the UK’s elite had all but given up.
As repugnant as you might have found him, you at least knew what the man stood for. Far more dangerous are the blank canvas men who make a pretence at impartiality and hide the motivations of their sponsors. This is the disaster that has played out in Western politics and leaves us where we are today: uncertain of what our leaders stand for and distrustful of where they are taking us.
Throughout his long Parliamentary life WSC made no secret of the fact that the ONLY thing that really mattered was himself.
It comes as no surprise that one Boris Johnson has taken him as his alter ego.
Give me an Attlee or a Bevin any day.
That may well be true about BJ, but at least he got us out of that damned EU, and perhaps it took someone with such an ego to take on the establishment blob with any chance of success. That was also, of course, his downfall.
Yes, agreed.
“Every cloud has a silver lining”, and even WSC commanded an Infantry Battalion on the Western Front for six months in 1916.
I don’t think that bit about the elites giving up is true.
It’s clear from Simon Newman’s ‘March 1939 : The British Guarantee to Poland’ that Britain wanted the war, and as much as 1940 brought huge setbacks, it seems to me that giving up couldn’t have been part of it.
It was necessary to hold on, and the elites knew that.
I think the elite’s minds were set on a course of keeping out of man-on-man confrontation with the Germans, something that had been envisioned in 1938-39, while trying to entangle the Soviet Union and/or the USA as quickly as possible.
While the speedy collapse of France was a shock, the idea that even this would make them give up is still inconsistent with the course they’d set out on in starting the war in the first place.
When you determine that you must remain at the top table, and that war -right now, in 1939, before Germany gets too strong – is the only way for you to do that, then you pitch in and hold on for dear life.
It’s clear given the debates at many levels among diplomats, MPs and the civil service, and taking into account the collaboration of newspaper owners, the markets and to a lesser extent, captains of industry, this can be understood as the longterm aim of ‘the elite’.
The big question for most unheard readers is surely: how do we learn from America and reverse the trend here? I work in the field of Psychology at a British University, and although I work exclusively in research, I know my teaching colleagues can not teach students about sex differences in relation to personality and behaviour. I’m sure this isn’t a unique example of how our universities are also gradually disintegrating. The proliference of AI also means that students no longer have to think to complete much of their coursework.
Do you think improvements in AI will eventually render coursework obsolete, as it will be impossible to tell what was written by the student? Or will all coursework have to be done under supervision to prevent cheating?
Get rid of coursework and go back to exams. Makes the attainment gap between boys and girls invert.
The impact of coursework on attainment dependent on student characteristics (publishing.service.gov.uk)
Sort of implies there is some cheating or “help” going on with girls’ coursework.
It’s not a bug, Joel, it’s a feature. A well educated populace is not in the interests of the state. Which is why the state should have no direct control over education beyond the provision of vouchers.
Wow, that linked Time article: “sinister development” is an absolute masterclass in gaslighting!
It’s the reason I can’t bring myself to follow much legacy media any more. The blatant lying and gaslighting are not good for my blood pressure.
Quote from a British Governer General in Ireland to the Head of the Catholic church at a meeting after Britain in order
To curtail a growing rebellion fueled mainly by Catholics joining the Rebels
Due to in main being seriously discriminated against
But Irish immigrants to The USA a good few of whom had become very successful and rich were dispatching money and arms to Irish Rebels and Britain was having to deal with Indian insurection without sufficient
Troops to deal with both Ireland and India hence the deal with the Irish Catholics
And in the Meeting the Governor general
Imparted to the Head of Catholic Church
” Now you got what you sought , here is the real deal It’s your job to keep them ignorant and my job to keep them down ”
And that only too well how education is going now in USA & UK
“IQ scores, which had been rising for decades, are now falling even among college students.”
This really doesn’t belong in an article that’s about education. IQ is basically fixed by the time you are 6 years old, and is about 80% heritable. It’s completely obvious why the average IQ is falling in the USA, but nobody can say it out loud.
Drugs? Lead in paint? Teenage mothers giving birth without adequate nutrition and development? Immigration of particular races? What is it?
