A Subscriber's Perspective on US K-12 Education

With an interesting comparison to our European counterparts...

I get LOTS of correspondence — typically 200 to 300 emails a day. I try to read most of them, but I do have a life otherwise.

I’ve decided to periodically post an email I receive if it covers something slightly different than I have discussed, and I think it would be of general interest to my Substack readers. Here is a recent good example from a Professional Engineer…

Hi, John,

I greatly appreciate your good work.

My comments are about the NASA article (in your last Media Balance Newsletter) regarding uncreative behavior being learned in school.

In his seminar, “Creative Problem Solving,” the late Victor Papanek (best known as the author of Design for the Real World), told us that 90% of children entering school are inquisitive and creative, and that after first grade, the ratio switches: only 10% retain their inquisitive and creative traits!

In my own family, my mother observed that all three of us children were inquisitive and creative before starting school, but while those traits in me seemed to be accelerated by my school experience, both my brother and sister had traumatic experiences in first grade that resulted in a significant loss of those traits. My mother had the opportunity to investigate two of our teachers some years later. She found that students who had my first-grade teacher typically graduated high school in the top quarter of their class. In contrast, students who had my sister's first-grade teacher typically graduated high school in the bottom half of their class.

The matter became of direct interest to me when my son was in first grade. His mother and I were able to effectively counteract the destructive methods of his teacher, and were relieved when in second grade his natural creativity was enjoyed and encouraged by his teacher. This positive experience helped him to weather occasional mediocre teachers in the years that followed, and I am happy to report that he continues to be an inquisitive and creative adult.

Partly due to my son’s rough start, I ran for a seat on the school board. During my 12 years on that board, I discussed this topic with several educators, all of whom affirmed that this inversion of inquisitive and creative traits after first grade was well known to them. (My local administrator was the first, and when he nodded in agreement, I immediately asked about the continued assignment of a particular teacher to first grade. I was not the only board member who had been prompted to seek election after having a child experience that teacher.)

NASA broke new ground in the 1960s, with their study conducted by the then-young George Land. After that study was done, Dr. Land did further research, concluding that the problem is systemic and ongoing. He spent his life pursuing ways to remediate the ill effects of public school education. His work inspired others so that today there are numerous post-school programs to help folks regain their natural creativity.

In my view, one of the roots of the problem is the U.S. approach to schooling. Here is an area of public policy where we truly could improve life in the U.S. by emulating the Europeans.

A fundamental difference between U.S. and European public schools is in teacher education requirements. While in the U.S., the easiest course of study at all levels—Bachelor's to Ed.D—is in education, European nations take an entirely different tack. First off, there is no push to get everyone into the university. On the contrary, every effort is made to make sure only well-qualified and committed students are admitted. The statistics are difficult to nail down, but a case can be made that getting into the universities requires being in the top 5-10% of the student population. 

Next, "Education" is not a field of study. All teachers earn degrees in academic fields. The small-town German Mittelschule (not college preparatory) I attended, had at least two teachers with PhDs. My homeroom teacher had a PhD in geography. Our history teacher had a PhD in that field. Our physics/chemistry teacher had schoolmates who were at the Max Planck Institute. To teach a foreign language, one had to earn a degree in it, of course, but also have a year of study at a university in a country where that was the official language. Our English teacher had spent a year at Oxford. Our French teacher had spent a year at Strasbourg. 

There were major differences in curriculum, too. Here in the States, we had six periods a day—one of which was a study hall—and every day’s schedule was the same. In the Mittelschule, we had school Monday through Friday and half a day on Saturday. The curriculum was the same for everyone. There were five core subjects, which met five times per week. There was a second tier of subjects that met four times, then there were classes that met twice. All told, we had something like a dozen subjects. This broad curriculum encompassed a well-balanced education: math, science, history, languages and literature, art and music, religious instruction, athletics, and wood shop (for the boys).

