Public Education: The Downward Spiral

The nation’s public schools are letting their students down, and many students are aware that this is happening. What is even worse is that these young people are convinced that they are powerless to correct the situation – it’s how schools are, and they will always be that way. They are probably right, especially if responsible adults either deny that problems exist or do nothing but point accusing fingers, blaming the schools’ failure on somebody or something else.

In such a setting, it is not at all surprising that student performance is declining and that disciplinary problems are increasing. Just one practice alone – the automatic promotion of students to the next grade regardless of their performance – shows why and how schools fail. Although it is not the only problem by any means, this practice of “social promotion” has a consequence that sums up the failure of the schools: We are graduating students who are unprepared for the demands they will face after graduation, whether they enter the workplace or go on to further study. When we promote students from grade to grade regardless of whether they have learned anything, we inevitably graduate some (or, more likely, many) who have learned little or nothing. To put it quite simply, our primary and secondary institutions of education are producing graduates who are not educated.

Few people attack social promotion; indeed, most defend it. Administrators and teachers argue that holding a child back to repeat a grade has serious social and psychological consequences. Children, they say, must remain in classes with their age-equivalent peers so that they don’t become social outcasts. Never mind that, as slow learners, they will probably become social misfits anyway. Educators also argue that holding children back damages their self-esteem. Never mind that it is false self-esteem that will be shattered when these young people enter the working world and discover that they lack the skills or knowledge to succeed. Parents, in turn, protest that it is not fair to have their child repeat a grade. Once the child has put in a year, regardless of whether he or she learned anything, parents believe that the child should be guaranteed a promotion.

It is not surprising that teachers support guaranteed promotions, since they themselves enjoy guaranteed employment. Under the tenure system, once a teacher has taught for three or four years (the time varies by state), no teacher can be fired except for cause – and “cause” must usually be extreme, such as conviction for a felony. Anything less than that involves such expensive litigation that schools do not and cannot dismiss lazy or incompetent teachers – a job guarantee that nobody else in the working world enjoys, not even healthcare workers who are involved in life-and-death decisions.

Although many teachers, perhaps even most, may be hardworking and capable, it is likely that, under the tenure system, many students are exposed to teachers who are neither industrious nor competent. We may add to these teachers all those who try to teach but cannot because they are not well-grounded in their subjects, having been trained more in “education theory” than in substantive knowledge. It is not unusual, for example, for a teacher who has only minimal education in literature and has little experience or training in writing to be certified to teach high school English. Therefore, students probably have quite a few bad teachers in their twelve years of public education.

If this is the environment in which students are supposed to acquire knowledge and develop respect for the value of education, it is no wonder that many students say that school is boring. To be sure, they are misguided when they argue that school should be “more fun” – and that statement is often a copout to excuse their own laziness. Students must face the reality that learning – the acquisition of knowledge – requires effort and hard work. The primary function of a school is to educate, not to entertain.

However, good teachers know how to convey the message that, no matter how hard it may be, learning has its own rewards. When we learn something, it is a gratifying experience. If the schools want to give students some real self-esteem, they should do so by helping students to meet the challenge of learning, not by rewarding them with promotions just because they attended school. Good teachers also know how to make their subjects relevant. They take the time to explain why something is being taught and how it relates to the students’ lives – now, or as something they will use in the future. For example, when students are required to read a novel, a good teacher will demonstrate how the experiences of the characters or the ideas in the book relate to their lives. At the very least, instruction will include some explanation of what the book says about the human experience – about the emotions and thoughts that engage us all, just because we are human beings. Finally, good teachers bring into the classroom a contagious enthusiasm for their subjects. A knowledgeable and energetic science teacher, for example, can inspire at least a moderate interest in – and curiosity about – science, even among students who are more inclined toward something else.

Having good teachers is only half the battle. We must have a society (and that includes parents – especially parents) that is genuinely committed to the value of education. Here perhaps we are failing most of all. Instead of looking upon education as the acquisition of knowledge regardless of its monetary value, our emphasis is almost entirely upon how education affects earning power. A diploma or degree is not seen as a symbol of having achieved a certain level of learning but as an entry ticket to a well-paying job. We tell young people that they should get a diploma because “without it, you cannot get a good job,” not because “without it, you may spend the rest of your life as an ignorant dolt.” Yes, it is quite true that nowadays everyone but a few geniuses and those with special talents (such as entertainers and athletes) needs an education to make a decent living. However, true commitment to education involves the belief that knowledge, regardless of its practical application, is itself beneficial – to the individual and to society.

Not many of us, apparently, feel that way. We pay lip service to the importance of education, but what we mean is that everyone should get a diploma or a degree so that everyone has the opportunity to get a good job. We don’t mean that everyone should acquire knowledge. In fact, we have a certain disdain for any knowledge that cannot be translated into dollars and cents, calling people who possess such knowledge nerds or intellectual snobs. Teachers say, for instance, that parents in parent-teacher conferences almost always want to discuss the grades their children are getting and not what they are learning – or even whether their children are learning anything at all. Saying that the grade necessarily represents learning is to be naïve, considering that a high school diploma (after twelve years of “making grades”) does not even necessarily represent literacy. If we were truly committed to education, we would be marching on the schools, demanding that our children learn something.

