I debated whether to title this blog, “Why Public-School Education is Dead” or “Why Public-School Education is Being Murdered.” The latter is absolutely true, the former will be true in less than twenty-five years (My prediction). There are several reasons why public schools are dying. But before I go into those reasons, I want to tell you why I think I am qualified to talk about this issue or should I say problem. Mark my words, it is one of the biggest problems that any democracy or would-be democracy can face.
Democracy in America without a good public education program will fade away. Some people will mourn the passing of democracy. However, if the present is any predictor of the future, the number of people who care will decline with each passing year. Democratic principles are not immutable. They will whither and die if they are not nourished. The most important fertilizer for a democracy is public education.
Thomas Jefferson believed that Democracy cannot long exist without an educated citizenry. Jefferson argued that all children should be educated regardless of wealth, birth, or other mitigating circumstances. He believed that free public education should be provided so that children from poor families as well as rich families would receive the knowledge they needed to function in a democratic society. For more information on Jefferson’s educational ideas see the following:
Thomas Jefferson: A Bold Vision for American Education by Gordon E. Mercer
Thomas Jefferson: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
My Educational Background
I was an above average student until high school. After starting high school, I spent the next four years being bored and getting into trouble. I probably spent more time in detention than I did in the classroom. Many teachers despised and loathed me. My father kept thinking I would go to college which was some sort of a fantasy on his part. With no money and my poor grades, there was not a single college in the country that I could have been accepted to.
A few weeks out of high school, which I barely graduated from (I think the teachers just wanted to get rid of me.) I decided to enlist in the US Military. The year was 1964. The Vietnam War was ramping up and the military would have taken anybody who could walk a straight line. I joined the Air Force because I liked their uniforms. I had hopes of fighting in Vietnam and being some sort of a war hero. The Air Force decided that I would make a better Radar Technician than warrior and sent me to electronics school in Biloxi, Mississippi after basic training in Texas.
I did not want to go to school, and I resumed my antics in class which resulted in my being sent to see the base commander. He gave me two choices. One was to get my “ass” back in class and start behaving myself, the other was to spend the next four years painting barracks in Mississippi. Perhaps wisely, I decided to pay attention. I graduated second in my class and was sent to my first duty station. It was a remote assignment at a Radar Base in Unalakleet Alaska. It was four hundred miles northeast of Anchorage on the Bering Sea. It would get cold enough there for exposed flesh to freeze in less than one minute.
The rest of my military career was uneventful. After getting discharged from my last duty assignment in 1968 at Osceola, Wisconsin, I worked in a variety of different occupations. I never attended any other classes while in the military and I had no desire to go to school when I left the military. It took about 3 years of not getting anywhere career wise for my first wife to convince me to go to college on the GI Bill or at least try to go to college. Getting in required my former high school counselor to say that my records were lost so that they could not see the comments and stuff said about me. I was finally accepted into a college back in Rhode Island and thanks to the GI Bill I had some money to pay for school. Nevertheless, it was not enough money to pay all the medical bills and household expenses.
I was married with a wife that had a severe medical condition and we had a three-year-old child. Neither of us had any extra money, so I took a job working nights from 11:45 PM to 7:45 AM at a manufacturing plant. I was “temporary” in that the man I replaced had lost his arm in the machine I would be working on. I questioned the supervisor on any new safety protocols that had been adopted after the accident and was told to “keep your arms away from the machine.” I would leave home at 11 PM to bicycle about six miles to work. I would get off work at 7:45 AM and then bicycle to the college which was about 6 miles away. We only had one car and my wife needed the car to take our daughter to day care and then she would go to her part-time job. After finishing my classes, I would bike home from college which was another 5 or 6 miles. Thus, each day for 4.5 years, I biked a round trip of about 20 miles, went to school full time, worked full time, and slept about 4 hours a night until the weekend when I would try to catch up on my sleep. I also had to include time for studying, writing papers, reading and tests.
