Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
By her public utterances, Betsy DeVos seemed spectacularly unqualified to lead the bureaucratic enterprise called the US Department of Education. But you really have to wonder: could she do any worse than the exalted mandarins of educational bureaucracy who preceded her?
There is so much not right with public education these days that it could be the poster child for institutional collapse in America. Certainly in terms of the money spent per student, it illustrates perfectly Joseph Tainter’s classic collapse dynamic of over-investments in complexity with diminishing returns. Young adults are floundering in high school, or “graduating” as functional illiterates despite the vaunted widespread application of computer “technology.” They can do Instagram on a cell phone, but they can’t read an application for a driver’s license. And the mania for “diversity and multiculture” has left kids without the armature of an American common culture to successfully mold a life onto.
That common culture, by the way, is exactly what allowed waves of immigrants from the early 19th century until the Second World War to find a place and thrive in an American life that was new to them. It also enabled the sons and daughters of former slaves to enter professions and business, even despite Jim Crow segregation. Today, according to the official diktat of the Department of Education, and the propaganda of the politicized teacher corps, the very mechanisms that made previous success possible are essentially outlawed or banished beyond the pale of a functional consensus. For instance, instruction in speaking English correctly.
I have said this before to the scorn and derision of my auditors: it should be the primary mission of schooling to teach kids how to speak English grammatically and intelligibly. Without that capability, they may not be able to learn much of anything else. That this is not regarded as important anymore is a spectacular disgrace. It also brings us to horrifying issue of race in American schooling. (Yes, this is part of that “conversation about race” that the professional race relations establishment calls for incessantly but doesn’t really want to have.)
The failures of education are especially vivid among the children of the so-called inner city — polite code for black. The school troubles of this group may be attributed to an array of other problems, starting with a social services system that pays teenage girls to have babies without a father present in the house, and the inept parenting that follows in chaotic homes. You could argue that children produced in those conditions are so damaged by the time they get to first grade that they can’t recover.
Under Barack Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, a policy called “racial equity” was devised to mitigate the embarrassing problem of black students being suspended or disciplined disproportionately for behavior problems in the classroom. The “solution” to that was to just stop enforcing behavioral standards. The policy placed the blame for students’ disruptive behavior on the “cultural insensitivity” of the teachers and staff, and more generally on “white privilege.” The result, naturally, is greater chaos and dysfunction in the classroom. It is worth reading the piece by Katherine Kersten in City Journal on how this worked out in the St. Paul, Minnesota, district.
Arne Duncan was also responsible for mis-applying federal “Title Nine” law on college campuses (originally drawn up to balance funding of men’s and women’s sports), where it was used to promote the extra-legal prosecution of rape allegations in what amounted to campus kangaroo courts run by ideologues unconstrained by due process. This has produced a star chamber climate of persecution across the country, nicely in-step with the officially sanctioned coercions of the cultural Maoists who are destroying the intellectual life of American higher ed.
American schooling from kindergarten to post-doc has entered a phase of epic failure under the watch of several generations of federal policy “experts.” It suffers from several other illnesses than the ones I’ve already mentioned, namely the tragic over-centralization of school districts into giant schools; and the odious racketeering in loans that drives college education. Betsy DeVos has a lot of damage to undo engineered by her exquisitely qualified predecessors.
“I have said this before to the scorn and derision of my auditors: it should be the primary mission of schooling to teach kids how to speak English grammatically and intelligibly. Without that capability, they may not be able to learn much of anything else.”
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!
Here comes another load of scorn and derision.
Few people in the US have the command of speaking (or writing) as grammatically and intelligibly as JHK and yet he was incapable of learning that a vote for Obama was a vote for anything other than the Narrative. He is able to list the salient points of why our system is a failure, yet he selects the very candidates who focus on doing just that in order to further ideological gains. One would think he had the intellectual capacity to discern the contradiction in his position, yet the proof is in the pudding.
Love the man’s writing, cannot fathom his mindset.
Yes, HSF, I could enjoy his writing a lot more if I knew less about him. The first few times I came across his writing, I was able to enjoy his writing on its face value without any creeping cynicism because I was unaware of his leanings. I like his style, but every time I read an article of his where he is bitching about the state of things, no matter how correct he may be, I keep coming back to the fact that HE VOTED FOR OBAMA, TWICE. The hypocrisy is glaring here.
