Before I begin this article: I am not an educator, nor are my spouse or our children. I do have nuclear family that works, and has worked, in many aspects of education, for which I am grateful.
Education, more specifically public education, is in the news almost daily. Loud voices shouting to be heard in a public square trying to be the dominate role in spending public money and educating the vast majority of America's youth. I've some thoughts I'd like to share with you; I hope this provokes thought on your part, and discussion between you, your families, neighbors, school boards, and politicians. And please, don't leave your children out of the discussion!
A free, public education is an idea that was new and untried when this country was founded. The balance of the civilized world saw no need for the masses to know any more than was necessary for their daily lives and employments or servitudes. It took a long time, and a great deal of protesting, fighting, court action, governmental decrees and just plain old fashioned hard work for our educational system to reach the point it is at today. Now, don't stop reading at this point. Take a deep breath and continue with me. In no small part, America's experiment with an educated populace has lead to some of the greatest changes in education worldwide; it is now the norm for children to go to public schools in most developed, and many developing, countries. (We could pause here to pat ourselves on the back for leading the world in this regard, but, we have other items on the agenda.)
It has become a revolting national pastime to fault public schools, and the teachers therein, for all of societies evils and ills; to accuse them with charges of malfeasance and dereliction of duty, improper education, grooming, etc., ad nauseam. Politicians, pundits, TV personalities, podcasters, and commentators who should in fact have a better grip on reality jump on these perceived iniquities to rack up click points, ratings, and cash, spreading these and other perverse embellished fabrications to forward their own political, financial or social agendas.
Regarding the above, I can hear my Grandmother (who was, by the way, a teacher herself) saying "They are lying to you, Robert. Just lying to you."
It is abhorrent, to any rational mind, for school board meetings to be destroyed by a dullard with a microphone proclaiming without evidence or fact that K-12 educators are teaching Critical Race Theory. The idea, spread by nefarious individuals with an axe to grind and no wood that need splitting, that the educators of our youth are grooming them to some perceived homosexual agenda is disgusting beyond words. (I wrote about litter boxes in classrooms in a previous article.) Demanding that certain books be removed from classrooms on the basis of a sentence, paragraph, or character taken out of context displays not a high moral stance or great intellectual prowess; instead ignorance, fear of new or strange ideas, and lack of cognitive reasoning skills are showcased for the world to see. Clamoring for history, both world and American, to be taught as it was in 1950, is to ignore reality and places our youth at a great disadvantage relative to interaction with the peoples of other countries in our shared world. To declare that The United States of America is and always has been perfect in every detail, and that education should develop around that thought, is to deny the very first sentence in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States:". . . in Order to form a more perfect Union. . . ".
At times, the people screaming the loudest at school board meetings about these perceived faults do not even have students in the schools controlled by that particular school board. They are simply following some item of interest from social media. (In Utah, our legislature just tried banning children under the age of 13 from using social media. Perhaps we should ban the parents from the same.) The inability of the protestors to show proof of the nonsensical claims they make evidently does not embarrass them in the least; it seems to be a badge of honor to say, "just do the research and you will find I'm right." Reality finds in most cases they are not right. It doesn't appear they have an agenda to correct the imagined faults (other than to fire teachers and school board members), they are just interested in causing confusion and disruption. Some, however, do have an agenda; they want education, and in fact the country, turned back to what they grew up with in the 1950's or early 60's.
Our country, and the world around us, is changing at lightning speed. The internet, cell phones, satellite technology, even the pandemic cause structural and interpersonal changes unprecedented in our history. The factual changes in the demographics of our country, the increase of business and employment opportunities around the world, and the immediacy of today's news reporting, has laid open what is to some an unthinkable and unbearable reality; we are a more diverse nation than previously understood, and we are not a perfect nation by any standard of civilization. Education, more exactly public education is one tool we have as a country to help us keep up with the changes, innovations and discoveries rapidly affecting our lives. Rather than destroy the educational system that is addressing and teaching about these innovations, changes, discoveries and actualities, rather than strip educators of the tools and resources they need to prepare our youth to enter college, adulthood, employment and the challenges they will face in the near future, we need to enhance our children's educational opportunities, and support our public schools, the teachers, staff, and administrators therein, and push back against those who would, out of fear and ignorance, deprive our youth of the same opportunities we had growing up and being educated in public schools. Our parents, and the leaders of this country in the past, tried to provide us with the best education possible at the time. It is our responsibility to do the same for the youth of today; it is our duty to give all of our youth every opportunity possible to enjoy the Great American Dream.
And before I leave you, dear reader, here are some FACTs for you to digest. Regardless of all the talk about how our schools are failing, how our children are not getting the same education we ourselves received, the facts tell a different story.
The average SAT scores for high school students in 1972 were: Math, 509; Critical reading, 530. The average SAT scores for 2021 (the last year available) were: Math, 528; Critical reading, 533. The lowest average score for Math was 492, in 1981; for Critical reading 494 in 2016. The highest average scores for both were in 2021.
I do have a response I use when someone tells me about the CRT education, the Great White Replacement Theory, the grooming of our children, etc. I simply and quietly ask for the source material they are sharing.
Thank you for reading, I do appreciate your taking the time to hear me out, particularly on this divisive and challenging subject. I also appreciate any comments you would like to leave, just click on the word "comments" in the white box below.
R. M. "Bob" Hartman
Edit: The SAT scores shown above are national averages, I have added the word average where appropriate. Thank you PJA 02/05/2023 RMH
Isn't their goal to finish creating an uninformed armed and malleable majority controlled by the more heavily armed?
ReplyDeleteDoesn't the right's reaction to CRT, woke, black history etc. represent a defense of the establishment of the Holy White American Theocracy?
I once asked an adult male who confused Dachau with extermination camps while declaring that groomers should be gassed to explain how a prepubescent child could comprehend anything meaningful about the diversity of human sexuality from any source, nor after reaching puberty what could the groomer's executioner have read in a book, heard from a guest speaker or a teacher that would have caused him to become interested in the guy in the second row instead of the girl in the first row, or becoming a girl like the girl in the first row, presented his source material in the form of a deafening silence.