In 1976, I graduated with a degree in K-12 Health Education, a minor in Biology and a second degree in Psychology. I took a job at the Veterans Administration as a GS-7 Claims Examiner. A year later, my wife and I moved back to Wisconsin and due to some marital problems she decided to leave me. Several months went by. We kept communicating and were able to work out some of our problems. We decided to move back in together and give our marriage another try. I decided to take advantage of a 9-month extension in GI Bill benefits to go to school for a M.S. Degree in School Counseling. I completed the M.S. program in 1979. I was hired for one year as a Biology teacher at Spring Valley HS. I left after my contract was up and took a job as a teacher/counselor at Guadalupe Area Project (GAP) in St. Paul. GAP was a school for troubled high school youth in the St. Paul, MN area. I thought I could use my degree in school counseling at GAP. I soon found out that at this school, I was a counselor, teacher, cleaner and anything else that needed to be done. It was a fantastic experience. The principal at GAP was Sister Giovanni. She was one of the most remarkable people and educators I have ever been fortunate enough to work for.
Despite efforts by my first wife Julia and myself, our marriage soon unraveled again. We agreed to separate. I moved out and wanting to change careers, I made the decision to go back to school and focus on training in industry. I was accepted into a Ph.D. Program at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Vocational Education. My major would be Training and Organization Development with a supporting field in Adult Education. By this time, my GI Bill had run out and I was now living alone and paying child support. I applied for and was accepted as a research assistant with the Minnesota Research and Development Center in Vocational Education on the St. Paul Campus. This job together with several summer internships and a very frugal lifestyle enabled me to pay my bills, my child support, and my tuition.
I completed my Ph.D. degree in four years and graduated in 1986. My dissertation was on “Conflict in Organizations.” I was hired by a management consulting firm in Bloomington, Minnesota. I worked the next thirteen years as a trainer and consultant in both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. In 1999, I joined the faculty of Globe University as a business instructor. I had also been working part-time as an adjunct instructor at Metropolitan State University where I was employed for 16 years. In 2015, I retired from Metropolitan State University. I left Globe University when they closed their doors in 2017.
Since leaving full-time teaching, I have been doing a variety of substitute teaching assignments in the Casa Grande area of Arizona. Karen and I have been splitting the year between Wisconsin and Arizona since 2010. We live and work about six months in each state. As a substitute teacher here, I have replaced Art, Drama, Band, Physical Education, History, Science, Special Ed, English, Spanish, Culinary Arts, ROTC, Mechanical Arts, Social Study, and Dance teachers. I have substituted in every grade from kindergarten to senior high school.
I have taught as a regular teacher at every grade level from kindergarten to Ph.D. programs. I have taught at Army and Navy depots. I have taught at over 40 for-profit industries including Chevron Manufacturing, Whitman Manufacturing Company, International Nickel Corporation and Fletcher Challenge Corporation. I have taught at hospitals, trucking companies, mining companies and in Canada, England, and Taiwan.
I have also written several pieces on education which you can find as follows:
Social Legacy Systems: How They Block Change and Prevent Progress: Part 1- Education
Legislating Balanced Perspectives in Education
Creating a Twenty First Century Education System
Educational Arrogance: Why my degree is better than your degree
What is wrong with education today? Part 1 and Part 2
So that’s if folks, I have told you why I think I am qualified to speak about education and public schools. In the following four parts, I am going to dive into the major issues that are leading to the death of public-school education. I will conclude with some thoughts on what a new system of education will need to look like. The impact these issues has is not limited to high schools but also manifests itself in grade schools and colleges. In many respects, it is impossible to untangle the matrix that comprises the public education system in America. When public school education dies, so will all forms of publicly provided education. If you have a car and the engine is great but the transmission dies, the car will no longer run. In any system, the goal or purpose of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. There will be no public education in America unless we provide for it. It will either die or evolve. That choice will be up to you.
