I could write a lot about this. I was an educator.
Several points. The best class in US history graduated in 1969. And that's a fact. You can look up the scores. Today's kids have broken homes or both parents working, and too much social media to succeed and achieve at boomer level. Education techniques have improved since 1969, but the middle of the road students are too screwed up to take advantage of the improvements.
What made America great? America's greatness came from clubs and local newspapers. Stay at home moms who kept businesses and schools accountable and made their community a great place to live. Local newspapers that kept the local government accountable. Churches that brought the community together across class lines. These things are gone. And Trump ain't bringing it back.
Today's average college freshman is an intellectual dwarf with anxiety problems. Many of America's young people do not have a solid emotional foundation to build their lives on. And they're lazy to boot. They didn't have to be, but they are. Passive. Risk averse. And worst of all, they barely know how to read. The majority of students I taught who walked at graduation had NEVER finished a book.
College is wasted on them. They lack the backbone to push back and engage in critical thinking. The education system teaches young people nothing about taxes or home ownership, the biggest expenses of their lives. College doesn't even teach young people how to write a resume. The real purpose education is to teach conformity. To train young people to jump through hoops and put up with bureaucratic nonsense. How a student responds to first grade determines the success of their educational career; by the time a student gets to high school, the die has already been cast.
It's true that real life can make one ready for college. It's not hopeless. I wasn't ready at 18. I flunked out. After a few years in the service, I was ready for college. However, the most intelligent and emotionally sound 18 year olds have an amazing world at their finger tips; things have never been better.
Students are subjected to a tsunami of bad advice from their teachers and their parents. More often than not, K-12 teachers have spent their entire lives inside the education system. Their notion of how the world works is far from reality, but they have no idea. And the people they interact with everyday, kids and fellow teachers, reinforce their feelings of intellectual superiority. And the parents that teachers most often interact with are not hyper successful to say the least. And since college was the best time of their lives and unlocked the door to a career, they advise their students to pursue the same path, BECAUSE IT'S ALL THEY KNOW (teachers are some of the hardest workers I've ever known, but they are severely biased). Parents, even ones that did not go to college, believe in the power of a college education and it's ability to transform teenagers into successful adults that can navigate the challenges of life and pursue middle class careers. What parents don't know is how much lower the value of a bachelor's degree is now than in 1990. Not only are more people getting bachelor's degrees, and lowering the value through quantity, colleges have been steadily lowering the actual work load for decades.
I remember the shock on my student's faces when I told them that they were not a loser if they didn't go to college. That having the respect of your peers and family was the true sign of success, not a college degree. The constant hammering and pressure to go to college had convinced these kids that were losers if they didn't go to college, and so they go. And without a clue of why they should be there.
It surprises me and doesn't surprise me the LoveinHD would blame the Right for the American education system's failure. There is no sector of American life that is more controlled by the Left. My grad class was 24-1 Liberal. The school I taught at was in a rural, religious area. The staff was liberal 98-3. And if there were more conservatives, they were extremely silent. And in case you're curious, it was me, the librarian and the head football coach that were happy Trump won.
I didn't have a single conservative professor in college. The closest, was an old line Marxist that felt that identity politics were the scourge of the left. He believed it undermined the only true political battle, class warfare. Teachers and professors are almost uniformally leftist.
We spend more on education than in any other time in American history; you cannot blame the right for a lack of funding. Vast sums of money are wasted on gyms, and fancy buildings, and administrators. The faculty themselves rarely achieve tenure anymore. I don't blame the professors, and in fact, I still like my professors, even though they were a bunch of liberals and leftists. They deserved tenure, but the university withholds it from them. The university is not only ripping off students, they're ripping off professors.
And as far as the loans are concerned, it's immoral to charge 8% interest on student loans. It's reprehensible that our nation allows banks to charge high interest rates on the young people who are trying to better themselves. Student loans should be pegged at or a point above inflation and no more. It is also immoral that student loans have to be paid back with post-tax earnings. Student loans should be paid back with pre-tax money.
Charging 300 dollars for math book is immoral. Textbook prices have been outrageously high for decades and congress had done nothing. I really thought Obama would do something about the cost of education but he failed.
The loans should not be simply discharged Bernie Sanders style. Bailouts are immoral. The loans must be paid back. We risk creating an even more irresponsible society.
And it bears stating that if student loans could be discharged through bankruptcy, then logically, every student would declare bankruptcy as soon as they graduate. The goods are in their brain and cannot be repossessed.
There are four groups of greedy scum that are ruining education: banks that service the loans, school reform advocates, university administrators and publishers. Each one is trying to milk as much money out taxpayers and young people as possible. They're disgusting, and it's way past time that our government stepped in and stopped the feeding frenzy. Education is how we as a nation invest in our future. It's patriotic. And these greedy scum have perverted it to make money of some of the most mentally vulnerable people in our society ... teenagers.
