Responsibility for Education

Until we take responsibility for what is happening "inside education" we will suffer it's consequences -Or as I put it on Twitter:

"Schools gave diplomas = we hired them = we noticed deficits = we found answers = we published a book of answers."

I have found that we blithely accept that teachers know how to teach. I think that is correct when you look at individual subjects - 70% of the time. In the other 30% there is blatant and pervasive ineffectiveness that cannot be handled by terminations because of contracts. (Whoops)

The more basic problem, however, is that students do not know how to learn, or how to study, and we have lost the part of the good old days that taught that. I wrote the book On Building Better Students as an answer, but because I just "played" a teacher in the business community, and am not "certified" it is difficult to get educators to even take a look. They are also looking for the grand idea as a fix, and getting back to a very non-technical fix is hard work.

If you want a real eye opener, the attitude of some academic elitists is one of complete disgust and disdain for all business people - unless they want money. We are "money-grubbing folks that will step over, or on the dead to get that new BMW" (actually said). That attitude is everywhere within the educational system. Know a teacher, ask them.

Here is another Twitterism:

"Words = bits of information that if misunderstood = virus in student’s thought-software = Teaching stopped cold."

That seems straight forward right? Guess what, it is not. I have had teachers tell me that stopping to look up words wastes a lot of time. WHAT?

(Twitter again) "When you were advised to "go study"- "do your homework", did you know how to do that? We found the "exact" answers."

The unfortunate part is that there is a mental residual effect that builds within students, and businesses end up hiring them, and then experience mediocrity.

So, you don't think it is your place to say or do anything about the local highschool? I promise you it will get worse if we do nothing. Los Angeles school district has a 52% dropout rate. One in four schools nationwide are now considered "dropout factories." Our test scores are down everywhere, and IQ is even dropping. We place 29th in education globally.

Oh yeah, you know that 4.0 high school graduate you have that is going to college in the Fall? There is a plus 30% chance they will need remedial courses, in starting, because the standards are so low now in high schools.



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