If you’re not cynical about education in the USA today, John Derbyshire says, you’re just not paying attention. Much of the problem stems from educational romanticism, the theory that, given the opportunity, most people could do most anything:
This bizarre and nonsensical doctrine was yoked together with a determination to academicize the entire U.S. population, to turn us all into bookish grinds ready to enter full-time employment only in our mid-20s. Politicians of all parties jumped happily aboard the Lunacy Express, seeing the opportunity to spend scads of money while boosting their own moral stature as champions of “the children.” Barack Obama has said that every American should have a college degree; Jeb Bush, Florida’s “education Governor” hovers on the edge of the same preposterosity here. The judiciary agrees: Wouldn’t everyone attend law school if they could? The Academy is of course only too happy to expand its power and wealth. Elite-consensus-wise, it’s a wrap: Most people could do most anything, if we just get the schools right!
What is going through people’s minds when they applaud these weird notions? Did not any of those in the audience for Barack Obama’s speech, for example, pause to reflect on the mix of people they themselves attended high school with? Charles Murray has offered the opinion that no more than 20 percent of students have sufficient academic ability to cope with genuine college-level material. You might argue with that figure — I’d put it closer to ten percent — but surely nobody who has walked in the world with open eyes can believe the correct number is 100 percent?
Derbyshire considers it an example of Orwell’s crimestop — the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought.
The missionary ideal has corrupted education:
Where, after all, are the benighted heathens to be found? At the bottom of the ability scale, that’s where. So all our efforts in public education are tilted towards “helping the disadvantaged.” Unintelligent, unmotivated students are showered with resources, while those who will benefit most from teaching are neglected.
Private cram schools are especially popular with East Asian parents:
Here is an interesting fact: Until a slight change in the law in 2008, students in struggling schools in poor neighborhoods could attend crammers for free, courtesy of No Child Left Behind funds. Thousands of entrepreneurs opened up shop in inner cities, expecting a profit bonanza from academically deprived students flocking into their crammers on the government’s dollar. Alas, nobody showed up.