Facing America’s Real Problems:  Part 2 – The Failure of Education

07 May 2023 8 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , ,

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One of my writing goals is to simplify the complexity of the problems facing the USA today.  This effort is like trying to find my way through a very complex maze.  An instructor of mine once told me that “anytime you study a problem, it becomes more complex.”  I agree with his analysis, but I also like the Zen thought that when we start studying a mountain, it first becomes a complex amalgamation of physics, geology, geography, chemistry, and biology.  However, once we really understand it, it becomes a mountain again.  A Zen cycle of simplicity, complexity and then simplicity.

This is the problem facing my analysis of the Education System in America.  It is complex and overwhelming.  I have been working in the system for almost fifty years now.  I have taught every grade from pre-kindergarten to college Ph.D.  classes.  I have written several blogs on this subject already.  However, as each day goes by, what I have said the day before seems less and less adequate.  Many friends have disputed my thoughts on education.  They think that I am wrong, and that the system can be saved by some tweaks here and there.  I disagree.  I have not changed my thoughts on this problem.  We need an entirely new concept and system of Public Education.

The Public Education System in America is like a bomb that has exploded.  You cannot put the bomb back together even if you do manage to find all the pieces of the bomb.  The Public Education System in America is dysfunctional and outdated.  It is rapidly disintegrating as the many outside forces that impact it are ignored or mishandled.  The most important of these forces involve technological and social changes, but they also include a well-funded political effort on the Right to privatize education.

The rich in America understand that Public Education is not serving the needs of students and families.  Those with money and power are cannibalizing the present Public Education System with vouchers and charters to establish elite schools for the wealthy and privileged.  The dream of a Public Education System which would prepare all children with the tools and skills needed to be successful in a Democratic society has been abandoned by many in this country.  We are moving towards a two-tier system of education.  Much like we have one system of justice for the rich and powerful and another for the poor and underprivileged, we are moving towards the same structure in our schools

For the past seven years, I have been working as a substitute teacher in two different high schools in my local area.  While I think many of the same problems plague elementary schools and universities, there are notable differences.  Thus, in this blog, I want to focus on the problems that I have seen over the past few years that high schools are trying to deal with.

The two high schools where I am teaching are comprised of mainly low-income students in an area of low-income families.  The two high schools I substitute for received the following ratings by Public School Review based on a comparison of test scores statewide.

High School 1 -Rating: 2/10 Bottom 50%

High School 2- Rating: 4/10 Bottom 50%

Arizona ranked worst state in America for teachers, study says

Arizona public school system ranked worst in America; study says

The results for Arizona are dismal and put Arizona at the bottom of states in terms of supporting education.  However, I do not believe that these statistics should lead anyone to feel that Arizona is simply a bad state for education.  In the first place, ratings and rankings only tell a portion of the story.  I have seen many schools across this country.  I doubt that the problems in Arizona are much different than for most public schools in America.

We have a systems problem here and my best guess is that most public high schools will be within three standard deviations of a mean around test scores or any other rating scales you can use.  Thus, using the same statistical methods we use for determining the quality of any process, it would be foolish to say that any one school is clearly better than the rest.  The same forces are at play across this country in our public schools.  We are looking at a system and not simply a group of isolated schools.

The following are the major forces causing the deterioration of Public High Schools today.   I will address each of these in more detail.

  1. Technology that replaces traditional skills learned in school. g., AI replacing writing skills
  2. Lock step education methods
  3. Low investment in education by students and parents
  4. Lack of student discipline
  5. Attacks by politicians on the Right who are pandering to voters and parents at the expense of teachers and students
  6. Over emphasis on testing and high school rankings

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  1. Technology that replaces traditional skills learned in school.  g., AI replacing writing skills

Years ago, in 1975 when I was doing my student internship for my undergraduate teaching degree, I allowed my students in my classes to use calculators.  The math teachers in the school were appalled but I did not desist.  They went to the principal who ordered me to stop allowing my students to use calculators.  “What, he said if the batteries went bad?  How would they do any math?”  I replied, “What if their pencils ran out of lead?”  He was not amused.

From calculators to computers to cell phones to the internet and now Artificial Intelligence, the world that students live in today bears little or no resemblance to the world that many of us once knew.  However, the fundamental problem here is not technology.  Marshal McLuhan nailed the problem fifty years ago.  The world outside schools is not richer and more dense with knowledge and skills than the world inside schools.  Once upon a time, students went to a dense environment of wise instructors, libraries and books that were unavailable to the wider community.  Today, a child of three holds in their hands more knowledge than in the Library of Congress.  That child is also exposed to ideas from all over the world and not just Po-Dunk Iowa.  Schools cannot compete with this.  Schools are becoming more and more irrelevant.  Students know this but parents, teachers, administrators, and politicians either are blind to the fact or too vested in the present system to seek major changes.

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  1. Lock step education methods: 

Standardized testing.  Standardized curriculums.  Grades following one after another in silent marching precision.  Our nation seems obsessed with insuring that everyone marches to the same drummer.  Do you have children?  Do you see anything identical about each child.  Take a classroom of 32 students and how many of them will be identical in knowledge, skills, abilities, and interests.

Now put 32 students, Latino, African American, Asian American, White American, and Native American all in an English class studying Romeo and Juliet in old English.  How many of them do you think will be interested?  I did not find an interest in Shakespeare until I was nearly fifty years old.  My interest really began when I discovered something that high school English teachers seem to ignore.  Plays were meant to be watched not read.  They were never written to be read.  And if they were read, they should be in a language that someone might understand.  I watch many BBC shows on the tele and I use the English subtitles to understand what they are saying otherwise I am lost.  I assume that the British are using some version of “modern English.”  They still argue that Americans do not speak English.

We need a system of Customized Education for all students today.  My program of Free Public Education would start with three-year-olds and extend to ninety plus year olds.  In other words, I want Free Public education for life not just for a temporary time in youth.  We say that people are our most important assets.  We need to start treating them like they are important.  We need to provide life-time education that will continue to prepare citizens for careers today, tomorrow, and next year.