I will call it demographic change.
Ask any black Conservative will.mention what the author of this article fails to say, that race plays a big part in the inderperformance. The stats mentioned in Chicago are all.black majority school districts. Lazy unmotivated teachers, lazy
or absent parents and all.powerful teachers unions who have immense political power andnthebmaintaining of thisnpower is their primary .goal All this andnthen sof bigotry of low expectations combined are the perfect storm.for black under achievement. Nobody seems to care that thousands of black children can barely read or write. The priority for these interest groups andnrace baiters is that these children get into elite universities by hook or by crook.
>Nobody seems to care that thousands of black children can barely read or write.
But they know how to start fires, and they will be reliable Democrat voters.
roughly half of all major corporations are now eliminating college degrees as a perquisite for hiring.
Surely you meant “prerequisite”.
While I agree American education is in a terrible state, the author has mashed together a number of ‘talking points’ that aren’t well examined.
For example, he says “soaring cost” is a clear factor in the educational system becoming “more elitist.” This is exactly backwards… “soaring cost” is an effect of the system becoming less elitist, not the cause of it becoming more elitist.
The soaring costs arise from the federal govt creating cheap loans to encourage lower-income Americans to attend college. This dramatically increased higher education demand – and simultaneously gave colleges incentives to offer ever more lavish non-academic offerings (new dorms, new food courts, new emotional support administrators, etc.) as they tried to compete for all those new students. The price of college went up dramatically because demand for college increased dramatically, and was subsidized by cheap money.
The author should be particularly ashamed for claiming that “soaring costs” account for the fact that “Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and Yale collectively enrol more students from households in the top 1% of income distribution than from households in the bottom 60%.” The author is surely aware that those schools are desperate to find well-qualified poor kids to admit, and all of those schools (as well as many others) leap at the opportunity to give well-qualified poor kids full scholarships to get them into school. Even most ‘middle income’ students who enter the top schools receive significant financial assistance packages. It’s the top 1% who pay full freight.
No, the reason those schools enroll so few poor kids is because intellectual talent in the US is not evenly distributed across the income scales. In a knowledge economy, why would this be surprising?
No idea what this guy is talking about. All these kids got their participation trophies at regular intervals all through elementary and secondary school. I’m sure they must be the brightest young people ever – or so they tell us.
Interesting parallel that progressivism is the ideology of the elite and America looks more and more like a plutocracy.
Though when I was in the States in the 1990″s, the children of poor inner-city African American and Caribbean families were being taught Critical Race Theory in a far more virulent form than is now taught mainstream. But that just shows again how quack-Marxism infiltrates upward into a weak and decaying elite.
While not a teacher, I have many school teachers and counselors and administrators in my practice, worn out, dispirited, and tittering on the brink of resigning. As to what factors are hampering their ability to educate, they list the escalating disrespect and disruptions in the classroom, the volumes of children leaving the classroom for ‘mental health’ issues, the neutering of costs and consequences for misconduct, the interference from overly protective and coddling parents, and the mainstreaming of ‘neuro-diverse’ children whose behaviors and cognitive differences strain resources. And, oh yes, the impact of using smart phones and social media, not just in the schools, but also in the home, is making children become less literate and less social, more distractible and more drained.
I left teaching last year and can’t imagine myself ever returning. Being a teacher these days is an exercise in sado-masochism.
When you say practice, do you mean talk therapy or medicine, or both? It sounds as though you are a counselor or psychiatrist. Just curious.
Do you notice any encouraging or at least less-dispiriting models too, a few patients who are handling similar stresses well, at least compared to the norm?
At long last, people have started seeing themselves as consumers of govt services instead of just taxpayers who fund it all. And the consumer is not pleased with the quality of what he/she is paying for. The reaction from the educrats highlights the difference between the private and public sectors: the latter has never had to care about the customer; the former cannot survive without doing so.
Of course, the establishment is attacking the messenger. That’s all it knows to do. When you live in a bubble that is free of pesky things like accountability, you can luxuriate in the aroma of your intellectual flatulence. The problem is never you; it’s those rubes and hayseeds who cannot fathom your brilliance.
