Manipulated Choices Leave Nation On Edge of Disaster.
(EUGENE, Ore.) - The insight of working and middle-class Americans is leading to a realistic and angry reaction over what has happened to our economy and our educational system.
Their American wit, wisdom and will now guides them to know the full damage they are experiencing every day, in every way, in their own lives. That’s all the proof they will ever need --with key numbers now found, painfully, in their checkbook and credit card balances.
Then, too there are the everyday results with their kids, in far too many schools. They are discovering that “clear, critical thinking” and individual responsibility; and many other 'true American values and goals' DO NOT 'just happen', even in the strongest of families. Those absolute essentials for 21st Century success MUST be taught, with “the common school” the great and working way-to-do-it, well-proven in our history.
Many now realize politically-motivated manipulation of corporate and private interests are causing these excruciating damages to our two most fundamental systems. Most now also understand the seducing and distorting/perverting impacts, manufactured and propagated since the early 70’s by a complex and lushly-financed neo-conservative Noise Machine; supported by complicit companion-perpetrators in the mainstream corporate-controlled media.
The unavoidable consequences of neo-conservatism have finally come home to roost --right there on the paychecks and the pile of bills-- in most American homes.
Workers at all levels -- and certainly now our middle classes, too-- have found out the hard way what false choices on economic and educational policies have already cost them; with more-to-be paid by children and grandchildren.
The final blow-back has been the 'preemptive attack' on Iraq and the phony war on terrorism; demanding trillions of dollars most desperately needed right at home, for our own survival and forward progress.
The most galling of reasons --now well understood by millions-- is the demonstrated failure of our once-esteemed 'free press' to fully inform, motivate and guide citizen oversight and surveillance, while this has happened. Outright lies, too easily accepted and published, have supplemented long-continued failure to discharge Constitutional obligations and responsibilities explicit for any free press.
Resounding failure of neo-conservative policies via a whole range of false decisions forced on the nation is all too well understood for motivation and consequence for detailing-again here. (See R/N for references and previous Op Eds for excruciating detail.)
The unavoidable consequences damaging education --and realistic remediation for them, too-- have become increasingly clear. First and foremost is the longterm damage done to the essential element in all education --the relation of the teacher to the learner.
Long ago we learned that this sensitive relation demands individual understandings of each student by the teacher. The school functions to provide full opportunity to work with that learner; to shape, guide, and strengthen what any student MUST inevitably do: LEARN by-own-effort.
You can transport them en masse, provide an efficient school, choose every teacher most carefully --yet fail when that relationship is not achieved, for any reason. In most schools it is the sheer impossibilities always involved in “too-many, too-close, too-involved”, for the demanded teacher-learner relation ever to mature and contribute its essential impacts.
Without that shaping insight in every one of these learner-teacher relationships, far too little can happen to motivate students for lifelong delight in personal accomplishments --which we know we must seek.
Many millions have learned to love learning in our system --always with just such a teacher caring and carrying out those demanded steps without which it might never happen.
Teacher-skill is that phenomenal professional ability to relate to every student. But its function is near-impossible without requisite physical tools aiding psychological means, in a learning environment skillfully created for those very purposes.
The basic approaches can be taught in essence; but deep and demanded levels of skill come only from actual working-experience, involving intense complex learning situations --FOR THE TEACHER ! Even the strongest of 'internships' can never substitute for “the real thing”.
That demands long-term teacher continuance in similar “surround”, with the same kinds, types and levels of learners, for some years; a fact too often overlooked at 'teacher-pay time'.
That failure to compensate at practical working levels comparable with private enterprise, forces early departure by the very best, current research has clearly proven --the very ones we should want and work to KEEP!
Their loss is a 'cost consequence' long-recognized but still far from realistic solution by local remediation. Action MUST start with school board recognition of inevitable, unavoidable realities, and budgets, since most of school funding must come from local control. ONLY THEN will legislatures chip in their fair and indispensable share, for the same excellent reasons.
Yet we still allow a normal classroom-size of thirty --sometimes even more-- when few teachers, however skilled, can ever possibly cope with more than twenty; in limited-circumstance, with wide array of learning tools absolutely demanded.
What our kids get now is seen as appropriately appropriated in every state legislature, supplementing what 'local control' provides.
Far too often the realistic fact-experienced over our own two centuries in this nation is ignored.
EDUCATION is the most effective and efficient way in which we can invest in our mutual future, since it not only shapes the culture but also the economy.
Anyone surveying more than 200 years of American history can see overwhelming evidence, in every decade, every trend. every national development.
The deepening international competitive demands of the 21st Century make that intense economic and cultural experience of many decades an extremely explosive motivation for remediation now.
Action is the ONLY way to preserve any semblance of U.S. leadership, across the world, in ANY area, be it business, free trade and international competition --and especially in foreign policy.
“Wasting wars" are remorselessly the most draining and destructive element --surely demonstrating what 'false-choice' can guarantee as unavoidable consequence.
Yet, the most essential element-needed for practical remediation of our education is the very component all others in our society are already using, in full depth and detailed applications: The new technologies for communication.
ALL are based on digitalization of every detail involved, in every area of usage and endeavor, not only via broad computerization but also for the equally-broad and wide-open/for-free channel: The Internet.
The ultimate dream of every skillful teacher is to bring the world into our classroom. --and the Internet does just that --easily accessed by any learner.
Yet education lags far behind every other element of business, industry, finance, healthcare --and even home cooking (!)-- on utilizing this strong asset.
Kids with access to computers, now in nearly half of all American homes, find themselves without that most essential tool ready for individual usage, in most classrooms, even today. (But printed texts and teacher-talk still prevail, everywhere.)
Many (with home-experience) have already developed valuable self-learning habits, and the requisite attitudes are already in place, for millions.
School usage of audio-visual media and learning techniques, deeply stimulated by the National Defense Education Act (1958), strengthened and broadened that foundation learning-trend.
Those are the absolute essentials for learning the broad values and cooperative skills we know are needed components for our treasured “American way of life.”
Every one of these negative impacts on education -- shaping lifelong learning of every student-- also impacts our economy. They are at the heart of the absolutely demanded necessities for preparation of effective participants in our society and efficient workers throughout every level and every segment of our economy. These are the ones --in either the public OR private side-- who REALLY make that economy first GO -- and then GROW.
That’s what millions of Americans are now coming to understand. That’s what drives those solid changes we must now make --not only to GROW but simply to SURVIVE.
That’s how we can and MUST rescue our democracy-- now become a threatening plutocracy.
Op Ed: Education, Economy,Salem-News.com