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  1. Low investment in education by students and parents:

Here is a law.  “If people have no investment in something they do not value it.  When people are invested, they do value it more.”  Parents send their schools to free public schools.  Students go to school for free until college and sometimes even to college.  Many parents value schools for their babysitting function rather than for the purpose that schools were designed to serve.  Parents are irate when schools and teachers go on strike.  However, across America schools and teachers are at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to funding.  I have seen more than eighty percent of funding requests here in Arizona vetoed in referendums since 2010.  This comes at a time when funding for teachers and schools in Arizona ranks at the bottom of the US list of states.

I am for “Free Public Education” but that means in terms of money individually paid by parents and teachers for education.  That does not mean I think students and parents should be given a Free Lunch.  Indeed, I want to see accountability on the part of students and families for the education that their children will receive.  Parents and students should have accountability not in terms of monetary compensation but in terms of time donated to the education system.  They need to have a program in education whereby parents and students support their education using time allotments paid to the schools.  One of the teacher aides I worked with a few weeks ago suggested that she would like to see parents with their children in school sitting in class with their kids on a regular rotating basis.  This is a great idea but only one of many that could be instituted to help ensure that students and parents have a vested interest in education.

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  1. Lack of student discipline:

Student discipline is a major problem in public schools today.  I have seen teachers and substitutes walk out of school after their first day on the job.  Schools today are loaded with security guards and even armed police in some schools.  On any daily roster of students there will be a few serving in-school suspension and some serving out-of-school suspension.  Every year, I see more and more students in detention.

Kids behave towards teachers with the same arrogance that their parents may have for teachers and education.  The poorer the classroom in terms of demographics, the worse the discipline will be.  It does not matter whether the class is Black, White, Brown, or Red, the poorer the social economic status of the class, the more behavior problems you have in the classroom.  The wealthier people are the more they seem to value education.  This is not a hard and fast rule, but a general observation based on my almost fifty plus years of teaching.  This is one of the reasons so many of the wealthy are pulling their kids out of public schools.

Today, teachers are so little respected that many of them are afraid to discipline their students.  I had a security guard tell me that she would not intervene in a fight between students as she did not want to take the risk of either being hurt or sued.  Teachers should not have to be disciplinarians.  Once upon a time, when I was a young, if I disobeyed a teacher and my father found out about it, I was punished.  This was typical of my generation.  No questions asked.  The teachers was right, and I was wrong.  Somewhere in the mid-seventies, there was a sea change of major proportions.  Suddenly, teachers were besieged with challenges like “What did you do to make my Johnny or Mary act out?”  “It is your (teachers) fault that my child is failing.”  Teachers are now in the wrong when students are disciplined or given a failing grade.  There is little or no support among many families for teachers.  The teacher is wrong.  The student is right.

A few nights ago, before a concert, I sat with two other retired teachers.  We discussed the sea change I noted above and what the potential causes were.  Here were some theories”

  • The teachings of Benjamin Spock were too liberal
  • Parents feel guilty they do not spend enough time with their children
  • Single parent families lack the ability to discipline their children
  • TV promoting a set of values antagonistic towards education
  • Too many people that were not well served by public school education in the past

At the time, I did not challenge any of these theories.  I simply listened and questioned.  Over the next few days, I found something wrong with each theory.  I am still searching for the reason.  I welcome any ideas you may have.  Please leave them in the comments section.  I will try to think about and reply to each idea.  Nevertheless, discipline is a major problem, and it will go away unless we understand its root cause.  One solution might be to have parents join their children for in-school suspensions or pay a fine for out of school suspensions.  Perhaps that could be a “Parental Responsibility.”  I think it would put a rapid stop to much of the behavior problems that teachers have to put up with today.

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  1. Attacks by politicians on the Right who are pandering to voters and parents at the expense of teachers and students

The Right Wing in this country want to destroy Public School Education.  They are waging a war on education every single day of the year in every single state in the Union.  They are engaging the families of children with promises of “Parental Rights.”  This panders to the same parents that have a low respect for education and believe that schools are brainwashing their children.  This has been an issue among White Supremacists and Southern Bigots since the early years of the Jim Crow laws.  This group is (though they would deny it) racist, sexist, xenophobic and homophobic.  They are against Gay Rights, Minority Rights, Women’s Rights, and Immigrant Rights.  They are for Parental Rights but not a word for “Parental Responsibilities.”

The politicians to curry votes, tell parents that books are pornographic or racist.  Their kids are being brainwashed by liberal teachers.  School boards are being packed with radical parents who want to fire school superintendents, principals, and teachers over what is taught and how it is taught.  In fact, I can point to some of each of the above that have been fired in the past few weeks here in Arizona.  Books are being banned in over thirty states in America and librarians are fearful for their jobs.  Politicians are enacting laws whereby teachers can be fined and charged with a crime for teaching certain topics like Critical Race Theory and Gender Studies or Sex Education.

In my seventy-six years on this earth, I have worked with all sorts of people.  But never have I seen a less moral or ethical group than the politicians that now sit mostly in the Republican Party.  I have seldom believed in conspiracy theories ever since reading C. Wright Mills “The Power Elite.”  He argued convincingly to me at the time that the wealthy and powerful in America may seem to be working together but it was mutual interests that dedicated their actions rather than any coordinated planning or effort.

Wright Mills is now rolling over in his grave. There is an interlocking and well-coordinated group of Right-Wing organizations in this country which plan, fund, and orchestrate major efforts to elect politicians that support their interests, to push laws and bills that support their interests and to block any efforts to make their planning and funding more transparent. If you doubt what I am saying, look up the following names on Wikipedia and see what you conclude.  Pay attention to the organizations they serve and their reliance on dark money for their activities.  I think you will see more than just a casual merging of interests in their activities.

What can we do about this situation?  Is America doomed by money, power politics and large corporate interests overriding the public good?  Many would say that the end is near.  The democracy that we hoped for in this country is over.  People are powerless to change a juggernaut that is fueled by rich billionaires and served by minions with law degrees and no morals or ethics.  I am still waiting to hear from the Republican Ethics Committee concerning the fate of George Santos.  I doubt the Republicans will overside their power interests in the service of the public good.  Santos will probably remain in power until the next election when I would hope he will be kicked out on his lying butt.