One of the things that burns me up, which I suspect is due to the winter weather, is the hate on California comments.
My ex was an elementary school teacher. While her union-minded colleagues abhorred competition, she took her class every year for several years to the Kern County Oral Language festival. Granted, she was working with a good substrate, white kids, and her results were impressive.
I had the pleasure of accompanying her troops to the Bakersfield regional a couple of times. The competition was rough but they worked hard. Her kids also put on the annual music show with her friend Marlene who also played the piano. I recall the American anthem they sang, recapping the market crash of ’29; ‘going up, going up, going up, up, up, up, up, up, ohhhhhhhhh! I am sure it stirred the hearts of the military parents as they sang, Freedom Isn’t Free.
Their science fair projects were a bit repetitive (volcanos) but you occasionally saw one with a good lesson about microbes on kitchen sponges. In a like manner, she had one or two special kids each year that she made a point to introduce, smart kids that I recall from time to time for their little personalities and talents, a little girl who sang us a beautiful song, with a warble even, as we drove her home after school.
I recall a little kid I nicknamed ‘noogie’ whom I had the opportunity to drive home one afternoon. I recall that particular time because I suggested to him that he should keep an eye out for a white bronco that was in the news that year. I could go on and on for a bit. The point is that when folks make all Californians out to be liberal retards, it really pisses me off; California is not a tard state, even if we do have a lot of tards in places.
Isn’t Taft in Kern County? The original name of the town was Moron. They changed it when the USPS wouldn’t build a P.O. in a town of that name. Really.
It’s amazing that one negative comment can generate over a dozen votes but a long comment where I don’t mention Trump only gets me a sympathy vote. And they wonder why I make negative comments trashing Trump.
Hey, Coyote,
You said nice things about my comment yesterday, and I’ll return the favor.
If you exclude L.A., Santa Barbara, and the Bay Area, California is RED. Hell, everything north of Sac wants to secede (Jefferson!!).
There’s a lot of decent RURAL folks in California.
Yes, not everyone in CA is a radical leftist, but it is the only state of the lower 48 that made us feel, well just made us, unwelcomed. It really felt like a hostile foreign country. In comparison, being solid yanks, we worried about Alabama & SC, but always felt safe & welcomed in the deep south.
I think (can’t confirm) it was Jim Sinclair’s buddy Yra who came up with the term IYI (intellectual yet idiot) speaking about someone else that also perfectly describes Kunstler.
I got an idea , even Stucky would approve. Abolish the department of education.Get rid of damn thing.I firmly believe students across this nation would be so much better off.
Really, education should and theoretically is a State issue–not a Federal one. If screwy Cali want to opt for bilingual ed. so be it. I suspect most of flyover country would opt for basic 3 R education as it should be. Let these screwy coastal elites lead the libs down the path to destruction with their multi culturalism and transgender studies and the like.
I don’t even think its “theoretically” a state’s issue. It seems pretty cut and dry to me. Since the enumerated powers given to the feds by the states don’t mention schools or education anywhere, I’d say that means they have no legal authority to do so. All they do is consume money and put out garbage.
The General Welfare clause is all you need to know. It enables the exact opposite of why this country was founded.
The General Welfare clause is so extraordinarily misused. Madison made clear, before the Constitution was accepted, that it was NOT a grant of power. In fact it is a limitation, a restriction, on the use of the other delegated and enumerated powers. In other words, “Congress can do specific power so-and-so AS LONG AS IT IS IN THE GENERAL WELFARE”. Lord knows it is not interpreted that way these days…
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3255144/posts
Unfortunately, the “clause” was not well defined, along with other thins like “is”, family, etc.
If my memory serves me correctly, LBJ was the first to stick the federal nose into state education. The promise was “the Federal government is sooooooo concerned about the quality of education in our nation that we are going to donate, free and clear, no strings attached, some extra money for the states to use as they choose in their school systems. Don’t believe those crazy people who claim that the Federal government will ever use that money to leverage influence and control into the schools. We KNOW that the states have complete control over the schools and have NO intention of messing with that. TRUST US!” By the time Carter came along, the money had increased to the point that he authorized the creation of a new cabinet level department. When Reagan ran for President he (and later Republicans) promised to dissolve the Department of Education because Federal intrusion into the schools was not authorized in the Constitution.
