And increasingly obnoxious.
It’s not entirely their fault. It’s part their parents’ fault, too.
Yet most of the blame falls on our politicians and
especially our K-12 public education system that went off the rails starting
about 40 years ago and continues to devolve.
Now we’re all suffering from the results and, if left unchecked, we will
continue to suffer for years to come.
The downward slide started with the idea that the most
important thing was to make every student feel good about themselves. It became more about boosting
self-esteem than learning.
That’s how we got social promotion in our schools. That’s
how we got the dumbing down of the general curricula. That’s how we got rampant
grade inflation.
Students no longer advanced to the next grade solely because
of academic performance, but because holding them back would hurt their self-esteem.
For that reason, teachers and school administrators became
reluctant to hold failing students back a year, even though repeating a grade
was often in the best interest of a failing student. That’s because the next
grade up has always built on mastery of content from the previous grade. When
that doesn’t happen, students can fall further and further behind and never
catch up.
But something else happened as well. The role of teachers – or at least how they
perceived their relationship with their students – changed dramatically.
Teachers no longer wanted to be authority figures in the
classroom; they wanted to become “friends” with their students. Pals.
Buddies. Some didn’t want to be Mr., Mrs., or Miss so-and-so; they
wanted to be on a first-name basis, especially with students over 16. At the very least, they wanted students to
like them personally, rather than just respect or fear them.
Before you think that never happened, think again. In the late-1960s
it had already started. I remember one young
English teacher who showed up in my home room when I was a senior in high
school to ask me why I didn’t seem to like her.
I was stunned; I’d never had a teacher do that before. It wasn’t that I
was doing poorly in her class or causing trouble – I made straight As in her
class – and she was an okay teacher, it was simply she worried I didn’t like
her.
From that day forward, I had zero respect for her.
When teachers prize your friendship and self-esteem, and the
happiness of your parents, over your performance in the classroom, that’s
corrosive to the process of teaching and objectively measuring what students
have learned. Poor test scores and bad
grades hurt your friends’ feelings, and often meant confrontations with angry
parents. It was far easier to let kids slide and that’s what a lot of teachers
did, with the blessing of administrators.
This led to a whole
generation of students who graduated from high school – if they didn’t drop out
first – with a diploma that meant nothing except attendance. Too many were functionally illiterate: they
couldn’t read at their grade level; they couldn’t do basic math.
Despite this, some of them graduated with “honors.”
But they felt good about themselves. That’s all that
mattered. They were happy. Their parents were happy. Teachers were happy
because they moved students through and out of the system. Big-city mayors touted their success in
improving graduation rates in their schools, which, while still dismal in most
cases, were artificially better than before.
Marginally.
Everybody got a trophy – in this case a diploma.
No one seemed to care the K-12 public education industry was
pushing out too many students ill-equipped to fill out a basic job application.
Making everybody feel good about themselves was what public
education was all about anyway, right? That’s
what the teachers’ unions espoused.
That’s also what Education majors in college at that time were being
taught. Students would learn better –
and more – if you only used positive reinforcement and compassion in the
classroom. It was bad to be judgmental.
You’re probably think that no way did colleges teach future
teachers that. Aren’t teachers the best
and brightest among us – otherwise they wouldn’t be teachers, right?
Few will ever admit this – teachers especially – but a lot
of Education majors haven’t been that challenged on their way to becoming K-12
teachers. There are exceptions, of course, like those that earned degrees in
Math or Science or another subject before they became teachers. But many got more
generic Education degrees from probably the easiest programs in their college
or university. I know that was the case
when I was in college. I suspect that
never changed.
In my university, even in the 1970s, it was almost
impossible to fail Education courses; about the only way you could fail was not
show up to any classes and not take any exams.
If you failed an exam you could take it over and over until you passed.
That happened nowhere else in the university.
Predictably, then, when my state instituted more rigorous
mandatory testing of teachers not all that long ago, an appalling number
failed. This wasn’t something new. For four straight years teacher test scores
declined. Some teachers lamented that
they had to retake the test as many as six times before they ultimately
passed. Yet instead of trying to bring
up their scores by better mastering their subjects, they blamed the test itself
as being “too hard” and went to court.
I remind you folks, these are the same people teaching your
children and grandchildren. The same ones on whose watch American student test
scores continue to fall compared to other nations. These are the people who will be instructing
the next generations, too. The overall
message: if at first you don’t succeed, demand a re-do until you do; if you still
fail, sue to lower the standards.
Remember this the next time you hear that today’s teachers
are woefully underpaid and overworked.
If we only spent more on teachers and reduced class sizes we’d get
better results.
Well, we’ve done that and scores continue to decline.
But there were clear signs this wasn’t working out as
planned. Not all students were learning better and more. In fact, objective standardized test score
averages kept declining. And still are. As early as the 1970s more and more colleges and
universities found the need to provide remedial reading and math courses for incoming
freshmen. Think about that.
What was the response from politicians and the teachers’
unions?
Smaller class sizes.
More classroom aides. Better pay
for teachers. Better training for
teachers. Improved facilities. More creative teaching techniques. Always the
same stuff.
Nothing about addressing the real reason for declining test
scores: teachers weren’t doing their job
to actually educate the kids and apply real standards to determine what the
kids learned. Just as important, many parents
were opposed to any objective measurement of how well their Sue or Johnny were
doing; they either didn’t want to know or were afraid of the results.
Probably because they suspected what they’d learn. The myth
would be destroyed.
When some states tried to implement standardized testing of
all students to decide whether they could move to the next grade or graduate
the outrage from a lot of parents was off the charts. There were lawsuits,
accusations of racism, and organized protests to halt the testing.
The entire premise of the American experiment and the rights
and freedoms we enjoy is based on an informed and educated electorate. That’s why K-12 public education here is
free. To everyone. Regardless of race, gender, ethnicity,
religion or whatever.
But if you can’t objectively measure if our K-12 education
system is doing what it’s supposed to, and we continue to lower the bar to make
even the most illiterate students feel good about themselves, we can expect our
population to get dumber and dumber.
Worse, they’ll vote.