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  1. Over emphasis on testing and high school rankings:

A well-intentioned effort to ensure quality in schools.  Unfortunately based on stupidity and ignorance of statistics and relevance.   My teacher here was Dr. Edward Deming.  The noted quality expert and pioneer who helped the Japanese become world leaders in quality.  Deming was against ratings and ranking that were often used in business to assess employee performance.  The same logic that he used to refute the relevance of these ratings apply to the schools system of ratings and rankings.  Deming said:

“Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review… The idea of a merit rating is alluring.  The sound of the words captivates the imagination: pay for what you get; get what you pay for; motivate people to do their best, for their own good.  The effect is exactly the opposite of what the words promise… The fact is that the system that people work in and the interaction with people may account for 90 or 95 percent of performance.”

If you look at the ratings for schools anyplace in America, you will find that the wealthier the area in which the school lies, the higher their rankings will be in testing and all other metrics.  Here in Arizona, my two schools are in the bottom twenty-five percent of schools in terms of rankings.  Scottdale has the highest ranked schools in the system.  It is no surprise that Scottsdale has the highest per capital income in the state.  The wealthier the school district the higher their performance rating will be.  Nevertheless, I would not assume that students from Scottsdale have any greater native ability than my students.  I would only assume that they do better on standardized tests.

A few years ago, I took the Forbes 200 list of richest people in the world.  About sixty percent of them had a college degree.  Forty percent never went to college or did not finish a degree.  I did a correlation analysis to see what the strength was between net worth and education.  I was quite surprised to find that the average net worth of those without a college degree was 1.5 billion dollars higher than those with a college degree.  3.5 Billion net worth with no college degree versus 2.0 Billion for those with a college degree.  College has been overhyped as a path to success.

Ratings and rankings are no measure of life success or even of learning to think.  I would argue that the people who excel on college standardized tests are less able to think for themselves and more likely to conform to norms of thinking and behavior.  Regard all the lawyers in America who have gone to Harvard, Yale and Cornell but seem to have little or no ethics or standards other than winning or money.  Both Deming and J. K. Galbraith wrote about the sorry state of MBA programs in America when it came to teaching ethics and morals.  We have too many students now who excel on standardized tests but have no morals or ethics.  They have learned that these things do not matter.

Conclusions:

Here is the part where we live happily ever after.  The good guy wins, the bad guy loses.  Right triumphs over might, and justice wins out over injustice.  If only this were true.  Maybe as Martin Luther King said, justice will eventually prevail.  I am not so sure he is right anymore.  All empires since the Akkadian Empire in 2330 BCE, (Arguably the first empire in history) have ebbed and waned and eventually declined.  Many have predicted that the USA is now on the downward path.  I will say one thing.  Our Founding Fathers knew that a public education system was the cornerstone of a democratic society.  Thomas Jefferson said:

”I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.”

Without a Free, Egalitarian and Open Public Education System, America will continue any decline that many believe has already started. 

PS:  Today (May 9th) I noticed that Jim Hightower had also published some thoughts on Education.  I am providing a link to his thoughts as well.  He is a good writer and I always enjoy reading his ideas.  He has a great sense of humor.

Chicken Little Attacks America’s Teachers

Why Public-School Education is Dying – Part 2 of 5 Parts

18 Dec 2021 9 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , ,

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In Part 1 of this blog on education, I stated that, “I am going to dive into the major reasons that are leading to the death of public-school education.”  In this part, we will look at

  • Why our present educational model is obsolete

Our present educational model is obsolete because it is based on several faulty principles or assumptions.  Perhaps at one time some of these reasons had some validity but that is no longer true.  We are not living in a 19th century agricultural or a 20th century industrial economy.  We are now in a digital economy that is moving faster than anything the world has ever known.  The following are the most important issues that one must understand to realize why our present educational system is useless.

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  1. Outdated concepts of how education should be conducted

The teaching in the early part of America was based on two principles.  First, that every child needed a broad liberal arts education to be qualified as a good citizen.  Second, that education curriculums would follow a set of orderly progression starting from simple concepts to more complex concepts.  Thus, you would learn simple arithmetic before taking complex subjects like calculus or trigonometry.

The above principles treated every student as though they were the same.  There was no customization.  There were no exceptions to the grading progressions that developed in most schools.  If you were an advanced student, you would need to wait for the less advanced to catch up.  If you were not as advanced, then you looked like the dummy in class and were often ridiculed.  If you were somewhere in-between, you kept your mouth shut and dreamed of the end of the school year.

These principles may have been useful in a society that was information poor.  Marshal McLuhan said that schools made sense when they could bring information to a central point. Prospective students from information poor societies could come together and feast on the abundance of knowledge that was now centralized in one location.  Over time, the reverse has taken place.  Societies and cultures have become much denser and richer in information than any school could possibly hope to capture.  Students today can access more knowledge on their smart phones than probably exists in the entire Library of Congress.

“Today in our cities, most learning occurs outside the classroom. The sheer quantity of information conveyed by press-magazines-film-TV-radio far exceeds the quantity of information conveyed by school instruction and texts. This challenge has destroyed the monopoly of the book as a teaching aid and cracked the very walls of the classroom so suddenly that we’re confused, baffled.” — Marshall McLuhan, excerpt from “Classroom Without Walls,”  Explorations in Communication (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960)

Treating students as though they are all the same ignores fundamental elements of human skills and abilities.  Some students may have better social skills.  Some have better musical, artistic, and athletic skills than others.  Even in the domain of cognitive knowledge some students excel at math and others excel at English and language.

Just imagine if music was the dominant purpose of education rather than liberal arts.  Children might enroll in schools where the curriculum included violins, drums, harps, guitars, pianos, trumpets, and harmonicas.  Each student would have to learn all of these instruments and get a passing grade in each to graduate school.  It would not matter if a child received an A in violin if they did not pass drums.  If this sounds ridiculous, it should not since it mirrors the way curriculum is handled today.

Furthermore, the system of education assumes that all children would need to progress systematically through learning each instrument.  You would have violin 1 before you had violin 2.  It would not matter if you could do violin 1 when you came to school, you would still be required to take violin 1 before you could take violin 2.  True, in some schools you can test out of a subject but that is still rare in most public high schools.

