150 years ago, Charles Darwin put forth the theory of evolution based on natural selection. Layers and layers of scientific evidence have since proven many of his theories to have merit and evolution is mostly accepted as fact by the scientific community. But what about the general public?

The last major public survey I could find was a Gallup Poll from 2005. In this poll of 34 (mostly western) countries, the United States ranks second to last in public acceptance, right before Turkey ( a mostly Muslim nation.)

So in the U.S., only about 40% think that evolution is true, while nearly 60% say it is either false or they aren’t sure if it is true. Interesting…especially when we consider ourselves to be an educated, first world country.

For comparison, here are some Muslim opinions.

So…was Darwin right? Or is the Earth just a few thousand years old, with all species being independently created by a master planner?

In 2008, Gallup did a national poll to find out where the most religious areas of America are. The northwest corner of the country (where I hail from) is among the least religious part of the country. Can you guess which camp I sit in? Let’s just say I’m not waiting for the rapture….

(cross posted at Bring It On!)

This is the America they have brought to reality today:

Education is falling farther behind the rest of the world, including some third world countries. Science and math scores are at all time lows. Education costs are at all time highs. Cuts to student grant and loan programs for higher education leave many out of luck. The average reading comprehension ability among adults is judged to be at a sixth grade level.

Health care has become so expensive that many citizens go without, causing preventive care to be ignored at the peril of national health. Hospitals are overwhelmed with uninsured and illegal immigrants and are closing their doors. Seniors are having to go without vital medicine in the wake of a “new and improved” Medicare prescription benefit. The average bankruptcy is due not to reckless, wanton spending, but to unexpected, catastrophic medical costs.

Energy costs have skyrocketed, but energy providers and others in the energy industry have seen their profits explode. The average person has to choose between filling up the gas tank or buying new clothes for the kids. Home heating bills are even worse. Yet the answer from Congress is not to aggressively explore new energy resources, but to offer tax cuts to the industry as they attempt to gut wilderness areas in the quest for more non-renewable energy sources.

Employment is being sent overseas as companies seek to improve their bottom line at the expense of the people they want to buy their goods. For every middle wage job that leaves, a new Starbucks opens so net job loss is negligible. Net income is going way down though. And as inflation rises along with the federal interest rates, average Americans are being squeezed by the financiers and credit companies. Bankruptcy is also tougher to access for those in real need, but companies can shift their obligations like pensions and health care off on the government while receiving subsidies and bail-outs and tax cuts.

Prisons are expanding in both population and power as more citizens are targeted in the worthless war against pot users. Meanwhile, child rapists and convicted murders are paroled and let loose on an unsuspecting society to make way for the dangerous dopers. We have nicer prison complexes than schoolhouses, which is okay since so many will end up there now that they can’t get a good education or a good job anyhow.

Domestic security is a farce with our unsecured borders, unprotected ports and transportation systems, and concern with taking nail clippers away from the elderly and infants. Regular Americans are kept off of airplanes by a “no-fly” list while we look the other way as violent gang members sneak across the border. But at least the president is spying on average citizens to make sure they aren’t calling terrorists abroad. After all, better to monitor the phones than stop them at the border.

Our environment is being assaulted by corporations who continue to ignore regulations and get away with it. Reducing greenhouse gases is just too darn expensive. Ensuring that water is clean takes too much time, and besides, we soon won’t have any scientists to monitor this stuff anyhow.

On the foreign front, we’ve managed to piss off most of our former allies and made some new, duplicitous ones in the process. The “War on Terror” has been turned into a war on innocent foreign citizens while the real dangerous people are left to plan another battle for another day. And let’s not forget about the fact that we’ve hocked the future of the next two or three generations to foreign countries to pay for all of our misdeeds. The mortgage on America is held by everyone but us, and when the bill comes due, it will be our future generations who are left holding an empty purse.

Throw in an assault on the Constitution by a power hungry president and administration, fueled by a religious ideology and sense of American superiority that does not exist and the very tenets of freedom are on the block.

And what has your congressperson or senator done to prevent any of this? The Republican party in congress has created many of these program policies and championed them through couched as family values or moral certitudes. The Democrats have sat idly by and let it happen. Both want only to remain in power and get richer while the average citizen withers away. They are paper tigers and corrupt pawns of corporate hegemony and religious zealotry and neither will help us regain what used to be a given- namely, American freedom, prosperity, integrity, and pride.

Sure, some politicians are trying to do what is right for America and Americans, and by extension, the other people in this world. But the majority are careerist hacks, bent only on their ability to get power and keep power. They’ve made politics a game of partisan bickering without benefiting the taxpayers who keep them in office. They’ve turned us off on politics by their own ineptitude. They’ve made the job of governing so meaningless that we’ve stopped participating. And now they can do as they will, not to make life in this country better, but to keep the people out of the way.

So I ask you again, Why do you support a system and a politician who would sacrifice you and your children’s future freedom and peace? Is it because you believe the rhetoric you read in the paper or the sound bites you see on TV more than you believe what your own experience tells you? If I kick you in the head and tell you it doesn’t really hurt do you believe that too?

There is another way. In America we are allowed, no, we are required, to choose who will govern us. And when those who are in the chair of power do not do their duty, we are supposed to get rid of them. If the Democrats and the Republicans won’t take this country to a place it should be, a place where our tax dollars fund the people who pay them instead of the bureaucracy that has no common sense, then we must find people who will. We must choose to elect people who are like us. People who suffer the inanity that we all endure and want to change it. People who grow weary of the rhetoric and seek to speak the truth. People who will work towards a common goal of returning America to the land of freedom and fiscal sanity and lawful rationality that it was meant to be.

If the two party system has become so corrupt that it cannot right itself, and I fear that it has become just that corrupt, it is time to move away from it to an era of citizen legislators. Don’t be fooled into thinking that we need two parties to move America forward. They obviously have done nothing but move us backwards. We could do better without them, and our very way of life may require that we do just that.

