Liberals Want Education to Fail?

I tried to reply at MinnPost, however I apparently ran afoul of the mediator again...  My comment went something  like the statements that follow these interesting perspectives from Paul and Matt.

"Sean,
Now you are in my world of expertise. Natural variability and surprises occur in all aspects of design, manufacture and test. The most successful companies and employees are those that manage it most effectively. I am amused by the idea that Apple controls Google Motorola and Samsung. If they do, they are doing a poor job.

As for indifference, it seems to me that many of the commenters here want to double down on a system that has left millions and millions of children behind.

Matt,
Many Superintendents, Administrators and Teachers get buy outs to make them go away. The current system has delivered millions of adults who are not academically capable enough to get a good paying job. I think a change is worth the risk.

Nobody demands that the education system "teach to the test", but the students had better be able to answer the questions on the test if they want to go to college, a good technical college or get a high paying job." G2A


"You need to decouple your mind from the notion that the only purpose of education is to A. Provide the business community with skilled labor and B. Provide the means for individuals to accumulate wealth. Now to be clear, those are both ancillary effects of a strong education system,
but they cannot be its focus. Education is what provides us civilization itself. It is a base level necessity lest we descend into dystopian savagery. You see into quantify, to commoditze knowledge and wisdom to parcel it out in the smallest, cheapest possible form necessary to satisfy your narrow needs. In so doing you by necessity homogenize and standardize as much as you can, as is dictated by the god of efficiency so many of you technocratic conservatives worship. Unfortunately, that isn't how learning works, it requires many differing approaches across the wide spectrum of students, from a wide spectrum of educators. In practical terms this means expense, more teachers, more materials, more schools to achieve smaller classrooms, more individualized learning, more technology, more everything. To which, the answer from your side has always been, and will always be, NO! Far from indifferent, I am simply actively opposed to all the solutions you propose, as I see no good faith from your side that your end goals are anything but self serving. You want my solution? Compulsory, taxpayer funded education pre-k through a bachelor's or technical equivalent (with those equivalents requiring a certain proportion of non-technical for lack of a better term "liberal arts" based coursework, the civilization stuff J mentioned earlier) Come up with the money however you like. Make a degree or equivalent or progress toward one a feature of every prison sentence handed out. Make business pay for the retraining of every employee they lay off without cause. In short, make a good education the baseline expectation for every citizen and put forth the resources to do so. You can quibble all you like about the price, tell me how throwing money at the problem won't work, what have you. The biggest portion of the change I seek is the transition of thought from believing education is a NICs thing to have if you can afford it, to thinking orbit as a baseline necessity, like air, food, water, shelter, and treating it accordingly. From asking "why should we spend so much money on educating our kids?" to "how could we ever think to spend LESS to educate our kids?" Matt
 

 "I am not sure what is self serving about demanding that every child has the knowledge and capabilities to earn a middle class or better living in our modern competitive world. I am thinking reading, writing, math and basic science capabilities would be an acceptable minimum standard. The challenge is that we spend a great deal of money on education in the US and have many many students who can not even meet this minimal threshold.

How would you know the education system was successful in your version?

Or does society just give unlimited funds to the system and trust them when they say it is excellent?

Remember that we have done that for decades and the academic achivement gap still is huge." G2A


"I don't care if ones education leads to employment, middle class or otherwise. As eleoquently stated by Mr. Udstrand below, education is not a commodity to be sold for a return. My standard for success would be functioning citizens, capable of engaging in the day to day business of society, capable of playing an active role in their own governance, capable of resisting persuasion from any number of interests whose goals do not align with their own. The ends you strive for, a skilled workforce for the minimum input cost possible, addresses none of this. Malleable corporate drones might make for a useful business investment, but also a disastrous society." Matt


"A lot of conservatives really don't understand the fundamental purpose of education, and that's why it was a huge mistake to consider their agenda. First we abandoned innovation in the public schools because conservatives demanded that we get "back to basics". Then we developed amnesia regarding the aforementioned innovations and decided that entrepreneurs were the only people on the planet who could possible save our educational system.... with charter schools and vouchers. Standardized tests are the legacy of the back to basics movement, and most people now agree that No Child Left Behind program that made those tests a central feature is a dud. The result is that we've made almost no progress and in many ways rolled backwards over the last three decades. It shouldn't surprise anyone because on a very basic level a lot of powerful conservatives never really believed in public education in the first place. Historically they've been fighting it one way or another since the time of Thomas Jefferson.

What many conservatives don't get, is that education is about developing good intellects, teaching people how to think, not WHAT to think. A good education system trains people how to think, not what to believe. You pick up diplomas and degrees along the way, and you can specialize in later stages of education, but the degree is product of intellect, not merely ticket to affluence.

The problem is we've moved away from a model of an education system that produces good intellects into a market based education system that sees degrees as tickets to affluence. We have a degree "market" that sells education. The result is that we graduate more and more people who have degrees... and poor intellects. I had a friend who used to say we were becoming a nation of people who were increasingly "degreed" but not educated. You can see that in the recent polls that have found that Americans who are ignorant about a variety of issues are NOT uneducated in the sense that they've graduated high school and gotten more advanced degrees. They've gotten the degrees they need to enter the job market, but they don't have the intellect to sort out or recognize reliable information and evidence.

And of course the chamber of commerce always supports the wrong approach to education :)" Paul


"So your answer is send the education system more money and trust that they will take care of things.

And send more checks to the adults who are unable to get jobs, because the education system failed them.

Interesting concept... Now I understand why the war on poverty is failing." G2A

Based on Matt and Paul's comments, I am beginning to believe that Liberals truly aren't interested in helping all children escape poverty by ensuring that they learn skills and knowledge that will help them attain a middle class or better life. Maybe the Conservatives are correct that Liberals truly want to keep them poor and voting Democrat.

I certainly hope not.  Thoughts?

Ps. As you know, I enjoy philosophy, psychology, critical thinking, creative thinking, team work, communication and many other areas as much as most other people.  However these need to be in addition to a basic knowledge of math, english and science, not instead of them...