The idea of holistic learning is totally ignored by the rigid lock step progression that is built into curriculums in both public and private schools.  Fifty years ago I argued with math teachers about the use of calculators in a classroom.  Most felt that students would not learn the proper concepts behind the calculations if they were allowed to use calculators.  Ten years later, the Mathematical Association of America approved the use of calculators in high school classrooms.

The fear of technology is still prevalent in schools as most schools do not allow their students to make use of a smart phone’s capabilities.  In many high school classrooms, students are prohibited from having their cell phones out.  (There is a constant game today between teachers and students to prohibit students from “misusing” their cell phones.)  It is rather funny since some teachers do not restrict cell phone usage and others do.  A few students told me a while ago that they wished their teachers could agree on a “cellphone policy.”  True, many schools give students laptops and tablets, but their usage of these tools are limited to such programs as Blackboard, Desire to Learn and other instructional interfaces.  Students are not taught how to use the power of their cell phones to think.  Teachers often seem afraid of new technology perhaps fearing that it will replace them.  In truth, the times have changed in respect to what a teacher’s role should be.  Looking at the results in the Virginia Governor Race this year, where the pundits believed that parental dissatisfaction played a major role in the election results, I found the following comment.  It was made by one of the consultants that the Loudoun County School District in Virginia hired to incorporate equity and inclusion in their curriculum.

“I think the thing that public education offers… because I certainly don’t think we offer learning… are relationships.  What historically high schools were for was the dissemination of information very quickly…Well, actually, the internet is better than the high school is…Truthfully, the teacher in relation to the dissemination of information is obsolete.”  —Equity Collaborative Leader Jamie Almanza.  

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  1. The concept that more money for educators and educational institutions will result in better student outcomes

During the 15 or so years that I was a management consultant, I often encountered the argument that employees would be more productive if they were paid more.  Now, I am a great believer in paying employees as much as the organization can afford and well beyond a simple livable wage.  I am well aware of the battle between employers and employees over wages and have myself often had to fight to get a salary that I felt was fair.  Nevertheless, I see little or even no correlation between productivity and wages and I have told this to many a manager and employee.  I have frequently asked people if they thought they would be “twice” as productive if I doubled their salaries tomorrow.  No honest person ever told me yes.

Teachers are no different.  Teachers who are paid more will not have more students getting higher test scores. There will not be more students graduating or more students learning more because their teachers are higher paid.  Yes, I believe teachers are underpaid based on their abilities and goals but that does not mean that I think schools will be more effective with higher paid teachers or with more capital outlays per pupil.

I looked at the rankings for Arizona High Schools a few days ago.  (Arizona High School Rankings) The top-rated school in the state was BASIS Scottsdale.  Their average student expenditure was $7, 231.  Their “Average Standard Score” was 99.9.  I then looked at Vista Grande High School where I have been substitute teaching this year.  They were ranked 205th out of 226 public high schools.  The average dollar spent per capita for students was $9,153 dollars.  Their “Average Standard Score” was 14.1.  I briefly looked at the student expenditures for all 226 high schools in Arizona.  I did not calculate a Standard Deviation for the 226 but if I did, my guess would be that all 226 schools would fall within 3 standard deviations of the mean.  I think the mean for “per capital student expenditures” would be about $7,500.

What do the above figures tell me?  First of all that per capita spending is not related to school or student performance.  Second, that there is a correlation between the wealth or affluency of a community and high school student performance.  Put simply, students from poorer families do worse in school than students from more affluent families.  The bad news is that no amount of money poured into any school system in the country is going to change these outcomes.  The World Development Report 2018 shows a similarly weak correlation between spending and learning outcomes.

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  1. The belief that what can be measured is what is important to teach and that standardized tests and curriculums are essential to a quality education

This is another fallacy that I often encountered in my years as a management consultant.  There is some kind of a foolish business quote that says, “What gets measured, gets managed.”  What is more accurate is that “What gets measured, gets gamed.”  My mentor, Dr. W.E. Deming taught his students that a system is more important to performance than the individual.  A favorite saying of Dr. Deming’s was that “A bad system will beat a good performer any time.”  Dr. Deming taught how to measure the performance of a system and then to use those measures to improve the system, not to work on exhorting individuals or individual testing to improve the system.  Two of Dr. Deming’s 14 Points for Management were:

11 a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.

11 b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.

12 a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.

12 b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective.

The standardized tests that are given to students all over America are no help in increasing school performance.  The ranking of schools and the ranking of students has no statistical validity in terms of improving the educational system in America.  In fact, not only are these measures useless, but they are a major impediment to improving any school system.  There are several reasons for this:

  1. They force teachers to focus on memorization and not learning
  2. They penalize students that are not good test takers
  3. They destroy student morale
  4. They stop educators from making the real reforms that are needed in education
  5. They have no scientific validity in terms of measuring student performance

The following comments are from a blog titled, “Here’s the Real Reason Why Public Education Will Never Get Better” by Shelly Sangrey

  • Schooling and education are two different things.
  • Education is about exploration and learning how to think.
  • Schooling (which is what our public schools are a part of) is about training and teaching children what to think.
  • Someone who is being educated will be told, “Do some research on this topic. Study the evidence, weigh both sides, and make an informed conclusion.”
  • Someone who is being schooled is told, “This is how it is because scientists, historians, and other people who are smarter than you have already figured it out. There’s no need to look into it further.”

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You cannot measure education.  You can measure training.  But even measures of training are more likely to reflect the ability of the system rather than the ability of the students in the system.

Where has this emphasis come from in terms of measurement and metrics?  The first is from politicians who have little or no knowledge of education.  They also lack knowledge of data analysis or statistics.  These so-called leaders are more than ready to jump on bandwagons that sound good to their constituents but actually have little value in increasing educational outcomes.

The second is from educators themselves.  Believing that if they show good rankings they can justify the money needed for higher salaries and more resources, many teachers support the idea of “pay for performance” or “measuring educational outcomes.”  These teachers know little about business concepts but are more than ready to accept that business principles can work in a school system.  Unfortunately, many business principles lack any kind of validity either for education or for business.  All over America today, we have accountants running businesses and schools.  Our systems are driven by short-term numbers and bottom-line thinking.  These are major contributors to the death of public-school education.

In Part 3, we will look in more depth at the role that our political leaders play in murdering public school education in America. 