In the next four blogs, we will look at:
- Why our present educational model is obsolete
- How our politicians are helping to kill public schooling
- How our educational unions are helping to kill public schooling
- What a new model of education should look like?
Integrity is everything to lose and nothing to gain, except your self-respect. Integrity is standing up for what you believe is right even when everyone is against you. Integrity is the ability to put compassion and kindness ahead of self-interest. Integrity cannot co-exist with greed. It cannot co-exist with lust. It cannot co-exist with a thirst for power. It cannot co-exist with a drive for money, fame, or fortune. All of these elements are like Kryptonite to Integrity. Kryptonite was the one thing that could rob Superman of his powers. Lust, greed, money, fame, and power all have the ability to rob one of his/her integrity.
Politics is a sham in America today. We have men and women who are elected for life and spend more time campaigning then they do in serving their constituents. Public servants who start collecting money to run their next campaigns within days of winning their present office. We have a system of government where money is the most important factor in who gets elected and who gets reelected. Our politicians are more worried about losing votes than they are in the constitution or in protecting our democracy. What Integrity is there in supporting a riot to overthrow a fair election that every court and every state in America found was fairly conducted? The media seized on the outrageousness of the Big Lie to sell news. The losing party seized on the credibility of millions of gullible supporters to buy the Big Lie and try to maintain their power.
The media in America has become another hallowed institution gutted by greed and a desire for more and more money. Reporters, writers, and journalists in America today are more interested in selling advertising than they are in balanced objective reporting. You can divide the news up by whether they lean Right or Left, Liberal or Conservative, Democrat or Republican. Each side has a mirror image on the other side of the political spectrum. CNN is opposed by Fox News. The New York Times is opposed by The New York Post and the Washington Post is opposed by the Washington Times. One side supports the Right and the other side supports the left. This is not balanced reporting, and no truth comes out of the dynamic between the two sides. What both sides have in common are reporters who will report the most useless, tasteless, uninformative stories if they perceive that these stories will sell advertising or if they can figure out a clickbait title that will attract readers and thereby expose them to paid commercials.
f you want more of a description of each scale you can follow the hyperlink above. The USA ties for 10th place with Great Britain on this index. I can see some correlation with Integrity, but I can see many differences. I think honesty is one component of Integrity, but Integrity is more complex than being simply honest. An honest person can still lack integrity if they are unwilling to stand up for what they believe. Cowardice and Integrity are incompatible.
Two days ago, I heard a story that is worth being repeated. The story brought tears to my eyes. If you have already heard it, I hope you will not mind hearing it again. I personally would like to hear it being told from every church pulpit, every congressional building, and every auditorium in America. I would like to hear it being told every day until every person in America could empathize with what this young girl went through. I would like to hear it being told until every person in this country would finally speak out and say “enough.”
the issues of Meaning and Purpose that I addressed above relate to a certain position in life. Namely, those of us who are secure enough in our environment that we no longer have to worry about food, shelter, and safety. This is a luxury that does not pertain to all people. In particular it did not pertain to Izzy. She was a girl who because of her skin color and health had to face every day with a battle. A battle designed by others to destroy her peace and serenity. A war waged to undermine her very being by belittling, insulting, and abusing her. Izzy did not have the time to think about the meaning and purpose of her life because she was too busy trying to deal with the very bottom levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy.
Theory (CRT) comes into this match sporting a record of 25 wins and 25 losses. Both opponents have lost matches to Trickle Down Theory and the Birther Theory. The winner of this match will face the reigning champion, The Theory of the Big Steal.
The testability of the theory’s major tenets
A theory may propose various tenets. That is the theory will assert specific things that belong with the theory. For instance Q’Anon Theory proposes that a group of Democratic politicians who are pedophiles meet regularly in the basement of a pizza parlor in D.C. to plot nefarious schemes for taking over the world. One of the major tenets of CRT is the notion that racism is ordinary and not aberrational. To measure the Q’Anon Theory all we would have to do is find a pizza parlor in D.C. where a number of pedophiliac Democratic politicians meet. This would be an easy tenet to test since the number of good pizza parlors in D.C. can be counted on one hand.
