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Education Is Not A System

Education Is Not A System

By: Barry Hess

One of the greatest misperceptions in our modern, dependant society is that “education” has something to do with how much money the government spends on it, or how much time a student is forced to spend inside a classroom with a teacher who is ‘certified’ by a union organization not judged by the quality of the student they produce.

The results of implementing this misperception speak for themselves: dismal and dangerous failure that increasingly jeopardizes the future of our once-free nation.  Only an educated populace can enjoy the sweet taste of the fruits of the liberty tree by defending its inherent responsibility to protect its own freedom.  Only an educated society is able to resist the temptation to succumb to the promise of gaining something of extraordinary personal value from a bureaucracy.

Education is not a system, it’s a process, and it does not apply to groups of any kind"it is the accumulation of information and skills by an individual.

A truly educated person is aware of their resources and environment and is able to rationally predict the outcome of any actions they might take with a fair amount of certainty.

Arizona is one of a handful of individual States whose Founders decided to make the State responsible for ‘educating’ its populace as a form of public ‘welfare’.  Regardless of their intentions, these States put in place a system that would inevitably result in the “dumbing down” of its students to the point where functional literacy would become the exception, rather than the norm. 

Why is that?

Had the Founders of these states themselves been educated, they would have foreseen that what they put in place could never produce an acceptable result, at least not if their true intent was to enhance the productivity and prosperity of the common man. Any rational, clear-headed individual could have predicted the results of any attempt to create centralized, non-competitive education system.

It could not possibly work because institutionalized systems necessarily dismiss human nature and individual valuations on learning, but mostly because they lack any specific objective result.

Of all the silly attempts ‘design’ the future of a population, clearly the most destructive is requiring the State “…to provide free, or nearly free public instruction”.  It’s a recipe for disaster, the consequences of which are exactly the opposite of intentions.

As an example, prior to Lyndon Baines Johnson’s 1964 “War on Illiteracy” and its nationalizing effect on the welfare school system, Americans enjoyed, by most serious scholars estimations, functional literacy of nearly 94% of the general population. The highest any nation in world history had ever achieved.  2nd place (Switzerland), was far enough behind that it really needn’t be mentioned.  Today, Libya is the highest at 85%.

It needs to be noted that even as far back as the late 1800s when the Frenchman, Alexis DeTocqueville, surveyed education in America that literacy had already been established as the currency of prosperity.  At that time it was noted that it was not unusual to see a young man of fourteen “with a plow in one hand, and James Fenimore Cooper in the other”.  Cooper was not easy reading, and remains the equivalent of an ‘American Shakespeare’ in complexity and depth.

Limited wardrobe and materialistic alternatives that could be carried on horseback left only the product of one’s mind, as expressed through their mouths and mannerisms, as the measure of one’s social worth.  Education was the most sought-after commodity of the time.

This foundation, a societal appreciation for personal education, along with an unfettered marketplace produced a national prosperity unequaled on Earth.

Only an educated person can test the limits of inventive creativity or brave the hazards and risks of enterprise to realize the full potential of reward for their effort.

LBJ claimed his intention was to eviscerate the remaining illiteracy, but the disastrous effects of his “War on Illiteracy” only served to compound the scourge by a factor of 10.  Regardless of his intent, the focus of government education became the ‘system’ itself.  ‘Education’ came to mean all the people who profited, either by contracts or position, and the focus shifted from teaching children to read and critically reason logically (so as to instill a curiosity in the student to find out ‘more’) on their own, to preserving the educational process.  The victims of this indoctrination became nothing more than pawns in an overt effort to preserve the paychecks of the profiteers"it became a political ‘issue’, and brought with it a political voting bloc.

Education became an attractive political football with the educational unions seeking to influence any politician who would ‘give them more’.  It became a game of paychecks versus performance. 

Ever since the federal government got it’s smarmy nose under the tent using the threat of withholding federal highway funds as a bargaining chip, every State has suffered great losses in trying to prepare the next generation for what they would face in every day life.

Compounding the negative effects on the young were the “Politics of Pain” that encourage the system to deliver less and less in terms of results"just so politicians could argue for more taxes and more money to appease the education voting bloc.  Education has become an industry based on seller profits instead of the usefulness of their content. 

The young may be young and inexperienced, but they’re not stupid.  They ‘get it’, and to a major degree, they’ve simply given up.  Now it’s all about the piece of paper they’re given for putting their collective asses in a seat for 180 days a year, not actual learning or developing life skills to help them succeed.

