Alright, I can't copy the jpeg, so I'll recreate what it says.
HOW CAN A POPULATION BE CONVINCED THAT A LIE IS THE TRUTH?
21% of Americans are illiterate.
54% of Americans can't read beyond the level of an 11 year old.
57% of Americans have no education past high school.
America ranks 36th in the world for literacy levels.
White US-Born adults are the largest group with low literacy.
This is a graphic posted by my high school band teacher. He had a lengthy career and I've been able to maintain a friendship with him to this day. He is politically extremely left, and very vocal about his politics on social media. Most of the people he interacts with echo his positions.
I suspect that he posted this graphic to own someone, without realizing the message it was sending. Assuming these numbers are correct, and most of what I've seen makes this look less somewhat better, then there is a glaringly obvious series of questions to ask.
What federal department could have some responsibility for these dismal numbers?
What union also might have some responsibility here?
What profession might have some responsibility here?
What political party are teachers unions most closely affiliated with?
What political party controls the majority of urban areas with poorly performing schools?
Now the 57% have no education past high school is interesting. Especially when you consider how many billionaires/successful people don't have an education beyond high school. Also considering that is is totally possible to have a high earning potential without a college degree.
Of course, the spin is that people without college degrees aren't very intelligent. Yet, we see plenty of evidence that the education industrial complex is happy to take students who's test scores indicate a likelihood that they won't succeed in college and can't afford college and saddle them with loans that they have to repay even though they didn't do well in college. There is a sense of credentialsim on the left that prizes the credential of the degree above all else.
As for the last point, US born whites are (for now) the largest demographic group in the US. This is a situation where it'd be nice to look at the per capita breakdown of the raw numbers as a way to determine what this "statistic" really means. If that raw number is in line with the per capita/percentage then it means nothing. If not, then we can talk.
Personally I don't think I'd be touting the failure of the education system, and my political party, if I was a retired teacher
19 comments:
I have nothing to add to what you've said about the dismal state of our education system, except that parents and the students themselves share responsibility for the failures. The parents must demand better. The students must want to learn.
But as to the question posed, I don't know if we can truly write it off to the education system only. Look at how many morons are being churned out by our universities, including those with higher degrees. How can a medical professional abide the lie of multiple genders and that a person of one sex biologically can actually be of the opposite sex? The reality of conservative economic policy...i.e. capitalism...as being superior to the various iterations of marxist, socialist BS can't be ignored except by a glaring lack of wisdom (which can't be taught like 2 + 2 = 4), or a willful desire to deceive. And I also believe that people like these are the driving force of what "trickles down" to those who end up learning nothing.
Obviously parents have a role. The problem is that the APL/NEA/DOEd keep insisting that it's primarily a funding issue, which doesn't address the parent issue. Given that there is a demographic issue to this as well, it's hard to have a serious conversation about the role of parents.
I'm not saying it's 100% the education system, but clearly the education system plays a significant role. In this case, an educator is acting as if the education system plays no role in the situation.
I alluded to the higher education stuff. It is abundantly clear that colleges and universities pump out plenty of people who've wasted their opportunities for education. That the left places so much credence in credentials (especially undergrad degrees) despite the evidence that there are lots of idiots with a degree, tells us plenty about what they're impressed with. Add to that that the academy is overwhelmingly the province of the left, and that so much of what passes for education is really indoctrination.
I think what the polls say should be no "formal education" beyond high school. That would be me. Besides reading hundreds of books on history and theology (which is educating oneself), I graduated top of my class in a leadership school while in the Army, and was the operations and training NCO for my company when I left the Army. I think my pilot ratings (commercial license with multi-engine rating, instrument rating, helicopter) rating would qualify as post high school education. More management training to be a captain as Deputy Commander for Cadets in my Civil Air Patrol Squadron, and even in the FAA I have a few months of manager training and was a control tower supervisor for 10 years. And I've written articles fora prestigious apologetics journal and also for well know/well respected aviation magazines. So not having post-high school education at colleges/universities did not leave me as a dunderhead.
