Parents the world over are dealing with massive adjustments in their children’s education that they could not have anticipated just three months ago. To one degree or another, pandemic-induced school closures are creating the “mass homeschooling” that FEE’s senior education fellow Kerry McDonald predicted two months ago. Who knows, with millions of youngsters absent from government school classrooms, maybe education will become as good as it was before the government ever got involved.
“What?” you exclaim! “Wasn’t education lousy or non-existent before government mandated it, provided it, and subsidized it? That’s what my government schoolteachers assured me so it must be true,” you say!
The fact is, at least in early America, education was better and more widespread than most people today realize or were ever told. Sometimes it wasn’t “book learning” but it was functional and built for the world most young people confronted at the time. Even without laptops and swimming pools, and on a fraction of what government schools spend today, Americans were a surprisingly learned people in our first hundred years.
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Several years ago, I read a piece noting a researcher who was very surprised at the literacy of letters of Western settlers from the period he was studying, 1850-1875. Reading newspapers from that period, it is apparent the papers were published for the literate common man and woman. Government schools exist in order to provide a union card for those who sat in class for 12 years.
ReplyDelete1870- Penmanship, civics and civility at the end of a yardstick.
Delete2020- Climate change, gender fluidity and incivility with no consequence.
Thanks, Dems.
There's a very big difference between Education and Indoctrination. Education sets you up to be independent and self-reliant. Indoctrination sets you up to obey and dependent.
ReplyDeleteThe worst thing that ever happened to our Educations system was the Federal government getting involved with it and the NEA becoming an arm of the Democratic party.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm 74 years old, wtf do I know.
My Grandfather's formal education stopped at 6th grade. He taught algebra to his high-schoolers who came home confused. My father's formal education stopped in the 9th grade. Engineers consulted with him.
ReplyDeleteThe reason educators are now required to have college diplomas is because when the Great Depression started there were a boat-load of college-educated people out of work. To put those people back to work TPTB wouldn't let the teachers who had been to a Normal School teach any more. Every last one of us on this forum is qualified to teach our own children up to and probably through high school.
Diaries and letters home from Civil War soldiers are a testament to your premise. Though the spelling is sometimes different they are great primary sources for historical research.
ReplyDeleteI hope this "pandemic" is the cause for many more parents to try home schooling.
Your post is almost the same as what I was going to write. I was astounded at the level of vocabulary, sentence structure and overall conversiveness in the CW letters I read some 30 years ago. They were an education in themselves.
DeleteNemo
See what they used to have to read in 1914 Calif
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/California-Sixth-Grade-Reader-Pournelle-ebook/dp/B00LZ7PB7E
If you've read The Federalist Papers, try interpreting them into today's language. They are incredibly complex, yet were written for people on the street. I tried to understand and I came up with this:
ReplyDeleteAlexander Hamilton
Federalist #22
In today's language (2020):
If a minority with strong beliefs can control the majority's opinion by using the most effective means of communication, the majority must do something to appease the minority, and the minority will overrule the majority and control the national discussions. Therefore, tedious delays, continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. Its good that these compromises happen because when they fail, they can't be hidden.
Heinlein commented in 1980 that "We've gone from teaching Latin and Greek in High School to Remedial English in college."
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid it's worse than that.
Amish yutes are formally educated to eith grade level by the oldest unmarried daughter in the area.
ReplyDeleteThey seem to survive just fine.
If you want to see how far we have fallen look at the military training manuals from WWII compared to today. And never forget the peanut farmer created the Department of Education as a reward to the teacher unions for voting for him.
ReplyDeleteI became educated when I left school.
ReplyDeleteAmen.
DeleteMark Twain said, "Never let your schooling interfere with your education.
My schooling ended with a high school diploma. I've educated myself by reading pretty much everything I could get my hands on since I was five years old.
We can blame Jimmy Carter for the Department of Education. The current public education teaching goal is to educate a class to the level of the lowest common denominator.
ReplyDeleteOn the road trips I use to take with my late wife, we would frequently go to smaller museums and such. I remember a display on early life in the Dalles or maybe Hood River, and the work and final exams the kids had to complete was in some ways on a college level today.
