Inside American Education: The Decline, The Deception, The Dogmas Thomas Sowell
This book was published in ’92, but you would think it came out yesterday. The public education system hasn’t improved and faces the same problems today. Academia has gotten worse and has yet to confront any of the issues thoroughly discussed in this book. It was refreshing to see the data, the results or lack of results, that this never-ending money pit we call public education has produced. While other books are usually firsthand accounts of one’s experience with teaching within this system, this book provides a larger picture of the system as a whole that only an economist could provide while also including individual accounts as examples of implementation. As someone who has a Master’s Degree, I have personally found conversations with school teachers alarming to the lack of competence they generally exude. A teacher without a teacher’s manual seems to be like a fish out of water. This book shines light on the fact that a degree in education is one of the least demanding and easiest degrees to obtain.
Speak to these teachers about their classes and their job and you will find those that teach math, took less math classes than you. Those who teach history, may have never read a history book in their life. Yet they seem to be really good at teaching our children that their parents are the dummies when the least competent college students and professors are found in the education department. If what they were teaching students was academic in nature, they would not be the ideal choice. Fortunately for them, they focus more on teaching ideology, and their success in doing so is not being measured.
“Public Education” has become Orwellian in that “Public Indoctrination” may be a more appropriate name for it.
Of course, there are exceptions, and I have met some teachers who are competent, and they also seem to express frustration teaching within the confines set by school administration which this book also expounds on. The few quality educators that exist are punished for being exceptional teachers, and are therefore pushed out of the industry, as opposed to the worst educators, which are promoted based on seniority and are protected from scrutiny as it is near impossible to fire them. This book should be read by all those who have invested interests: parents, and taxpayers in America. If the data exposed in this book proves anything it is that the last thing needed in public education is more money. Yet when concerned parents bring up the shortcomings of the system, representatives mention a lack of funding as a major culprit. Finger pointing and lack of accountability remains the status quo in a system which renders stake holders helpless to change it.