On the face of it, Zero Tolerance policies seem to make sense, especially in a society that is portrayed as increasingly dangerous and hostile. It is, in a sense, a natural backlash from a society that feels battered by crime and hatred. Kids going into schools and shooting up the place; little league coaches molesting children; gang bangers causing all kinds of havoc; we see these things and hear about them every day on the TV or in the papers and we want to protect ourselves. Zero Tolerance policies provide tough consequences for those who go beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior, hoping to reduce or eliminate those who would do so. Whether our communities are actually dangerous places or we want to prevent them from becoming so, Zero Tolerance policies look great on paper but actually provide a false sense of security while destroying the freedoms of ordinary people. The truth of the matter is not so much that Zero Tolerance policies can’t be effectively used, but rather we are using them against the wrong people.

Zero Tolerance policies are as much a part of our education system now as pencils and paper. But are they really making our schools safer for our children? Does expelling a kindergarten student for throwing a temper tantrum and throwing a crayon at the teacher make the rest of the kids safer? Was the child really a monster or just having a bad day? With Zero Tolerance we may not have a chance to find out since the first infraction results in expulsion. What about expelling a junior high school girl who brought a butter knife to school for the Home Economics class she was in, but instead of taking it right to the classroom like she was instructed, got sidetracked with some friends and discovered her mistake during the lunch break. Someone sees the knife in her backpack and next thing she knows, she’s being sent home indefinitely for carrying a concealed weapon. No matter the reason for the knife’s presence. With Zero Tolerance, no excuse is good enough. What about the high school sophomore who chooses to wear his “I Love Jesus” t-shirt to school? Do the children of atheist parents faint in his presence or go into convulsions? Does sending him home to change or face suspension really make the rest of the school safer? The problem with Zero Tolerance in our schools is that they lack any effort to use Common Sense and employ every effort to maintain a façade of impartiality and fairness, all the while destroying the academic careers of otherwise trouble-free kids for expressing an opinion that isn’t hate filled or inciting violence or for making an innocent mistake, which, by the way, is what growing up is all about. Rather than promoting a safe learning environment, these policies have only succeeded in making our schools more like the prisons we hope our children never visit as adults. Is this how we foster freedom and democracy in our children today?

Kids may be the most affected by the Zero Tolerance society, but adults encounter their fair share too. A classic example is our new and improved airport security policies. Aimed at giving the appearance of safety in aviation, the actual practices and enforcement of security policies are widely viewed as nonsensical, in large part because they seem to take every chance to avoid actually increasing security. At the security checkpoint, people are prohibited from carrying nail clippers, cigarette lighters, small letter openers, or other ordinary items beyond the metal detectors and x-ray machines. You can, however, have matchbooks or pilfer a butter knife from the lounge near your gate. Your shoes must be examined thoroughly, to ensure that they aren’t really bombs. But what if someone just started hitting someone else with his or her shoe really hard? Zero Tolerance would soon prohibit all shoes on flights. More extensive searches are made of old ladies walkers or infant carriers, especially those of Caucasian women despite the fact that the last people to hijack and use planes as weapons fit an entirely different profile.

And that is where the government applies it’s own version of Zero Tolerance. From a political perspective, Zero Tolerance policies are aimed not at reducing harmful behaviors, but at getting and keeping votes and power. Such policies include a ban on racial profiling in the case of suspected terrorism, a policy that completely disregards everything we know about the Islamic militant radicals who wish for an end of western civilization. This is not to say that all Middle Easterners are terrorists or that all terrorists are Middle Easterners, but at this point the preponderance of the evidence shows that focusing on these kinds of folks will likely yield higher safety quotients than harassing Granny at the subway station will. Politicians have also created an all-encompassing Zero Tolerance attitude with respect to opposing political parties and ideologies, following the example set for them by their religious or special interest or corporate benefactors. In this case, there can be little or no dissent within the ranks. Any disconnect between the party line results in censorship at best, marginalization or expulsion at worst. That’s hardly an inspiring atmosphere for national political discourse that affects all our lives. Nothing says freedom like stifling opposition opinions.

Strangely enough, that segment of society truly deserving of a Zero Tolerance policy is the one we seem to give Unlimited Tolerance to, namely the heinous criminals who murder our friends, rape our children, destroy our financial lives, and erode the public trust. To these people, society (through the politicians and PC idiots) has a seemingly unending supply of tolerance. It shows in the way we release them from prison early (or at all) despite their horrific crimes. It shows in the way juries defy all Common Sense and free obviously guilty people. It shows in the way that the courts toss out evidence that proves guilt or innocence because of insignificant technicalities. If ever a portion of society earned a reputation for needing a Zero Tolerance policy, it is the people who commit the worst acts on other people. Yet somehow, their behavior gets excused.

Zero Tolerance fails because it assumes that all people think the same, act the same, and are equally dangerous. It focuses only on the perceived infraction, establishing that an infraction actually occurred, and then proceeds directly to the harsh punishment attached to that act. It cares nothing for rational explanations or opportunities for learning and growth; it cares only about punishing and setting an example. It slowly drives away individuality and replaces it with a wariness of each other and an expectation of privacy invasion. Zero Tolerance is a forced trade off between the public and the government. We give up some autonomy and you give us security. Instead, we give up our ability to teach our kids and identify real problems for the mere appearance of security.

Perhaps most troubling of all though, is the fact that Zero Tolerance naturally embraces conformity and punishes individuality. This is a great benefit to the power brokers in the capitols across the country, but it spells doom for the average person. As we continue to indoctrinate our children and ourselves with the notion that Zero Tolerance is the only sure way to security, and as we perpetuate an environment of distrust, we will eventually become a parody of ourselves, screaming for freedom as we build walls around ourselves.

The Value of Education is one of the greatest concepts we can instill on our kids. Mankind’s ability to learn and be curious is the one gift that really sets us apart from the other animals on Earth. Our ability to pass on what we learn, to expand upon what we learn, is what has enabled us to move from the caves into our condos. But just because we are inherently curious, that is no guarantee that we will use our ability to its potential. As parents, we must show our kids that learning is fun and learning opens doors of opportunity. We must foster their natural inquisitiveness, while reminding them that learning isn’t always an easy process. Learning requires listening, studying, testing, and more listening. Parents can better help their children to embrace learning by answering their questions when they can and by insisting their children show respect for their teachers. Parents and teachers need to work together instead of as adversaries to ensure that kids learn to their best ability. Outside of structured school, parents can increase their children’s curiosity with trips to museums or sporting events or libraries or with experiences in nature. To help parents achieve these things, costs for event tickets shouldn’t be out of reach for anyone making less than six figures a year. Employers could embrace more flexible work schedules to allow for more family time and yearly vacations. Society in general could learn to demand less instantaneous satisfaction in favor of a saner pace of life.

