U.S. history required – in college?

August 5, 2006

Third or fourth time is the charm, right?

In Arizona, where the legislature recently decreed a U.S. flag and a copy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights will be displayed in all college classrooms, the debate now turns to whether the legislature should require the study of U.S. history by undergraduates. I appears the legislators do not find college kids have enough appreciation for our nation’s history.

I’ll reproduce the entire story out of the Arizona Republic below the fold (Dan Quayle’s family’s newspaper!).

Is it just me, or is it that these pseudo-patriots who don’t think our kids are well-enough indoctrinated always stamp the life out of history when they start these tirades? I have yet to find a law that mandates that history be interesting. Instead we get standards that provide great, boring, history-crushing, mind-and-butt-numbing lists. In short, these requirements tend to make history not worth the study.

And, as with those who celebrate Fillmore’s bringing the bathtub to the White House, the advocates almost always get history wrong. [Millard Fillmore himself, never attended college; he apprenticed first in the cloth business, and then in law.]

Barry Goldwater will be coming out of his grave to stop this silliness. Maybe literally. If such standards don’t make high school students history literate, what makes anyone think the failed methods would work on college students? If the standards do work to make high school kids knowledgeable in history, why would the college standards be necessary?

This controversy smells. It has the earmarks of being one more way to issue diatribes against “librul college professors.” It’s one more way of flogging public education, while refusing to give educators the tools to solve the problems.

Article below the fold; please comment. Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | America's founding, Bill of Rights, Curricula, Education, Flag etiquette, History, History Revisionism, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

. . . and it will trickle down to education

August 4, 2006

Heard this one before?

“Income-tax cut urged, Huntsman says it would benefit schools, but educators are wary,” is a headline in this morning’s Deseret Morning News in Salt Lake City.

Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr., wants a cut in the state income tax. Education funding shrank a great deal as a priority in Utah in the past decade, and educators want to make up lost ground — much of the state income tax goes to support education. Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Business, Current History, Education, Public education, State school boards | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Madison on education

August 3, 2006

August 4 is the 184th anniversary of Madison’s letter to William T. Barry, with a discussion of the value of education to a free, democratic republic. Parts of the letter are among the most popular of Madison quotations.

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

James Madison, letter to William T. Barry, August 4, 1822

Madison Building inscription

Photo of inscription to the left (north) of the main entrance on Independence Ave., of the James Madison Building, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Education, Good Quotes, History, James Madison, Public education, Public libraries | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Dismal job market for historians

July 28, 2006

Jason Kuznicki writes about the dismal job market for historians at Positive Liberty.

In contrast to the troubles that afflict elementary and secondary education, Kuznicki writes:

I’m conversant in economics, so I even know the method to the madness: State subsidies for higher education tend to produce an oversupply of educated people. A state can hardly fail to misallocate resources, and, in all likelihood, we have too many universities, too many graduates, and too many PhDs in the fields the politicians think are important — like history.

“Oversupply of educated people.” The kids in my history and economics courses, with whom we struggled to keep them in school for one more semester to get a high school diploma, will not read that, I hope. Nor will their successors.

Leave a Comment » | Education, History, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Public education: underreported war

July 28, 2006

Super teacher Paul White blogs at Arianna Huffington’s site. In a post titled “Public Education: America’s Most Under-Reported War,” he argues for radical change in the school system.

Sample comment:

While the War in Iraq will progressively require less financial support, no amount of funding for public schools will ever be enough until its inept leadership changes. Local school districts should actually be given less money and not more, until they agree to hire competent financial professionals to handle their budgets, and stop funneling all their funding increases into unwarranted administrative bloat. The only school budget item which does justify an increase – teachers’ pay – is the one area where school leaders refuse to spend a dime. This counterproductive action both drives out good teachers and prevents strong candidates from entering the profession.

“War” is an over-used metaphor, certainly — White’s background, teaching in some of the most difficult situations, gives him license to use it. The comparison between our nation’s efforts to secure legitimate peace in Iraq and our efforts to improve schools is a stretch.

But consider my view: Schools make the nation.

(Please continue below the fold) Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Education, State school boards, Teacher Pay | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Keep Education Green: Bring money

July 17, 2006

A member of the Utah State Board of Education has started his own blog. If I understand the politics correctly, Tim Beagley’s up for reelection this year. A blog, in that case, could be quite an exercise in bravery. It could also be an exercise in stupidity — maybe both at the same time.

In his first post he laments that Utah has fallen behind in spending, but he rather stops short of calling for a lot more money: http://kcmannn.bravejournal.com/index.php.

Utah was the most highly-educated state population in the nation in the not-too-distant past. The line I used to insert into speeches was Utah had an average educational attainment of more than 12 years in school — high school graduation — and that was not only higher than most states, it was remarkable because Utah had a significantly younger population than other states.

Education funding is a key place to improve results, if the money is spent wisely. My view is that teachers’ salaries in almost all cases need to be increased, and in most cases, increased a lot. Teachers are still the front-line workers in education, the people who make all the other delivery system improvements work (or don’t make them work), and the people who really influence children.

Any attempt to improve education without raising teachers’ salaries might be compared to an attempt to improve safety in the airline industry while freezing pilot salaries. We might get the results we want, but it will be despite our gross errors in judgment, not because of them. Let me rephrase that, trying to be more clear: The quick way, and lasting way, to improve education results is to raise teacher pay; we may get better results without raising teacher pay, but it will cost a lot more money to overcome the difficulty of making the system work when the front-line workers are not the best we can get.

I spent my last years in public schools in Utah. I had a handful of great teachers who coached me to do my best. On their efforts I won a National Merit Scholarship. Certainly the administrative decisions to keep our academic day short, and to keep calculus out of the high school curriculum, did nothing to help me achieve. I suspect that is true for most people.

It would be good to see an advocate of increasing education spending declare that openly, and win.

Postscript: I am not in the business of advising candidates for profit any more, but were I , and were he to ask, I’d urge Mr. Beagley to hustle himself to a good portrait photographer right away.

Hat tip to Lavarr Webb’s Utah Policy Daily, at UtahPolicy.com.

1 Comment | Education, Teacher Pay | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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