Let's Fix Education / by Bruce Deitrick Price
Savvy, practical insights on where our Education Establishment went wrong and how most schools can be improved.LET'S FIX EDUCATION explains the many dysfunctional theories and methods operating within our schools. This podcast is intended for parents, teachers, and community leaders who want education reform.
Each week, LET'S FIX EDUCATION examines another problem in our public schools, such as: Constructivism. Learning styles. Sight-words. No memorization. Cooperative learning. Prior knowledge. Reform math. The dilution of knowledge. Common Core. Project-based learning. Student-centered, etc. In fact, there are DOZENS of counterproductive learning and teaching theories, all made worse by ideological motives.
Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is a novelist, artist, and education reformer. He has analyzed the problems in education for more than 30 years. Price is the author of "Saving K-12: What happened to our public schools? How do we fix them?" (190 pages) His main education site is Improve-Education.org. For more information about book and author, visit Lit4u.com. Newest novels are "Frankie" (about a harmless robot) and "The Boy Who Saves The World" (about a boy who saves the world).
"Bruce Price’s SAVING K-12 is a MUST read! It is precise, concise and powerful. Action is required…for the sake of our children, our grandchildren and the future of the American Republic!” Robert W. Sweet, Jr., long-time President of The National Right to Read Foundation
Let's Fix Education / by Bruce Deitrick Price
Episode 109: Nine reasons why our public schools are so hard to rescue (Wed., August 2, 2023)
The Education Establishment does not allow K-12 to improve. They like mediocrity. That's why, 30 years ago, George Carlin could announce so confidently, "Nothing will get better. Don't expect it to get better."
I hope everyone will get more involved in education. For a statement of my perspectives and proposals, please visit SUPPORT EDUCATION REFORM.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Podcasts are always available as transcripts.
SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1792553/support
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The best way to understand problems in public schools
is to read this book: Saving K-12
Available on Amazon.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Word-Wise Education
757-455-5020
Bruce Deitrick Price
----------------------------------------------------------------
New novel: Art and Beauty.
Crime fiction. Set in Manhattan.
Dangerously well written.
Published by Web-E-Books.com /// Editor says: “Bruce Deitrick Price puts
a new spin on the all-American, sexy, fast-talking detective story by creating
a truly fresh crime-fighter personality and placing his original P.I. character, Jon Dak, among movers and shakers in the NYC art and fashion world.”
< Enjoy Chapter 1. ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY >
< Enjoy Chapter 2. MISS BABBAGE >
------------------------------------------------------
Let's Fix Education explains to Americans why their schools are so bad. The people in charge prefer mediocrity because they are socialists of one kind or another. If people work together to promote real education, we'll have it.
LET'S FIX EDUCATION --- by --- Bruce Deitrick Price
Episode 109 -- August 2, 2023
Nine reasons why our public schools are so hard to rescue
Ladies and gentlemen
You could write a book about each of these 9 factors. But the goal now is to be very succinct, like the CIA briefing agents about to go into an alien culture.
One, wherever you look in the school system, you find dreadful ideas. It seems that only failed, unworkable theories and methods are allowed in the door. The three main examples are Sight-Words to teach reading, Common Core Math to teach arithmetic, and Constructivism to teach knowledge. Every new idea is the same: we are promised a panacea but it turns out to be poison.
Two, ideological corruption is the norm. It’s said that you can’t serve two masters. The Education Establishment has sworn fidelity to progressivism and social engineering, which means in practice that education is secondary at best. School officials are trying to create a more cooperative child, i.e., a little socialist, not an educated child.
Three, we are neck-deep in a swamp of lies, jargon, and propaganda. The bonds of trust that should exist between parents and community have been broken. Almost no one can understand the mumbo-jumbo used by experts, nor trust their recommendations. We have a new version of the famous Tower of Babel. It’s not a matter of people speaking different languages. Rather it’s a matter of people pushing different agendas, and telling lies to do it. Too many people are acting with what our legal system calls bad faith. Suppose I tell you that I can fix your television for $300 but I don’t actually know anything about televisions. I just take the money and walk.
Four, there is a relentless demand for more money even as results get worse. Money, money and more money—what does our Education Establishment do with it? Well, you've got tens of thousands of largely unnecessary administrators. Most need an office and a couple of secretaries. Meanwhile, the education professors must conduct ever more exotic and largely irrelevant research and this eats up hundreds of millions of dollars. Finally, some money does flow to teachers but they have to pay dues to the NEA, which channels that money back to politicians who will support giving ever more money to the schools and teachers, so that the Education Establishment can keep on doing a bad job even while demanding more money.
Five, the public is kept passive, off-balance, and often indifferent. They can’t grasp what’s going on, nor what they should do about it. The children come home with school work that parents can’t even understand. The Education Establishment uses its money and power to keep the public ignorant, dazed, and passive. Trying to understand why sight-words don’t work and constructivism minimizes the teaching of knowledge must seem like hopeless projects. Parents give up, having concluded that resistance is futile. This is exactly what the Education Establishment likes to see.
Six, the Education Establishment seems indifferent to the suffering of children, parents, and the society. Students in middle school can hardly read. Children cry over homework that makes little sense. Older students have never mastered the skills of writing English, doing basic math, or knowing how to find Alaska on a map. Adults with such minimal educations will not be able to get good-paying jobs. In short, their suffering will last a lifetime.
Seven, many outside influences devastate the schools. In 1983 the Nation at Risk report said the schools are so bad they seem to be designed by a “hostile foreign nation.” In fact, ever since the Russian Revolution was consolidated, the Communists and their agents of influence operate throughout the society, trying to diminish anything that makes us stronger. Professional front groups such as National Council of Teachers of Math (founded 1920) pretend to be disinterested guides to better education, when they are more properly understood as self-serving promoters of an agenda. Then came Bill Gates, spending more than a billion, some say, to force Common Core into the schools.
Eight, the Education Establishment is like a cult, rigid and dogmatic. Everyone drinks the same Kool-Aid in order to be admitted. The education cult is like the Catholic Church in that novice priests must embrace the proper doctrine. Similarly, elite educators have to believe the same things. Any religious organization would consider such affirmation completely reasonable. But it would never occur to anybody, a hundred years ago, that American education would one day function as a church. As that phenomenon became more pronounced, the quality of education predictably dropped.
Nine, finally, all of these tendencies come together to create an invincible Death Star. The Education Establishment is programmed to protect itself against all challenges from whatever direction, inside or outside. I once read a story about a space colony that was set up with elaborate defensive weapons. Then a virus killed all the humans on the space station. The Death Star would attack everything that got within a million miles. The only way to visit it was to first destroy it. Today, American K-12 is that sort of Death Star where everything is engineered to perpetuate the status quo. Improvement is nearly impossible.
-------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------
If you credit Bruce Deitrick Price and Let's Fix Education, you can reprint in whole or part these podcasts or transcriptions. If you want an interview or article, call Word-Wise 757-455-5020 (USA).