Truth 
in politics. 
What a concept!

Restore Rigorous Education 

By Kevin Barrett 

I have been working in education for most of my adult life. I have worked as a substitute teacher in the public schools. I have tutored foreign students in English, and taught older students Humanities, in community colleges. I taught French students American Civilization in Paris. I have taught a long list of subjects at the university level. And for two years I have been home-schooling my two sons. 

Right now, our education system is top-heavy. Let me explain.  

At the very top, the military-industrial complex is handing out billions of dollars to Ph.D. scientists and their graduate students so they can dream up fancy new high-tech ways to kill people. While this is not a very good thing to expend brain-power on, at least our graduate programs are high-quality, well-funded, and full of highly-qualified people...or at least they have been. But that may not last. 

Before 9/11, the smartest people from all over the world came to the USA to study in our graduate schools. American graduate education was the best in the world. That was the biggest secret behind America’s economic success. Since 9/11, the smart people from all over the world are going elsewhere, because they’re disgusted with our war criminal leaders. This will have a terrible long-term effect on our economy. 

Our undergraduate college education is another story. It has never been very good. There are far too many students in our colleges and universities who just have no business being there. Many of them have no sincere desire to be educated. They are just going through the motions, doing what is expected of them, maybe hoping a college degree will get them a slightly better-paying job. Others would like to be educated, but they just aren’t prepared for college-level work. Why not? 

Because our elementary schools and high schools aren’t preparing them.  

Our greatest challenge is to improve elementary and secondary education. I hate to say this, but after living for a year in France, it sure looked to me like the average French high school graduate was better educated than the average American college graduate. To get a French high school diploma, you had to be able to spend a few hours writing a serious essay on philosophy—and the essay had to be pretty good. Here in the USA, we graduate people from high schools who can barely scratch their names in mud with a stick. 

The problem with American public education is that it has always been more about brainwashing and socializing people than educating them. Our first public schools were built to turn immigrants’ children into Americans. They were taught to toe the line, salute the flag, speak passable English, get a decent job, and not ask too many questions. Teaching critical thinking was not high on the list. If you teach ordinary people how to think critically, they might see through the BS they’re being fed by the power elite. 

I think we should eliminate the brainwashing and socializing, and instead teach people how to think. Our elementary and secondary education should be much tougher than it is now. No more automatic promotion! 

And no more mandatory schooling. Those who aren’t interested in education should be getting vocational training. 

A high school diploma should mean something. There is no reason everybody should get one. Maybe in Lake Wobegon every kid can be above average, but not in the real world. If we toughen our schools, and require real achievement to advance, we’ll end up with roughly half the population getting a high school diploma, and at most a quarter getting a college degree. But those diplomas and degrees will mean something—and the real educational level of the population will be much, much higher than it is now. 

If the public schools can’t change their mission from “socialize and brainwash” to “educate,” maybe we need to give them some competition. School tax vouchers, which would give private schools a chance to flourish, sound like a good idea to me. But I’m a pragmatist, so first I’d like to look closely at the voucher schools we have now and see whether they’re really working. (Just because something sounds like a good idea doesn’t mean it will work in the real world.) 

I agree with Eric Larsen, the author of A Nation Gone Blind, who says that our nation is being terminally dumbed-down—partly as an intentional policy of the power elite, and partly because the liberal intellectuals have abandoned critical thinking and rigorous standards. 

I think we need to overthrow the power elite and rebuild a real educational system based on critical thinking and rigorous standards.

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