I’ve been noticing something for years, after (in order):
- Attended public school in the US.
- Hearing about the public schools my parents and grandparents attended in the US.
- Sending my own kids to public schools in the US.
- Working for a European company and discussing education with my European colleagues.
- Working for a US company and discussion education with my colleagues from Japan, Taiwan, and India.
- Seeing my granddaughter’s experiences in public schools in the US.
What I’ve been noticing is that US education has been in decline for a long, long time. I managed to do well in school, but I’m not sure I could have been as successful in earlier decades because the material back then was more difficult and the curriculum more challenging. Educational success was a lower bar for me, and since my time the bar has been lowered even more.
This appears to be only happening in the US. Education in European countries with similar living standards has not, as far as I can find out, been similarly hollowed out. So why has it been happening here, and why for so long? After all, this is where Thomas Jefferson was when he said:
“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves: and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is, not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”
It looks to me like education has been in decline in the US because some people have been working on that exact thing for decades. According to the documentary The Revisionaries, which you can see here, there’s a dentist in Texas named Don McLeroy who made it his lifelong project to dumb down US schools by joining the Texas Board of Education and editing textbooks. Texas, as with other huge states, buys so many textbooks that whatever they specify becomes the default for most smaller states — and even some of the huge ones, too. McLeroy’s particular penchant for stupidity was whatever Christian religious sect he subscribes to. It’s apparently one of those sects, or cults, that think they have the right to “disagree” with science and history.
So the next time your packages are delivered to the wrong address because of poor reading comprehension, or you have to help the teenage grocery store clerk figure out the right change because of poor math skills, or you notice that although the US has many outstanding universities, many of the top students are here on student visas, drive right down to Texas, find Don McLeroy, and tell him what you think of his little project. He won’t care, of course. Cult members are cult members because they were never taught critical thinking in school.
Thanks to Balloon Juice for extra material.
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