I read with great interest the recent Report about Saving US Higher Ed. It was authored by one of the leading US Conservatives, and co-signed by a very impressive Who’s Who list of 40+ heavyweight education experts.
I am in complete agreement with everything in the Report — but very disappointed with what was missing: not a word was mentioned about the essential importance of first fixing the US K-12 education system!
What’s going on here? How could such a collection of world-class experts not understand that there is no conceivable way of saving Higher Education, without first completely reconstructing the disintegrating and dilapidated foundation that it is built on?
Let’s back up to see this in perspective…
Fixing the US education system (Secondary plus Higher Education) has the distinctly intimidating appearance of being a Sisyphean task. As a result, most complaining people give up before they do anything productive.
Worse, the few who bravely attempt serious reform are like the blind men describing an elephant — they rarely seem to understand the Big Picture.
The net result is that our education system continues to rapidly decline. The outcomes of this trajectory are beyond horrific, and they all but guarantee the failure of the American Experiment. (That, of course, IS the objective of the bad actors we have allowed to take over our K-12 education system.)
I don’t say this lightly. Consider that annually there are 4± Million graduates from US high schools. One consequence of our allowing the Left to control the US K-12 education system is that almost all of these graduates are not only Marxist indoctrinated but also have purposefully been lobotomized so that they are devoid of Critical Thinking skills.
Now, carefully consider the impact on America when 3± Million of these automatons are annually added to the voter rolls…
Once we appreciate our alarming proximity to the cliff, we need to stop worrying about the challenges and instead stay focused on the consequences.
This is a perfect example of a task where Critical Thinking should be utilized. My suggestion is to employ the time-tested concept of Divide and Conquer. In other words, breaking this complex problem into more digestible bites is essential. Here is my suggested sequence…
Six Steps to Fix America’s Most Significant Problem —
- We MUST fully recognize that the K-12 part is the foundation for the entire education edifice. Spending a large amount of time trying to save Higher Education makes little sense since it is constructed on a crumbling base. We can significantly simplify our task by realizing that K-12 is where meaningful reform needs to be made first. If we do that right, Higher Ed will subsequently be a major beneficiary.
- Although the phrase “K-12” sounds simple enough, the reality is that it includes numerous and very diverse problematic issues. These range from teacher certification to age-inappropriate books, smartphone use to parental rights, SEL to pedagogy, etc. In this step, we need to get a reasonable handle on what the main K-12 issues are. I proposed a list here, and I am open to additions and/or clarifications.
- Once we have a solid understanding of the many major K-12 issues, the next step is to prioritize them. A key point here is that prioritizing is NOT based on which items are more important, but rather what sequence do fixes need to be made to get the most effective results? For example, unless we are clear about our national K-12 education objectives, most other issues will not get effectively resolved. (Note: to date we have ZERO national K-12 education objectives!!!)
- Going one step further, it is essential to appreciate that there is one underpinning issue: the Curriculum. Fixing all other K-12 issues, but allowing corrupted curricula, guarantees failure of meaningful K-12 reform — and that is the direction we’re headed. A good perspective is to see where the main emphasis of our opponents is, and then counter it. There is no doubt that the Left has invested an extraordinary amount of time and effort in undermining K-12 curricula (Reading, Writing, History, Math, Science, etc.) … Considering that a typical State is “educating” our children for over 2200 days. There is no way to overstate the extreme importance of WHAT is being conveyed (the curricula) during that enormous amount of time the K-12 education system has control over our youth.
- Right now, the US K-12 education system is focused on teaching children WHAT to think — and the WHAT is determined by the Left! A simple, but very powerful change, would be for our K-12 education system to focus on teaching children HOW to think! Currently, no State is doing this! Making that one change would positively affect every K-12 issue and would be the most consequential improvement in the US K-12 education system in over a 100 years. This requires leadership, and the most appropriate source for that is the federal Department of Education.
- Lastly, we need to understand who has what authority. Those with some K-12 power are: parents, the local School Board, the State School Board, the State Education Department, State Legislators, Teacher Unions, the federal Department of Education, etc. One of the main reasons that K-12 education reform has failed is that most citizens do not accurately understand who is responsible for what. For example, blaming the federal Department of Education for age-inappropriate books in your local school library is completely inaccurate. Unless we understand the authority of the various K-12 players, there is no way effective reform can come about.
The Bottom Line —
It is becoming more disturbingly clear every day how almost all federal departments and agencies (EPA, DOE, FBI, FDA, DOEd, etc.) have become corrupted. Due to a lack of Critical Thinking, the DOEd is the only one that is being targeted for closure. The proper solution for DOEd (just like the EPA, which has seriously lost its way) is head-to-toe reform.
For the details and further explanation of how to make revolutionary improvements to DOEd (and to K-12), please read here, here, and here.
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