What role should our government play in education? It’s quite likely that when the constitution was written, the education system of the USA was superior to most other nations and no thought was given to disrupting that by government involvement.
However, over time, most of us have come to realize that the better educated the population is the more successful the nation is. Not just the wealthy should be educated! Having the best education system in the world since the 1700s (until the past few decades) has been credited as a major factor in the rise of the USA.
But what should we be teaching?
Clearly I’m opposed to indoctrination. We need to teach our citizens how to think, not what to think!
Reading, Writing and Arithmetic are the core fundamentals in my opinion. These are essential.
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There are a million other interesting and important subjects that would be worthwhile to teach the population in general. We need our children to become adults with a knowledge of a wide range of practical skills. Important concepts like pushing too much electricity through the resistance of a wire heats up the wire, potentially melting it, potentially starting a fire. Lubrication, without oil an engine will rapidly destroy itself. Are you aware of how many adults have no idea how to change a tire?
However, the past three years have made it clear that one of the most important things to teach is “critical thinking”. Our world is full of misinformation. Our authorities can not be trusted. The media can’t be trusted. Heck, even our friends and social circle can’t be trusted. How often have you re-shared a post without considering if it actually is accurate or not?
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Related to this is the concept of quality. Compare the quality of manufacturing in Europe to the quality here in the USA (which mostly comes from Asia). We are drowning in cheap crap that breaks and then we buy a new one. Let’s not continue to teach a disposable culture.
Thus I now think a good education includes teaching how different people have different ideas. Just because the establishment insists on something, doesn’t make it correct (consider Galileo or Flip Flop Fauci).
Students should also be taught the design and functioning of their government. It’s amazing how many people in the USA think we have a democracy! Even worse is that almost nobody is taught the tyranny of democracy (and why the founding fathers knew it was important to not create a democracy).
Cost! Who should pay for education? Over 90% of funding for education is from state and local sources. Yet the federal Department of Education has a budget of $638 Billion dollars! Clearly education is “Big Business”! 25% of the USA population is enrolled in school. If we consider only K-12 enrollment we see figures around 53 million. (there are about 20 million college students) Doing a bit of math, my calculations show $120,377 spent per student. More really rough math would indicate the average taxpayer is paying $25,520 per year for education. Clearly someone’s numbers are a little bit off. Of course school property does cost some, but if we ignore all other costs this would allow hiring one well paid teacher for every student! Yet our classroom sizes are often thirty students to every one teacher. Since student to teacher ratio is usually considered the most important factor for a good education, we would be better off hiring a private tutor for every student rather than using public schools!
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Yet, those pushing government funded education constantly claim that funding is inadequate and needs to be substantially increased.
It seems to me, we are not getting our “money’s worth”! Once again it seems like it would be best to slash the government by 90% and let private funding supplement that. Get back to basics and make education cost effective!
Another opinion I have is that businesses put too much value on a college education when hiring someone. The primary value of a college education is four more years of life experience! General college education isn’t worth much! Serious technical education could also be better provided directly by an employer! Hands on training is far more valuable than sitting in a classroom.
References:
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2019/school-enrollment.html
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372
https://www.epi.org/publication/public-education-funding-in-the-us-needs-an-overhaul/
https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-education?fy=2022
Some feedback would be nice. I’m trying to keep articles “short and readable” but this also means that I’m making a lot of general statements rather than diving into details. Should my articles be shorter? Longer?
This is a great length ! I think diving into parts is good ! It doesn’t leave us questioning more and wandering if you dive into some of the breakdowns of the topics . I think education even since I have been alive has changed drastically . I think our government shouldn’t be the ones in charge of schools I think we should run our own schools! And colleges !