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One of the subtle side effects of the fundamental difference in academic preparation of teachers, is that ALL the teachers in German schools had been gifted students, while FEW of the teachers in U.S. schools had been. As a consequence, teachers in German schools readily identify and encourage gifted students. Even though my school was not college preparatory, there were gifted students in my class who were encouraged to take the bridge year and entrance exams to attend the university. One is a chemical engineer, another majored in geography, and a third earned his PhD.

In contrast, teachers in U.S. schools generally do not do well with gifted students. I believe this is rooted in the fact that not being gifted themselves, they cannot relate to gifted children. Additionally, the curricula are not encouraging to gifted students.

The result is that gifted students have unmet needs that compound over the years. As a school board member, this was a continuing source of vexation for me. When budget cuts had to be made, the gifted program—such as it was—would be the first thing to get trimmed, until it was finally eliminated altogether.

There are exceptions, of course. The school system that serves Princeton University faculty children is an example. My hometown (Bartlesville, OK) has fallen on hard times, but when I was coming up through school there, the management of Phillips Petroleum Company was intent on recruiting and retaining the top talent from the nation's best universities. As a result, we had—with the exception of a few teachers, as noted—amazingly good schools, with ample encouragement and opportunity for gifted students.

Clearly, a commitment to good schools by local power brokers helps, but after it got going, in Bartlesville, it was in large measure self-sustaining. My grade school of 400 students had a gymnasium packed with parents for the monthly PTA meetings. My parents got sitters for us, so they could both go. Parents were activists.

Sadly, that was then, and this is now.

What we face nationally goes far beyond a concern with robbing children of their inquisitive and creative traits. There is an organized effort to standardize schools in the U.S. so they share a common curriculum objective. We must be aware of and then closely examine those objectives, which are often hidden.. We must ask who the people and groups are that are doing this. We must ask who is funding them. This is all the more urgent because of what has been found in US K-12 subject standards (like Science) and because of their widespread adoption.

Under the Clinton administration, Congress enacted Goals 2000 in 1994, an outcome-based education initiative that codified certain National Education Goals and offered grants to states that committed themselves to specified reforms.

In 1996, the governors of 43 states, together with one corporate CEO from each state held the National Education Summit which created Achieve, a business organization reportedly “to help states raise academic standards, improve assessments, and strengthen accountability.” Achieve was instrumental in coordinating the development of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) introduced in 2013, which are comprehensive for K-12 school programs.

Nearly parallel to this development was that of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) sponsored by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers and introduced in 2010.

These standards have been adopted by numerous states — 49 in the case of the NGSS. The Achieve organization has been the subject of at least one critical review, “The Organization Named Achieve: Cradle of Common Core Cronyism,” by Richard P. Phelps.

It is well known that leftist political and economic agendas are not popular. To get elected, leftist politicians regularly claim to champion “centrist” positions, even masking their true intentions once in office by various forms of subterfuge. They have several strategies for gaining and keeping power, one of which is to change the nature of the voting population by changing the nature of public education.

Training children to be conformists and to trust the opinions of publicly acclaimed experts helps rid the electorate of folks with critical thinking skills. An examination of the 400± page foundational document (A Framework for K-12 Science Education - 2012) reveals that it heavily promotes compliance with political correctness — e.g., an entire chapter on Equity.

Beyond the 3R's (readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic), the most important objective of an education must be the teaching and cultivation of Critical Thinking. The subject area of Science is the best place to introduce and nurture it. Scientists are naturally questioners, and Critical Thinking is largely about questioning.

To ensure that our children gain the skills they will need to be informed citizens, we must continually assess the curricula in our schools and demand that they not falter in pursuing this objective.

Hope you found this worth reading!

David W. Pennington, PE
Marathon, Florida

David W. Pennington is a long-time licensed Professional Engineer whose field is mechanical engineering. His experience in school encouraged his creativity, broadened the spectrum of his interests, and provided him with ever more tools with which to pursue them. While employed by a major medical device company he was a part of teams that produced intellectual property covered by 12 U.S. patents. In addition, David submitted over 30 invention records detailing his original ideas.

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Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2024 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time - but why would you?

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