Students today recognize that no matter how hard they work they’ll get the same diploma or degree as the slacker who barely squeaks by.  This lack if incentive is compounded by even the once-vaunted Ivy League schools who have largely given up on remedial studies (almost all of their students need it to bring them up-to-speed) in favor of simply lowering their standards to the point where in some cases 80% of a graduating class will get a piece of paper suggesting they graduated “with honors”, ostensibly to create a better impression for prospective employers and to entice parents to pay the tuition.

Actual education has given way to ‘certification’ for the sake of appearance, but the marketplace quickly dispels any notion of competence based on certification.

The difference is clear.  It’s a simple matter of perspective.  When education focused on the end result, the student’s abilities, government schools were places they “got” to go to become more valuable to the marketplace"education was sought after and individual school pride led to statements like, “My school is better than your school”.  Now students relate that government schools are places they have to go, and can only offer, “My school is the same as your school”.  They really don’t know why they are there. 

Perspective changes everything.

Back in the days of ‘real’ education, there was an encouragement to become ‘employers’ who could open opportunities to work for others.  Today the educational establishment is geared to producing nothing more than ‘employees’ who’s only worth is in filling menial jobs.

Today, illiteracy has risen to an all-time high in American history and the very definition of literacy has been purposely changed from meaning ‘the ability to read and reason clearly’ to ‘the ability to complete an employment application without error’.

The incentives, the hope, the optimism and the excitement of setting the world on fire with creativity and inventiveness are lost to depression and hopelessness.  The young folks recognize that there are few, if any incentives to push them to strive for excellence in their studies so they’ve resorted to doing whatever they can to ‘get out of’ the system…and dropout rates continue to soar.

As a parent, I could think of no greater form of child abuse than to forsake my children’s ability to meet the challenges they will inevitably face by entrusting their education to a clearly failed system that offers no hope of instilling competence or confidence.  There is no higher duty that a parent can have than to oversee the education of their offspring.

So, what happened?  How did education in America drive off the cliff into oblivion?

The changes were subtle and incremental.  Parental focus on a clear objective gave way to their convenience, and to the voracious appetite for money of a bureaucratic system.  Objectives were blurred as ‘education’ came to include every imaginable form of social indoctrination as well as forced intrusions into personal and family matters, even going so far as to force attendance and drug use.

Welfare schools always come with strings attached that only serve as excuses to expand the system and its personnel.

The surest way to correct systemic ineptitude is to simply abandon the system altogether and return the education of our populace to the People themselves.  Unfortunately, the very concept of education in American is so far off track, such an alternative would likely send complacent parents into a panic.

If there is a way to make a return to excellence in education, it has to start with a singular, clearly defined objective and a resolve to adhere to it.  Vigilance in working toward that singular purpose would have to be maintained or we will shortly find ourselves back in this same state of educational disarray.

Before we can design an effective means of educating anyone, we first need to understand what education actually is.  The word ‘education’ is derived from the Latin root ‘educo’, or more precisely its active verb ‘educe’ meaning “to draw forth from within”. 

Historically, the concept was made famous as the Socratic method, and it recognizes that learning is something that has to come from within the mind of the student in answer to deliberately contrived questions.
  
It doesn’t take a lot of thought to realize how supposed educational ‘experts’ have perverted the concept with their insistence on trying to cram knowledge into the heads of their students on the supposition that all students possess empty minds. 

The ‘experts’ have failed us as a society and their students in a profound way, which begs the question"‘who’ certified them as ‘experts’?  The marketplace of ideas is the only expert there could be, regardless of how many degrees a person may hold.  Only the quality of students they produce can be a measure of how well an educator performs.  The students already have the answers, they only need a competent teacher to ask the right questions.

That’s not something education system promoters want you to know.  So, they lie to you"that’s politics.  This is why they make excuses and suggest that those who think for themselves are “special needs” students often forcing them to take drugs that leave them in a permanent stupor. You need only look at the facts to discern the truth every student is a ‘special needs’ student.  Each is different and each will learn at a different rate.  Whether the differences are environmental, or genetic makes no difference--every individual will learn to think at their own pace.

A true educator is one who recognizes that the limits of their contribution to their student’s actual learning is their ability to ask the right questions that will provoke the student to come to the right conclusions.  This is the basis of a real education and the job of an educator is to hone the student’s skills in both rational and critical thinking"nothing more.
 
