27 Feb 2005
Governors Sound Alert on U.S. High Schools

There's no doubt that the American education system is in trouble: but I think these guys are off base in their corrective prescriptions.

First, we must ask ourselves "What is the purpose of an education?" The consensus answer among politicians and business leaders seems to be "To train the population for working." That's dead wrong. One doesn't need to know calculus to drive a truck. No appreciation of the context of the French Revolution is required to be a nurse. Nor is an understanding of organic chemistry necessary to write computer programs.

The purpose of an education is: to educate! What a concept! An education is a background store of knowledge that can be applied across the educated person's life, from work to relationships to hobbys and leisure activities. An education is a knowledge and understanding of the culture in which the educated person lives and operates, and an appreciation for the foreign and historical cultures that share this planet.

A good education certainly includes a basic understanding of history, math and even organic chemistry. But those can be acquired anytime, if the key goal of an education is met. And there is only one real key to a good education.

Reading.

And that's where we're failing.

According to the National Adult Literacy Survey reported in Publishers Weekly in January of 2003, 20% of adults in the U.S. read at or below the fifth grade level. Only 56.5% of US households purchased a book in 2003. There's a whole page of these depressing statistics here.

We are churning out kids by the millions who hate reading, avoid literacy and only look at the classified ads when they do pick up a newspaper.

Remember the old saw "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."? That's the way it is in education generally: teaching somebody to turn an eighteen wheeler on a dime, or measure an injection, or paste together a Visual BASIC program is giving them a fish. Teaching someone how to read, and, more importantly, to enjoy reading, is feeding them for a lifetime.

AP - The nation's governors offered an alarming account of the American high school Saturday, saying only drastic change will keep millions of students from falling short.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

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