Eliminate all communists
I look out and see lawyers with Magna and Summa Cum Laude degrees from Yale, Harvard, Cornell, Brown, and other Ivy League Universities who can fashion legal arguments designed to circumvent and pervert any sane person’s idea of justice. They have corrupted our Criminal Justice System into a Criminal Injustice System. The winner in a court room is the one with the most money who can hire the best and brightest lawyers. An argument by one defense attorney claims that a self-styled vigilante shooting three unarmed people is a tragic case of self-defense. Another defense lawyer for three murdering racists suggests that the victim in the case was shot because he had come to Satilla Shores “in his khaki shorts with no socks to cover his long, dirty toenails.”
I look out and see corporate executives who will ignore the danger posed to the environment and climate because they can make more money today than by creating a sustainable system. I see too many people willing to “shop till they drop.” A materialistic mentality that supports the greed endemic in Corporate America. A focus on short-term thinking that drains the earth of the resources it needs for sustainability in order to reap mega-profits today. The “hell with the future” is the motto of Corporate America.
Is there any meaning to what I am seeing? Am I just getting too old? Is my brain incapable of understanding things anymore? Journalists are murdered because they report the truth. Innocent people are slaughtered while they watch a Christmas parade. A pregnant woman is shot eleven times on her doorstep. Fifty or more people rob a series of stores in what the news calls “mass grab fests.” A six-year-old child is killed in a car seat by some maniac with road rage. There is no bottom to the bizarre. No one can imagine what the next day will bring. All attempts to discover what is causing these problems or how they can be stopped seem futile. They are meaningless crimes without rhyme or reason in a world that George Orwell would never have imagined possible. Up is down, right is wrong, facts and truth do not exist, everything is fake. There is no sanity.
This morning while doing a 4-mile run in the Casa Grande Mountains, I thought a lot about his advice. I realize that much of what I have said above could be considered a rant. I would like to think it was somewhat of a catharsis. Another friend told me yesterday that I sounded like a man in despair. I resonated with the word despair. I regard optimism as ideologically unsound given our present world. Many people have advised me to stay hopeful. There is a fine line between hopeful and optimism. I am not sure I can manage the divide. Despair on the other hand fits my mood just fine. Despair is defined as: “The complete loss or absence of hope.”
We have elected people that will support an insurrection against free and fair elections. The most important element of Democracy. People that prefer to ignore that on January 6th, we almost had a coup against democracy in America. On November 17th, we had these same people vote to ignore the censuring of one of their comrades who parodied the killing of an opposition opponent.
I look out my window and see a public school system that is being dismantled by racists, bigots, elitists, and sexists who do not want the schools to actually teach anything that might be construed as controversial. Two thousand five hundred years ago, Socrates was executed for trying to teach the children of the Athenian elite to think for themselves. Schools and educators are still being attacked for trying to teach children to think. How can our future generations create a better world when they are besieged with information that keeps them in a past that never existed and feeds them myths about the way the world works?
Will the USA survive? All great empires have eventually declined. It took 300 years for the Roman Empire to fall after it began its decline. We are witnessing the decline of the American Empire. How long will it take to fall is well beyond my ability to foresee. If history is any indication, it will take many years and the decline will be gradual but punctuated by episodes of tragedy and elation. The tragedies will far outnumber the elations. Study any system in decline and you can see the gradual disintegration that accompanies all declines. It is already clear that our Public Education, Political Systems and Legal Systems are in decline. Trying to stop the declines is futile. You cannot stop the decline of an old bridge or an old building. You must rebuild from the ground up. Sadly, I see neither the drive nor the desire to do the work that needs to be done to help restore democracy in America.
Aging Capriciously 