The Education Assassins (Scary, Really)

There’s considerable animus for the Department of Education these days. Let’s not get carried away.

Source: The Education Assassins – NYTimes.com

I wrote.

To see how scary it is, just go to my blog inside-higher-ed . Yes, the blog is about higher education, but it explains how higher education dumbs down all of education, doing the most damage to the high school part of k-12.

The Economist recently noted (and I have observed for years) that it’s not that college grads do so much better than high school grads; it’s that high school graduates do so much worse than they used to. That is a direct consequence of the poor education that college grads who become teachers get.

Education is a complex, connected process that is hard for outsiders to understand. If left unattended it will, like any public necessity, attract the unscrupulous. It has already done so. We need oversight of the whole system throughout the country.

But it may well be too late. As Thomas Jefferson said,

“…improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against…evil, and that…kings, priests and nobles…will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance…”

I hope it’s not too late. From where I sit, I already see those “kings, priests, and nobles” rising up.