Herb Van Fleet: The sad state of education in America – Joplin Globe

Here we are with 2017 more than half over and weve got a lot on our plate to deal withour political system, our environmental problems, our federal and state debt, our infrastructure, our civil unrest, our dealings with domestic and international terrorism, our health care problems, and many more.

But one issue that is rarely brought up these days is education; specifically, where is education in terms of priorities, what are the issues and how will its shortcomings be remedied?

The people of the United States need to know that individuals in our society who do not possess the levels of skill, literacy and training essential to this new era will be effectively disenfranchised, not simply from the material rewards that accompany competent performance, but also from the chance to participate fully in our national life. A high level of shared education is essential to a free, democratic society and to the fostering of a common culture, especially in a country that prides itself on pluralism and individual freedom. That quote was taken from a report called A Nation At Risk and presented to president Ronald Reagan in April 1983.

The report goes on to enumerate the deficiencies of our school systems and to offer suggestions for improvement. But the negative findings in that very report are just as valid today as they were 34 years ago. Arguably, even worse.

Youve probably seen some of the statistics. The United States ranked 14th out of 40 nations in overall education. We are 24th in literacy and 17th in educational performance. In its 2015 report by the Program for International Student Assessment, the U.S. was ranked 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science and reading. Among the 35 member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.

This lack of education has produced some disappointing results. For example, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs commissioned a civic education poll among public school students. A surprising 77 percent didnt know that George Washington was the first president, couldnt name Thomas Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence and only 2.8 percent of the students actually passed the citizenship test. Along similar lines, the Goldwater Institute of Phoenix did the same survey and only 3.5 percent of students passed the civics test. According to the National Research Council report, only 28 percent of high school science teachers consistently follow the National Research Council guidelines on teaching evolution, and 13 percent of those teachers explicitly advocate creationism or intelligent design. And 18 percent of Americans still believe that the sun revolves around the earth, according to a Gallup poll.

Another statistic that is alarming today is the result of a July 10 poll taken by the Pew Research Center in Washington, where 58 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning Americans said colleges and universities had a negative impact on the way things were going in the country. Two years ago, only 37 percent of that group said that. In recent months, that seems to ring true.

This decline of education in America has been going on for years. And problems engendered by this diminution have been and continue to show up in most of our institutions, our culture and our national conscience. As a result, we are losing respect from the rest of the civilized world along with our competitive edge. In short, we are facing a national tragedy.

As Susan Jacoby writes in a 2008 article in The Washington Post, The Dumbing of America, Dumbness, to paraphrase the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture; a disjunction between Americans rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism. There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. Its the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility.

So here we are at the beginning of the 21st century with too many of us dismissive of science and rational discourse. Literacy and critical thinking are becoming anathema to our future leaders.

For some time now, Ive been studying the Iroquois Confederacys political philosophy as set fourth in its constitution. A small excerpt from that document seems pertinent here.

In all of your deliberations in the Council, in your efforts at law making, in all your official acts, self-interest shall be cast into oblivion. ... Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground the unborn of the future Nation.

Time to wake up America.

HERB VAN FLEET, a former Joplin resident, lives in Tulsa.

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Herb Van Fleet: The sad state of education in America - Joplin Globe