How Low Will American Education Go?

Helloooo…(peering through the school door)Anyone home? (knock, knock, knock)…Yeah! Hey! (pounding on the door)…You, over there with the books, talking on the cell phone! And you, behind the desk micro-managing feel-good education! And you, the dude behind the big desk, managing his school like an ice cream parlor with curriculums available in a zillion flavors except for the one with real ingredients! And you, in the parking lot, who says your kid can’t get up before 9 a.m.? Yeah, all you people. Listen up! Twenty-five other nations scored higher than the U.S. on a science test given to 13-year-olds. That’s right. We’re not first anymore. We’re not even second or third. We’re 26th—do you hear me--26th!!!! Today my daily newspaper told me that while immigrant kids struggle in school because they don’t know English, they most likely have better math skills. One kid said that what he was learning in sixth-grade math here, he had learned in third grade back in his home country. Hey America, are you following me here? Do you get yet? Are your petty fights over educational content starting to look sordid yet? Having lived abroad, I know for a fact, that foreign schools demand much more of their kids, and that those schools have no fear of using merit, and merit alone, as the measure for success, i.e., lots of standardized tests. My kid was even in a school where they still used corporal punishment, i.e. spanking. Here are some other examples from that school: Kids had homework in kindergarten. Kids learned to write in cursive at age 6. They also visited art museums in first grade. Every kid took a foreign language at age 12. No academic subjects were ever taught in any language other than the language of the country—so guess what, my kids learned the language. There were tons, and I mean tons, of memorization. School was held 6 days/week, and families that took days off, say, to go skiing, were looked down on. Am I making myself clear here? Are you beginning to see that American education might just have another Sputnik crisis on its hands—getting so complacent about its math and science education, that one day America will wake up and see another country--or as is currently the case, many countries—zooming ahead of us? Other countries’ kids are actually working tirelessly to get an education, knowing full well that education is their ticket to success, yet America continues to dumb down every course and test, demanding the barest of performances from its children. If the high school exit exam is really at a 10th-grade level, then expect 10th graders to pass it, not 12th graders! Other nations, using much less money, exceed us. Yep, while American adults are content to narcissistically rehash the social debates of the 1960’s through the educational system, Rome is burning. How unsurprising that a generation that lacked personal discipline and commitment cannot bring itself to demand performance from its kids, but instead prides itself on teaching protest skills, socialism, and the false notion that self-esteem is given and not earned. When the world is quite literally passing America by, fake self-esteem will be no salve, and the future will belong to others who were better prepared.