What The Hell Happened To...

Education?

I've worked at a couple of different colleges now. I'm not that much older than the kids starting college these days, but it seems as if quite a bit has already changed about pre-college education in this country since I was there. Kids don't seem to be learning certain things anymore, like math, or spelling, or how to write or speak in full sentences. Sure, some kids are picking this stuff up at home (or on the mean streets of Sesame) but the preponderance of the evidence tells me they're not getting this stuff from school anymore. So what the hell happened to education?

I have some theories. Most of these things were already present when I was in school, but have since conspired to lead to some sort of breakdown. Also, keep in mind that I went to Catholic school because, well, my parents correctly diagnosed New York City public schools as suckariffic and thought I'd be better off. Anyway, who's to blame for this mess? A few different groups, starting with...

Foreigners. Actually, this is probably less about actual foreign people and more about egghead multi-nationalists. At some point, someone decided American children needed to learn second languages. I would have no objection to this if most of us actually spoke two languages, but we don't. I took two years of Spanish in elementary school (I think, it's possible I'm making that up), four more in high school and four semesters of Spanish in college. If you dropped me into the middle of Spain right now, I'd be able to say hello and goodbye, count to ten, order a Coca-Cola and ask where the library is (I wouldn't actually be able to get to the library, because I wouldn't understand anyone's answer to my biblioteca query). And I'm not a stupid guy, I went to college for free, and it wasn't because of my awesome jump shot.

Why is this a problem? Look at how much time I wasted not learning Spanish. 200 minutes a week for six full school years and then four semesters of college. Imagine what I could be doing right now if I had spent that time learning something I could use, or at least something I could remember.

Solution? Find a way to teach kids languages in a way that will, ya know, work. Maybe this means starting them earlier. Maybe this means spending more time on conversational uses and less time conjugating verbs. I think it would be great if most Americans spoke multiple languages, but do we care enough to make it happen? I don't know, but fix it, or stop trying. One or the other.

Who's next? Christians. I don't like picking on Christians, really. I know a lot of Christians, they're mostly nice people, I used to be one myself. And maybe this one isn't really the fault of actual Christians, but rather the fault of people who exploit their faith for votes. But isn't it interesting that America's fall to something like 804th in the world in science education seems to have coincided with this whole neoconservative thing about not teaching children evolution? And I know, I just said I went to Catholic school, and I didn't turn out so bad. But, I know more about Genesis than I do about, say, chemistry or calculus, and I'm not sure this is a good thing.

Solution? This is an easy one. When people say they want you to teach stuff in science class that isn't, um, factually accurate, politely tell them no and move on. Everybody has to get on board with this though (I'm looking at you Republicans) because as long as some of the people in charge keep pushing to allow science class to also be catechism time, we'll keep having this stupid debate that teaches kids that there's no scientific difference between stuff you can prove and stuff you just believe in.

And speaking of Christians, George W. Bush. No Child Left Behind was actually pretty well named, because if you don't go anywhere, you can't leave anyone behind. President Bush did the worst thing you can do with a serious problem. He proposed something that looked and sounded like a good idea, so everyone stopped paying attention, then his administration executed this idea as poorly as possible (this, by the way, is the real legacy of the Bush administration, not actually terrible ideas executed unbelievably poorly).

I will, however, take one idea from the former president. I'm a big fan of national standardized testing. I hear a lot of teachers complain that they wind up teaching to the test. This tells me the current tests don't focus on things kids actually need to know. If that's the case, we'll have to fix that, if that's not the case, then everyone shut up.

Last problem? Unions. This is a surprising one for me. I'm generally a big supporter of unions, I was sort of raised that way. But, a while ago I wrote that I'm generally against big government programs, but I support health care because we need it and it's too important. I feel the same way about teachers unions, only the exact opposite. Education is too important, we shouldn't have anything standing in the way of our ability to reprimand, discipline or fire bad teachers.

This leads me toward my big solution for education, which starts with the teachers. Teachers should be making huge, six figure salaries. Being a teacher should be like being a doctor or a lawyer, something the smart people want to do when they get to college because that's where the money is. That's my pitch to the teachers. Yes, if you're a bad teacher, I'll want you to start working on your "would you like fries with that?" (yes, by the way, I'd love some fries right now), but if you're a good teacher, you don't need union protection and I'm planning to double or triple or quadruple your salary.

Add this to my other solutions: Spend more time teaching kids things they can actually use, in ways that will actually work, no more religion in schools (this means school prayer too, don't even get me started on that) and national standardized tests to pass each grade that actually test kids on the things they need to know. I think this is a pretty good start and could, mostly, be done pretty quickly.

My Republican friends will say we don't need a big national education thing, that communities and school boards and parents know more about what their kids need to be learning in school. No, they really, really don't. I can't emphasize how little I want parents and local politicians involved in this plan.

How do you pay for it? I don't know, do I look like some kind of economist? We're probably going to have to raise taxes. I don't know why people are so willing to spend money to invade countries but when it comes to public education and health care it's all about the fiscal discipline. Actually, maybe I do know, maybe they went to crappy schools.