Then Bush 2 came up with the idea to dumb it down so that the slower kids could catch up.
“Will you walk a little faster?”
Said a whiting to a snail,
“There’s a porpoise close behind us,
And he’s treading on my tail.
I gave a presentation in a middle school …. there were children who surprised me that they had enough brain power to run their heart and lungs ! really, really stupid … and they were holding the average and bright children back !
I believe DeVos was hired for the very purpose of dismantling the Dept. of Education. At one point during the campaign, fairly early on, Trump stated a desire to return control of education to the local level. That was when I first really started paying attention to his campaign.
Dismantling would be great, so I don’t believe it. As to Kunstler’s “diminishing returns”, test scores show that the returns have always been negative.
Dismantling, as in making education mandatory, but privatized? That’s why the Amway/Blackwater clan wants a seat at the public trough: to funnel federal funds into private pockets à la Obamacare.
22 votes for BB when he offers a simplistic solution a 3rd grader could have written. Life ain’t fair. No wonder HF can’t break 50 comments, yet Stucky commands an instant 200 on an article about Joos that became a Joo-bashing fest.
If I’m going to be lumped in with HF while BB gets the same enthusiastic fans Stucky does, well I don’t know how to take it. I guess I can dumb down my comments for youse guys.
Don’t you recognize charity when you see it?
We know you’re a great intellect and thus a higher standard must be met if you wish to have green thumbs bestowed upon you.
Besides, this is getting unseemly. It’s the second post I’ve seen today of you carping about your vote totals. WWJD?
P.S. I’ve been upvoting wherever I can to give a little boost.
Yes, that’s why I called it a pity vote.
I’m no great intellect, but I have gotten a lot smarter about commenting here. At one time I got nervous about all the brainiacs here. I got stage fright.
I do not need to imagine the readers are naked, perish the thought. At one time Billy knocked me off my groove because I began to address him. It’s like playing pool with a lousy player.
I finally learned to treat the audience as if I was addressing only Stucky or LLPOH. It helps me stay focused. Again, because they are such good pool players, your game improves just interacting with them. You could say I was home schooled by these punks. Heh.
WWJD? He would get oodles of thumbs down because as Maggie said, folks always upvote Barabbas.
EC – you underestimate your many gifts to TBP. If one of you or BB left, one would be a true loss, the other not missed. Here is a hint – BB would not be missed.
Plus, never heard you claim you would default on your debts.
Kunstler is spot on in so many ways this piece included. Like hardscrabble mentions, its a wonder he still pines for the Democratic Party. –perhaps he is living in the past in that regard.
When I was assigned a book report in high school, I had to read the entire book and demonstrate that I had understood the contents. When my daughter was in high school, she had to read one chapter of a book for a book report. When my granddaughter was in high school, it was okay to watch the movie instead. This started long before Barack Obama was president, although his contributions to this deterioration were not small.
My offspring did well. My daughter graduated summa cum laude in a difficult major, and my granddaughter is currently in a pre-med course of study. Both are articulate and can write well. They will both tell you, vehemently, that it was because they learned it at home, not in school.
Teach your children well. The schools can’t and won’t.
Nice CSNY tie – in there.
But yeah, I learned everything at home, as did my kids, my wife, my OTHER wife, and my OTHER OTHER wife!
We were all six of us, Merit Scholars. Didn’t learn shit at “school”.
Capn Mike, are you Mormon?
Didn’t learn how to stay married, that’s for sure.
Anyone else remember the days when the most serious issues of our school systems were express in simple descriptive phrases like “Why Johnny can’t read”?
Times have certainly changed, haven’t they? I don’t think reading ability is actually discussed much anymore, if at all, in most educational discussions.
But what do you expect when the government sets out to solve a problem, as it did with our educational system starting back in the late 50’s and early 60’s.
Does anyone here remember the “new math” they foisted on kids in the mid ’60s for a few years? It was a complete & utter failure, but the kids who learned it have a hard time unlearning it. Ask me how I know.
