Critically Thinking about K-12 Education
Again, this time from another angle
For years now, I have had a major underlying theme: we need to meaningfully fix our horrifically bad K-12 education system. (By meaningfully, I mean no more nibbling around the edges!)
Yes, a lot of people say things like that — but what are they proposing that is genuinely “meaningful”? Popular ”fixes” like school choice are like giving a pillow to someone dying with stage four cancer: the patient will feel a little better, but nothing meaningful regarding the cancer has been done.
Critical Thinkers will say: “To meaningfully fix K-12 education, we need to get to the root of the problem” — and things like school choice aren’t even close.
The root of the problem is that we have FIFTY (50!) inadequate objectives for our K-12 education system. Go read every State’s Education Department’s Mission Statement. I have! Not one of them is sufficient — and the best sounding ones are not being adhered to (they are simply virtue signaling).
There is Only One Legitimate Solution —
That is where the Department of Education (DOEd) could be profoundly helpful. (In their reincarnation, they would strictly provide assistance.)
For example, they should publicize that we now have a National K-12 Education objective. This would be advisory: no State would be forced to go along with it. And it would be up to each State to determine how it would attain the national objective.
Here is what I propose: The objective of our K-12 education system is to produce graduates who are: Critical Thinkers, and fluent with the 3Rs.
At this point, there are Zero States that have anything like this objective as their K-12 Mission Statement. So what sense does it make that the federal Department of Education would give these 50 clueless, catastrophically failing States (e.g., here) more power and more money???
Since things have to be broken down to marketing soundbites these days, the national objective (above) might be too much for legislators, etc., to process. Here is an even simpler version:
We need to change our K-12 education system from teaching children WHAT to think, to teaching them HOW to think.
Even a Comedian Gets It!
When nationally popular comedians start saying this, hopefully that’s a sign that this extraordinarily important message will start to catch on. Just watch the first 3:25 minutes — and note 3:20!
After Greg’s commentary, the other guests weighed in with their views. Just like with the public, some make sense, while others do not. Don’t be distracted. National agreement on our priority is needed to meaningfully fix our K-12 education system:
We need to change our K-12 education system from teaching children WHAT to think, to teaching them HOW to think.
To naysayers who have given up, consider that this relatively simple and sensible solution has NEVER been tried before…
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The rise of “evidenced based instruction”, scientifically grounded in research that offers proof of superior results is helping to bring up basic skills scores. For example over the last half century the “reading wars” have lead to periodic shifts between a heavy phonics emphasis (associated with conservatism) and little or no phonics emphasis (progressivism) for k-3 language instruction.
Years of research has shown that phonics is necessary and now both red and blue states are adopting evidence based reading curricula. The Mississippi Miracle is a widely used example of the success of the phonics focus.
Similar results are seen in the math and science wars, where conservative approaches fell victim to progressivism but are now coming back thanks to evidence produced by the scientific method.
This approach mirrors the “how to think” notion that is embodied in critical thinking which has the scientific method at its core.
John Droz offers important ideas to correct our very broken K thru 12 education system..
Yes, there are many very good public and private schools, great teachers, stellar students and student athletes. But there are far too many examples where our students can not keep up with average education systems around the world, much less the very best.
We will be following and promoting John Droz on our new website:
John Shanahan's Substack - Energy And The Modern World,
johnshanahan.substack.com.