Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events

Jerry Pournelle on education

A short bit from his webpage:

^Reform of the US secondary education system would end the depression and cause people to export jobs to us; but it is not likely to happen. The purpose the US public education system is to employ teachers who have graduated from Education Departments at what are now often called universities but which were, when education was working well, Normal Schools that gave 2 year degrees. I didn't get a college graduate teacher until I was at Christian Brothers College ( a high school run as a part of a junior college) and not all the Brothers were 4 year graduates even there. Yet I got a good university prep education. Memphis also had "technical" high school programs of shops, mechanics training, and such like. ^

^The US education system pretends to give everyone equal access to college, which means that very few get an actual college prep education since it has to be tailored to the stupid so that no child is left behind.^

^This would be handled nicely by the market, but of course the teachers unions prevent that. We are left with home schooling, which ought not to be as effective or useful as a real school with real teachers, and with exceptions like Robinson and his kids, generally isn't as effective as the schools were when I was in them. So it goes.^

^Nothing much will be done because the students never know what they have lost, and no one else cares as much as the teachers unions. The unions have learned well: the Iron Law was never better illustrated. The good teachers avoid union office. Those who want to be union leaders as opposed to being effective teachers get the jobs. The results were predicted and predictable.^
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We built our modern society with an education system that spent a hell of a lot less and worked a hell of a lot better.

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