Inevitable

REALITIES

It’s not always easy to look back on any action that really matters in a life to understand or question what we did or should have done to get a better result.

But looking back offers us a chance to consider the reasons for failure or the keys to success as we move forward.

It has been relatively easy to use history itself to identify the reasons that each of the great superpowers – from Asia, throughout almost all of Europe ending with the British Empire – lost those powers forever because in every instance they stopped educating their children.

Was that failure of education an attempt by the government involved to dumb down and so control the public or was it simply a lack of interest in education by the public itself?

It is difficult to say in every case in those countries because education was often limited to the very privileged and not to the population at large.

It was the newly established ‘free World’ of the United States which early in its history recognized the value of an educated citizenry and declared that all Americans should learn to read (the Bible to begin with) and then committed itself to that effort for more than a century.

America reached its zenith as a superpower during World War 11. When it was victorious it took another step towards the education of Americans when Congress passed the G.I. Bill of Rights offering free college scholarships to most American veterans…though initially, true to its racial history, not to black veterans. That situation changed in later years.

It is still considered one of the greatest pieces of legislation ever passed by any American government.

The problem for us today is that public education no longer works…and nobody seems to care.

And because that is true, our failure to remain a superpower is not only inevitable but is already becoming clearly evident.

Just look at where we are.

Our political system is shattered. Both national parties are broken into pieces. Little or no compromise is possible and so no new laws that matter are being created to maintain a pace with our needs.

The Republican Party has all but disappeared in New York City and State. Its candidates for Mayor in the last decade have been an essentially unknown Staten Island Assemblywoman and a talk show radio host known for his work with an energetic group of crusaders but with absolutely no business or government experience.

Both candidates were able to gain a little more than 30% of the city vote.

Its candidate for Governor, a Republican Congressman from Long Island with experience and a powerful message about crime in New York City (but not a single word about crime and drug use in his Nassau County) was a known supporter of Donald J. Trump. That allegiance lost him the election against a professional political woman from Buffalo who was serving as Lt. Governor and then became Governor because Andrew Cuomo was driven out of that job.

The Democratic Party in New York is essentially divided among veterans and newly elected so-called ‘progressives’ who do not possess the know-how to even begin to act with common sense.

Both National Parties are in no better shape.

The Republican Party has disappeared under the red and white hat of MAGA with nary a peep.

The national Democratic Party is as fractured as it appears in New York and lacks even a semblance of leadership throughout the country. A noted NY Times columnist gave extraordinary examples of all the things Joe Biden is not doing and recommended he could best serve the country by stepping down along with his Vice President.

He then suggested the Democratic Party’s candidate for President could be the Governor of Michigan who is a woman or the Governor of Pennsylvania who is Jewish.

At a time when we remember the fate of Hillary and Nikki and see rampant antisemitism, it is difficult to imagine this America seriously considering either such persona.

The trouble is basic: once we looked to the next generation to provide us with new “smarts”. That new generation no longer does because it does not have the education once found in American schools

So the Executive branch will be led by one of two old men the majority of Americans do not want; the Legislative branch refuses to do the work expected of it because laws are written through compromise which doesn’t exist and the Judicial branch – the Supreme Court – is seriously suspect because it seems a lifetime job means that a Justice can condone whatever stupid thing his wife does or says or lies about it, or any venal thing he wants to do without care or concern.

Then we look outward and see Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, Taiwan, Russian nuclear vessels and warships in Cuba, Chinese power games in the South China sea, Putin and North Korea’s Kim in a tight embrace and the Hout is stopping traffic through the Suez at Iran’s instruction. All of this daring America to act as superpower.

EDUCATION OR ELSE

We have devoted many pieces over the years describing the slow disintegration of America’s public education system.

From the failure of properly developed and delivered pre-school Early Education, to the failures of teacher education, to the continued loss of interest in a career in education by women who now can sit at the head of a major industry, run a law firm or be a surgeon.

Once teachers had a great partner in a Mom at home. They shared the understanding that a child’s education was the only way to guarantee upward mobility and economic stability. This was especially true for immigrants from Europe and Asia who saw America as something special because America had jobs for them and school for their children. Their children represented a future and their children’s education represented the certainty of that future.