The Need for Tolerance is another important trait to instill in our children, for without tolerance we can’t coexist with any sense of normalcy. The perpetuation of racism and prejudice creates much harm to the progress of civilization, wasting so much effort, resources, and lives, that their continued existence lacks all Common Sense. As people, we are each different from each other in some way, and for someone to decide to hate or deny equality to another because of race or religion or sexual preference is as illogical as one can be, for even if you were wronged by someone of a different race or religion or what have you, this is not evidence that all others in that generalized classification are bad too. As parents, we must not only teach this to our children with words, but with our actions as well. Children perceive the subtleties we think we reserve for adults, and though they may not understand them, they certainly adopt them and make them their own. As a society, we must stop painting portions of our country as evil or idiotic simply because they have different priorities in life. We must insist on an end to the political rhetoric that serves to divide rather than unite. And just to be clear, tolerance does not mean the acceptance of heinous criminals like murderers or rapists or condoning acts that harm others or ideas that deny others equality and freedom..

The Meaning of Respect is another invaluable tool to give to our children, one that is sadly missing from today’s world. From the loss of formal salutations and assumptions of respect for ones elders to an overriding sense of self-importance, showing respect for each other is becoming archaic, much to our detriment. But the breakdown starts in the home when parents don’t demand respect from their children, and instead attempt to be their own kids’ best friend. This attitude is not how one teaches respect, as it places children on the same plane as adults, when they are neither psychologically or intellectually ready to be there. Children need authority figures and disciplinarians, and they seek them first in their parents. When they find no firm authority in the home, they equate all adults with their parents and learn to respect only those they fear, which is not really respect at all. As they grow older, this lack of respect can only offer a lifetime of combativeness or separation, certainly not positions one finds success and happiness in. Respect has many levels. There is respect for a position like doctor or teacher or firefighter. We respect these people for what they do whether we know them personally or not. We extend a certain amount of respect to them collectively, in spite of bad actions that may arise by certain individuals. Another respect is based on our personal knowledge or admiration for someone or their actions. While the first is easier to teach, the second is just as important, for through it we can reinforce the other lessons we strive to teach by holding up the success and behavior of others who exhibited those traits. Respect doesn’t necessarily mean we have to like someone or even agree with them, but a good rule of thumb is to show respect to someone until they prove themselves unworthy through their actions or through their words. We need to move back, as a society, to addressing each other with respect, or at least insisting on it from children.

Teaching Honesty is among the harder values to instill in our children, especially when the prevalent mood of society is to spin the news towards one view or the other, starting in our halls of government and working down to the classrooms in our schools. We all want our kids to be honest with us, yet we lie to them each and every day. We promote propaganda regarding sexual behavior, the effects of drugs and alcohol, personal image, and other seemingly moralistic issues. We tell our children that there is only one truth when in fact there are often multiple facets to every truth. Does this mean that we should never tell our kids anything not provable by science or direct observation? Should we give up our fairy tales with their moral lessons simply because they are fiction? This is not what I mean when I speak of being honest with our kids, for there is also an element of magic associated with childhood, a time of naivety that is enriched through fantasy. But when we sense a child is asking a serious question, for the purpose of learning, let’s give them the unblemished truth, to the age-appropriate degree that they can understand, instead of perpetuating wives tales and repeated mantras. And governments and businesses must stop twisting the truth about their actions and start being honest with the public. The truth may sometimes hurt, but they say it also sets you free.

The Concept of Service is one that shows our children that a free society depends upon the participation of all the citizens, and that by volunteering our time to help others or to clean up our cities or to coach a little league team is time well spent. When one embraces the idea of giving back to their community, one feels more a part of that community and helps to keep that community safe and clean. As parents, we can teach the concept of service by making our kids he
lp out around the house, helping relatives and friends with bigger projects or daily needs, and not paying them in cash or rewarding them in kind for every act they perform. The concept of service implies that your efforts will be returned to you when you need help, and that sometimes it is more rewarding to lend a hand than to demand a dollar. Society depends upon people helping people, and the upshot is that with an increased sense of service, many of the more mundane or everyday tasks now performed by government agencies could be handled by you and me for less costs and with better results. We should remove many of the barriers that prevent people from helping out, including a propensity to sue each other over every minor slight or mishap.

Personal Responsibility is something all children must eventually learn if they are ever to earn the respect of others, care for themselves financially, and provide for their own families someday. Personal responsibility is the ability to pay one’s own bills, hold down a job, keep one’s word to others, provide for their family, and stay out of legal trouble. When parents make excuses for their own child’s bad behavior they are not teaching personal responsibility. When a parent does their child’s homework for them they are not teaching personal responsibility. When a parent buys kids everything they ask for, or when a parent ignores their child’s dishonesty or when a parent never demands their child pick up after themselves, they are not teaching personal responsibility. When there are no consequences to actions, there is no personal responsibility. The end result is an adult who can admit no wrong, who is never to blame, and who always knows the best way to do everything. As a society, we need to stop idolizing those figures that do not espouse the tenets of personal responsibility. We need to stop promoting behaviors that are based only on selfish motives. And we must each try to keep our word to each other and to our children.

Common Sense parenting isn’t as much about what practical skills you may teach your kids so much as it is about making sure they have the tools to learn those skills themselves and to put those skills to good use. It isn’t about following a particular path or walking the same road as everyone else as much as it is about treating each other in a similar way and expecting the same in return. Society has a stake in successful parenting, and should work together to help parents teach their kids. Business leaders should make time for families more valuable than they do now, for eventually, they will need to hire these kids, and they’ll want them to have some manners and social graces. And parents need to quit trying to be their kids’ best friend. It’s time to reinforce our social values together instead of indulging our own egos and perpetuating our own irrational prejudices at our kids (and society’s) expense.