America is getting stupider by design. The three Rs have been supplanted by thing irrelevant to actual education. The goal is no longer to create citizens, but rather, activists. The “graduates,” be they barely literate or somewhat cognitive but entitled, are just one more instance of adults failing the young people in their care.
…destruction of nuclear family… wokeness… on and on. How about this idea? Ask yourself what do you believe and why do we believe it? Get that firmly settled in your heart and it’s unlikely you’re going to devote a lot of energy seeking affirmation from others. In the case of the nuclear family, is it for others to decide for you or your spouse what constitutes the worth of a nuclear family for yourselves??? Or are you more inclined to put your trust in others to “certify” what choices that you make? If K-12 public education is content to spit out functionally illiterate graduates (see Chicago, NYC, Baltimore public schools), parents will seek out alternatives and free-entreprise/entrepreneurs will fill the gap with an education that actually matters. I don’t imagine the arm flailing emotional tirades of the blithering idiots of the public education unions are going to carry much weight when they’re so invested in the “identity olympics” and intensely arguing sexually explicit adult content is tantamount to “book banning.” When parents stop giving a flip about seeking a collective approval from others, then things might start turning around… or we can continue this dysfunctional absurdity of raising functional illiterates who are emotionally fragile “trip wires” waiting to go off. And parents… stop giving a damn whether you’ve got your kids approval… raise ’em, protect them, educate them… and when they’re in their 20’s you’ll have something you treasure far more than what job title you have.
I was born to a middle-class couple in 1946 in St. Paul, Minnesota. When I completed elementary school, I had mastered algebra, could write a coherent 500-word essay, had a solid understanding of US history and the US Constitution, I had read a good number of the classics of western literature, understood the basics of biology, chemistry and the physical sciences.
So what, right? The so what is that I was a grade C to occasional B student with a 500 SAT scores. I was turned down by every private university I applied to.
When I entered college, it was it was public university with 25,000+ students. The cost of tuition was $10 per credit. Most of my classes were held in auditoriums with 1200 other students. I graduated on-time with a 2.5 GPA.
I went into the workplace, corporate life. I was able to succeed, achieve executive status, became reasonably wealthy and retired comfortably at age 60. An average kid, from an average family, with an average education.
Today many employers find their recent college graduates come to the the workforce without basic reading, writing and arithmetic skills.
There is a simple explanation for this. This is collective failure. Local school boards, teacher’s unions, politicians, community leaders, complacent parents and wannabe globalist corporate America all own the blame. There are exceptions but not enough to make a difference. The details are easily found, though few or none of these perpetrators accept responsibility.
But there no doubt. This is a Made-In-America problem. We baby-boomers allowed it. It will be up to our children and grandchildren to resolve it.
For details go to: https://worldtop20.org/worldbesteducationsystem/
So the “educratic establishment” is terrified. That’s good news.
I’m putting my hopes on the flood of immigrants who want to live and work to build a good life. My parents did it in the 1920s along with thousands more. https://citizenpath.com/immigrant-contributions/
Your parents did it when there was no welfare state for immigrants to plug into. They had to learn the language, find work, and become self-sufficient, which is hardly the case today.
Poorly-educated Teachers result in dumber students which results in lower educational standards and even more poorly-educated teachers ad infinitum. Unions just prevent the downward spiral from ever being resolved.
How would scrapping the unions help matters? Most countries already have a shortage of teachers, so how is scrapping the unions (and seemingly worsening working conditions) help to upskill and retain teachers?
‘The empires of the future are the empires of the mind,” said Winston Churchill. And judging by the state of education in America, it seems both of those empires could soon crumble.’
The statistics in this article are frightening.
Would this be why Nuland can’t count her bullets, Mrs Debtfire of the federal reserve does not understand economic responsibility and biden can’t string a sentence together?
More people with lower IQs cannot be helping things.
