Yet Another Example of the Decline of Public Education

For years, I have felt that the USA’s public education system is in decline. I compare what was required of high school graduates from 100, 50, 20, and 13 years ago, and I despair. Now, Ted Nugent provides us with another symptom and a possible cause:

What we discovered on one such meeting at a Michigan grade school was rather eye-opening, to say the least.

Sitting down with a fifth-grade teacher, we examined some schoolwork and homework papers where the written work was done in all-capital block letters. Simple words like “window,” “chair” and “book” were capitalized. We asked, why?

With a distant stare and a weird Mr. Rogers-TV demeanor, the kind teacher feebly attempted to explain. It was no big deal, she said. It was easier for the children to write in block letters.

He opined that cursive writing “wasn’t used that much anymore.” Say huh?

The scary part came when we scrutinized our son’s papers that had already been turned in and corrected, but somehow still contained numerous misspellings.

Could a professional teacher actually have missed such mistakes? We asked. We were shocked to hear that such misspellings “were close enough and didn’t matter that much right now.”

This teacher believes that standards are not important.  That being able to write legibly and spell correctly don’t matter. Is it any wonder that we have people in college who can not communicate effectively? 

IMO, in an effort to be more inclusive, we are harming our best and brightest children. This ends harming all of our children’s futures. We have lowered our standards so that “no child is left behind.” We need higher standards than what children are held accountable to now (and higher than what they were held accountable to 20 years ago).  We also need to realize that not all children are going to go to college, nor do they need to go to college. Our society needs skilled tradesman (machinists, carpenters, plumbers, and others) as much as as it needs doctors, lawyers, and engineers. There is nothing wrong with becoming a skilled tradesman instead of a degreed professional. Yet, we have people who look down there noses at the tradesman and insist that everyone should get a 4 year degree from a university.  This ignores the fact that not everyone has the ability and/or the aptitude for achieving what a bachelor’s degree should mean.