A few nights ago, my friend stopped by for a visit. He had been out to a sports bar for a couple of beers, and to see a cute bartender that he’s been enamored with for a while. He told me that they were showing one of those trivia games on one of their many TV monitors, since there just aren't enough sporting events happening on a Tuesday night in July. A question appeared asking who was the U.S. President during the American Civil War. He sarcastically joked to the bartender that they really picked a tough question. She looked up at it, read it, then told him that she didn't know the answer.
Initially, I laughed when he told me. I didn’t believe she was serious, or maybe my friend was setting up a joke. After all, you would have to be asleep in grammar school not to know about one of America’s most famous Presidents, and he’s told me the woman in question is around forty years old. Somewhere along the line, they made us memorize the Gettysburg Address. It’s a really short speech, but very memorable. It was a long time ago, but I mostly remember the speech, and certainly the reason behind it. But the bartender was serious, she didn’t know, and my friend was beside himself that she was that clueless. Unfortunately, after I realized he was serious, I didn’t have much trouble believing it.
I recently had the opportunity to work with some local high school students and recent graduates. I recall one young lady, I considered her reasonably bright, knew she was doing well in school, and we were talking about a recent trip she had taken with a school group to France and Spain. It seems that they were trying to find out something fairly simple from a guy in France, but he spoke no English. I don’t remember the exact problem, but I asked her if no one in the group could ask the question, which I then asked in French. It was something simple like: “Where’s the bathroom?” Now it had been around forty years since I took French in the seventh and eighth grade, but I’m pretty sure I phrased it correctly. It was a really basic question.
She looked at me and asked what I just said. She knew it was in French, but didn’t understand. I repeated it, slowly (my French teacher told me I had a terrible French accent-go figure, I’m from Ohio, she was Belgian by birth). She shook her head, and told me she didn’t speak French that well. “Wait a minute,” I protested, “didn’t you tell me you had four years of high school French, and you were in the French Club, and your group visited France last summer?”
She sadly nodded, but then explained that her French teacher had been a huge NASCAR fan, and all they had to do was to get him off on a tangent, discussing his favorite sport, and he would forget about teaching the subject that they were there to learn. Apparently it worked for four years straight. I was beside myself. That was just wrong.
Our economy used to be the best in the world. Our public education system was the envy of most countries. Opportunities abounded for our citizens. That is no longer the case, and if you’re wondering why, start with the basics. A country that does so little to prepare its young people for the future is bound to fail. History has shown us that all major societies, all of the world’s great empires, from Ancient Egypt through Alexander’s Greece, Imperial Rome, Portugal, Spain, the Dutch, and the United Kingdom, all of them, have fallen. The United States is on its way down.
The shortsighted way that we choose to educate the majority of our young people has to be a contributing factor. Of course, the argument has to be made that we cannot afford to spend more money on public education, and in some respects it is a valid argument. Especially considering that we have instructors more interested in pit stops and checkered flags than teaching what they are paid to teach.
So what is the answer? I have lots of opinions on a vast array of subjects, developed through careful reading, and listening, and devoting time to thinking about various issues. And I haven’t got the slightest idea what will work. What do you think?
I know we need to get rid of teachers that aren’t effective, but I’m generally opposed to firing teachers. I know we need to find a way to fund public schools better. Our current property tax basis has resulted in school districts that are vastly different in quality, and that bothers me. But I used to be comfortable with the idea that if you wanted better schools, you voted for higher property taxes to fund them, but now I feel that there’s a problem with that rationale. It breaks down over time. In a poor economy, no one feels compelled to vote for higher taxes. The children suffer, and no one cares.
There are those groups out there who would be happy to scrap the public education system altogether. Just do away with it. If you have kids, you pay to educate them as best you can, and that’s it. Of course these are the same folks who want to do away with Social Security and Medicare, too. I guess we could use all the extra tax money to fight a few more wars, and for sure there would be lots of kids who couldn’t afford an education looking for a job in the military. I think it might just create an ugly world.
Personally, I like the idea of a strong public education system, where even the less fortunate children at least have the opportunity to show the world that they have something special. I would hate to think that the next Steve Jobs, or Thomas Edison, or Dr. Christiaan Barnard, would just be sitting on the corner, wishing they could get a break. But a strong public education system requires a strong middle class of informed citizens. Ay, there’s the rub, as Shakespeare would say, because right now our middle class is deteriorating, and our electorate is not well informed.
So what’s it going to be? Shall we have a race to the bottom and may those who shoot straighter and faster win? I hope not. So, if you have an idea, share it. I know there’s at least a few people reading this, so share what you think. The situation demands a response. Don’t be just another clueless American.
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