The reason that this whole “family values” thing is so important though, is that a stabile, progressive society is dependent upon the family unit to turn out stable, progressive citizens. And in order to fulfill that expectation, the family must rely on society to provide the tools it needs to be successful. It is a symbiotic relationship that demands the best results even when it offers up less support.

If “family values” is going to be a benchmark from which to measure a candidate’s suitability, by reason there should be a definition of what those family values are. For that matter, there should be a firmer definition of what constitutes a family so far as the family values discussion applies, and what the goals of a family unit are. Once we know what we are talking about, we can more accurately estimate if a candidate truly does further the goals of families or whether they are just full of hot air.

So what exactly is this family whose values we are longing to support? The simplest definition of a “family” is probably the best one to use, but it is also the first thing people will disagree about. No matter. For purposes of clarity and by reason of Common Sense, a family consists of two committed adult parents and at least one child. Without a child, or children, you are only a couple, or even a single. It is with the addition of children that the family unit is formed. The exception to this definition would be the single-parent family, but despite studies and findings that may disagree, two parent families are both more practical and better suited to the purpose of families in general. That purpose is really quite simple: it is to raise the child(ren) to adulthood, having taught them to become a responsible, productive, and hopefully happy member of the society. If society is the total combination of individuals and their actions, then the family is our training ground.

In order for families to be successful, they must first be stable, both financially and emotionally. Like the foundation of a house, the parents are the base on which a family is built. So our first family value is stability. But we all know of the statistics showing half of all marriages end in divorce, and many of those marriages produced children. For that matter, how many of the politicians spouting about family values have been divorced? Don’t get me wrong here. I understand that there are great reasons for people to get divorced. Abuse and deceit are certainly among them. And I’ll readily concede that in these kinds of situations it is better that children don’t have to live in that environment. But how many divorces are just the result of people who married before they were ready, or people who decided that their own self-actualization is of greater value than their children’s well being? We hear plenty of talk about “strengthening marriage” that all boils down to making sure the parents are of opposite sex. A real show of strength would be to help reduce the number of divorces, especially when children are involved.

Families are expensive. Kids require a lot of food and education and health care. So another family value would involve embracing a system of health, education, and retirement reforms, such as those described in previous essays on Common Sense, that would alleviate some of the stress placed on parents who are caught between the costs of daily life and the need to treat a sick child or pay for school. Lowering these costs and improving the services would allow parents more time to spend with the children and less time slaving to pay the bills. And with more one-on-one time between parents and kids, cultural values like respect, honesty, and responsibility would have a better chance at being passed down from one generation to the next, having a positive effect of society as a whole.

Because children mimic what they see and hear, as cultural excesses become more prevalent it becomes more difficult for families to instill a sense of right and wrong in their children, especially in an environment where both parent are working long hours and are turning over the child rearing to video games, television, or the neighborhood hang-out. Especially damaging to society as a whole is the amount of gratuitous violence found in our art, music, and media. While I don’t advocate artistic censorship by the government, I wholly support selective censorship by parents, and in many cases, expect it. Yes, we all know that the world can be a violent place, and we all know that at some point we need to teach our children to be careful, but how many of us actually expect to be massacred at summer camp? How often does a satanic cult kidnap the neighbor’s new baby? And do our children really need this in their lives? As adults, we know these things are created for entertainment, but children don’t know the difference, and parents are often remiss in making sure they understand, or worse, expose them to things before they can really distinguish the difference between right and wrong. Reducing the amount of desensitizing violence we expose our kids to should be among our family values, preferably through parental education, but if necessary through legislation.

Finally, we should reform our family laws to better assure that innocent children are not punished for the wrongs of their parents. We should stop empowering government agencies to disrupt family life unless verifiable abuse has occurred. We should resist any attempts at laws that would discriminate against two committed parents of the same sex from adopting or otherwise providing a stable, loving environment for a child. And in cases of divorce, we should insist upon amicability between parents and a civil dissolution coupled with continued financial and emotional support schedules.

These are the things that we should expect from any politician who says that they stand for family values. We should ask them how they’ve applied these goals to their own families, and examine their record to see if their actions back up their words. You may have noticed that none of these family values focused on religion. The reason for that is simple. At its most basic level, religion is not a social value or need, but rather an individual one. And while I would never deny that religion espouses many of the same ideals of behavior that secularists cherish, the immense permutations of religious belief and doctrine would virtually guarantee that no consensus would ever be met with regards to “family values.” So religion is out the window, at least when it comes to the political and practical definition of “family values.”

The next time you hear a politician talk to you about family values, take a moment to ask them what they mean. Odds are you won’t get a specific response. But you’ll probably get a lot of gobbledygook about gay marriage and zero-tolerance. Families are the building blocks of any society, both of its social fabric and its economic stability. Supporting families, then, is naturally in the best interest of society. It is not enough to just do the best you can within your own family. You must also make sure
that those elected officials who claim to support you, who claim to believe as you believe, who claim to be looking out for your interests, are really doing all those things, and not just wearing a friendly label, hoping you’ll never ask what it means.

Our current system of funding and control seem to have the appearance of rationality and accountability on the surface, but if you crack open the lid on this jar of worms, you’ll find nothing but mismanagement, wasteful resource allocation, and an overall lack of common sense. The state and federal governments allocate a portion of their general or property tax revenues for general education funds, disbursed to pay for all the facility, instructional, administrative, and operational costs and apportioned by various formulas and guidelines. In the 2001-2002 school year, the national expenditures were $434,438,650,000 (yes, that is BILLIONS) or about $6500 per pupil per year. As of the last population census, legal residents of school age (5-18 years old) numbered about 55 million. (I know that the math for these numbers doesn’t exactly add up- 6500 x 55m does not equal 434b- but what can I say…government tables!) So what are we getting for our money?

Students are provided with textbooks, at an average cost of $50, maybe 5 per student. (Many of which are outdated or shared by multiple students at one time, preventing these books from being taken home for study.) Students are provided with teachers, whose average salary of $42,900 and average class size of 16 costs $2931 per student. (Many of who are becoming disillusioned with both students and administrators.) Students are provided with a facility in which to learn, that also requires administration and maintenance staff, supplies, and utilities. How much of the remaining $3569 is spent here? (The state of these facilities varies greatly though, due to their primary source of construction funding, local bond measures.) Students are sometimes provided with extra-curricular activities. (Often at an additional cost.) Apparently, more than half of the “cost per pupil” is being spent not on education, but on education infrastructure. Is this the return on our investment that we were expecting?

