Can we call the writer of this report “Captain Obvious?”
Let’s see. There are a couple of things everyone agrees on. First our public education system is broken beyond belief and second it is an economic threat to America, a financial threat to America and a national security threat to America.
From Fox News:
A new report finds that the United States' education system is putting the country's national security at risk.
The independent study, sponsored by The Council on Foreign Relations, finds K-12 school systems across the country are failing to adequately prepare kids to grow up and protect the U.S.
"For starters, we don't have nearly enough people who are capable in the STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and math," said former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, a member of the council's task force that wrote the report, titled "U.S. Education Reform and National Security."
"When we think about the modern world of defense," Spellings said, "the fact that we don't have people who are capable to do this work is scary."
In addition to skills needed to defend ourselves in war, the study found American schools fail to teach students skills needed to avoid conflicts.
"We don't have people who know and understand foreign languages and other cultures," said Spelling, pointing out that U.S. children are ranked No. 17 in the world for language skills. "On any given day, there are hundreds of (job) vacancies for people who speak Pashtu and Arabic, and Mandarin and on and on."
Perhaps this report is akin to the famous words, “Houston we have a problem.”
No kidding.
We know what the problem is. Few are willing to say what the causes of the problem are or what the solution is.
The causes are the educational establishment that has built up in the last few years. Yes, you can read that as the Education Unions. They are more interested in protecting teachers and politics than education.
The schools continue to get worse and worse, and union dues go to make sure we elect politicians who will protect the educational mafia.
The education model is broken and the federal government continues to spend billions to keep the model in place and keep kids in failing schools.
You want to fix the schools and make our schools the best in the world?
Institute competition.
Let the free market into the school system. Use vouchers that will allow parents to send their kids to the best schools around. Poor schools will fail and go out of business. Break the teacher’s union and make it possible to fire bad and even mediocre teachers.
That will fix this problem.
But you have the Party of Treason and the Teacher’s Unions standing in the way. And if you see the way they have fought in Wisconsin, this would be the mother of all political battles.
Unfortunately, it seems like the Republicans have no stomach for a fight.
Tags: democrats, failing, national, republicans, schools, security, teachers, threat, unions, wisconsin
Permalink Reply by Thomas Angle on I know people that home school their children. They also get them involved in sports and other hobbies to help in the social part.
Permalink Reply by Agi Yaeger on They can't be less social than those school kids who sit mesmorized in front of computers and TV all day long. As a matter of fact, those kids in public schools have a lot less socialization skills than the home schooled kids, who get together with others like them in the home school community, not just family members.
The big flaw is in the public schools where the kids get a daily dose of indoctrination of how to hate America, authority, parents and tolerate perversion, but forget about learning subject matters.
Permalink Reply by Charles F Nichols on Yes Mama and in our days we did not use gasoline in huge buses to get to school. We walked. Bring back local family supported schools and watch this decline reverse. Where parents are involved and the teachers are held accountable instead of blaming the families. I once had a teacher call me to ask me to teach my son his multiplication tables. I asked is that not your job? She went on explaining how important kids think more from their parents teaching them ,when I had to stop her. I said maam,I am responsible for about forty people at work and my job requires ten hours a day. When I get home ,I am responsible for teaching my children right from wrong and everything about moral issues but since you asked I will try to fit in a little time to do your job for you. Point is now days they the teachers want parents to teach their own children to read and write and do math and where does it end and exactly what are they doing all day long? Enough already we know Americas drop out rate and we also know how our schools stack up against the worlds schools. Fact is their failures and as a result they should be fired and replaced until we find teachers who can teach.
Permalink Reply by Billy Bowlegs on Socialist objective is to prepare the kids K1-K12 to not protect the country.
How else do you think they could have gotten in under the radar.
Socialist attacks are one hell of a war.
Permalink Reply by Charles F Nichols on And they release the underachievers for the sake of federal funding. Selling out the childs future for more money. The nea has produced an army of illiterate who enjoy video games and wasting their lives away. Forwarding the rolls of public assistance. While no one wants to face it. This is a conspiracy. A conspiracy headed by the democratic party to support their political incomes and solidify their grip on the elections far into the future.
Permalink Reply by Agi Yaeger on Now, you got it, Charles! It's the first on Marx's list of dismantling a country for take-over.