I'm not necessarily suggesting one part of the equation is more at fault than the others, though to do so would make for an interesting debate for another time, but that parent/student character and effort are certainly in the mix. No one should be suggesting any of the others are more at fault because they're all interrelated. They're a team and a good team is comprised of those who each take it upon themselves to find ways of improving their own efforts for the sake of the team. I will say that the team analogy suffers to some degree given the fact the best interests of the students is the point of it all, but the students must do their part as well.
But at this point, it's quite clear funding isn't the issue.
Glenn,
It seems a bit more complex than that. I personally prefer that Drs, Engineers, and the like to have more than a HS education. I'd prefer that pastors also have post high school formal education.
Beyond that, there are plenty of options that do not require a bachelors degree, that lead to well compensated careers. We've moved beyond the days when it made financial sense to get a degree "for the experience". It's clearly absurd to take o 6 figures of debt for a degree that doesn't lead to a career that pays well.
I'd argue that every thing you mentioned was "formal education", but that it was outside the academy and specialized for a particular purpose. Which, again, is an excellent model. It makes much more sense, for many, to get specialized education that qualifies them for a specific career without the massive cost of a 4 year degree.
I don't think that education or lack thereof makes one a "dunderhead". We don't have to look too far to see examples of people who boast of their education, yet remain "dunderheads". It's why I find the left's obsession with credentials to be frustrating. That they value someone who slid through 4-6 years of college with a C- in a worthless degree, than someone who went to a tech school and learned any of the trades is beyond me.
Oh, I don't discard the idea of college/university education; as you noted there are many occupations which require in-depth training. It's just that I have read and hear a lot of people who downgrade those without a college degree of some sort. I have encountered many college-educated people who have "discarded" me in conversations, etc because I don't have a college degree. What I found amusing as an Air Traffic Controller for 30 years was that every person I worked with had at least a 2-year degree in something or other (a couple were high school teachers) who couldn't figure out how I got the job and even later when I became a supervisor. In actuality it was because all my pilot ratings counted instead of college.
I assumed that you didn't, it's just strange that you didn't think that your post high school formal education was formal education. As you note, the formal education required for your pilot ratings was counted positively in the ATC job.
I get that people on the left, (mostly) are obsessed with the polling data that says that DFL voters are more educated than GOP voters. Yet, I agree with you that merely sliding through 4,5, or 6 years of college to get a worthless degree doesn't really mean that you're educated. I also agree that self education can be a powerful way to learn things.
IMO, the problem we face is that the left decided to capture the academy back in the '60s and have turned the higher education system into a place where indoctrination is more important than education, and where those who don't toe the philosophical line are punished with bad grades. Those students either leave, or lie.
As Art and I talked about elsewhere, the education mess we find ourselves in is a complex problem unlikely to be solved here.
Are ANY of y'all gonna talk about the swath of destruction this conservative administration is wreaking upon the US and the world?
* He's plunging the world into economic chaos.
* Mind you, he inherited a solid economy with the promise of making things better, but he appears to be clueless as to what his actions will do.
* Mind you, the US average wage for all wage earners is in the top five of all nations in the world. But that's not enough for him??
* He's ignoring judges. That, or he's attacking and threatening them.
* He's establishing an authoritarian stronghold, firing people he deems not loyal enough to him and putting in their place spineless sycophants.
* He's willy nilly deporting people, slandering them with no support accusing people of being terrorists and yet giving them no due process. He's clearly already deported several (at least) clearly innocent people.
* He's slashing the services that US citizens, children, students, veterans, disabled people depend upon.
* He's doing this slash and burn process in theory to make the gov't "more efficient" and save money, but he's clearly doing it in a thoughtless, unmeasured, "destroy them all and see where it lands" approach. No one is opposed to reasonable efforts to create efficiencies and save money, but THIS is not THAT.
* He's placing clearly incompetent people in charge of departments they're just not qualified for.
* He's releasing villains convicted by a jury of their peers who had assaulted and caused harm to dozens of police officers in an effort to undermine our elections.
On and on, the dim-witted, malevolent chaos continues.
AND NO conservatives are speaking out against it... Not even a tepid, "well, now, dearhearts, maybe he should slow down just a bit and be a bit more rational and decent in his responses..." Just crickets.
Now I know how decent, rational, moral Germans felt in the 1930s!
What an interesting, and completely off topic comment.
