The United States Government has been involved in funding or directing education in the U.S. since at least the middle of the 19th century. The current “champion” for education in the government is the Department of Education, a cabinet-level position created in 1979. Its principal role is to establish educational policies and oversee the disbursement of funds appropriated by Congress to improve education in the United States and its territories. In 2019, the President asked for $63.2 billion in discretionary spending. The Congress actually approved $70.8 billion for education. The question we should be asking ourselves is has the money we’ve spent actually been effective in raising the educational standards across the 50 states and its territories?
It seems each President (Trump excluded) campaigns on how poorly we fund education and how they will make a difference. I remember President George W. Bush’s promise to leave no child behind, and of course, President Barrack Obama swept into office promising to fix the failures of Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” and fix what he saw as a decline in public education. Of course, along the way every educational expert seems to have their own view as to what should be done to address the failures and Make American Education Great Again!
Bill Ayers, the 1960’s radical, brought us “Common Core” which, as far as I can tell has done little to actually improve the next generations' ability to consistently get 4 as an answer to the age-old question of what is the sum of 2 plus 2.[1] What it did accomplish is to stop every parent from helping with their student's math homework.
Today’s educational policies and dialogue mostly center on how to divide up the dollars available to education in such a way that the professional educators get the most dollars for themselves and their organization. Those who want more $ for education routinely cite the performance of students in other countries, but I see little to actually reflect a debate on why American Education is different than say Finland. I see little to reflect the decline in social structure and traditional family values as a contributing factor and see little agreement on paths forward to fix the foundational problems we, as a nation of 350,000,000, face as we try and prepare our young to assume the roles of tomorrows leaders.
It seems obvious, at least to my simple way of thinking, higher education over the past 50-years has shifted from teaching our young the humanities and the sciences to a process of “right-thinking” where there is an intolerance for anything anyone wants to define as an injustice. At one point this used to be referred to as indoctrination, but today I think it is just the educational standard. Today’s debate in social media over offensive acts and language is just a logical outcome of that indoctrination.
It is clearly a tool used by those who wish to dominate society, rather than become a part of it. The result of this shift is a clear move into an age of ignorance where our history is clouded by modern opinion, rather than understanding the times and the opinions of the day that helped write it. It is reflected in the vilification of opposing views based on emotion rather than fact, and it is highlighted in the belief one side is right and the other is wrong as if the world around us is cast only in white and black.
These facts alone are enough to raise concerns for those who worry about the legacy we, my generation, leave behind, but when it is compounded by the political hypocrisy of politics and the average layperson’s willingness to accept as truth the views of only one side it becomes even more likely the age of ignorance will flourish.
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