Taking It to Extremes – Part 3 of 5 – Society versus the Economy

27 Nov 2020 5 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

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Introduction: (Skip if you have read Part 1)

A number of years ago, I wrote an article about the famous “Golden Mean” of Greek philosophy.  The mean was basically a rule that said the best way of living is to balance extremes.  Another way of looking at what this rule implies is that evil or bad things happen when we over do something.  We need to take all things in moderation.  Thus, drugs, smoking, guns, watching TV etc., are not evil or bad in themselves but when we take them to extremes, they became dangerous and counterproductive.

Life is an ongoing struggle to find our proper balance.  However, it may never be a question of equal balance because the proper balance can never be static.  There are many dimensions or polarities in life where it is not really a matter of moderation or balance but more a matter of dynamically imposing a temporary order between two extremes.  The concept of Hegelian Dialectics comes to my mind as an aide in thinking about this process.

Dialectical thinking can be described as: “The ability to view issues from multiple perspectives and to arrive at the most economical and reasonable reconciliation of seemingly contradictory information and postures.”  This is a much more complex process than simply balancing extremes.  The more I thought about it the more I decided to add a corollary to the Greek Rule.  Since I think time has easily proved the value of the Golden Mean, a corollary by definition is a proposition that follows from and is appended to one already proved.  My corollary is as follows:

John’s Corollary:

Anytime, one concept in a set of opposing concepts is allowed to dominate the other concept, extreme dysfunction will result.

I want to discuss this more by using five pairs of concepts that I think are critical to our world today.  I want to show you how the distortion created by proponents of each concept is dangerous to life as we know it.  I do not use the word dangerous loosely or frivolously or for effect.  The battle between these ideas is destroying life as we know it on this planet.   The proponents of each side of these polarities seek to destroy the proponents on the other side.

Rather than looking at things from a systems perspective and trying to dynamically adjust the system, opponents are driven to allow one idea to dominate to the exclusion of the other idea.  Witness the name calling between conservatives and liberals today.  Each side demonizes the other side and assumes God is on their side and Satan is on the other side. Liberals are evil to conservatives and conservatives are evil to liberals.

Here are the five pairs of concepts we will look at in the next few weeks.  This week we will look at number three on my list.  We have already discussed the “efficiency versus effectiveness” dimension in part one of this blog series and the “growth versus development” dimension in part two.

  1. Efficiency versus Effectiveness
  2. Growth versus Development
  3. Society versus the Economy
  4. Conservative versus Liberal
  5. Rights of the Individual versus Rights of the Group
  1. Society versus the Economy:

moses-and-rameses-were-raised-as-brothers-but-took-different-paths-to-become-great-leaders

Today we are faced with an epic pandemic.  This threat has led to a battle between those who want to protect the economy and those for whom society is more important.  This is not the first time such a battle has been waged.  Four thousand years ago Moses battled Ramses over the same issue.  Pharaoh Ramses had cheap labor with the Israelites.  The Egyptian economy was purring along.  Pharaoh did not want to change anything.  The Israelites were not so happy.  Their society was in chaos as it was being slowly but inevitably destroyed by Egyptian culture.  A few hundred more years and there would be no Israelites.  A leader named Moses decided his people must leave Egypt.  He first tried to convince Ramses to simply “let my people go.”  Ramses would have none of this idea.  He had a good thing going with cheap labor and he was not about to rock the boat.

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Moses decided to play hard ball.  He brought a plague to hurt the Egyptians.  Ramses was aggrieved and decided to allow the Israelites to leave.  However, at the last-minute Ramses changed his mind.  It was a question of what would be good for the economy or what would be good for the Israelites.  The economy won out.  Moses brought another plague and then another.  Each time, Ramses would acquiesce and then at the last minute he would change his mind.  He finally let the Israelites leave but once they were “on the road” he had his last-minute regrets again and sent his army to bring them back.  The rest is (as they say) “history.”

Fast forward to the world in 2020.  A pandemic more widespread and as lethal as any in history has struck the world.  The battle is again engaged between leaders like Donald Trump who care more about the economy and leaders who care more about society.  A false dichotomy if ever there was one.  Under John’s corollary, taking either position and ignoring the other position can and will only result in a destruction of both.  You cannot have a society without an economy, and you can not have an economy without a society.  But what is the purpose of each?  What is a society and what is an economy?

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A society is a group of people, perhaps a tribe, a nation, or a family that choose to live together to share mutual resources.  People that live together beget relationships that involve feelings of community that grow out of common concerns.  These feelings range from love to sometimes hate.  There is a mutual interdependence in a society that implies the good of the society is based on the good of the individual and vice versa.  Societies develop a strong bond based on this mutual interdependence.

An economy is a means of providing resources for a society.  It is the means towards an end.  The end being the perpetuity of the society.  No society can exist without an economy.  Social economies have existed since the cave people and at one point simply involved people hunting and gathering together.  In modern times, we see economies based on a much more complex web of “hunting and gathering.”  The hunting and gathering in a modern society may involve Internet hunting or gathering crops at the local supermarket.

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A supply chain exists in modern societies based on what economists’ call “comparative advantage.”  This involves multiple components of a supply chain each doing what they do best.  Farmers raise dairy cattle.  Dairies make milk.  Trucking companies transfer the milk.  Retail stores sell the milk and other dairy products.  Consumers work at some part of a supply chain (there are thousands of supply chains that exist in the world today) to earn money to purchase goods and services sold at one or more other supply chains.  This is a simple version of an economy.  The bottom line is that in the 21st Century, no jobs mean no money.  No money means no ability to purchase goods and services.  Ergo, you starve to death or rely on the charity of your neighbors in your society.