Permalink Reply by Dwight M. Schmitz on I have long maintained that the best thing we can do for our children is to overhaul the public school system from top to bottom. We keep hearing from the public sector, especially here in Wisconsin, about how we need to do things "for the children." Our children are 29, 25 and 25. After a minor war with the public school system here, we pulled our children out after the 5th and 1st grades (our oldest in 5th, the twins in 1st) and, though we weren't sure how we could afford it, we knew we could not afford NOT to send them to parochial school. It was the best thing we have done "for the children." The straw that broke the camel's back with us and the public school system came when one of the teachers reported me as a potential child abuser. When I got mad at the kids, I lectured. I'm not a hitter or screamer, and I was giving our oldest son a particularly long lecture one day (I forget about what). He turned to walk away, I went to grab his arm, and, being rather gangly, he tripped and fell. I helped him up and continued with my lecture. A couple weeks later my wife received a letter from the Department of Social Services saying that they wanted to interview her because of possible child abuse in the house. She talked to our son and he admitted that the next day he told his teacher that I got mad at him and knocked him down. So without even calling my wife to find out if there was any truth to the story, the teacher just went directly to the DSS. The DSS came about a week later and stayed for about half an hour (I coincidentally had to leave on a business trip that day). As they left, one of them gave my wife her business card and told her that if we ever considered becoming foster parents to give her a call, because they were looking for a good home for some twins they had in their custody. So in 30 minutes I went from being a potential child abuser to a potential foster parent!
Flash forward. Our oldest son was attending a private college when 9/11 happened. A couple months later he informed us that he felt that God, family and country were worth fighting for, so he was going to enlist in the Marines. While we had no objection, we convinced him to finish his degree first to hopefully have some kind of advantage when he went in. Eventually he found out that he could finish his core courses here in town, so he moved back home and went to the public technical college here. Being a history buff, he took a course about the Vietnam war. After several weeks he started complaining about how it had come to be known that he was a conservative and the "professor" was a liberal, and he was convinced that the "professor" disliked him because of it. He complained about how almost every class started with Bush and conservative bashing. We took it with a grain of salt, as, and I think most parents can appreciate this, whenever a student doesn't like a teacher, then the teacher doesn't like him and has it out for him. We convinced him to just bear with it and get it over with. The end of the semester came and our son gave me his final paper to proof read before he turned it in. It was on the Gulf of Tonkin, and, while certainly not doctoral quality, it was certainly gradable. It began with a rather idyllic description of the gulf at sunrise. The "professor" rejected it in it's entirety claiming that he knew our son's writing and he couldn't have written this description, so therefore must have plagiarized it. No proof, no evidence. After having two more papers rejected for similarly dubious reasons, the end of the semester was upon him and he still did not have a paper that was accepted. The "professor" told him to write a 4th paper and email it to him by a certain date so he could grade it before final grades were due. After not hearing anything for a few days, he emailed the "professor" to make sure it was received. He got an email back saying that the "professor" was on vacation and would not be back until after final grades were due. Consequently, he got an incomplete after having had put up with this "professor" for an entire semester. After some futile appeals to the school, our son finally said "enough" and enlisted in the Marines.
About a year later our youngest son was taking Police Science courses at the same college and one of the core classes he needed to take was a history class. Guess which "professor" he got! After about 4 weeks our son dropped the course because he said that every class started with Bush and conservative bashing. All he was doing was getting mad, he stopped listening, and figured that there was no point in taking the class as he wasn't getting anything but frustration out of it. By the way, he's in the Air Force now.
So the degradation of the public school system education has been going on for some time now. David's right, our students know all kinds of stuff about gay rights, their "rights," global warming and the religion of science (but certainly not Christianity), yet they can't add two numbers in their head and too many (almost all?) are incapable of any kind of deductive thinking. Here in Wisconsin they are subtly being taught that if they don't get their way, then they can throw a long, loud and expensive (with other people's money, of course) temper tantrum. Children teaching children.
A blogger "Iowahawk" reported that "white, black and Hispanic students in Texas's allegedly ramshackle public schools outperformed their ethnic-group peers in high-tax, union run Wisconsin in 17 out of 18 NAEP measures, and bested the result of most of the so-called progressive states."
Texas test scores were surprisingly higher than those of the "progressive" states. It goes back to quiet, assertive leadership.
And the first thing their Govenor proposed was "abolition of the Department of Education in Washington, D.C."
Permalink Reply by Billy Bowlegs on 
© 2013 Created by Judson Phillips.
