Episode 174, What is The Education Enigma? Wed., Oct. 30, 2024

Episode 174, The Education Enigma      --     Wed., Oct. 30, 2024

What is THE EDUCATION ENIGMA?

USA spends more money per capita than any other country, but we have the worst schools. And the least educated students. How do you explain this to yourself?

This paradox I have named The Education Enigma.

Everything is unbelievably shoddy and low-level, except the cost.

A cool, calculating observer might even conclude that the people in charge don't know what they're doing. Or they don't want to do what they should be doing.

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Listen to PODCAST or read TRANSCRIPT.
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For a 2-page explanation
of how everyone can help,
visit  Education Reform 

When you need a smart gift,
give Saving K-12 .

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Word-Wise Education
757-455-5020
Bruce Deitrick Price

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Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is a novelist, artist, poet, 
and education reformer. 

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.

Transcript

LET'S FIX EDUCATION      by     Bruce Deitrick Price

Episode 174        Wed., Oct. 30, 2024

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What is THE EDUCATION ENIGMA?

First, The Education Enigma refers to the gigantic mystery that, despite huge budgets, our public schools provide watered-down, near-useless instruction to most students. Many reach the end of high school and can't read in any real sense. They can't find China on a map.

Second, The Education Enigma points to the sick paradox that the people pretending to care about education, students, and our country, actually scorn and abuse all three.

Third, The Education Enigma points to the further paradox that practice makes perfect but somehow our schools get worse every year. 

Summing up, the dark heart of The Education Enigma is that every theory and method beloved by our Education Establishment is phony and inferior.  Ballyhooed improvements turn out inevitably to be destructive.

Here’s the down and dirty explanation for all of this counterintuitive craziness. The people who control our schools do not care primarily about facts and knowledge. They care passionately about social control and human engineering. (In other words, they are Socialists, Communists, Totalitarians, and/or Fascists of one stripe or another.)

Realistically speaking, it's difficult to find simple explanations for all these weird and unnecessary problems. Probably you would like to have a short guide to all the crimes and confusion. So here's the good news.

The Education Enigma is the name of my first book about problems in K-12. Every American should read this book and then we would have far fewer problems in our schools. Citizens would understand the ed swamp and deal systematically with causes and effects.

As a practical matter, Americans can't improve K-12 unless they understand the arguments pro and con. Especially they need to understand the lying and deceptions. If school officials promise to create “lifelong readers,” you should doubt that children will ever learn to read.

The Education Establishment is supremely gifted at two things: jargon and sophistry. Fundamentally these are cheap tricks, much like the way a magician pulls a rabbit from a hat. Once you know the trick, it's not very interesting.

For example, if you want children to learn less, you simply demonize direct instruction (that’s how classes have been taught for centuries). Instead you proclaim that children must create their own new knowledge; teachers should remain passive and silent. It’s clearly idiotic, but if all the professors say the same thing again and again, and the New York Times stands pompously by, what are parents to do?

QED: The Education Enigma is an excellent entry-point for every person who wishes our schools could be better.

Here is a review now on Amazon. It provides a perfect summary:

"""I purchased a copy of "The Education Enigma: What Happened To American Education"(Paperback) by Bruce Price on March 29th. I have found the book to be most interesting and informative. As a retired engineer, I have always been baffled at the consistently poor education being provided by the public schools. Now I understand why. I recommend this book to anyone who also has had questions. It is well written, entertaining, and short enough to be read casually on a business trip, or before retiring for the night. My youngest son who is currently a sophomore in college also read through the book and really liked it. I hope Mr. Price writes more books on American education in the future. GWK""

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https://www.amazon.ca/Education-Enigma-What-Happened-American/dp/1439230358

Note: 136 pages, $11.50, published in 2009

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(A longer, slightly more expensive collection, Saving K-12 was published in 2018. No overlap between the two. Because the Education Establishment won't allow improvement, all of my articles remain timely, today and tomorrow. 

https://www.amazon.com/Saving-K-12-Happened-Public-Schools/dp/B08SWXWTPJ
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See more about both books, and my eight novels, on Lit4u.com