1. That remains to be seen, as do the long term results for the US.
2. 40% of all of the US dollars currently in circulation were "printed" during the Biden administration. During the Biden administration federal and state spending was 37% of the GDP. The "good economy" under Biden seems to have been a combination of the recovery that started under Trump 1, and smoke and mirrors.
3. So.
4. Since when does 1 out of 677 circuit court judges have the ability or power to unilaterally halt the functions of the executive branch.
5. As has virtually every president since Jefferson.
6. If you say so.
7. If you say so. I've posted multiple examples of DFL politicians calling for exactly what Trump is doing, including P-BO naming BIden to head a proto-DOGE. Hell, DOGE was authorized under a P-BO policy. Why didn't P-BO and Biden do this? BTW, why do universities in other countries depend on US taxpayer funding to the degree that removal of the US taxpayer funding causes them to consider closing?
8. If you say so. As you noted, the establishment is fighting him tooth and nail, one wonders why. FYI the US federal budget has been out of control, and unsustainable for decades. If we continue at this rate, interest on the federal debt will become the single largest line item in the federal budget. Unfortunately, it is literally impossible to tax our way out of this hole.
9. You mean like Lloyd Austin that obese trans dude he put in charge of HHS (setting a great example of the first H), the trans dude that kept stealing luggage, or Mayor Pete who managed to avoid making a visit to one of the largest transportation disasters in the country (during his tenure) and accomplish virtually nothing on the Baltimore bridge. POTUS has extensive power to appoint whoever he wants for whatever reasons he wants, it might suck, but blame the founders.
10. You mean like Biden did with his flurry of last minute pardons. Again, blame the founders.
But hey, I guess honestly assessing he dismal state of our public education system (almost entirely controlled by the DFL or DFL donors) isn't high on your list of priorities.
I (although this would have been deleted and lied about at your blog) allowed your off topic rant because I try to allow idiots to prove their idiocy. However, this thread is about an ex teacher accidentally destroying the narrative around education in an attempt to prove that people are dumb. If you'd like to comment on that topic, please do so. If not, please don't waste your time, as your off topic comments will not make it out of moderation.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, this isn't a real comment, it's an ad for Dan's latest screed at the cesspool. Unfortunately, Dan's arbitrary policies on comments and the fact that he's virtually banned me prevent this conversation from going any further.
Craig,
I guess I think of formal education as colleges, universities and other higher schools. The many books I have studied would be informal education, but I can see where flight training and the various leadership and management classes could be considered formal.
I'd suggest that if they have a defined curriculum, required textbooks and materials, and have essentially the same course of instruction regularly that "formal education" is an apt description.
OOPPPS I didn't realize my wife was signed on blogger!
No problem.
Dan's list is comprised of what he would routinely refer to as "wildly stupid unsupported false claims"...or words to that effect. He did nothing to support any of it here. By his standards the whole thing was deserving of deletion, but given how stupid it all is, it's better to allow him to expose his stupidity.
We know it's likely you, Glenn. Your flesh and blood actual wife has never posted her thoughts on our blogs.
You are correct. If I chose to lower myself to Dan's standards for comments I would have deleted it from moderation, then lied about it. However, I choose to demonstrate more grace to Dan than he's shown to those who disagree with him. Having said that, and considering my clear warning, I see no reason to encourage his idiotic behavior in this thread. I regularly give him lots and lots of latitude for his off topic comments and diversions, I'm not in the mood for that on this thread.
I'll give him one thing. Time will tell how this plays out. His lemming like parroting of talking points could (in blind pig/acorn fashion) turn out to be accurate. The problem is that he's (metaphorically) calling the final result of a game at 2 minutes into the first (quarter, half, period, inning, whatever). It's just too soon to tell. Even if he's wrong, he won't admit it. He'll just parrot the next batch of talking points like the (metaphorical) lemming he is.
Marshall,
HAH. We have two browsers, Safari (Mac) and Google. I stay signed in on Safari and she on Google so we don't have to keep switching. Google works better with Facebook so I was on that and didn't even think about dropping off when I went to my yahoo email and that's how that happened! Now on the laptop I have to use Google for an aviaition history site I also help manage so I use google on my laptop and stay signed on it there--Jill never bothers with the laptop because she likes the big screen,
Post a Comment