Chapter Four
What's Wrong with Education
We don't value education enough in our society. Maybe it is because we fail to see that education is the solution to so many of our problems.
A better-educated society is a more employable society. People with jobs are less likely to turn to crime—less likely to turn to drugs, prostitution, robbery, assault, and more. They are more likely to stay home and take care of their families. They have money to spend, which helps the economy. They are also less dependent on the government to take care of them.
Sadly, most folks have never stepped back and looked at the big picture and end up focusing on the wrong solutions to many of our problems. Want to fight drugs, racism, teen pregnancy, government dependence? Get more kids in school and keep them there.
As a country, we are failing at this as the following statistics show.
- Every 26 seconds, a high school student drops out of school—7,000 students per day.
- Twenty-five percent of high school freshmen fail to graduate on time.
- The United States now ranks 22nd out of 27 developed countries in graduation rates.
- The average income of a high school dropout is about $20,000 per year while a high school graduate earns over $36,000 per year.
These stats alone should be all you need to know that we have a crisis of education in our country.
But the problem is not confined to our high school dropout statistics. Education as a core value means we have to look past just these numbers.
College is the next issue. I am not a fan of free college. I am not supportive of the government loaning money to students. Anytime the government gets involved in financing anything at any level, the price goes up. I firmly believe that one of the reasons college costs so much is because government pays for tuition for so many and colleges know that they can charge whatever they want because the government is paying for it. Therefore, I am a fan of a more affordable college experience. I believe that work-study programs make sense. I still fully support military service and the GI Bill. I like an exchange of community service for financial aid. I like what some Texas colleges are doing by allowing students with military, work, and life experience to test out of many of their college courses. I think there are many alternative avenues to the government loaning money to students. It's not good for education, it's not good for the student, and it's not good for the government. The government needs out of the loaning money business.
Here is my biggest issue with a college education: It's just not the solution it once was. Don't expect your kid to go to college and graduate on Tuesday and have a high-paying job on Wednesday. It doesn't work that way anymore. Yeah, it does for some, so don't start telling me about your genius nephew who had 14 job offers waiting for him. That's not the norm. For many kids, a college degree is an expensive piece of paper that they will spend years paying for and will have little to do with the job they end up taking—especially when you have so many students graduating with no marketable skills. Parents, you must guide your children to study subjects that have a financially viable future.
The chances are not good that your children will become self-sufficient and be able to support themselves if you allow them to take college courses in things like Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame, What If Harry Potter Is Real, Philosophy and Star Trek, Invented Languages: Klingon and Beyond, Zombies in Popular Media, and The Textual Appeal of Tupac Shakur. Yes, these are real college courses. I could name another hundred that are just as stupid. We don't need more courses in underwater basket weaving. We need more math and science. We need basic literacy courses. We need courses on financial literacy. We need courses that actually prepare kids for the marketplace.
And when I said, “if you allow your children” I mean exactly what I said. You are the adult, you are probably paying, and you should know better and care enough not to allow this to happen.
In fact, maybe you should take a good hard look at college for your children. I can guarantee you that most plumbers make more money than most philosophy majors. Why? Toilets aren't going away and everyone's toilet eventually breaks.
And don't give me the argument of following your bliss. For too many kids today, following their bliss means sitting in their bedrooms at the age of 25, eating Mama's cooking, and playing video games while robbing their parents of their retirement. Bliss be damned, get a damn job!
And for too many, attending college is not much more than an excuse to delay entering the workforce just so they can do what I just described.
We have an abundance of jobs in this country that do not require a college degree. There are hundreds of thousands of blue-collar jobs that need to be filled right now. The problem is that too many view those jobs as demeaning. The “too many” I am referring to are parents who dreamed of “better” for their kids. I never dreamed of better for my kids. I only dreamed of them being employed, independent, good people who had a strong work ethic, integrity, were honest, and men of high moral fiber. Fortunately, I ended up with that. But I never saw a college degree as the only way for them to achieve that. We need to get over our elitist attitudes about blue-collar jobs and stop looking down our noses at the many honorable, high-paying jobs that require you to break a sweat and know how to use a tool. Our society would fold like a cheap suit if these jobs failed to exist. That's why there is great job security in providing these services.
I believe we need to put shop classes back in public schools. I believe that we need financial literacy classes in public schools. I even believe home economics should be brought back into the curriculum. There is nothing sexist or wrong about teaching both boys and girls the basics about nutrition, basic cooking skills, hygiene, home finance, and more.
I also believe we need to put more emphasis on vocational technical schools. We need to hold this type of education in higher esteem and encourage the many, many kids who just aren't cut out for college to enter these schools instead of traditional four-year colleges. At least kids who graduate from technical schools almost always have a good job.
I am also a big believer in the military as an option for many kids. The very best thing that happened to my son was going into the military. College was not the right choice for him. The Army was. He was a pretty good kid when he went in but he came out a fine young man. Those eight years were the best investment in his future he could possibly have made.
Parental Involvement
While parents need to flex their muscles when it comes to guiding their children about what direction to take as they enter college or determining whether college is right for them at all, there is a time when parents need to butt out.
When I was a kid and got in trouble, my parents didn't go to the teacher to complain. They let the teacher discipline me and then they disciplined me. They didn't second-guess the teacher. They trusted the teacher, as the adult, to judge if I was wrong. They never blamed the teacher when I got in trouble, either. My, how things have changed!
Now when a kid gets in trouble and the parent is notified, the kid is immediately the victim. The parent calls the 6 o'clock news team and the television van rolls up to find some wailing mama talking about how her precious snowflake has been mistreated. Never mind that the precious snowflake cussed out and slugged a teacher. Their baby has been maligned! Holy crap people! Chances are very high that your baby was wrong and got less than he deserved, anyway.
