The Greatest Threat to Education

The greatest threat to education in the USA is quite possibly political correctness. How so?

To keep it simple and to the point, many teachers, the current push in the public schools, at the federal level with No Child Left Behind, and numerous other ways focus on trying to treat students as if they are all the same. I’ve heard comments from other teachers I’ve worked with who believed there was no such thing as an advanced student or a gifted and talented population. The NCLB requires all students no matter their ability to take standardized tests to use to judge a school. Add in the common push to treat all kids the same and you have a recipe for a problem.

What is the problem? All kids are different. Some are gifted and advance while some will always be cognitively disabled. Now while some schools are trying to tell the parents the rationale for not challenging the advanced students is because of not wanting to hurt the feelings of the slower kids, the children know differently. I asked my daughter, who is now in first grade, about the kids in her Kindergarten public school class. She and all of the other kids knew who was smarter, who was a better athlete, who was a better talker, etc. I remember that all through school as well. I haven’t forgotten my childhood. Kids are people too with thoughts and observations just like the adults. The knowledge and experience bases are different but everything else is the same.

Basically, the adults are fooling themselves into thinking all the kids can be treated the same. Kids are not just some programmable robot. Some will go on to be the foundation of our country. The future of our economy is founded in those children in the areas of chemistry, engineering, computers and other science and technology. But some students / children are wired for other things such as being a mechanic or a janitor. That is where the politically correct drive of treating all the same does the most damage. Everyone is different. All the students are different. Not all are destined for college. While we struggle with this, the Asian education counterparts have long understood and embraced it.

As found here, there appears to be a high drop-out rate in the Asian countries of India and China as compared to the USA. But this is where one has to pause and understand you can’t look at how another country works from how we define things here. China, India, Philippines and many more Asian countries such as Japan require you to test INTO high school. Dropping out would indicate a choice. That would be mostly false. You have to prove you are worthy to get IN high school. Many are delegated to manual labor or other positions.

China has 24 million students who tested into high school. India has 35 million who tested into high school. The USA has 16 million who are required to be in high school. With fewer numbers of students on our side, that means there is far less room for error in our educational system while still keeping a hope of being a competitor in the global economy alive. With political correctness, we have handicapped the effectiveness of our educational systems, our present and future economy, and put the fiscal standing of the USA in the global community at serious risk.

It is said that powerful nations of 200+ yrs in age die from cancers created within. Will our arrogance and political pandering with the future of our children be our undoing?