ReplyDeleteThey had Greek lessons, complex math used for crop yields and other practical lessons besides RRR which was also top notch work.
But then again, they had different motivational tools back then.
So much truth here... I remember reading on how children as young as 12 regularly debated adults in Washington's time. I home schooled my boys for one year. Just their math was so far ahead by the end, they ran circles around their classmates for the rest of their years in school. Were any of you taught about our birthright? In civics, were you taught your constitutional rights are God-given? Were you taught our nation is Constitutional Republic and in itself is a gift of Almighty God? Were you taught the principles of self-government? Were you taught about stewardship? My generation had a far better education than what I'm seeing today and yet I was taught none of these things. In fact, even my own math skills were much improved after I taught the boys just basic math from Ray's Arithmetic. We'e all been duped.
ReplyDeleteGood Lord it's amazing.
ReplyDeleteYou go all over the internet and read what's wrong with the world.... and I agree, the US school system has sucked nigh the last 50 years.
But what are you doing to fix it? Pounding on your keyboard?
I can't say for anyone else but I continue to teach my children - I still have one in school. The two older boys turned out well. I'd like to think they were a positive influence on their classmates. Both ranked high in JROTC and excelled in school.
DeleteOther than that I advocate decentralization all across the board. We cannot afford to focus just on school systems. ALL government needs local control. To put it bluntly, it is an uphill battle. While I am encouraged by events such as the 2A sanctuary movement here in VA and elsewhere, there is no guarantee progress there will continue nor spread. My own efforts - "pounding on my keyboard" seems to affect little. Even so I will do what I can, any way I can.
Public school? Here's my personal experience with public school.
ReplyDeleteMy mother, her mother, and her mother were all school teachers, with my great grandmother teaching 11 students in a one room school house. My mother and grandmother taught me to read before I started school; I would have never learned to read and write otherwise.
My brother is ten years younger than I am. When he started first grade, he could read at a third grade level (his grandmother taught 3rd grade). By the time he was half way through second grade, he couldn't read at all. He didn't fit in, you see.
This was in Hillview Elementary school, Sylvania, OH, around 1968.
My mother sent him to private school, where he did much better, eventually going to college and being a real success.
Ask your local public school if you can monitor one or more classes in session. You'll set quietly in the back and watch and listen. They won't allow it, nor will they allow the classes to be recorded on video.
No one reading this will even begin to wonder why, but this is something our elected weasels should have been monitoring in 1970, and refused to do so. Now look where we are.
Davenport High It offered classes in 127 subjects, “from algebra to zoology,” and while students had to take some English, math, science, and history, they could, through electives, study a broad range of non-college-track material. A senior, who hoped to study dentistry at Northwestern University, was taking Grammar, American Government, Algebra III, Chemistry I, and Phys. Ed. A sophomore, took English I, Biology I, Electricity I, Machine Shop I, Phys. Ed., and Occupations, a required course that included vocational testing. Now they get classes on gender fluidity and racial inequality
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother taught in one room school houses in West Virginia til moved to FL to to kids who went to Mich and Ohio get out of the coal mines and off the farms. Many made successful businesses. She took her children to wherever she was teaching. Of 6 children, my dad earned a PhD in ed and was a superintendent of schools if FL til he died of a brain tumor in 1982. His brother/my uncle joined army in 65. Flew gunship helos out of Pleiku in 4th ID, 67-68. Transitioned to Cobra in early 68. (4 u doubting experts, 4th ID had integrated forces-their pilots flew slicks and guns for THEIR division) He was an instructor pilot for Marines when they later started using cobras. Earned a masters in regular college,two degrees from war college, retired as a col. 3 sisters got jobs at DC and later earned degrees, one BA and one up to MA. Civy employees of military their entire career. Last sister destroyed by polio. Gram and gramps took care of her their whole life. Anyway---WVa one room school houses produced better results than our current system spending 10K+ per student per year. Of course not all in those schools did so well, but plenty did. And these were dirt poor West Virginia kids. But they were tough and expected to work hard. Did anon since no google acct. Don S. PSL Florida
ReplyDelete