Vindaloo Bugaboo (VB) and I join forces against the array of squishies, socialists, and environmentalists at Carbon Upfront. What we haven’t succeeded in doing is instructing them that they can mandate anything they want when it comes to how people are to live but that they will receive a lot of pushback – by politics first and then by the use of the Second Amendment if necessary (Canada, where’s he’s from, has nothing close to the Right of Self-Defense and he likes it that way).
But I digress; I’m just trying to set the stage. Education/student achievement came up, and we had a back-and-forth. The following was in our email banter; permission was granted to publish it.
The discussion was about Coke/large corporations, and VB had written this:
I could compare Coke to education (my current career) and ask whether or not I, as the teacher, bear full responsibility for student academic achievement and success in university, community college, or the workforce. If a student fails to graduate, or is unable to get a preferred job after graduation or is mired in massive student loan debt, is that **MY** responsibility?
Of course it isn’t. What a puerile, nescient belief system if you think otherwise.
I cannot control a student’s actions or inactions; I cannot force them to turn in assignments on time, or pass an exam. I cannot compel them to be hired by a preferred employer, let alone control their overall employability. IT IS SOLELY THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE STUDENT TO MAKE THE MOST OF HIS OR HER TIME IN THE CLASSROOM TO THEN ACHIEVE THE SUCCESS THEY DESIRE FOR THEMSELVES. If a straight-A student becomes sullen and maligned and fails to become a successful adult, why would that be a reflection of the quality of teaching they received if a ‘C’-average student from the same class also began his own company and makes $400K+/yr as its president and CEO?
My response was this graph.
To a SINGLE student, no, you aren’t. But what about the Cato graph on cost vs student achievement? Costs keep climbing while achievement levels remain flat over years and a ton of students?
So here’s the payload of this post, courtesy of VB (reformatted, emphasis mine):
“But what about the Cato graph on cost vs student achievement? Costs keep climbing while achievement levels remain flat over years and a ton of students?”Well, education on the whole is broken—and it really began its decline in the 1990’s. Both my girlfriend (who’s been teaching for 30 years and is set to retire from in-classroom instruction at the end of the 2025-26 school year) and I believe that that’s when things began to come off the rails in primary education as the focus turned from mastery of skills to DEI initiatives and s**t like “No Child Left Behind“—thanks, Dubya … you asshat.Why?Because “No Child Left Behind” had no requirements that students achieve specific goals or even meet basic standards, and eliminated the tried-and-true practice of tracking.Instead, because of feckless administrators who kowtowed to belligerent parents upset that little Johnny and his tirades were no reason to put him into specialized classes, problematic students (behavioral or academically slower) were mainstreamed with regular students, thereby disrupting the learning process for gen-track kids. At the same time, exceptional (i.e. gifted) programs were systematically eliminated because parents of lower-achieving students felt that it was unfair to spend resources on those kids when they didn’t see a real “need” for those kinds of advanced courses.But having been one of those gifted students myself, I would have loved to have had more opportunities to really challenge myself, or have dual-enrollment AP coursework available to shorten my time and costs spent on college. Instead, we’ve dumbed down the curriculum and enabled the losers in society to be passed up to the next grade whether or not they’ve demonstrated mastery at grade level. So kids in 4th grade that can’t read will continue to get passed up to the next grade, until they get to 8th grade and are passed from elementary to high school under the guise of “well the high school teachers can fix them.”Except they don’t have the time to devote to remedial studies because they’re too busy jumping through hoops put up by administrators to justify their expensive salaries. And since state and federal funding is contingent on how many students pass vs. fail (and every student is seen as little more than ‘x’ number of federal education dollars) there’s little incentive by high schools to employ remediation measures and ensure mastery of skills before moving on to the next grade level.So we have a whole cohort of students who can’t read, write, or use critical thinking skills walking across the graduation platform, many of whom go on to college, who then receive their indoctrination from leftist professors whose sole intent is to ensure groupthink—and so long as they’re good little minions and abide by following that indoctrination protocol, they get a passing grade.But then they enter the workforce, fresh from indoctrination camp, having never been challenged or how to build resiliency, only to fail over and over in their jobs—or job hop repeatedly before true depth of knowledge and skills can be demonstrated to the employer. And thus, that’s how we got to where we are now.Costs keep rising because the federal government outlawed personal loans from banks and other financial institutions and forced students to get their college tuition underwritten by the federal government. Once colleges realized that they can charge whatever they want for tuition because the government would guarantee payment without risk of insolvency, they began hiking rates. And then, to match the tech world entrepreneurial “fun place to work” lifestyle so many wanted to be part of upon graduation, they began building ridiculous housing and offering amenities that are far beyond any fresh graduate’s expected reality.… which only added to their anxiety, stress, and sense of being lied to about the value of a college education. I don’t know about you, but my entire college career was one of being poor, subsisting on ramen and Spaghetti-O’s and PBJ sandwiches, and living in basement lets with a bunch of other housemates. No college student these days has to endure those kinds of conditions anymore, which is why their sense of entitlement is off the charts.Solutions to the problem:
- bring back phonics and rote memorization charts at the elementary level
- mandatory foreign language training at the elementary level (and not just Spanish)
- require mandatory skills mastery before allowing a student to pass up to the next grade
- track students and separate kids based on abilities, not age or class cohort, so personalized instruction can be used to level them more quickly
- require mandatory end of school skills mastery to graduate
College?No clue—it’s a cesspool of liberalism and woke indoctrination and for many young men, unnecessary. Blue collar trade jobs are in high demand and will only continue to be of more pressing concern, offering high pay without the need to go into massive debt on a useless college degree. Young women are skewing much further to the Left, embracing wokeness and eschewing masculinity and religion—the complete opposite of young men. We need strong leaders, especially of faith, and to stop embracing victimhood.Just my personal thoughts, anyway.
I let him know that we tracked but in parallel:
I mirror that except MY thesis is when the New Left discovered that their “Revolution” was being ignored, their Weatherground and SDS compatriots were getting jailed, and LBJ’s war was getting them conscripted. So they burrowed into academia, especially Education colleges (e.g., Bill Ayers) and restarted their revolution there (see Gramsci).
We have great conversations on the phone, too!
