Bernie Sanders and his toothless education program
For all the Bernie Sanders’ self labelling, I don’t think he cares much about socialism. But what he, evidently, does care about is national pride. He bemoans the United States’ position in the all-important ranking of “percentage of young Americans with college degrees” . He says:
Our nation used to lead the world … We were number one. Today, we are number 11 … and that is not acceptable.
Seriously? Being 11th out of about 200 countries in the world is not acceptable? This is a clear case of American exceptionalism.
To return to the number one position in the world Bernie suggests the following 8-step plan:
- Combating Racial Discrimination and School Segregation
- End the Unaccountable Profit-Motive of Charter Schools
- Equitable Funding for Public Schools
- Strengthen the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
- Give Teachers a Much-Deserved Raise and Empower them to Teach
- Expand After-School/Summer Education Programs
- Universal School Meals
- Community Schools
There is not a single item that concerns actual teaching among the puffy goals he lists. It is, basically, a money talk. But the fact is that American schools already receive more funding than schools in most other countries. Where all this money go?
Every district, nay, almost every teacher create their own curricula. For example, Chicago Public Schools district just set aside $135 million for “developing and licensing new teaching materials from textbook giant McGraw-Hill and several other education companies”. Apparently, the EngageNY program developed by the state of New York for reported $36.6 million does not fit picky “CPS student body”. At the same time, one third of Chicago high schools do not offer biology, chemistry or physics.
The Chicago teacher’s union criticized either developing or purchasing a curriculum. Why? I suppose, because the current situation when every teacher develops their own program requires more teachers, and smaller classes. It works for the union’s agenda of employing more teachers, but do they care about their students’ actual education?
In short, public school system as it exists now is a bottomless money pit.
Here are some ideas to improve public schools in America, in no particular order:
- Public schools must be federally funded;
- Public schools must have federally controlled social and political agenda;
- Federally-mandated curricula should be provided for all public schools free of charge (paper textbooks can be sold for reasonable price, but no more than say $25 per textbook);
- All tests administered to students must be available to teachers and parents, including questions and answer keys;
- Throw away “science” and “social studies” as useless, pitiful subjects and replace them with proper history, philosophy, geography;
- Physics, chemistry, biology must be multi-year courses starting from middle school;
- Algebra must start from middle school;
- Geometry must teach the basics of logic and contain the essential proofs (take the Elements for inspiration);
- Mandatory foreign language (considering that English is mandatory national language);
- Elementary students should not spend six hours in school every day, shorten their days to three to four hours;
- Use phonics in all schools from the very start, dump Whole Language;
- Develop federal buildings and furniture codes to ensure enough natural light in classrooms, with large desks and with chairs that don’ t break students’ backs;
- Make 10-minute breaks a federal minimum, anything shorter than that should be criminalized;
- Prohibit classes longer than 50 minutes;
- Start school no earlier than at 8 a.m.
I can think of at least as many as I have already listed, but I think my point is clear: concentrate on actual education, not on edu-speak, or edu-administration.
So far, I am thoroughly disappointed in Bernie.
