Three R's 111914

Remember the "Greatest Generation," those people that created an American century?

Born in the late 19th and early 20th century, many first or second generation Americans, they built modern America by brainpower.  They created aviation, tying the world together.  Henry Ford is credited with inventing mass production, but Ford knew it was his workers that solved the problems and made it work.  They pioneered oil exploration and highway designs that serviced Ford's automobiles.  They built bridges spanning rivers and dams electrifying the nation.  They designed rail networks, radio networks, medical networks, business networks and created a cultural network that was America, then exported that culture to the world.

Tempered by two wars and a great depression they remained visionaries seeking to build a better future.  Many of this great generation were the products of one-room schoolhouses that slowly disappeared by mid-century.  Often the teachers in those schools had a limited education themselves but they taught a love of learning that emerged as a problem solving generation.  Those teachers left a legacy of cowboys carrying books in their saddlebags, builders who solved complex math in their heads and libraries for continued learning. As the one-room schools disappeared neighborhood schools staffed by teachers who knew their subjects rather than theories replaced them.

As the teachers who loved sharing knowledge began to disappear they were replaced by an education industry strong on theory but unable to inspire student's visions of the future.  America's lead as the world's most literate began to erode with the industry producing graduates who could neither read nor balance a checkbook.  America began to slip down the literacy ladder; the problem was obvious the solution was not.  The education industry saw money to be made, theories flourished.  Billions were spent on mega-schools, better football but education was lost in a maze.  The industry discovered even more money could be made by building smaller charter schools, big bucks but limited education.  The industry reassessed, building schools cut into profits why not just write tests and lobby politicians to subsidize the industry by making its test mandatory across the country.  Teachers were relegated to being petty bureaucrats keeping records and attending meetings on testing theory.  In the 50s President Eisenhower warned against the military industrial complex, he did not foresee the conspiracy dangers of political- educational industry.

A legislator recently proposed a law requiring his political ideas be added to curriculums.   Religious and social groups along with fringe elements are demanding their teachings. Textbooks have become politically correct but factually flawed. "Reading, Riting and Rithmetic" has given way to radiating rabid radicalism; or maybe it's raucous, rattlebrained, rascality.  It may be time for rebellious parents to overthrow the reckless, recalcitrant education theorist and reexamine, refurbish and reestablish an old education theory leading to a learning renaissance.  In that theory parents take an interest in academic accomplishment, trusted teachers are freed to inspire students' to visions and judge when their student have mastered the three "Rs."