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Saturday, December 10, 2016

Concern for schools who aren't teaching kids very much

The little red school house, famous in the lore of the early days of the republic, is long gone, but the memory of it is a nostalgic reminder of how the education of children was once the responsibility of the town. As public education has grown into extensive public school systems in towns big and small, the schoolhouse is no longer the source of civic pride.

Restoring the importance of the public schools in towns big and small has become a cliche of our politics. Everyone knows that schools are failing large numbers of children. Parents quail, politicians rail, teachers’ unions squeal, and nothing much changes from election to election. There’s a growing appetite for shaking things up.

The concern is not new. A loud alarm was sounded in 1983 with a report titled “A Nation at Risk,” and Ronald Reagan held it up at a press conference, decrying the substandard performances of school children across America. “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today,” the report concluded, “we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves.”

President Reagan wanted to get rid of the Department of Education and return education to local control, but he couldn’t come close to doing that. So 33 years later we’ve continued “unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

We have lowered our education standards to satisfy the minorities , we went very far down and a lot of high school grads can't read or write. These kids are mostly black and very few are Mexican . The teachers do not and will not discipline these minorities because they are not allowed to , besides that they will be attacked and assaulted.
I've even noticed that college grads are very ignorant on just about everything , having said that , it's hard to give them a job being so stupid.
Hell , if you have a masters degree you just might get a job making 30,000 .
I will also tell you that the mexican workers are extremely productive , much better than blacks or whites.

Anonymous said...

We need to get back to basics. Reading, Riting and Rithmetic the three R's.

Anonymous said...

9:39 the Mexicans also have more "family units" than other minorities. You always see the father with the wife and kids instead of sitting home playing videos, listening to rap, and smoking weed. Mexican workers also are sending a lot of money back home for the families. Very committed to trying to better themselves. Of course there are bad apples once in a while but the poultry business, the landscaping business, and now the construction industry is using Hispanics almost exclusively for the reasons you say.