Now I see the shit they’re pushing for common core & just shake my head in amazement at the folly of it all. In 10 or 20 years these kids will be the leaders?
IIRC, the feds really got involved in education as a result of Sputnik. There was a fear that the Soviets were overtaking us. One result of this post-Sputnik spasm was the opening of the money spigot for college education loans, based on an assumption that education was now a national security issue.
Of course, once the feds got a toe in the door, another toe followed, then the whole foot, then ……
Nothing like missing the whole point entirely. “Public” (state funded and controlled) education is fundamentally flawed by virtue of its being controlled by the state. It is not fixable. It must either be destroyed entirely and forever banned from a free society or its products will steadily degenerate into the antisocial criminals now controlling modern nation-states. Though few recognize the root issue as being the conflict between individualism and collectivism, some are at least dimly aware of this fact and, together with those disgusted with the steady decline in educational quality, compose the burgeoning home-school movement.
What an absurdity to believe that extorting money from some people to fund the “education” of others’ children under a state-controlled curriculum could have a positive long term result, never mind errors or omissions in the subject material! If the collective’s interests are considered superior to the individual’s the result will be collectivism in any of its various destructive and murderous forms. How could anyone think that anything other than collectivism would ever be taught in a collectivist school?
Our children attend public school because they will spend their entire lives living among the general public. Every single day we discuss with them the complexities of how to deal with those who neither see, nor understand the world as they do, the kinds of people who adhere to the letter rather than the intent of the law, those who cannot grasp fundamental concepts, those who won’t or can’t perform without half a dozen helpers, in short how to navigate in a world of people that are not like them regardless of outward appearance.
The education of our children is all on us- we taught them to read, we taught them to write, how to do math and apply it to the functions of life, a work ethic, hand and eye skills, self-reliance, etc.
I’ve been criticized from both ends- sending them to public school is cruel (it’s a test of self-control and patience as well as a way to hone their sense of humor, social skills, etc.) and from the folks who swear by the role of the schools as “educators” (I find them to be among the least capable of that very thing, much like politicians) and think that our lessons of wary cynicism are harmful in some way and undermine the success of our government and society in the long run.
Parents have an obligation to educate their children, schools are only a facet. What lessons are taken depend upon those who seek them.
My wife and I were deadset on home-schooling. We’ve since backslid to the program you have outlined: Learn hard skills and respect at home. Learn how to deal with the reality of human stupidity at school.
We did it; homeschooled the girl from 7th and the boy from 3rd grades on. Girl got a B. A. in English (it was her heart’s desire, not my advice) and the boy is a junior in IT in college. It cost us whatever money she would have earned, a bit of my time and effort, and supplies and gear. It paid off in adults who think for themselves, generally; and neither has a lot of tolerance for formalized, insane bullshit.
We will see how they fit in society; the girl has a friend in Vancouver she wants to be with, the boy hasn’t even looked as far as I can tell; maybe what he sees turns him off, I can’t say. But public schools in general have fallen so far, what with environmental / “climate science” bullshit, trans-gender bathroom bullshit, reverse-racist and reverse-sexist bullshit and so forth, that sending kids to public schools should be considered grounds for child abuse charges.
Highly dependent on your location. Here in northern UT, all that SJW stuff doesn’t fly. I haven’t caught a whiff of it in my kid’s elementary school. Junior High and High School remains to be seen…
End government control of education. They have failed completely.
You wouldn’t happen to have a list of things the government controlled that they have given up, would you?
Governments never give up any power until forced to do so.
The public simply need to learn civic jiu jitsu and turn it back against itself.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a list of things the government controlled that they have given up, would you?”
Here goes:
1) Rule of law.
Umm, I can’t think of any others just now.
They didn’t give up the rule of law. They just expanded it to include selective enforcement of the law.
Public educations main purpose at first was to make people citizens believe it or not.
Its tough to dismantle now when its primary purpose is a day care center for all the illegitimate children as well as wed mothers who have to go work and support the taxes to pay for all the illegitimate children.
Greetings,
Modern Education is this: Take 30 or so children with nothing in common but a chronological age and put them in a room together and educate them at the speed of the slowest person in the room.