But really, $434 billion is a lot of money, and when we spend that much money, we expect to have some control of how it is being spent. If you thought the financial end was a bit jumbled, this gets really strange. To begin with, government falsely assumes that the money it collects in taxes belongs to it instead of the people. Taxes are not the property of government; rather government is entrusted with those funds to pay for the needs of society. This false assumption of ownership allows government to feel that it should have some control of the education process, rather than just being a conduit of shared resources. At the same time, we have demanded that government legislate laws ensuring a level playing field in society, so we have invited the government to the table insofar as school regulation is concerned. The people, however, recognize the fact that the tax money that pays for education is really theirs, and as such develop school districts and elect local citizen school boards to maintain their bit of control on the process. Yet those elections are not widely attended and the parents often remain unattached to these elected boards and their policies. What often results is an adversarial coupling when government makes mandates for education that the people don’t agree with. It would seem that we need to redefine the roles each should play in the educational process.

Where funding is concerned, we must come to recognize that simply throwing more money at school administrators and teacher’s unions is not going to change the state of our children’s education. The things that matter are the books and the tools and the instruction they receive. The formulas should be reworked so that teachers are at the top of the pay scale instead of the administrators and consultants. In fact, why couldn’t we turn over the administration aspects of schools to volunteer citizens who could manage these affairs on a part-time basis? The savings could be funneled back into classroom materials. Facilities would come next in line to assure that they are safe and clean, and consistent across the nation, offering all children the same opportunities according to their abilities. Streamlining our building efforts could save untold millions in construction and maintenance costs as well as alleviate uneven property taxes and unnecessary building bonds. Again, these savings could be used to support extra-curricular activities that are being cut all over the country. Absorption of school utility costs through minimal across the board ratepayer increases could further free up operating funds that could improve student-learning programs.

When it comes to providing an adequate learning environment, we must adopt those attitudes I discussed in the previous two essays: the necessity of parents to instill the traits of responsibility and respect in their children and for parents and teachers to work together to demand those qualities of their students, and the necessity of society to restructure its agenda to allow parents and children more time together so these traits can be taught through example. In order to further these goals, we should return more disciplinary control to our teachers and severely restrict the ability to sue schools or teachers for anything but the most egregious behavior. Our schools are inundated by lawsuit happy parents for slighting students or hampering their spirit or whatever other nonsense they can think of. The costs of defending or settling these kinds of lawsuits, and the insurance schools now need to pay for just strips away more of the dollars for real education. Students need to be clear on the fact that their job is to learn and their rights are dependant on their level of responsibility. Once we take away the “get rich quick” option, schools can go back to teaching and stop looking over their shoulders as they make a lesson plan.

Control of academic curriculum is usually what most parents are concerned about. We want to make sure that our kids are learning the basics of reading and writing and mathematics. We want to make sure that our teachers aren’t filling our kids heads full of false information, though at times, even this is subjective. But the government wants to impress an environment that is as equitable to all as possible, while expecting a minimum standard of achievement on certain general areas of knowledge. A solution could be as simple as delineating who gets to be responsible for what. Government, by nature, is best at providing a level playing field. Moving much beyond this simple task, at least in the area of education, is only asking for trouble. So governments role in schools should be limited to a few things: assuring the equitable redistribution of collected tax dollars for education; assuring equitable facilities for all student
s through oversight committees; providing basic standard criteria for teacher certification; and developing minimum required mastery levels for reading, writing, mathematics, civic responsibility, personal finance, history, and science. Local school boards would then be responsible for implementing academic courses of study that would serve their student populations and teach at least the minimum requirements according to that communities specific needs or methods; hiring and firing of all school personnel; procuring and distributing educational materials; and managing the day to day occurrences that arise. Each would abide the decisions of the other, but disputes would err towards to people in cases of curriculum and style or towards the government in cases of fairness or assessment.

Business could and should be encouraged to step up to the plate too, since they are big beneficiaries of an educated citizenry as well. They could be instrumental in developing instructional courses for areas that fall outside of the required minimum mastery levels. Specialized instruction in career specific areas could engender the right numbers of future workers for industries. An example would be similar businesses pooling their resources to form teaching guilds. The sports and entertainment industries could return some of their mega profits to society by funding community sports programs and arts education.

As with every new change, you can choose to phase the new ideas in gradually or adopt them all at once. In the case of education, it becomes even trickier to decide, since if the changes are really beneficial, you want to reach all the kids as early as possible. In this case though, I think we just need to formulate the plan, and pick a date of adoption and begin to implement starting with the kids first entering school that year. As the system evolves, preexisting kids could be brought into the fold, under the “better late than never” concept. Finally, adults should be offered some re-education opportunities as they need them to fill any gaps in their education due to growing up in troubled educational times.

The bottom line is that there is already a good amount of money being spent but no real control beyond who can make headlines with the latest lawsuit. An educated society is a shared responsibility and a shared asset. It’s time that government and citizens quit fighting over education and turn towards our respective strengths to provide a more efficient, and therefore, more effective school system for our children.

The analogy of the race exposes the reality of our educational system today. One size fits all education ignores the realities that everyone has a different capacity and desire to learn. For some students, learning is both easy and fun. For others, learning is hard and unpleasant. And for the many in between, learning is neither easy nor hard, nor fun or unpleasant…it just is. But our school systems lump all students together, categorized primarily by age, and teaches them together as if they were all the same. Sure, we have some accelerated classes for the brighter students and remedial classes for the slower kids, but on the whole, the schools attempt to teach and promote kids in age groups with gained knowledge being secondary as criteria for advancement. The result is a student who either lacks the necessary skills to continue learning or one who is hopelessly bored by the relatively slow pace of learning. Yet the overriding concern to build a students self-esteem by pretending that all are equal in every way, which trumps the process of education.