Higher education in the US operates like a scam. Colleges are overpriced and all they mostly do is produce glorified secretaries steeped in Woke ideology. Many students and faculty mistake Critical Theory for Critical Thinking, not realizing that the two are poles apart. The result of this is a generation of narrow-minded people who believe that, because they spent so much money on an education, they must be incredibly intelligent.
Moreover, there is an added moral element to higher education, meaning that people with degrees believe themselves to be morally and virtuously superior than those without. By believing this about themselves, they can very conveniently stop listening to those that disagree with them, even going so far to publicly bully and denigrate them.
This is the main reason why Donald Trump was elected in 2016 and has a good chance of being elected again this year. Most Americans would rather have a snake-oil huckster as president than the insufferable faux do-gooders who use the media and education apparatus to relentlessly scold others, while quietly enriching and insulating themselves from their terrible policies.
“Why are Americans becoming more stupid?”
Because they are the inheritors of a fundamentally flawed project?
It was a fairly low base to start with
Falling IQ scores are a somewhat separate issue to falling educational standards, surely?
My own pet theory is that the normalisation of marijuana amongst teens is the culprit. That stuff makes people as thick as mince, in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t begrudge functioning adults a toke or two to kick back at the end of a working day or whatever, but I suspect the effect it has on younger minds is something we should be more concerned about.
Who is he to knock education standards, who uses ‘perquisite’ when he means prerequisite and treats ‘curricula’ as a singular noun? Must try harder.
Mr. Kotkin plays to my biases. School choice, which includes charter schools is an important component out of this failure. I will explain below.
Eight long years ago I and several others worked to open a classical charter school in Toledo, Ohio. We opened in the summer of 2019 with 206 students (k – 8) just in time to be hit with Covid “remote learning”. This year the school has 565 students (k – 12). We graduate our first class of 20 this coming May. The school’s academic outcomes are good, and improving each year. Always important to measure outcomes, not just inputs (though resources are important). The school’s total resources (including contributions) have never reached $9,000 per student, per year. Traditional public school funding in the area are about double. Wealthy districts’ funding exceed $22,000/student. Yet parents are voting with their feet!
Our school (Northwest Ohio Classical Academy) has started a trend in Ohio (we were the first). There will be 5 classical charter schools this coming August in Ohio, with a couple more in the planning. There are also a number of classical parochial schools (most with hefty tuition). Classical education is growing, though the teachers’ union is an impediment for charter schools (which by law are tuition free and seats available on a lottery basis). Interestingly, a few of our teachers are refugees from the traditional public schools. They come for the good that they can do, though compensation is sometimes 60% of their previous pay.
Now comes the begging bowl! If you would like to be part of the solution, please go on the web to nocacademy.org and hit the “Support NOCA” red button at the top of the home page. We are chronically short of funds. Your help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading my post and perhaps helping as well.
How can a school be expected to cater to those of average intelligence and above while also looking after a) those who don’t speak English, b) those who don’t want to be educated, c) those who don’t want to behave (ie conform), d) those who lack the ability to perform at ‘average’? Surely immigration is a factor along with ‘family values’.
When I was living in England I read a newspaper article stating that schools (in London iirc) were studying Chicago, on the basis that if Chicago can right the ship, anybody can. That would have been around 1991 or 2, before US education was almost universally bad. Turns out Chicago was an education leader, but down rather than up.
In the earlier comments, Terry laments that it’s time for a 21st century “From Sir with love”.
As I’ve commented in response, I’m not sure if his intent was to signal that more “sirs” in schools and colleges would be a good thing. But I would suggest their significant absence from teaching is a major factor in education’s fall from grace. I agree that the profession’s nominal intentions are ‘good’ but the unintended consequences of the gender imbalance is that it has hastened the state assuming [s]mothering proclivities in education as in other spheres.
I think one factor in the decline in literacy in students starts at an early age. Not so long ago, a family outing in the car would involve the children looking out of the windows at the world, playing all sorts of games based on what they were looking at. Today my grandchildren never look up from their phone or IPad, or from the video screen which is standard equipment in many vehicles these days. In conversations, if indeed one can start one, they clearly have little knowledge or interest in what we used to call general knowledge.