Instead, we are in a state of denial. Who can argue convincingly that we are not? Fully twenty-five years ago, in 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education published A Nation at Risk, a scathing criticism of the many ways that the public schools were failing. It caused a brief flurry of concerned editorials in the press, rattled the walls at a few school board meetings, and gave some school administrators heartburn. Then it was promptly ignored, except by a few annoying intellectuals, and the public went back into its ostrich mode, hiding its head in the sand. Since then, performance scores have continued to drop (albeit with an occasional exception), even while the standards on which we base these scores have declined precipitously. We have eliminated many of the more challenging subjects (advanced math and science, many history courses, required foreign language and Latin, to name a few) from the curriculum and replaced them with easier, “more practical” subjects. Nonetheless, in a survey conducted in 2000 by Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup, 47% of the respondents gave the public schools a grade of A or B, and 35% gave them a C. (Source: http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kpol0009.htm) In other words, 82% of us think that the schools are at least satisfactory; nearly half of us think they are good or excellent. That is denial; the facts suggest otherwise.

Even those individuals who do recognize that the schools are in trouble have many rationalizations for not acting – and for not being terribly concerned. As has been noted, the victims (the students themselves) are inclined to say, “Yeah, they’re bad, but they will always be bad, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Many adults, when they aren’t denying that serious problems exist, take the same stance. In addition, a remarkable number (especially in the suburbs) believe that, while the schools somewhere else might be terrible, those in their community are just fine. They hear about crime-ridden urban schools and conclude that their schools are OK. Their schools may be OK by comparison, but it never occurs to these defenders that they may only be comparing mediocre or bad to worse.

Another rationalization is that the system is fine because here in the United States everyone has an opportunity to attend school, whereas many other countries are more selective. That is quite true, but it is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter how many have this opportunity if large numbers of them are not learning anything.

Yet another way to avoid confronting the failure of the schools is to find a scapegoat – that is, to blame the schools’ failure on some force outside the schools. People have been extremely creative in this regard, placing responsibility on almost everything but sunspots. Television was for a long time a prime culprit, blamed by parents and teachers alike. That excuse won’t wash. Television has been a fixture in American homes since the 1950s, and still school performance has declined. If TV were responsible, performance might have declined in the ‘50s or ‘60s and then leveled off. The same can be said of many more supposed causes. Nowadays, it is fashionable to point to the Internet or videogames or some other diversion that is distracting the youth. That is nonsense. Students have always had diversions that lure them away from doing homework. It is more likely that they don’t study because they aren’t really convinced that studying matters and that there’s little if any penalty for not doing it.

One reason that many people cite for the schools’ failure to educate is that they have so many problems with bad behavior – ranging from violence to the presence of drugs to troublemakers who disrupt classes – that teachers cannot teach and students cannot learn. There is certainly some truth to that, but it’s an explanation, not an excuse. Schools cannot blithely excuse their academic failures on the grounds that they have disciplinary problems. They have disciplinary problems mostly because they don’t enforce discipline, and enforcing discipline is one of the school’s responsibilities. In the permissive atmosphere of today’s classrooms, behavior that not long ago would have resulted in severe punishment, including possible expulsion, is tolerated or is met with nothing more than an ineffectual verbal reprimand. Virtually nobody is ever expelled. The defenders of the no-expulsion policy say that “everybody has a right to an education,” and this apparently includes even those students who turn the classroom into a daily circus and interfere with all other students’ “right to an education.” To be sure, parents who do not enforce discipline at home and expect the schools to do so are partly to blame, but that doesn’t pardon the schools for tolerating disruptive behavior. In the past, children were always expected to be more controlled at school than they are at home. That is rarely the case anymore.

Yet another piece in the discipline problem is a point noted earlier. Students expect school to be entertaining and “fun.” It can be, especially if students enjoy and value learning, if classes are interesting, and if teachers are knowledgeable and enthusiastic. However, if students do not value learning or if classes are boring and teachers are incompetent, young people will seek ways to break the monotony and have “fun.” One way to do that is to disrupt classes.

If our schools are going to move in a positive direction and not continue their downward spiral, everyone (educators, parents, and society at large) must embrace a commitment to learning – not merely to the idea that everyone should have a diploma or degree regardless of whether that piece of paper represents anything other than attendance at school. If adults do this, young people will follow their lead. Students may even come to believe that it is possible and worthwhile to fix the schools.

We are already at the point where having a high school diploma is considered virtually meaningless. We are gradually approaching a point where an associate’s degree, or even a bachelor’s degree, is no guarantee that the person who has a degree has learned much of anything. This certainly does not mean that we are a more educated people; it means that we are less educated.

For more than a century, the United States has led the world in nearly every important respect. We have held this position not only because of our wealth and physical resources but also because our people have been well-educated, knowledgeable, and intellectually creative. We still have much of that edge, but our dysfunctional school system is obliterating it, squandering our youth and their futures.