The United States is an odd country: unlike virtually every other on the planet; the US is not a derivative of geography, but rather a philosophic creation, a nation in pursuit of ideas, ideas of individual rights and justice and a representative government that serves the people.

And that is all threatened.

I had a chance to talk with a friend’s son last week, and listen to him discuss high school. He had just finished his finals, stands near the very top of his class in one of the state’s better high schools, and he’s been accepted into a great university. His comments provided some rather salient observations about the state of education.

What he observed was not simply an inordinate focus on getting a good GPA (Grade Point Average) – one above 4.0 – which is accomplished by taking ever more AP (Advanced Placement) courses; but rather a system in which students who wish to come out on top have to know – or learn quickly – how to “game” the system; for example, to take certain course during the summer so you can squeeze in an extra AP course during the school year, and to start early – the 9thgrade – to “machine” your GPA, because by the time you’re half way through sophomore year you’ll already be out of the running for the top slots in class if you haven’t been “juggling the system.” (According to my friend, he succeeded because an older sibling “schooled him” on what he really needed to do to get a high GPA.)

Students who succeeded did so in part because they had learned how to game the system, and the schools go along with it. Those teachers who actually focused on trying to educate the students, and the students who were focused on learning, were a distinct minority, and any substantive knowledge gained on history or the processes of good government were more likely to be in spite of the efforts of the school rather than because of them.

It would be easy to simply chalk this up to one smart guy venting, but I’ve a number of other data points spread across the country: from friends in Maine, Florida, Colorado, California and elsewhere who all either have children who are in, or have recently completed school, as well as folks working in the education community.

All tell similar accounts: school administrations – and teachers – who focus on statistical outcomes that have little to do with real learning. Little allowance is made for the differences in learning between 15-year-old students and 18-year-old students, or of the differences in learning between boys and girls. In those cases where senior administrators and teachers do try, the push-back by teachers unions, state governments – and many parents – is for a system that produces students with 4.5 and higher GPAs (on a nominal 4.0 system), irrespective of the actual education students might receive.

The figures are daunting: the US spends more on public schools ($634 billion in 2014, kindergarten through 12thgrade) than it does on national security. That doesn’t include the money spent on private schools or the huge sums spent on colleges and graduates schools. Total spending on education in the US tops 7% of GDP, more than twice what we spend on national security, and places the US as #1 in per capita spending on education.

Frankly, that would be fine, if the product of all that spending was a well-educated citizenry, yet we continually fall short of the top 10 nations in virtually any discipline. Further, fewer and fewer high school graduates understood how our nation works, and our nation’s unique role in the world. Survey after survey reveals just the opposite, that understanding of the fundamentals of our nation and our government has fallen in the last several decades, even as spending has increased dramatically.

The truth is we face a real problem: a country founded not on a geographic reality but on pursuit of a philosophic idea needs to have a citizenry that understands those ideas. As my friend’s son observed, our schools are neither teaching the basics of our national origin nor our national ideals, nor is it equipping most of the students with the necessary tools to learn those things. What happens next?

Is it likely that our citizens will continue to defend and nurture what they don’t understand?

Copyright 2018 Arrias
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