Reform is Too Light a Word

“New data show that fewer than 25% of 2010 graduates who took the ACT college-entrance exam possessed the academic skills necessary to pass entry-level courses, despite modest gains in college-readiness among U.S high-school students in the last few years.” That’s according to The Wall St. Journal and it’s a perfect segue to a piece I wrote for Center of the American Experiment’s latest symposium, “How Can We Better Encourage and Reinforce the Most Entrepreneurial and Talented Among Us?”.

In my contribution to the symposium, posted in full below, I make the statement:

[R]eform is too light a word, as it indicates chipping away at the edges with school choice, charter schools, and similar endeavors. The entire system, empirically a complete and utter failure, should be dismantled and rebuilt with the goal of educating individuals properly prepared for life in a free society.

Of course, once I saw the piece in print, I figured I would get skewered for calling the system a complete and utter failure. But isn’t that what it is? Take a look a look at the chart the Wall Street Journal published from ACT on the high school class of 2010:

Barely half of the students taking the ACT received scores in Reading sufficient for college. Reading! And let's not even consider the reading abilities of the students who did not take the ACT. The system is a failure.

Indeed, I would argue that the system has been broken for quite some time, but has stayed afloat only because parents (and especially grandparents) were able to supplement the education system with their knowledge. Unfortunately, that group is fading into the past. We now have teachers and administrators who themselves are barely educated by classical standards attempting to teach the next generation. They are far too obsessed with pedagogy and conformity then simply teaching what really matters: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and History.

What I find interesting is that in the Center of the American Experiment’s symposium, folks from the Left, Right, and Center are saying similar, though more nuanced, statements. If you have a chance, please take a look at the symposium, which has some great contributors representing the Right, Left, and Center. You can read it for free here.

Simply put, “reform” is too light a word when it comes to education.

Below is my full piece, reproduced with permission:

As I was growing up, my family was involved in several small-business ventures—some were successful and some were not. From those experiences, I’ve certainly seen what’s required to make a business endeavor prosper; I’ve also seen the impediments to success. Since then, I haven’t had much experience in the for-profit world, as prior to taking the reins of Intellectual Takeout, I was a fundraiser for nearly ten years, mostly at Center of the American Experiment.

As a fundraiser, I did have the rare opportunity to visit with some of the great entrepreneurs of Minnesota, to tour their facilities, and to get just a glimpse of what it takes to be successful on a grand scale. Over the years, I’ve been particularly amazed at the humble beginnings of so many of the brighter lights in our state. I’ve learned a lot about business and success from watching Minnesota’s titans of industry. One story in particular sticks out in my mind as quite relevant to this symposium on entrepreneurism.

While visiting a business in Minnesota, I learned how the owner got to where he is today—heading a multi-national company with hundreds of employees and gross revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars. He told me of a young man who graduated from high school and decided he should get a job. This young man went to a local company and applied for employment. As part of the application process, he had to take some tests to assess his personality and intelligence (in those days, companies could more readily do such things). Through the process, company officials saw something they liked and offered him a job.

At this point, if you’re thinking that the job for that high school graduate was mopping floors or helping in the mailroom, you’re wrong. Based on his responses to the testing, this young man was sent to one of the company’s departments plagued by inefficiencies. Tasked with studying the department and then figuring out how to improve operations, he did just that. The company, pleased with his successful recommendations, began to move him around its internal operations to do similar tasks. Over the years, he learned the company business, climbed the ranks, and became the head of the company.

Slack-jawed by the story (there were more details than space allows), I asked this titan of industry, “If you came to the company today, could the same thing happen?” And it was at this point that the light in the man’s eyes dimmed. He shook his head and softly said, “No.” According to this man, today’s laws, regulations, and liabilities prevent his company from using the tools of the past to find diamonds in the rough like him. And so it was that the strangling of entrepreneurism and the extinguishing of freedom in America became more real to me.

If academics, educators, policy wonks, and politicians want entrepreneurism, then they must let go of the American people.

We have a three-fold, systemic problem:

• A top-down, collective mentality permeates academic, public policy, and media circles, which heavily influences lawmaking. Too many influential individuals succumb to the temptation to “plan” the direction of the country, forgetting that it is individuals who have been primarily responsible for the world’s technological and entrepreneurial successes.
  
• Historical evidence shows that the progressive education system is purposefully designed to instill conformity to the goals of society rather than to instill individualism. As individuals are gathered together and moved as a unit through the system, there is very little tolerance for deviation in learning or accepted practices. Yet entrepreneurs seem to be innately built to deviate from accepted norms and need the freedom to do so.
  
• Government, intentionally or not, has quashed the freedom necessary for individuals to run with their ideas and dreams. If we want entrepreneurism, why make things harder for individuals and business? For entrepreneurism to bloom again, real freedom is necessary.

There is no easy way to dig ourselves out of the position we are in, because many powerful, well-funded interest groups will fight to maintain the status quo. Still, our foremost goal should be fundamentally to reform education in America. Indeed, reform is too light a word, as it indicates chipping away at the edges with school choice, charter schools, and similar endeavors. The entire system, empirically a complete and utter failure, should be dismantled and rebuilt with the goal of educating individuals properly prepared for life in a free society. The successes of home schooling and online learning should be considered as models for individualizing education.

America is still unique in the world, and while freedom is dim today, it is not fully extinguished. For over 200 years, our nation has been the engine of growth and prosperity for the world. The Colonists and Founders established a country with the rule of law and the opportunity for individuals to pursue their own happiness. Let us recommit ourselves to a country built on the noble ideal that individuals of all races and backgrounds can have some place in the world to pursue their creative instincts and, in so doing, benefit us all.

If you found this blog post of interest, please consider these two sections in our library:
Education Reform Options
History of Education in the United States