One of the detrimental notions to rise from any attempt to quantify mass education is that of ‘graduation’.  At best, this ridiculous ritual signifies only that a student has endured the classroom for a given period of time.  It can’t possibly indicate any other accomplishment considering that the “A” student walks away with the same diploma or certificate as the “D” student, robbing the “A” student of their distinction and encouraging the thought that learning comes to an acceptable end point.  In an educated society it is clearly understood that education is a never-ending process.

Any attempt to systematize learning must begin with a single objective: To produce competent young men and women who are each capable of making their own way in life"without ever becoming a burden on others.  If such a system could be implemented, this would have to be it’s singular task.  Unfortunately, the influence of politics and sloth would inevitably alter the objective and soon it would again devolve into the destructive over-reaching bureaucratic leviathan we have today.

Learning has to start at home.  Parents have to set the example and demonstrate that they hold education above the convenience of government babysitting and actually take an active interest in the mental welfare of their own children. 

In our Orwellian world home schooled children are vilified by the welfare educators because they get personal attention"from their parents.  It just doesn’t make sense considering the demonstrably superior skills they develop.  While home-schooled children currently make up only a couple of percent of all students, they dominate virtually all academic and scholastic competitions based on the government school’s own tests.

One would think that instead of decrying home-schooled children’s advantage of having parents that actually care enough to overcome the inconveniences we are all faced with, that at the very least the education associations would try to duplicate the methodology.  Instead, organizations like the NEA constantly seek to eliminate their perceived competition and implement counter productive methodologies based solely on the expansion of their budgets.

These conclusions aren’t unknown to the education system profiteers.  Perhaps this is why almost 1/3 of Arizona’s teachers do not subject their own children to the government’s welfare education system.  They’ll take your money, but they’ll spend theirs elsewhere.  They care…for children"just not yours.

Continuing to pretend that somehow, young people are going to benefit by being forced into classrooms filled with other children whose parents simply won’t tend to their responsibilities, while facilitating the spread of disease is a joke on the children themselves that now commands half of most State budgets--just to appease a voting block.

Our children are the ones who will be running the world when we are too old and gray to do anything about it.  Any rational parent would want their children to be more competent and more capable than they could ever be, so they can relax in confidence that in their twilight years their nation will be in good hands.  Given the depth of this current Depression, it’s a wise investment for any parent to be good to their children and help them develop valuable and useful skills because the parents may well come to depend on them for their retirement.

After a great deal of study, it becomes obvious that the problems in education are not with the children; they will live up to…or down to our expectations.  Education associations have a clear incentive to never ‘fix the problem’, if they did, their relevance would fade quickly and the never-ending funding increases they demand would fall on the ears of a deaf public.

If the goal were to produce competent and capable students, instead of to indoctrinate them into a regressive and oppressive socialist system, their selfish scheme would have long since been exposed.  Instead, the hidden goal has always been to try to mold children to believe in and accept a flawed ideal that leaves them helpless and dependent on government largesse.

Politics have destroyed what was once the educational envy of the civilized world.

A quick perusal of history makes short work of the fallacy that formal government training enhances any person’s probability of success.  The pages are filled with successful people who were actually far better off by avoiding indoctrination, from Bill Gates (dropped out of Harvard to become the wealthiest man in the world at one time) to Abraham Lincoln (self-taught) and only superficial references to those who bought into government education and were promoted based on worthless certificates (Bill Clinton), and time served.

I don’t mean to imply that there are any easy fixes that would restore American education to its former glory, but as with most complex ‘problems’ muddied by the emptiness of politics, there are simple solutions in the real world.

The first solution to stop the destruction of student’s minds is to eliminate governmental interference/involvement from all aspects of education.  Only at that point will people realize the benefits of learning for the sake of learning and will shoulder the responsibility of preparing their offspring for the challenges they will face in life by teaching them at home or in groups of parents organized to share the workload, and it is work.

“But we can’t afford to stay home to watch over and guide our child’s learning” is the retort of those already conditioned to abdicate their parental responsibilities.  These are people who have been conditioned and trained to consider themselves helpless without the help of government.  The fact that half of our current population is already on the public dole is a testament to the fact that they really don’t grasp the concept that no government can provide everything to everyone without anyone having to pay for it.

