The real failure of American Education has little to do with minor changes in Math or Reading scores.
Our greatest educational failure is not correctly anticipating the Information Age and therefore not providing young people with the skills to objectively analyze the deluge of information received from a huge variety of sources each day. That failure has been exacerbated by the growing inability to bond with parents on the most fundamental shared values such as honesty and caring about others. These shared values, and others, are also needed to inform the analytical process and educators have been away from promoting these common values as arguments ensued about wedge issues. These two shortcomings have been in place for at least two generations, leaving tens of millions of Americans untethered from objective truth and grasping for real direction. Here are the results.
- The United States in drowning in guns and gun violence and we seem to think that more guns will help. We have an estimated 450 million guns with 60 million sold in the U.S. since 2020. Not surprisingly, gun deaths in the United States reached an all-time high in 2021 for the second year in a row, with firearms violence the single leading cause of death for children and young adults, according to a new study released by Johns Hopkins University. A substantial number of Americans now believe that more and more guns with fewer restrictions will make us safer when the facts are clear that the exact opposite is true. Perhaps a majority of Americans now believe that the Second Amendment to the Constitution was put in place to ensure that every American can carry all kinds of guns for purposes of their choice. In fact, the second amendment specifically calls for a “well regulated militia being necessary for a free state”. This meant that my ancestors who, in the early 1600’s settled in a village that would become Brooklyn, NY needed to keep a musket handy as part of the collective of citizens to protect the village from outsiders. Until the NRA started talking about “gun rights” in the 1970’s and accepting funding from gun manufacturers, the “militia” understanding of the second amendment prevailed.
- Most of those who are not wealthy in the U.S. seem to support policies that have the most benefit for those who are wealthy. A lot of hard working folks have been sold two ideas that are probably not in their own best interest. The first problematic notion is that government is a problem and not a solution. This started with President Reagan and the denigration of government that continues to this day. It is sad that the same government that throughout our lives has educated us and our kids, kept us safe in our homes, built our roads and keeps them safe now gets so little respect. It is not an accident that the drumbeat of criticism about government makes it easy to argue for fewer resources to support government services and therefore cutting tax revenues that support those services. Of course, the tax cuts in recent decades have very largely benefitted the wealthy and not the working class. The economic position of the working class has benefitted very little through all of this. The story of the IRS is an easy case in point. Nearly all middle class working folks don’t have much choice in paying taxes – it is deducted from every pay check. The IRS has need to audit very, very few tax returns from middle class folks because the process of paying taxes is so simplistic, and our choices are few. But politicians consistently generate animus toward the IRS and are quick to criticize and try to remove funding from the agency. A weakened IRS is much less effective in monitoring the income tax returns of the wealthy who have many decisions to make in deciding how much in taxes they are willing pay. We may save millions in diminished funding for the IRS, but we lose billions in taxes that are not fairly collected.
- We seem to think that everyone can succeed economically if they work hard enough. A significant share of families in the United States, even with all parents working, are struggling to provide for the basic needs to keep children safe and healthy. We have an excellent and very well-funded health care system in the United States – for those with the income to access it. Just as the disparities between those who make the most money and those who make the least have grown astronomically in recent decades, the gap among those who can access quality health care has also widened. The life span of a poor person in the U.S. now is as much as ten years shorter than the average. This is not true of other countries similar to ours. It is the main reason that overall life spans in the U.S. have actually declined while life spans in other similar countries have continued to increase. The lack of empathy, or at very least the lack of awareness is startling.
These examples are not political choices but are meant to show a widespread deficit in critical thinking and the need to better educate citizens to cope with intentional misinformation.
It should also be clear that these deficits are not the fault of individual teachers. The kind of changes needed to start eliminating these deficits are system level changes.
There are educational systems that are doing a better job of helping students to deal with sources of information. There are efforts on the part of school districts to emphasize character education and simply encouraging student to “Be Kind!”. But we need to recognize a national need and research and launch a national effort to deal with these issues. This is not a partisan problem. Everyone benefits from well-educated citizens prepared to take on the most effective role in their family, their community, and their nation.