Since the Covid-19 Pandemic began, leaders seem to have chosen sides in a fruitless and ignorant battle between “society” and the “economy.”  Over and over again we have seen leaders propose one extreme position or the other.  “We must shut everything down or we must open everything up!”  In the USA, there has been endless wrangling over a second stimulus bill.  Instead of intelligently looking at the balance between society and the economy, both Democrats and Republicans have used the crisis to further their own goals and agendas.

coronavirus

This lack of leadership of both parties directly dovetails with the lack of leadership set by the former President of the United States.  A man whose own agenda was based on keeping an economy going to further his chances for reelection.  For a man who scorned Marxism and socialism, he realized that the economy always plays a major role in the life of the common person.  He thought that if the economy was going strong, people would overlook the thousands of deaths of their friends and neighbors.  He created a narrative that the entire pandemic was “false.”  The deaths were false.  He claimed falsely that the hospitals were reporting everything as Covid-19 deaths when they were actually due to something else.  I personally talked to many Trump supporters who told me that doctors and hospitals did this because the reimbursement rates were higher for deaths due to Covid-19 than for other causes.

trump on virus magic

I served four years in the United States Air Force.  I learned while in the military that a commander, whether of a battalion, a squadron or a platoon has a major responsibility to keep his soldiers as safe as possible.  Any military leader who recklessly and needlessly puts his or her soldiers in harm’s way will be tried and court martialed for “dereliction” of duty. Following are two examples from a Marine publication titled: “Leadership, Ethics and Law of War Discussion Guide for Marines” by Marine Corps University, Lejeune Leadership (2008)

“The platoon commander was charged with violations of Article 92 (Dereliction of Duty), Article 109 (Willful and wrongful damage to an automobile), Article 118 (Premeditated murder) and Article 133 (Willful and wrongful failure to safeguard the detainees) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice on 1 Feb 2005.”

“1st Lt Lawson was charged with dereliction of duty for failing to account for LCpl Rother’s welfare by posting him alone as a road guide. He was also charged with disobeying an order for two violations: failing to post guides in pairs as Judgment Case Study 5 Dependability Proficiency as directed and failing to provide a roster of the guides to the logistics officer before they were posted.”

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We have a former President who claims to be the Commander in Chief, yet he violated every canon of military law by recklessly and needlessly putting the entire US population in harm’s way by his disregard for the lives of these people.  His actions resulted in the deaths of thousands and yet I hear no outcry for justice.  I hear no strong voices noting his responsibility for these thousands of deaths.  As the primary person responsible for politicizing this Pandemic, he must be held accountable for these deaths.  The liars and sycophants who supported him must also be held accountable.

I blame the Democrats for their continuing stupidity to face reality.  I blame the Republicans for their lack of integrity and for their greed.  Both parties have made the pandemic in the USA much worse than it needed to be.  The lack of courage on one side and the greed on the other side created a perfect storm for the Covid-19 Virus to spread.  As I speak, we are witnessing a spike and increase in cases that seems beyond belief.

online-school-socialization

Part of the reason for the increase in Corvid-10 cases has been the rush by both parties to open the schools.  So-called well-meaning educators and health experts even supported this rush.  On one side it was the belief that “day care” was needed to get the economy going again and on the other side, it was the need for teachers and schools to regain income.  Both sides used such flimsy excuses as “students need socializing” and would not get it at home or “students would fall behind” if they did not have direct contact with teachers.  No one ever defined what “socializing” children means or how schools accomplish this.  As for students falling behind, were they talking about their ability to take these ridiculous standardized state tests which add little or nothing to a student’s ability to think and reason for themselves?   No one ever defined what these children would be “falling behind.”

I realize that I have digressed from my original thesis.  To sum it up, a failure to balance the needs of both the society and the economy has led to disastrous results.  Add to this, the overall lack of leadership by the US President and both parties and we have a crisis that has never before been witnessed in the USA.  Some of these same problems beset the rest of the world.  The stupidity we have seen is not simply a manifestation of American ignorance, greed, and short-sightedness.  The world abounds in bad leadership.  Will we learn anything from our mistakes?  Will we admit that we were so polarized that neither side would listen to the other side?  Will we make progress under a new President?  Only time will tell.

National Academy of Science issues Garbage Report Recommending Schools Reopen in the Fall.

16 Jul 2020 3 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

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“This fall, public school districts should prioritize full-time, in-person classes for grades K-5 and for students with special needs.”   So says a new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.  Many are using this report to endorse opening all education institutions FULL-TIME and even decrying distance learning as a failure.  If you want to read the full report, you can download it in PDF for no cost.  Go to:  Reopening K-12 Schools During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This is one of the worst pieces of research I have ever seen in my life.  It is claimed in the report that “The report includes an updated review of the evidence from around the world and a set of recommendations on mitigation strategies for the corona-virus in school settings.”  In actuality, there is little factual data supporting a reopening strategy but a great deal of conjecture.  Some of the so-called findings would seem to support NOT opening.  For instance:

“there is no definitive evidence about what suite of strategies is most effective for limiting transmission within a school setting when students, teachers, and other staff are present.”

(145 Pages of this report is mostly information you could get online about the effects and history of the Covid Pandemic.)

“The existing guidance documents offer an extensive list of potential strategies but little guidance on how districts and schools can or should prioritize them.”

(Little guidance but they are making their recommendations to open the schools anyway).

“Many of the mitigation strategies currently under consideration (such as limiting classes to small cohorts of students or implementing physical distancing between students and staff) require substantial reconfiguring of space, purchase of additional equipment, adjustments to staffing patterns, and upgrades to school buildings.”

(When and how will this happen?  In the next month? Does this seem realistic?)

“The research community should immediately conduct research that will provide the evidence needed to make informed decisions about school reopening and safe operation. The most urgent areas for inquiry are: • children and transmission of COVID-19, • the role of reopening schools in contributing to the spread of COVID-19 in communities, • the role of airborne transmission of COVID-19, and • the effectiveness of different mitigation strategies.”

(This is a so-called research study but it recommends we make more research to find “evidence” about school reopening that they are already recommending to reopen.”

“Second, the committee determined that, given the short timeline for producing this report, an exhaustive, systematic review of all available guidance documents for schools and districts was not feasible.”

“The committee met virtually five times over a 4-week period.”

(The time spent doing “research” is ridiculous.  It is nothing but a cut and paste job that looks like it came from the White House.”

“If children do transmit the disease efficiently, as they do with influenza, for example, physically reopening schools could accelerate the transmission of COVID-19 in a community.  Data needed to answer this and other important questions are unlikely to be available by the time the decision to reopen will have to be made.”

(The Data will not be likely to be available, but we recommend anyway?”)