Much of the problem lies with the false notion that kids who are the same age should learn at the same rate. But since all children are different, this is a generalization that is weak at best. We must also refocus our sights on the type of education that our students receive and have a clear-cut objective regarding the knowledge they are expected to obtain at certain points along their educational careers. By addressing these basic building blocks of education, we can begin to put our children back on the path towards an education that is appropriate to their abilities and desires, and in the process, we could probably more effectively use our education tax dollars.

With regards to the grade based system of classifying students, while from a social perspective this idea makes a lot of sense, from an intellectual viewpoint, we may be hurting kids more than we are helping them. At some point in their education, kids will begin to separate themselves according to their academic ability, creating amongst themselves a caste system of sorts that serves to segregate the students from each other. Those who are academically gifted may be shut out of the mainstream social activities, while those who fall below the academic norm may lose all interest in further education. Meanwhile, those in the larger middle go blissfully along, hardly being challenged to exercise their intellect or being pigeon-holed into pre-determined academic plans derived by parents and counselors who are determined to push students along the “college path” regardless of that students desire or aptitude. Rather than help our students master certain necessary areas of knowledge, we instead funnel them through to the next grade, hoping that they will catch up and flushing out their lives with abundant extra-curricular activities to make them appear better rounded as college prospects.

But the numbers of high-school dropouts, the low level of adult literacy comprehension and mathematic skill, the masses of remedial college courses necessary for students to get up to speed, all affirm the failures of our current structure. We need to find another way to categorize, instruct, evaluate and advance students so that they can all achieve the level of education they are capable of achieving. So where do we start?

Beginning at the earliest ages, from pre-school through the second grade, basic evaluations should be taken on each student as they begin to learn how to read, write, recognize shapes and colors, and perform simple mathematical calculations. Based on a students progress, beginning at grade three, students could then be separated according to their learning capabilities, offering students who are faster learners to move at a more accelerated pace while slow learners could be taught at a slower pace. By separating these groups from the students who are average achievers, we could remove the stigma and social cruelty that pits students against each other, giving all students an opportunity to focus on learning and not on jealous or insensitive peers. Such a move would also permit teachers to spend less time dealing with students who are disruptive due to boredom and less time helping individuals who were seriously behind the other students and more time teaching at a common speed that fits the capabilities of the class as a whole. All the while, students could shift from one learning path to another if their capabilities show that they have become more or less adept at learning. As students progress in their scholastic years, they would be periodically assessed to ascertain that they had mastered the skills necessary for a person with their capabilities and of their age group before they could move on to middle or high school.

Once in middle school, students could begin to explore the opportunities that await them as adults by engaging in more “real life” educational opportunities. (An interesting concept for instruction of these courses can be found in this post at Educational Whisperer.) Students would also begin to learn about civic responsibilities and ethics courses in middle school along with their academic lessons in math, literature, science, history, and art. At the end of their eighth year of schooling, students would be assessed again and interviewed to determine the course of their further education. Some students will not have the skills or desire to pursue a career that required a college education and could be steered into a course of education designed to teach trade skills necessary for life in the working world after high school. Other students would continue along the college path and go on to become scientists or doctors or teachers, among other things. In both cases, high school education would become more individually tailored to each students goals, while still imparting the necessary life skills like personal health and finance, and basic “living on your own” information. From high school, students would follow their paths to a university, a specialized trade school, or directly into the work force.

Finally, we must recognize that all students do not learn in the same way. Some are good at learning through the written word while others are good at learning through tactile experience. As such, schools should try to be more flexible with regards to the methods a student uses to gain his or her new knowledge. The goal is to learn, so the rigidity of how something is learned should be dissolved and the focus should become that it was learned at all. Teachers and parents should help their students develop learning methods that work for best for them and be judged on the final outcome.

Most children want to please their parents, and by extension, the other adults in their lives. As young children, this desire allows us to instill the qualities of respect and responsibility in them. But we must at some point return that respect when they become capable of choosing their own interests in life. By nurturing these abilities and desires, we help create a happier, more pro
ductive adult member of society. We must stop pretending that all children are the same, or that they can all learn the same skills. That simply is untrue and only blinds us to the real goal of giving our children the kind of education that they deserve.

In order for the state of our educational system to be repaired and once again become an institution of learning and advancement instead of a money sucking day care center, American society needs to face up to our shared responsibility as teachers of the young. A quick reminder of where we went astray may be in order. American financial might in the 20th century provided an era of leisure and consumption previously unknown. As incomes rose and technology advanced, people began to buy more things to do their work and increase their leisure time, in the process, losing the lessons gained from physical labor. As their leisure time increased, technology created entertainment that required less and less intellectual involvement and more introspective enjoyment, causing social skills and interaction to suffer. These qualities of physical work, intellectual development, and social mores combined to develop what was once known as character and often blossomed into traits like respect, appreciation, imagination, empathy, congeniality, and compassion. These traits, once learned, would, in most cases, transcend into all aspects of social and personal life and help continue our national prosperity. But if life got better, people got worse.

Don’t get me wrong here. Technological advancements are a wonderful thing. But they do not take the place of humanity and the ability to coalesce with a community. Technology offers humanity the opportunity to expand our knowledge about our world and each other by giving us more time to explore new lands and ideas. It does this by making the machinations of daily life more efficient, freeing up more time for people to enjoy. But rather than use this opportunity to our advantage, we have allowed ourselves to become slave to it. Instead of turning the increased productivity into an asset for a better quality of life, we have insisted that our own productivity increase to match that of our machines. The result, of course, is a net result in no more, and in some cases less, leisure time than we had before. Less time for our families. Less time in our communities. Less time to teach our children those things that create character.

But the children have been watching and learning anyway. They have learned that work is more important than family. They have learned that imagination is just a click away. They have learned that money makes the world go ‘round. And they have learned that “me” is the most important person in the world. Parents, too tired from a long days work or home late after a long commute, would rather spend the few hours with their children filling them with fun and adoration, instead of teaching them about respect and responsibility. Or they would rather pamper themselves, ignoring the kids altogether as they run wild through the house. Kids have learned that it is easier to do what you want than what is expected, as the punishment is likely to be minor or non-existent, and rarely ever consistent. The result is a generation that expects to have what they want, when they want it, and the way the want to have it. We are now moving into the third consecutive generation that has been raised under these increasingly slacking conditions and the result is a society that shows little respect and gets little respect from anyone outside a given age group, and one that can barely communicate with each other, let alone the rest of the adult world. Such a societal shift isn’t always easy to see until it’s gone on for some time, and this is no exception really. All generations complain about “those darn kids today…” but the truth is that it’s becoming less of a generic grumble and more of a reality.

