John Catsimatidis ran for Mayor four years after he had planned to run. Michael Bloomberg, determined to be Mayor for a third term despite two citywide votes which supported term limits, literally bought the votes of the City Council which also gave them an additional four year term.
Bloomberg met with John, talked him into silence, promised him dinner and then forgot all about it.
Four years later John ran as a Republican and found himself in a primary contest with Joseph Lhota, an influential member of Rudy Giuliani’s administration and a very knowledgeable professional.
John met with us early in the campaign and we were drawn not only to his business acumen but to his genuine concern for the city and its people. A perfect example of a grandly successful immigrant , he felt that we were similar in character because as he put it “We both care”.
While John did not become the Republican nominee and chose not to run on the Liberal line alone, he enjoyed the experience of running for public office because it put him in direct contact with the public itself.
He wanted to remain in that place and so began a radio show on an updial station where he interviewed prominent political and government figures…most often more important people than could be found on major radio and TV news stations.
And then he bought WABC radio, 770 on the dial – a prominent news station which had fallen into bad times and was available for a $12 million dollar “song”.
Being the brilliant businessman he is, John has made it New York’s Number One news station in little more than two years by following the right business design: conservative radio stations prosper…liberal stations do not.
John wanted us to explain the differences between liberalism and socialism, believing as many do, that newly elected NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is a socialist because he ran as a Democratic Socialist.
John felt our comments about education indicated that unless America improves its education of our children we will lose our power and influence as every powerful nation in history did because they failed to educate their children.
Here are some thoughts about education we had no time to share.
Some 20 years or so ago, the Chairman of Columbia University’s prestigious Teacher’s College said that once the glass ceiling of the professions: Medicine, Dentistry, Law, Finance cracked so that women were allowed in, teaching no longer became the obvious choice of many highly intelligent, ambitious and skilled women.
That comment true as it was, cost him his job at Columbia.
But the simple truth was that skills in reading and arithmetic among our youngest students had been falling since the 1970’s when the way those subjects had been taught changed markedly and tests showed a steady failure that continued year after year as fewer and fewer students mastered those two heavily tested subjects.
When the school systems in America seemed to have lost the ability to stem the continuing decline, America’s politicians took over and made things worse. Their answer was continued testing rather than examining how those subjects were being taught…and the failures continued.
Those efforts were made more than 20 years ago, and nothing has changed.
The most significant problem which is never discussed, is how students wanting to be teachers are being taught how to teach. Studies show that nothing new has been brought to that arena. What we do know is that those wanting to be nurses – an area far more challenging than anything in teaching – are brought into hospitals within the very first months of their attendance in a nursing program. They begin working with patients right at the very beginning of their schooling.
Those wanting to be teachers aren’t brought into a classroom with children until the last four months of their four years at a teacher’s college.
That difference alone indicates how inadequate the teaching of teachers-to-be has become.
When at last in a classroom with a college degree and a certificate permitting them to teach, most are lost and while there is some help available it rarely helps them succeed.
Teachers drop out of the profession at an alarming rate…more than half in a five year period. Teachers are in short supply and are needed in every State in the Union.
Many older ones stay in teaching for the pension that follows a 30 year career. When the head of the NYC Teacher’s Union publically claimed that he is only interested in their monthly dues, you know that few in positions of power and influence have very much to say in how teachers are treated.
And so the national tests continue to show no change in how students in the early years are doing. Only 40% of students in the fourth grade in America can read at grade level.
Only half of students graduating from high school can read at grade level.
Again, tests are given for reading and math…but for nothing else. The teaching of history, social studies, the sciences, civics and economics never get tested for results on any national or regional level. Many citizens of a certain age don’t even know that some of these courses are no longer offered in public schools
The role of parents is even more stunning. The majority of parents questioned about local schools only want their children to be happy in school…as if happiness guarantees results rather than just daily attendance.
Only now is there the very, very beginning of the removal of IPhones from a school day. More than 90% of schools still permit them despite the statistics that indicate the devastating harm they cause.
Hope in Texas
This year a number of schools in Texas will begin to employ AI in a very special way. Every afternoon for two hours, AI “instructors” will teach subject matter to students in these select schools. Teachers will become advisers. All the material will be taught in a prescribed approach to the subject matter but AI will do something that no human teacher can do: it will teach each child in a way that the child can learn best. It will be able to understand how each child needs to be taught and it will teach the child in that manner.
Nothing in our once proud education system has ever been able to take such a step. Material is taught to the whole class in one manner and only the very best teachers can help the most students understand and retain the material.
AI will literally break through that wall and teach each child in a manner which best suits that child’s learning capabilities.
Will that massive change mean that the very best of AI capabilities can save America’s public school system?
We hope so. We believe so.
There is nothing else that will.