“Twenty-eight percent of public school teachers are over 50, putting them in the higher risk age category for serious consequences of COVID-19 (Taie and Goldring, 2020). On a survey of teachers, principals, and district leaders administered by the EdWeek Research Center in June, 2020, 62% reported that they were somewhat or very concerned about returning. Any plans for reopening will need to address these concerns.”

(So how do we protect the teachers? Administrators and Parents?)

There are five major reasons this study offers for reopening the schools, but they give little evidence to support a true analysis of the costs/benefits for reopening.  Nor do they offer any alternatives. They are as follows:

  1. Many families rely on schools for daycare.
  2. Schools provide meals
  3. Schools provide mental health counseling and health care
  4. Schools are a center of social life
  5. Minorities and disadvantaged youth will fall behind wealthy children who have better home access to the internet and distance learning. 

My response to the above issues:

  1. We need national daycare as well as national health care for all.  No question.  But are schools the right place for day care services?  Is reopening going to solve our daycare problem?
  • Many schools have already made arrangements to help provide needed meals.  We do not need to reopen the schools to do this.
  • In Wisconsin there is 1 counselor for about every 470 students in the state.  (See data from “https://www.schoolcounselor.org/asca/media/asca/Publications/ratioreport.pdf)  It does not seem very likely to me that much mental health counseling is actually going on.  This ratio is even worse in many other states.
  • Schools may be a center of social life, but kids will not die from a slightly diminished social life.  I doubt many high school kids suffer much during summer months from a lack of social life.
  • Suddenly, they are concerned with minorities and disadvantaged youth? This is a quite disingenuous argument.  Educators have been asking for years for more funds to help address this issue and suddenly it is given as one of the primary reasons for reopening the schools. The report even notes the pervasive systemic racism in the education system.  Now they want to reopen the schools to address the issue of racism?

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After reading this 145 pages piece of garbage, I may never have any respect again for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

I can only suspect that the White House threatened to cut off their funding if they did not publish something to support Trump’s determination to open the schools. This is clearly part of Trump’s agenda to get the economy to reopen before the elections. The result of his pressure on states to reopen and his lack of support for efforts such as masks to mitigate the spread of this virus are nothing short of criminal. The administration is willing to sacrifice “old people” for the sake of the economy and now they are willing to sacrifice “young people” as well.

Teachers Say Rush to Reopen Schools Without Covid-19 Safety Plan Shows Trump and DeVos ‘Do Not Care About Students’

 

 

 

Social Legacy Systems:  How They Block Change and Prevent Progress:  Part 1- Education

01 Dec 2014 5 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , ,

KuhnCycle_BasicCycleAccording to Thomas Kuhn when a paradigm shifts, you cannot be successful doing what you did in the old paradigm.  In a new paradigm, you must obey new rules to be successful.  Our culture and world are going through one of the greatest paradigm shifts in history.  It has been happening now for four generations starting with the Baby Boom generation.  The transition or swing generations have been Generation X and Generation Y.   These later two generations have been stuck between paradigms.  The final or new generation has been somewhat appropriately called Generation Z.  Generation Z *(See Footnote) represents the end of the paradigm shift.

The rules and cultural norms that have traditionally applied to: family, education, government, employment and law are all legacy based and present significant barriers to change.  In computers, a legacy system refers to either hardware or software that is out of date but is difficult to replace because of its widespread use.  I am using the term as it is known in the IT world, to refer to our outdated social and economic systems that are difficult to replace because of first: their widespread use and second: because of attitudes and policies that make it difficult to either change or replace them.

(Listen to Tracy Chapman sing  “The Times They Are A Changin.”  A song made famous by Bob Dylan)

Generation Z must create new rules for success and happiness to reign in this new order.  The emerging social and business systems will march to a different set of norms and standards.  Those systems that fail to change will gradually erode and die.  Their deaths will not be without casualties or bloodless.  Already we see the decay and decline of our antiquated educational system.  Our justice and prison systems are not far behind in obsolescence.

Legacy ChangesIronically, the Baby Boomers started the paradigm shift and are now the major roadblocks to change.  As Baby Boomers age, the systems they are most comfortable with (What I am calling the legacy systems) are increasingly dysfunctional.   In this blog, I want to talk about how the traditional systems have become barriers to change and the ways that these systems will need to be changed in order for Generation Z to achieve the success and happiness undoubtedly their parents want for them.  Indeed, the one thing that has not changed in six thousand years is the desire by parents for their children to live in a better world then they did.

What is the New Paradigm and what was the Old Paradigm?

The change in paradigms is embodied in the following dominant forces:

  1. From an Analog to a Digital world
  2. From Family centered to Child centered
  3. From Independence to Interdependence
  4. From Text to Visual based
  5. From Linear to Nonlinear sequencing

Each of the above factors has played a major role in the decline of social systems and economic systems in the USA if not also in many other parts of the world.  However, before we look at these individual factors, let me repeat a very important fact that is often ignored.  The changes in our systems will happen whether we want them to or not.  They are as inevitable as the weather changing or the mountains eroding.  There is nothing anyone can do to stop them.  Examine any of the five factors noted above and ask yourself “how likely is it to be turned back or changed back to what we once knew in bygone years?”  The only choice that we as a society and culture have is whether we want to try to restrain these changes or whether we want to help facilitate them and make the transition smoother and easier.

The old system and its rules and norms are barriers to change.  Laws and policies that support the old legacy systems now have the vice of creating friction and turmoil.  Just like two tectonic plates sliding over each other, when smooth transition is not permitted, one result may be an earthquake that shatters reality with its violent upheaval.  We are seeing many examples of both the inevitable frictions and resulting earthquakes in many areas of society and business today.  Sometimes, the changes are smooth but as often as not they are violent and chaotic.

Let’s look at two of what I am calling our legacy systems to see how these explosions and cultural clashes are playing out.  We will start with our education system (which is now quite similar all over the world).

How Does the Education System Block Change?

Paradigm-ShiftIn the late nineteen century, the American education system was one of the most progressive in the world.  Offering access to people that before could never have gone to school or college, the system was a reflection of many of the emerging industrial era virtues.