So what does any of this have to do with the school system anyhow? After all, isn’t this an essay about education? The answer is like connecting the dots in a child’s coloring book. In order for a child to be taught the basic intellectual skills to function in the modern world, they first have to have the character traits instilled in them that will allow them to function in a formal learning environment. In order for these traits to be instilled, parents have to take a more active roll in helping their child develop them. In order for parents to spend more time with their kids, we need to accept the fact that our priorities, as a society, need to shift.

Such a dynamic change of thought requires some proof of pay-off, so let’s take a look at the benefits of having an educated public. First off, business needs skilled labor to operate. In fact, so many businesses are claiming a lack of educated Americans to fill their jobs as an excuse for outsourcing their work offshore or encouraging illegal immigration. Quality education would negate that excuse. A more educated public would also likely have a higher rate of employment, which would ease tax burdens on social welfare programs and increase personal wealth across the board. An educated public is less likely to have rampant crime or rundown communities. And an educated public would probably be more stable and peaceful, working together to solve the next human challenge instead of fighting for a piece of the pie. To me, these seem like very valuable returns for my investment in time and money.

So, we must stop paying lip service to the empty mantra of “Education Comes First” unless we intend to back it up with actions. Parents must be responsible for nurturing the traits necessary for a child to succeed in formal education, especially respect and responsibility. Parents and teachers must work together to demand respect and responsibility be applied to the learning process by backing each other up instead of working against each other as if the child’s happiness were the prize in a race. Business must become more flexible for families by allowing the pace of commerce to relax a bit, or adjusting their business plans to help accommodate the time families need to make their children into good adults. And society must promote personal interaction and development as more valuable than pure wealth attainment. Young people must be taught that their role in society is to learn the traits and skills that will allow them to become productive adults instead of having their whims indulged at every turn. Educators must choose to put their student’s needs ahead of their own by dispensing knowledge without bias or omission. And we must show our children that we value education by offering them safe, clean buildings, accurate and complete information, and qualified teachers and accountable administration officials.

If you teach a child to throw rocks at windows, you can’t very well be angry with him when you come home and all of your windows are broken out. He is just using the knowledge he learned in the way he was taught. In the same vein, if we allow our children to sit in front of a television or video game for hours at a time, if we allow them to ignore their teachers or disrespect us as parents, if we give them everything they ask for and expect nothing in return, we can’t blame them for becoming uneducated, disrespectful, anti-social adults.

It will do us no good to reform the way we spend our education dollars, or to restructure our teaching methods, or mandate specific mastery of specific skills, or make any other superficial changes to the system without repairing the foundation that we send our children off to school on. Without an educated society we will eventually become one of two things: either a society of ignorant peasants working for the man or a culture of autonomy, too locked into the solitary, technological grid to relate to others or contribute much to anyone. Of course, behind door number three is the promise of an educated society. Which door will you choose?

But even as we proclaim unwavering support for the goal of education, our practical application of that goal is a mockery of itself. Many of our schools are overcrowded and dilapidating. Teachers unions resist change in curriculum or organization. Special interest groups demand services that degrade the entire systems ability to serve all students equally. State and federal regulations impose mandated achievement levels that measure little in the way of actual achievement. Parents are often apathetical and uninvolved in their children’s educational development. More money is thrown into school budgets that get eaten up by studies that show that graduation rates are increasing while class options are diminishing and extra-curricular programs disappear. The list of hypocrisies goes on and on, but the bottom line is this: when it comes to education, we are speaking out of both sides of our mouths.

At the heart of the issue is the importance we do or do not place on educating our children. If, as I assume, we truly believe that education is an important key to prosperity and peaceful existence, it is time we seriously revamp our education system. Everything from the schoolhouses to the curriculum to the administration must be given a fresh look. Everything…including our expectations and our definitions for what makes a successful education. We must put aside all of the politically correct nonsense to establish a truly efficient and effective educational program that would serve all the citizens of this country.

While everyone can be educated, everyone cannot be educated equally. Accepting this fact is essential to any meaningful education reform. What this means is simply that all people are not equal with regards to mental capacity, intelligence, or practical ability. While some individuals can easily master the concepts of higher mathematics and science, others may excel at artistic endeavors or mechanical tasks. Some will learn quickly while others may not be capable of learning much beyond basic personal skills. Yet in our current climate of promoting self-esteem above actual achievement, we have allowed our schools to neglect this important fact of education. This attitude must be changed if we are ever going to progress beyond what is aptly described as either a babysitting service or a diploma mill. Yes, it’s important for people to have a good self-image, but derailing the entire education system to achieve those means is shortsighted behavior. Self-image should come from values instilled at home and not be tied to ones ability to conquer chemistry or read Latin. Because education serves in part to prepare children for the inevitable day when they will become working, participating adults, more attention should be given to the fact that all jobs are valuable, with the benefit to a smooth society coming from the combined efforts of all.

In this light, equal education is not the goal, but rather equal access to education is what should be strived for. It would be far more efficient and successful to structure our education in such a way that individuals would at some point along the line be pointed in a direction most suited to their natural abilities than to maintain the charade of mental equality. During the early years of public education, students should be measured against their peers to determine what level of performance they might achieve. Once this has been achieved, students of similar learning abilities could be taught together according to their abilities. Success should be measured on the achievement of each student and their ability to master the skills of life and education to their full potential.

Still, even though all can’t achieve an equal level of knowledge through education, we must still strive to impart certain minimum knowledge levels for all students to master. These skills would necessarily include basic reading, writing, and math skills. Practical living skills like personal finance, personal communications, and personal responsibility should also be taught. And so should civic responsibility. These are the basic skills an adult must have for a chance at success in the modern world and should not be ignored in education. A general comprehension of U.S. and world history, a basic knowledge of scientific principals, and an appreciation of art could all be important for a more rounded education, and should be taught as well.

