While I think our public education system fails a lot of people, and has many problems, I think we all should recognize that the biggest piece of the pie graph in all of this is that it all starts at home. The reason we have fallen off the charts in world literacy is largely due to the crumbling of the family unit, less parent involvement, more distractions in kids lives than ever before, and then finally an often poor education system that cant mend the myriad of other issues. I think America's best and brightest however are still some of the worlds best - we just have a lot more at the bottom end that pull the numbers down. When you consider that over 70% of African American children grow up in a one parent home, often with a poverty mindset, this translates into a lot of negative parameters across society, especially in education. Does any other country have to contend with such a thing? People say our education started to go down hill in the 1960's. Do you know what also has seen a stark trajectory change since the 1960's? The divorce rate - which has more than doubled since 1970. So, the family unit has crumbled substantially since 1960. Couple this with what I said in my last post about the explosion of the "career woman" where the rate of women participation in the work force has risen from 34% in 1950 to over 60% by the year 2000. Where traditionally mothers could pick up a lot of slack for the children, they now also were out of the home in increasing numbers working jobs. Then the Internet exploded in the 1990's, and with it kids have become more and more connected to influences outside of the home. So family influence has fallen off drastically, outside influence is ratcheted up substantially. How does that affect children? When you step back and look at the big picture, I think it paints a picture of a series of societal failures, and in the midst of all that the ones who suffer the most are the most vulnerable - children. While the education system has major problems, I think the bigger part of the problem is we are sending much much lower quality children into the education system than we ever have before, and at much higher numbers, and then expecting the school to some how do the impossible. The mountain is just too big for most teachers. My mother in law was a public school teacher in Chicago inner city schools for over 20 years. She can tell you horror story after horror story that she has seen there. Teachers beat up and pushed around by students routinely, gang activity on campus, drug activity on campus constantly, sex, pornography, destroying of infrastructure for the fun of it, and the list goes on. Its enough to sink any aspiring new teachers hopes and idealistic views of educating and changing kids lives. These kids show up at school so broken and so screwed up from home life there is no fixing it - you instead get out of the way and try to just protect yourself and keep your head down. Some of the stories she has told me have just baffled me, and often the teachers have zero backup from administrators in many tough situations. It can start to become a "every man for himself" feeling among staff.
I think you have to look at the big picture with this problem It is not all the fault of one area or party - it is a culmination of failings and changes in society.