Then, economic forces, the contraceptive pill and fierce determination to let women find their true desire for a life no longer bound by expectation, convention and biology. Women no longer had to be at home.

As generations grew well past the old world of immigration, the conception that parents owed their children a chance at education and a better life dimmed into the past. The result was that parents in this 21st Century came to believe that they owed their children a chance at happiness – first and foremost. If a child was happy they were doing their job. Education? Leave that to school.

But there were other changes too that made these new attitudes so much more damning.

In the late 1950’s and 60’s California schools brought new ways of teaching reading and arithmetic to schools across the country. The purpose it was said was to make that teaching more successful. The real purpose was to bring new money to those selling educational materials – bringing new approaches, new books, new materials to the table.

Out went teaching reading using phonics. Now Children would learn to read the whole word.

Out went drilling in addition and subtraction and the memory work of learning to multiply and divide. Now children would understand the concepts of math.

None of it worked then or now.

New programs like the Common Core introduced in the early 2000s seemed like a major refutation against what failed but it was introduced so badly that it flopped almost immediately although echoes of it remain today.

Studies showed that teachers should be taught as doctors and nurses are taught…with work in the classroom beginning as soon as they began their first year in Ed school. The studies have been ignored.

In public schools, subject matter was continuously dumbed down…classics no longer in English classes, the end of economics and history as well as music and art…and so forth.

New York State, the largest school system in the nation is now one of only six systems in the country still demanding that students pass exit exams – we call them Regents exams.

Now the State system is talking about abandoning them and just expecting some form of test to act as an exit pass.

But that’s not the worse part…the reason for ending these tests is: “When students ask why they have to take Regents exams they are told ‘… in order to graduate’ and that is not reason enough for us to continue giving them.”

So it appears that to our educators enough is enough…and that’s that.

And that attitude of abandonment from within the system itself also was found in the failure of discipline that must exist in a school setting. Teachers found themselves faced with significant discipline problems in their classrooms and the failure of principals and administrators to help them. Control became a day to day battle.

We have a massive shortage of teachers across the country which seems beyond improving. Suburban and rural school systems are trying to design a FOUR DAY School Week to induce new interest in teaching as a career.

The abusive cost of college and the number of colleges which now exist are about to receive a major jolt which will change that landscape. There are now thousands of good jobs paying decent salaries which no longer require a college degree. That reality will soon become commonplace and the world of higher education will enter into a revolution.

But above all there is the essential truth that no one seems to care about educating our children enough to stop the failures of the system and design a new one which works.

Yet across the country there is a model which has been shown to achieve remarkable results. It is the beginning.

A NEW WAY

In States across the country – like Texas, for instance – those who fail high school and do not receive a diploma are being brought back to school in innovative programs which change the classic school model completely.

The location – a college – and the material on computers bring students into a learning environment they know well – and in a place they want to be in – a college.

It has worked for years now.

The attendance over a six month period is above 90%. The successful ’graduation’ rate is 92%

While it is early to hold up Artificial Intelligence as the be-al and end-all of everything, it is not early to recognize that the World has never known a concept which puts the staggering amount of information about “everything” in one place at one time.

We can argue how this knowledge may or may not replace human thinking and activities. Or we can discuss how AI can and will be abused. It is now all privately developed with billions of dollars invested and we all know that “money talks” as it wants to talk.

But going past these discussions the truth is this: this “inhuman’ amount of knowledge can not only be designed to teach children ‘everything’ they need to know, it can be designed to individualize this information exchange putting away forever the ‘one-size fits all’ of public education as we have always known it.

Teach every child things in the way each child can learn it best…and you have an ideal which cannot be denied.

This is the answer and the only answer to education as we once respected it.

It will not save today’s America from watching its superpower status slide into the past, but it might eventually do something that has never happened before in history.

America may become the first superpower to regain that status.

Superpower?

It might not be that important in time but the fact that we developed a completely new model of education that works will reestablish the promise of life that has always meant ‘America’.