  • A mostly democratic system of mass education
  • Standardized learning
  • Linear and hierarchical movement through a graduated system of grades, curriculum and tests
  • Experts in various fields who could bring ideas and knowledge to a centralized location
  • Easy availability of texts and reading material
  • Credentials essential for the new Industrial Age that was emerging

For nearly one hundred and fifty years, the elements of the Education or School paradigm were beneficial and coveted by many other nations of the world.  Witness, the vast numbers of foreign students who came to attend Higher Education in the USA.  The factors making our education system a success in the early 20th Century have changed.  The need for an education system is still there but the “School” system that now dominates the “education” paradigm is hopelessly obsolete.   Each one of the five forces has played a role in this obsolescence.    Let us look briefly at the role that each has played in degrading our present education system.

  1. From an Analog to a Digital world

analog to digitalStudents now carry as much information in their ubiquitous smart phones as in all the encyclopedias in the world combined.  Many schools that once banned IPADS and Smart Phones are beginning to allow them in the curriculum.  Attempts to control what students can see are rather fruitless and doomed to fail.  (The 12-3-14 Casa Grande Paper reported today that the FBI seized 20 boxes of an LA school’s iPad documents.  “Hundreds of students initially given the IPADs last school year found ways to bypass security installations, downloading games and freely surfing the web.”  HORRORS (My comment)

2.  From Family centered to Child centered

family versus child centeredSingle parent families are now nearly 40 percent of all households.  About 4 out 10 children were born to unwed mothers in 2013.  https://singlemotherguide.com/single-mother-statistics.  Children are now the center of attention in many households.  Whereas the family was once the most important component, children are increasingly the center of the family system.  Evidence for this is numerous.  From Soccer Moms to Helicopter Moms to parents that blame teachers for all that is wrong in the school but would never blame their children.  As an educator for over 40 years now, I have seen this shift firsthand.  Today, in all too many cases, if the child misbehaves or acts out, it is the teachers or schools fault.

  1. From Independence to Interdependence

independenceAmerica has always prided itself on rugged independence.  Many examples exist to show that much of this was image and not reality. Nevertheless, from individual grades to individual tests and individual merits of achievement, our schools have reflected this standard in its policies and procedures.  Sharing information with others in school whether on a test or writing assignment is usually labeled as cheating.

In business as in school, the individual performance ethic also reigned supreme.  This has gradually but inexorably been changing.  Today, the team norm has become increasingly dominant in the work place as we see that the old saying “two heads are better than one” is an essential platitude for innovation and creativity.   Schools are still lagging considerably behind the marketplace on the value they place on team work, cooperation and interdependence.

  1. From Text to Visual based

Visual-Tsunamis-Ketchum-first-pageFrom the early Jane’s readers to English Classics to modern stories like Harry Potter, the school system is dominated by a text based paradigm which has made the text-book the center of learning for most classes. This is true from kindergarten to Ph.D. programs and is of course reflected in ideas like Common Core and standardized curriculum.   At the college level, I have been told that I had to use a textbook because everyone else was using a textbook.  Recently we have seen that most hard cover textbooks have become e-books but this is a minor change and does not reflect the real underlying fact that kids today are increasingly living in a visual world.

Examples of this change abound:  Windows based interface systems, Smart Phone icons, You-Tube videos, documentaries, and just about every famous novel in history has been rendered into some form of video.  Children today are visual learners while the school system has standardized on text books, written assignments and term papers.  I wish I had a dollar for everyone that has said “Kids today do not know how to read or write.”  While, they may not express themselves in ink and papyrus, one only has to look at YouTube to see the abundance of musical and visual creativity now being displayed by young people today.

  1. From Linear to Nonlinear sequencing

non-linear-narrativeSchools are like factories with assembly lines. Everyone moves together at the same pace doing a standardized set of procedures designed for maximum efficiency.  Of course, these procedures were wonderful during the Industrial Era and propelled the USA to world leadership in manufacturing and production.  They also made the USA education system the envy of the world.  Today, these concepts are obsolete in business and also in education.  Just as businesses are moving to mass customization, so our schools need to move to customized learning curriculum designed for team of learners with similar interests and goals.  Our school system is now a testament to inefficiency, boredom and frustration for more than half of all students attending.

Conclusions:

Why are children dropping out of school or getting pregnant in school at horrendous rates?  I think the answer is simple:  School is boring and not meeting their needs. If in a business, your customers stopped coming, you would assume that something was wrong with your products or services. This does not seem to have occurred to either politicians or educators.  Perhaps, it is a case that “The fish is the last one to see the water.”  Schools have become obsolete.  The American education system now serves well only a small percentage of the students that enter the system.

Drop Out RatesMany will survive the system only to be glad when they finally get out.  Critical thinking is not well tolerated and the system does not accept challenges to its fundamental premises. Nevertheless, every school shooter represents a distorted but none the less serious challenge to the education system in America.  There will be many who ask “Is he crazy, how can he say that?”  One only has to understand the concept of a chaotic system to know that in any system that is undergoing decay, outliers or special causes will spring up that do not seem to be part of the system or that seem to have no relationship to the other elements in the system.  These special causes are all part of a normal system of variation.  In systems with a high degree of instability or inconsistency, the amount of variation results in increasingly greater episodes of chaos and breakdowns.   Looking for reasons for these “special causes” only results in speculation and frustration and failure.

No single theorist has painted a profile or single underlying reason for the increasing violence in our schools.  I submit, the schools and their dysfunctional paradigms are ultimately the cause of this violence.  If this is true, we will see more and more examples of such violence as our school system gradually deteriorates and becomes increasingly less relevant.  No amount of police in the hallways or concealed weapons will stop this inevitable and remorseless deterioration.   We are well past the time when we need a new education paradigm for the 21st Century.

In Part 2 of “Social Legacy Systems:  How They Block Change and Prevent Progress”, I would like to show how our legacy Prison and Judicial System has become a negative and restraining element in our present social system.  The result has been escalating and unsustainable increases in prison costs, legal costs, police costs and costs associated with our judicial system.

Time for Questions:

What is your opinion?  Do we need to change? Why or why not? Why are so many people only interested in half measures of change?  What will it take to change our education system?  Are you willing to work or financially support the changes that are needed? Why or why not?

Life is just beginning.

“And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.” ― Meister Eckhart

* Footnote:

Gen Z, Gen Y, baby boomers – a guide to the generations by Harry Wallop

 

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