Recently, a retired general wrote an article in the local paper that started this way: “Is our troubled educational system posing a threat to our national security? The Defense Department estimates that a shocking 75 percent of young Americans are not able to join the military–and one of the leading reasons is poor education.” His solution was that everyone should support the new Core Standards proposed by the Education Establishment.

But isn’t it obvious that these are the same people responsible, in the first place, for rendering the majority of young Americans educationally unfit for military service? Why would we trust them?

Four years ago, another general published an article in the same paper, where he lamented the poor quality of the young people coming into the military. To be blunt, these recruits were largely ignorant and nearly illiterate; the military could hardly use them. The general optimistically explained his solution: the Army would establish a remedial Academy to compensate for the poor job done by the public schools.

I wasn’t optimistic. I was sure that, to set up his Academy, the general would consult with so-called experts from Harvard and Teachers College (that is, high members of the Education Establishment, the very same people who created the mess in the first place). Even if they had the ability to help the general, would they? After all, any improvement among these recruits would put the public schools in even worse light.

Now consider this news story: “Army Basic-Skills Program Said Failing…
Washington–A five-year-old remedial-education program for Army recruits has largely failed to help soldiers improve their basic skills in reading and mathematics, and it has inadequately linked basic-skills objectives to job performance in the Army, according to a report by the General Accounting Office.”

This report appeared in Education Week more than — are you ready? — 25 years ago! (This was roughly the same time when the Nation at Risk report famously concluded that our public schools are so bad they seem to have been designed by a “hostile foreign power.”)

Doesn’t everyone see the pattern? No improvement ever occurs.

The Education Establishment has created mediocre public schools; and we are supposed to accept that. My analysis is that these elite educators got sidetracked by ideological (read: collectivist) considerations.

What these people care about is social engineering. They don’t know how to run good schools because it’s not something they value. If you ask them for help in setting up remedial programs, they won’t do a good job. If you ask them for help in writing new Standards, they won’t do a good job. When did they ever do a good job? All of their innovations, all of their much-touted theories and methods, turn out to be counterproductive. (For education, that is. For social engineering, they work just fine.)

I beg you to reflect for five minutes on Whole Word. It’s the dominant way to teach reading in our country for the last 75 years. It’s a hoax that has created 50 million functional illiterates. Therein resides much unpleasant truth.

This column is an appeal to the military and business communities– please, let’s get practical. All those starry-eyed ideologues up in their ivory towers are not going to help the problem. They will probably make it worse. You need common-sense, practical educators, people who believe in knowledge and making sure kids get a lot of it. I’m one of those people myself. Here is my advice: find 10 good private schools and hire the headmasters. Do whatever a majority think you should do.

Finally, does anyone doubt what I’m saying? Simply go to http://corestandards.org, and read the latest mush from our so-called experts. The people writing this stuff are not sincerely interested in education, not in a practical way, not as the military or business communities understand that term.

My own Standard for second grade is this: “Count to 100. Add and subtract two-digit numbers.” That’s it. Make sure all kids reach that level and we’ll be fine.

Now, by way of contrast, consider this small portion of the Common Core math standards for second grade as prepared by our Education Establishment: “….Students use their understanding of addition to develop fluency with addition and subtraction within 100. They solve problems within 1000 by applying their understanding of models for addition and subtraction, and they develop, discuss, and use efficient, accurate, and generalizable methods to compute sums and differences of whole numbers in base-ten notation, using their understanding of place value and the properties of operations. They select and accurately apply methods that are appropriate for the context and the numbers involved to mentally calculate sums and differences for numbers with only tens or only hundreds…”

This is blather. It will spark a million meaningless arguments. Babel will win. Kids will lose. If you want to ensure that 75% of American teenagers continue to be unfit for military service, trust the people who wrote this malarkey.

URGENT: Military personnel are urged to forward this communication to their Members of Congress and Officers in Charge.

Author Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is the founder of http://www.Improve-Education.org, an education and intellectual site.
One focus is reading; see \”42: Reading Resources.\”
Price is an author, artist and poet. His fifth book is \”THE EDUCATION ENIGMA–What Happened to American Education.\”

Category: Opinions
Keywords: k-12, public schools, standards, illiteracy, ignorance