This brings us to the second solution, the elimination of the theft of working American’s labor and thus their life-minutes through the wrongfully imposed “personal” income tax (“income” is actually defined as “Corporate gains and profits severed from capital invested”) and any tax on personal real estate and/or property.

This measure alone would infuse every working family’s home with an immediate 38 to 50% increase in net spend-able earnings, and eliminate the costs of one parent’s driving to work and eating away from home.  In most cases this would amount to more than enough to cover for the loss of a 2nd paycheck.  As an added benefit, that same formerly necessary 2nd job could go to someone else in these times of economic Depression and at the same time ease our collective conscience from trying to legitimize the theft of our fellow Citizen’s earnings.  That’s a bonus.   

A third solution is to remove the hindrance of oppressive regulations on businesses that make it impossible for little Johnny to profit from his innovative ideas and dreams in the marketplace.

Problem solved.

“But, what about those States with a constitutional mandate to provide public instruction?”  Good question, and you’ll be happy to know there’s a simple solution for that as well.

I propose that instead of maintaining ridiculously overpriced brick and mortar school facilities and fattening the wallets of overpaid educators and administrators to the tune of $15,000.00 or more per student per year, that the State issue a laptop computer, at a cost of less than $200.00 per student, with access limited to educational materials and sites on the Internet, and the ability to converse with educators for one-on-one instruction in difficult subjects.

A few of the benefits derived from this idea are:
-No hassle access to information at the convenience of the student, no matter their age, and eliminating the Pavlovian dog training of responding to the ringing of bells and marching to someone else’ drum beat.
-No more having to deal with the problems created by the anti-social offspring of careless parents.
-No more defenseless targets of homicidal maniacs that we’ve seen all too often.
-Parents can control “who” their precious child associates with.
-No more vacation periods interfering with family emergencies, trips and travel outings.
-A flexible view of life that allows for reflective thought at the individual’s own pace instead of being held back or pushed prematurely ahead by group consensus.
-The ability for the student to explore areas of interest, to them.

This list could go on ad infinitum, but it is clear from even these few benefits that each individual student could develop their skills to their individual maximum capacities.

We have to recognize that in spite of current contention, the Montessori method (allowing the student to study those subjects that truly interest them) works.

Incidentally, this idea has already proven itself far superior to the slavish and archaic system we have now, so much so, that the Kahn Academy was approached by government educators to cut it back on it’s curriculum because it’s students were excelling “too far” beyond their welfare school counterparts.

In Arizona, the State itself took note of this idea and implemented it’s own ‘K-12’ program on the same order.  Now, the political lobbies for the welfare education system are seeking to cut back it’s negligible funding, ostensibly because the results are making clear the deficiencies of their current model.  It’s a scenario right out of the history books going back to the early 1900s when the strongest union in this country (The Carriage and Buggy Whip Manufacturers Union), instead of re-training it’s membership to keep up with a new disruptive technology, they chose instead to use their political clout to try to keep the automobile from coming to America…their foolishness bankrupted virtually every one of its members.    

The final component to this proposal would be a voluntary competency test that could be administered by a trustworthy private provider, or the State itself.  Unlike a diploma, or a degree, which only serves to prove what a student has done (sit in a classroom for x number of days and years), a competency test measures what the taker can do"a far better and more relevant measure for parents, employers and individuals themselves.

Such a test will embrace the individual who has gained both knowledge and skills outside of regimentation, as well as those who have opted for a more formalized education.  The State should never have concerned itself with ‘where’ someone got their education and should have concentrated on doing whatever it takes to encourage a truly educated populace.
 
Of course, re-instilling an appreciation for education itself won’t be easy, and it cannot happen without a demand for excellence.  Weaning a dependent public off of the poisonous teat of mediocre expectations, and the lure of something for ‘free’ will take commitment and resolve on the part of parents.  It will be a difficult and hard-fought battle against those who profit from the way things are, but it’s a challenge well worth taking up because the rewards will be a free and independent People capable of conceiving of new innovations and technologies that will benefit all of society.
 
We just have to decide what we value most; the actual education of our young and the prospect of a bright and prosperous future, or continuing with a costly, counter-productive and destructive system of forced indoctrination.

To me the choice is a clear one.  We simply can’t do any worse than we are right now so there’s nothing to lose, and the future to gain.

It’s up to you.  Do you want to save the people, or the boat?  

 
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