Do this in an environment that mirrors that of prison.
Now, I’ve given this some though and I have a very good idea as to what education is going to look like in a few short years.
About the time your child is 3 a very pleasant holographic bunny or teddy bear will appear and “entertain” the child by playing games, singing songs, counting, etc. This will continue for a few years until a new teacher appears and the games, singing and dancing give way a bit to more difficult subjects like reading, foreign languages & math. The narrow AI educating the child knows exactly what knowledge the child has demonstrated and is making millions of calculations a second to devise strategies that work best for the individual target child.
A teacher like the one I’ve just described could get a child through “high school” by ten years of age and do so with only a few hours of play-time a day. After all, the typical child in the USA receives about 3 minutes of personalized instruction per day in our modern prison-school system.
This system will be fought tooth and nail but will be seen to be so superior that all of the legislation in the world will not save the school system. It will be pushed over once and for all having been easily replaced by A.I.
Holy shit, I never thought of AI teachers. Like so many other technological “solutions” it looks great on the surface, but would certainly be a disaster in real life. Learning about the “reality of human stupidity” as TPC put it, is essential. General socializing is essential. Also, as JHK brings up, solving problems caused by complexity with greater complexity is a dead end, same as all govt. “solutions.”
“Generalized socializing”? You mean, like the little cliques of junior high girls that made my kid’s existence in public school a minor nightmare in seventh grade? Not that the boys were any better, I was one once, and my behavior got me spanked as late as eighth grade (back when mischief was actually punished).
You can learn about the reality of human stupidity in less boring ways. Try volunteering, particularly at the local homeless shelter or equivalent; you will learn what happens when you abuse drugs and alcohol, sexual promiscuity, careless finances, and so forth. Probably with a side course on mental illness, and how to spot it! As long as you have some burly men to protect the kids if things turn violent ….
Public schools today are a cesspool. Education isn’t second priority, it’s somewhere around eighth …
Greetings,
I hear that from teachers all the time this total bullshit concept of Socialization? Being forced to sit in a chair while some dullard instructs the dumbest person in the room is not Socialization. Children learn by imitation and if you wish your children to function in an environment outside that of prison then public school is not for you.
Again, you can wish it away all you want but those with their little holographic teachers will so outperform those in public school that sending a child to public school will be seen as child abuse. Watch for it.
I hope and pray that De Vos simply follows the outline President Trump has handed her and during the course of her tenure de-claws, de-fangs and de-centralises the Department of Education. I believe that is what he has in mind.
She need only to keep from going rogue due to blackmail, bribery or any other diversionary tactic the powers that be may throw in her way.
Getting the leftists, teachers unions and such to go along will be the hardest part, I think most parents will support her.
Go along?
That’s funny. Maybe if you are being mugged at gunpoint, you could get your assailant to “go along” with giving you your wallet back?
The time for getting people to go along has long passed. These folks have to be defeated.
.. only to turn it over to privatization like with the ACA?
DeVos is in there as a vulture to feed off the rotting corpse of public ed., which in my day was actually pretty good.
A common thread with the illegals / public education is that we blatantly allow our laws to be broken. After 8 years of the Magic Negro ( a leftist / communist ) trashing our country, there is very little respect for the rule of law.
From the Huffington Post: “According to estimates by The National Institute for Literacy, roughly 47 percent of adults in Detroit, Michigan — 200,000 total — are “functionally illiterate,” meaning they have trouble with reading, speaking, writing and computational skills. Even more surprisingly, the Detroit Regional Workforce finds half of that illiterate population has obtained a high school degree.”
What slays me: HALF of illiterates had a high school degree. Who were these teachers? How could they do this? Did the administrator’s know this? Someone should be held responsible.
The reason for this is that it was considered “rayciss” to hold people back from the next grade, or prevent them from graduating, no matter how stupid they are. Inner city blacks, especially in places like detroit, proved themselves to be incapable of attaining what used to be considered high school level intelligence and ability. Rather than forcing them to attain that level of proficiency in order to graduate, the decision was made to simply lower the standards to whatever the lowest common denominator of blacks could attain. This standard is progressively lower each year, and the inevitable result of this is that having a high school diploma is increasingly meaningless. They are making the same “progress” with college educations as well.