Now, does that mean that all teachers and schools make good decisions and can't be wrong in these situations? I'm not saying that at all. But most of the time, the teacher is right and your kid is wrong. And my response is almost always going to be, “you do the crime, you do the time.” Let your kid be punished.
By the way, I have a keen sense of being able to predict responses to my writing. This last statement will cause many of you to write bad reviews of this book and write me letters. Do what you want, make yourself happy. You won't be able to change my mind, so have at it.
If you want to become involved in your kid's life at school, go to PTA meetings. Go to parent/teacher conferences. Volunteer to help out in the classroom. Talk to your kid about school, and their friends, and the work they are doing.
Failure Is an Option
When I was in school we had kids that were two or three years older than the rest of us in our class. Why? They were failed and held back until they could do the work and pass the requisite tests. What was the downside to that action? None that I can see except they were no fun to play dodgeball against. Some of them were damn near grown men with beards! Did holding them back hurt their feelings? Don't know and don't care. School was about teaching information and you stayed where you were until you learned the information. Now we have to save every child's fragile little psyche from experiencing failure of any type for fear of permanent damage. Ridiculous. Passing kids who can't do the work isn't fair to the kids who can do the work. And it's also not fair to the kid who couldn't do the work but was passed anyway. Teaching our kids they can get by with inferior performance has led to one of the huge problems afflicting many people today. It's what leads to entitlement mentality. It's what makes folks who mumble, “You want fries with that?” believe that that level of skill is worth $15 an hour.
Some of our school systems don't want our kids to experience the pain of failing. File this next piece in the “You aren't going to believe this shit” category. School officials at Yeshiva Ketana of Long Island sent the following letter to parents along with their child's grades:
Since our goal is to share accurate information with the parents, and not to discourage or hurt a student, great discretion must be used before allowing your child to review his report card. Certainly, report cards should not be seen by students without parental permission and guidance. If after reviewing the enclosed report card, you would like us to develop a second version of the report card with higher grades, please call XXXXXX at extension XXX.
Does this make your head explode? It does mine. In other words, if after reviewing the report card with your kid's bad grades based upon his true level of achievement, you would like for us to lie to him so his feelings won't be hurt, let us know and we will happily compromise our integrity, the integrity of education itself, and destroy all credibility we have as an educational institution and lie to your child. This is dishonest of the school and it puts the parents in a position of having to explain to the child why the school didn't just tell them the truth to begin with. That is, if the parents bother to actually discuss the bad grades with the children. And how are kids supposed to learn to do better if they never feel the consequences of their own poor performance? This violates so many of the core values I believe we must teach children.
Can you imagine being on the verge of getting fired for your lousy performance on the job, yet you still get a positive performance review? How would you feel if you got fired after receiving a positive performance review because you discovered that they didn't tell you the truth because they were afraid it might hurt your feelings? Surprised? You think? How would you know to improve your performance on the job if you never got an honest review about your work?
Sadly, schools don't feel that children are emotionally equipped to handle bad news, even when that bad news is the truth about their own performance. These kids are not fragile little snowflakes, they are people, and people can handle the truth—they may not like it, but they can handle it, especially if they have been taught to handle it.
Grades are a consequence of performance, and when we rob children of the pain of their consequences, we cheat them of the lesson. In sports, if you can't play the game, you don't make the team. If you are a coach and lose too many games, you get fired. If you are a salesperson who doesn't make any sales, you are a failure at being a salesperson and you lose your job. It is the way life and business works: If you can't do the work, you fail. However, that is not the case in many of our schools. Helicopter parents, bleeding heart school systems, and whiney kids believe they should win whether they can do the work or not.
Beyond School Systems
Education as a core value means more than just the formal education you receive as the result of attending school. Education is a never-ending process. It's necessary to continue to learn, to be aware, and to stay informed.
You can learn from reading, listening to smart people (you can even learn from stupid people), and, believe it or not, you can learn from watching television. Yes, there is a lot of great stuff on television. The key to what to watch is answering this question: “Does watching this make me smarter or better informed?” If it does, then it just might be something you should pay attention to. Not that you can't just watch television for pure entertainment, too. You just have to pay attention to how much of it you are doing and be aware of what that is keeping you from doing that could have better results.
I recently heard one of the country's leading motivational speakers advise folks to cut themselves off from all news as it can negatively affect your thinking. Just more ridiculous drivel from a so-called thought leader. Maybe that thought leader should have people stop walking on hot coals…now there's a thought! Changing a bad situation always begins with awareness of it. If you don't know there is a problem, how can you take the necessary action to solve it? I suggest the opposite: Listen to all sides, then make educated and informed decisions.
Don't bring up bias and start your name calling against various news organizations as a response to this suggestion. If you do, you will have missed the point completely. I listen, watch, and read CNN, Fox, CNBC, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Yahoo News, Google News, Politico, my local news and newspaper, and more. And then, because I have a brain, I assimilate the information and draw my own conclusions.
And remember folks: You can't be authentically for or against something when all of your information is second or third hand, fed to you by your favorite talking head. Rachel Maddow, Bill O'Reilly, Chris Matthews, Matt Lauer, Megyn Kelly and the rest are interpreters, not reporters. Experience the information for yourself. Are you willing to turn your brain over to someone else? Sadly, far too many are. And you can't claim to be truly informed if all of your information comes from only one biased source.
I find it particularly sad that we are so ill-informed as a society especially because information has never been easier to access. Knowledge is literally at our fingertips, yet we have chosen to invest the bulk of our time in the silly, the useless, and the stupid—things that add nothing to our lives, things that only point us in the wrong direction when we say we want to be successful.