Because education is a public endeavor, it is only fitting that the costs of education be borne by us all. But simply paying the tax collector is not enough. It is our responsibility as citizens to ensure that the taxes collected are used to educate our children and not used to pad the pockets of administrators, consultants, builders, or political committees. The state of our public school buildings is enough to make one wonder where all the dollars are going, because it sure isn’t into maintenance. This too is a problem. While it is true that a willing person can learn as easily in a sandpit as in a lecture hall, the importance we place on education is apparent in the importance we place on our educational building, and the subliminal effects of rundown or overcrowded schools only tells our children that we are less interested in their education than we are in saving a buck. Such messages only serve to diminish the value of education among our youth so we must make a conscious decision to place a priority on safe, well-maintained schools. It is a curious society that spends more money creating lavish prison complexes than it does on schoolhouses.

As a society, we must recognize the need to reform our education system. As parents, we must recognize the need to reform our own ideas about public school. One of the biggest problems in our educational system is the growing distance of thought between teachers and administrators and parents. No longer are teachers looked up to as role models for our children. Instead, parents vilify a teacher who demands accountability from their students as being too hard or too opinionated. On the other hand, teachers view parents as little more than disinterested chauffeurs dropping the kids off for another day of babysitting and socializing. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle and their needs to be some common ground on which to meet. How about this? The task for teachers and parents is to craft an educational plan that meets all the capabilities of the student while defining the responsibilities that are expected of the student, the parent, and the teacher. Children may be like sponges when it comes to obtaining information, but they can also be like sponges in another way. If they are allowed to, they will lie around and do little or nothing to improve themselves, especially if someone comes along to wring them out once in a while. Parents and teachers must come together and form a united front in order for children to excel and master the skills that are expected of them.
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In order for our educational efforts to rise beyond the level of today, into a system where costs expended produce a qualified workforce and responsible citizenry, we must rededicate ourselves to the fundamental idea that of all the social services, the ability to provide an equitable education is among the most valuable in terms of sustaining society. We must refuse to continue the ways of power politics and instead focus on the real goal of teaching our children.

Defining general welfare is at the heart of the matter. General welfare encompasses the obvious things like roads and parks and public buildings. General welfare covers the formation and administration of laws and justice and legislation. But general welfare goes beyond these tangible items that government is obliged to provide based upon our own insistence that it do so. Government, as defined in our own Declaration of Independence, is formed by men to secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and it is in these areas that my focus on general welfare will now be directed. For it is also in the general welfare to have a citizenry that is healthy, educated, and free from poverty. It is in the general welfare to provide services that ensure that a basic level of life is sustainable for all people. Over the last century, American politicians and citizens alike have made efforts to provide these “quality of life” services, and with varying levels of success. We have enacted programs to educate our young, feed our hungry, heal our sick, and shelter our poor. But instead of eradicating the number of citizens who need help, or even reducing their number, our social programs are a shambles, costing billions of dollars annually with little to show for their effort. It is an over regulated, often over lapping effort as well.

Take a look at the public institution of education. Education is a basic necessity for any civilization to advance and improve its quality of life. Many nations, ours included, recognize the importance of educating the youth and have empowered government to collect taxes to pay for a base level of public education. The supposed goal of public education is to teach young people how to master basic skills that they will need to operate as productive adult members of society. Additionally, public education is supposed to ensure that all students are exposed to science, history, and arts, as well as teaching social skills among ones peers. In America, study after study appears to show that our educational system is failing across the board. But putting all those studies aside, I am still constantly amazed at the lack of the depth of knowledge that is being taught in our schools, as evidenced in daily written communications or verbal conversations.

Or we could talk a bit about medical care and the correlation between a healthy society and the promotion of “general welfare.” Our professed belief in creating a level playing for all citizens has not yet reached the point of understanding that equitable health maintenance is critical to a prosperous society. We accept the necessity of public health care programs because we want that assurance for ourselves if we fall on hard times. But at the same time, we allow our government to use medical care as a game piece between various special interest groups without much regard for the real life consequences beyond which corporate donor gets paid back. Health care has become a complex web of corruption and indifference.

Retirement security is another member in the social program family of general welfare. One measure of a society is the manner in which they treat their elderly people. Government funded retirement security programs, like medical programs, are embraced by a public unsure of their own ability to provide for themselves in their old age, and are seeking some level of reassurance that they will not be left out in the cold. But our own social security programs, aside from being manipulated by our unworthy public servants, are entangled in a web of bureaucracy that only serves to make the days of seniors more aggravated and less relaxing.

Other socially funded programs include assistance with housing or food or childcare or programs for our military volunteers. Each of these efforts are borne out of a genuine desire by citizens to assist each other in hard times through the collections of taxes to pay for these services. But once the taxes get into the hands of the politicians, the special interest groups and corporate donors come knocking at the door, hands outstretched, trying to get the money without regard to the public desires or needs. The public, getting no relief from either political party, becomes embarrassed at first, angry in time, and apathetic at last at the seemingly endless line of corrupt politicians and business leaders.

It sometimes seems that government has some resentment at being placed at the center of social programs. Indeed, one could almost believe that the sheer inefficiency and lack of broad based successes were something of a master plan of incompetence in the hopes that the public would somehow withdraw their desire to provide social programs that ensure that everyone has the same chance out of the gate. If I wanted to get myself fired from a job, I would only need to adopt a work pattern like the government’s and I’d be out the door by lunchtime. In our desire to help each other, we have created a monster out of our government, a monster that is gobbling ever more tax dollars while placing ever more restrictions on what we can get back from our investment. Instead of operating in the best interest of the public it is tasked to serve, governments increasingly embark on missions that tinker with aspects of an already broken system instead of having the courage to point out the problems and work to get them fixed.

Entrenched ideological constructs have only enabled the morass to grow larger. Citizens have been deluded into thinking that the only reforms necessary come in the form of larger taxes, while politicians craft disingenuous policy that benefits corporations before the citizens. Breaking through that wall of complicity requires a strong dose of information and Common Sense. My next several essays will explore our public social programs of education, medicine, retirement, housing, and the others mentioned as well. I invite you to come along as I tell the truth about the state of affairs and offer some ideas for change that could really benefit society. It’s time for a fresh look at our methods. Our money, and more importantly our lives, are in the balance.