The Public Education nomenklatura boost their credibility
by inventing for themselves a glorious pedigree implying that public schools
(P.S.) have been around forever. They also claim that going to
school longer will boost a young person's lifetime income.
Wrong
on both counts.
New
York State, liberal and wealthy, passed its first P.S. law in
1874. Michigan, where I live, passed its first P.S. law in
1871. It wasn't fully implemented until 1900.
I photographed this plaque at Fayette State Park on Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
The
statement that those who get more schooling will be happier or earn more is
based on selection bias. People who graduate from high school are
smarter than, have better family support systems than, have more money than,
and are more ambitious than dropouts. The same goes for college
grads when compared to those who only finish high school. The
smarter, moneyed, family-supported and ambitious kids will do better
irrespective of whether they go to school or not.
Public
schools and factories were developed at about the same time. The
pattern adopted was that of an assembly line with parts – or, in the case of
schools, subjects, being bolted on as the child moves on an assembly line,
stations one, two, grades three, four. There is no recognition of
differences of personalities or of the individual needs of the
students. The lack of respect for privacy, the kids' expectations of
being told what to do, the regimenting and promotions based on politics rather
than merit, destroys whatever joy children gain from learning and
self-improvement. Coursework is unrelated to adult needs or to
lifetime work. The public schools don't work very well, are
expensive, and can do profound damage. What to do?
Let's
look at other school models. Take the Amish, who attend one-room
schoolhouses through seventh grade and then, at age thirteen, are treated like
working adults who need to find their role in life. During
"rumspringa," they can experience "Englisher" lifestyles
and are free to make mistakes. Eighty-five percent remain in the
religion, marry, have an average of seven kids, and run remarkably successful
small businesses. I regard the Amish as well educated.
In
Germany's schooling, ten-year-olds have to decide the level of schooling they
will undertake at the end of fourth grade, selecting from any of five kinds of
training available. Some will become vaunted German engineers – the
less zealous, skilled craftsmen. The system works.
Homeschooling
isn't schooling at all. Soon enough, the formal curriculum is adhered
to only superficially. Questions occur to the young scholars, and
they seek answers. Homeschoolers learn answers to questions they
actually have, and that is the essence of the education an adult
needs. By the time these kids become adolescent, they wander around
their towns, talking to experts or doing original research. Many
start businesses; others win national spelling and geography contests or are
welcomed eagerly at Ivy League schools.
I'm
going to promote two examples from here in Michigan. Thomas Alva
Edison grew up in Port Huron, where he went to school for a few
months. His mother encouraged his learning, and he read scientific
books voraciously. He began as a businessman, sold food on a train,
got into telegraphy, started and ran four newspapers – all this before age 19,
when he sold up and moved to Louisville, Ky. There he worked for the
Associated Press, did more experiments, and patented an early electric
vote-recorder at age 22. The rest is history.
My
favorite student-individualist has been termed Michigan's Radioactive Boy
Scout. Reading the 1998 Harper article first got me thinking about adolescence as a
time of hormone-induced hyperactivity. His real name was David
Hahn. Born in 1976, he lived with his mother in Clinton Township
outside Detroit. He acted normal until age ten, when he got a book
on chemical experiments. By fourteen, David had fabricated
nitroglycerine and at fifteen, believing that one day we'd run out of oil, he
pursued and earned a Boy Scout atomic energy merit badge. David got
himself a Geiger counter, happened to find a bottle of radium in an antique
clock, hoodwinked scientific supply houses into sending him unpronounceable
chemicals, worked odd jobs to support his obsession, did poorly in school,
retreated to a shed in his mother's yard, and built himself a breeder nuclear
reactor, all before he was eighteen. He realized that he was being
radiated, and he and his mother flushed much of the material down the
toilet. His experiments came to the attention of the law, but he was
not charged with any crimes. The backyard was cleaned up by the EPA
as a Superfund site.
I
used the Wikipedia article to follow up on this Michigander. His
later life was not a happy one, but that does not deter from his fame for doing
the unconventional at an early age. Hahn continued to try to get
into nuclear engineering. He did poorly when he tried college;
served in the Navy and later in the Marine Corps; developed mental illness;
took to theft; and, tragically, died of alcohol poisoning two years ago at age
39.
My
point in citing the Amish, homeschoolers, Edison, and Hahn is that youthful
energy, that burst of sex hormones that causes all the physical and emotional
changes with which we are familiar, also leads to the oblivion to danger that
we value when we send young men into combat and, the tirelessness when our
teenager does an all-nighter – and, occasionally, rises to levels of
achievement beyond anything the P.S. could possibly
plan. Adolescents face adult responsibility and advance relentlessly
toward the challenge.
Our
factory-model schools blithely obliterate this explosion of self-awareness, of
boundless ambition, and of the student's growing ability to fulfill his
potential, which is to achieve what he is passionate about within his range of
options.
These
effects are most marked in young men. Teachers regard this assertion
of self and of ambition as aggression that will disrupt the bland and
mind-numbing drills they conduct in their classes. They prefer the
more docile female students. School policy lately has tried to feminize
the men to make them conform. The result is that students' zeal is
deflected from attempts at possibly heroic accomplishments. They are
instead yoked to the mediocrity and sameness of high school and college life
from which they will be, in due course, excreted. Many students
leave schools apathetic toward learning. Others fall for the fallacy
that getting a diploma entitles them to a fulfilling job working for the Man.
The
dynamism of our youth is being wasted in factory model schools. I
propose that we recognize adolescent hormones as a powerful force for good and
let it loose to drive students to seek their own individual
happiness. Allowing adolescents to become responsible for their own
individual future is understood in other educational models, and it works.
Erwin Haas was a flight surgeon in Vietnam, a Kentwood city
commissioner, and an assistant clinical professor of medicine at Michigan
State. He is running as a Libertarian for Michigan's 26th state
Senate district. He blogshere.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/11/what_michigans_radioactive_boy_scout_tells_us_about_american_education.html