For education, the most important cabinet member to be confirmed isn’t Devos. It’s Jeff Sessions. The first step to getting better public school teachers is to get rid of the ignorant and stupid ones through teacher testing. If we need to raise pay after that to “backfill” the ranks of good teachers, fine. MN started with teacher testing until we found – to no ones surprise – that testing had a disparate impact on minority teachers. We need to ditch “disparate impact” law in order to accomplish anything in this country. Enter Jeff Sessions.
For all you anti-Kunstler folks at TBP remember, most of us got her after we took the red pill. Kunstler just got a slow-acting, time-release variety from Morpheus.
Many of us TBP people at one time might have been considered liberal in some of our attitudes. But as we learned more and more, we saw the flaws in most liberal arguments. I’ve read Kunstler’s stuff for years, he is going through the same process and is having a hard time letting go of his past liberal leaning. Cut the guy some slack and enjoy the stuff he writes that we can agree with. Pretty soon he will be fully endorsing Trump.
Let’s just kill the Dept. of Education already… I am tired of the Federal Government dictating how children within a community are taught. I am not against public education, but I am against my property taxes going through the roof and exceeding my mortgage to pay for another “special” vice superintendent to study transgender fluidity. Having a Public Educational System is a burden on a community and so the system should be run efficiently and cost effectively… none of which is occurring now.
I know this is going to sound harsh, because it is…. not every person is made to go to college. Their genetics…their talents…don’t lie in academics. Personally, I would like to see public education to 8th grade… you can continue with your “free” education if you can pass the appropriate tests….. if not, then you should be directed to go to a tech/vocational school sooner. We need to start making hard choices on a lot of fronts. We can’t pay for everything for everyone. If we don’t make these type of decisions now, the pain of collapse will only be greater and recovery that much more painful.
The inner city children are “damaged” (if that is the polite way to put having certain genetically given intellectual abilities and emotional/behavioral predispositions) at conception, if modern biological research is faithfully reported. There is precious little that can be done to change these traits. I suppose enforced pre natal nutritional regimens might mke some difference, but any small gain in cognitive ability would not be worth the draconian imposition on liberty necessary to make such a program effective.
Long story short, pick your child’s fellow students carefully.
Here is food for thought, especially for those who support “public education” and rally about the doctrine of “socialization” that they claim is lacking in “homeschooled” children.
Let’s look at what “public education” has to offer:
1. Cliques and rampant bullying, quite often the victim of bullying punished more harshly for fighting back. Many times, bullies are part of a “protected” class–racial minorities, jocks, etc. Strong official disapproval of students making friends outside their grade level. “Peer pressure” used to push conformity.
2. Teachers that don’t teach reading writing and arithmetic. Pushing communist principles such as rabid environmentalism, blaming humanity for conditions beyond our control as well as pushing “communitarianism” (“it takes a village”)–actually communism. This also ties in with teacher-recommended feminizing and drugging (mostly boys) to make them “less fidgety” and more compliant–all for the “benefit” of the teacher.
3. Non-existent moral guidance…the communist concept of “values clarification”, allowing each student to set his own moral standard with no discussion permitted as to guidelines. A student dare not mention God or the Bible in “public school”–not permitted…discussing Islam is OK…even field trips to mosques are encouraged.
4. Sex education that normalizes homosexuality and other deviant practices, actually encouraging deviant behavior and downplaying heterosexuality and abstinence.
5. Insane zero tolerance practices, punishing students for pop-tarts shaped like guns or a student having an “unauthorized aspirin” or plastic butter knife. Of course, abortions and birth control are available without parental notification.
6. Lockdowns and backpack/locker searches by police utilizing “drug dogs”, getting the upcoming generation used to random unconstitutional searches. Quite often, students “roughed up” by “school resource officers”…just because they can…Lockdowns should be reserved for prisons–not schools…
Since these “socialization” practices seem to be the norm in our “public education” systems, parents who send their children to these dysfunctional “indoctrination centers” are guilty of child abuse…
Children who are homeschooled actually do much better in life as they are comfortable with people of all ages. True socialization takes place outside the classroom.