Education week has started on NBC

Dictionary.com
“Education – The act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life”

NBC Education week has started. I am encouraged that we are addressing Education as a national concern. I am a firm believer that if we had a good education system we would not be in the economic turmoil we are today. We would require less government control, which would mean a smaller government, we wouldn’t be in to debt to China who knows how much and we would be experiencing more individual freedom than ever, as opposed to being restricted more than any time in the history of the United States.

Currently we rank “25th in math and 21st in Science out of 30 developed countries” according to data obtained by NBC and their polls show 58% of the public believe we need a complete overhaul and 77% give our public schools a C grade or less. So the public is finally starting to understand how poorly our public schools are doing. My theory is because of the high unemployment and the realizations that they were never educated.

According to Arne Duncan we have “A lot of money in the reform movement” and we are not giving it to the “status quo.” I think by now we would have figured out the spending money on education was not the answer. We spend more money than anyone on education, and receive significantly less bang for our buck. Our education system is the equivalent to a brand new fully stocked BMW, but without an engine. We have the bells and whistles; the children are entertained, when not sleeping on their desk.

The issue will not be solved by increasing our dependence on Chinese yen (see debt). We must go back to the same teaching methods as the 1 room school house. Where an untrained 16 year old could teach 4-15 year olds how to conquer a country, read and comprehend Greek and Latin. We must teach our children how to be free by giving them the tools to think for themselves. There is a simple solution and it is real inexpensive. 1.) Teach young children to memorize, and how to make it fun. 2.) Teach children in middle school how to think, logic, about the information they are learning and how to relate it to the world around them. 3.) Teach children in high school how to logically think and express their opinions in their unique way.

From Arianna Huffington , Editor-In-Chief, Huffington Post new Book “If America’s Public Education System were a product, it would have been recalled. If it were a politician, it would have been impeached.” In the 1960’s the greatest generation had over 90% prose literacy rate and very little federal government involvement. Schools were run by local school districts and designed to educate, not build up false self esteem. Now when schools are designed to build up self esteem and not to educate prose literacy has dropped to 14%. Our children may feel real good about themselves when there 16, but being unemployed, not having the ability to think, pay bills, vote intelligently is not fun and they will not feel good about themselves when they turn 24 and reality hits them in the face. It’s time to get back to the HARD WORK of learning and teaching the students to teach themselves. It is time to go back to the future: classical education.