The original four articles in the "Education That
Works" series pointed out that we've
been
educating children effectively for many generations, and discussed some
of the ways
earlier generations ensured that kids learned what they needed to
know to become productive adults.
Eight years ago, we wrote an article discussing the leading threats to America
which
included our failing education system. More recently,
we published a similar
article outlining long-term existential threats to our nation,
specifically, unrestricted immigration and unrestricted
spending. We oppose these because we'd like to see America
survive in
pretty much its current form and spend its energy improving things
rather than stirring up conflict.
Thinking about national survival got us thinking about family
survival. While bad education may not be quite as pressing
and urgent as is the threat from unrestricted immigration, it still
represents an existential threat to individual
families to the same degree that open borders threaten our
nation.
The only way a family can survive in the long term
is to educate their children so that their children and grandchildren
can succeed regardless of what happens around them. The
problem is that all too many
Americans are having a very difficult time doing so as
public schools become steadily more expensive and less effective.
Educational excellence works quite well in preserving
families. Back in 1427, the City of Florence faced a
financial crisis, identified "the rich," and hit them for
money. The records were preserved despite centuries of
tumult all up
and down the Italian peninsula. Lo and behold, families which
were rich in 1427 are still rich! Educating
successive generations of their children preserved family wealth for
nearly five centuries despite wars, changing forms of government, and
even several changes of national independence.
Although teaching skills such as plumbing can lead to a good
living, family preservation also requires teaching more general
disruption-survival skills
which are
needed during what the Chinese call "interesting times." This
includes philosophy, history, and becoming familiar with what we
loosely call the "great books" of philosophy which give
generally-applicable insights to navigating the stormy waters of human
nature.
It also requires creating and passing
along connections to other families or individuals who can help your
children survive. The Clintons' history of rewarding loyalty
is one of the reason the Clintons have so many
dedicated defenders. Even
now, someone who wasn't concerned with morality might
want a child or other relative to establish a connection to the Clinton
Machine. Regardless of whether Hillary goes to jail, the
Clinton Machine will have
enough money to be able to continue to reward loyal service, if
necessary by protecting them from the consequences of their illegal and
immoral actions in its service.
The bottom line today is that of all the players in the
trillion-dollar
public American K-16 educational system, only some
parents
care whether
their children learn or not. Legislators are too busy
courting votes
from teachers' unions and unions are too busy protecting incompetent
teachers to care whether kids learn anything. The few
parents who care can't get much traction against the forces who benefit
from and thus desire to preserve the expensive, failing status quo.
Some
individual public-school teachers do care about their students, of
course,
but on average, the
only teachers who can be relied on to care what their students learn
work for private
schools. This is because the private school business model
depends on
getting graduates into a
desirable institution in the next level of the education system, be it
a super-competitive grade school or the Ivy League. Otherwise
parents will stop shelling out big bucks for private-school tuition
and, having no union permanently attached to a taxpayer bloodvein, the
teachers will soon be laid off.
Probabilities, Not Certainties
Giving your children the best possible education doesn't
guarantee
their economic success, of course. We've read of Harvard-educated lawyers who ended up
homeless. Nor is formal education
necessary: Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg famously dropped
out of Harvard and achieved acceptable financial success.
It
would be a mistake to call either of them uneducated,
however. Before they entered Harvard, each of them had
learned how to
learn whatever they needed to know in any given situation and learn it
fast. One of
the fastest and best ways to acquire knowledge is to hire people
who already have it; that's what Microsoft, Facebook, and Google have
done
since the beginning.
Hiring good people and getting high value from their work
requires soft
people skills and the ability to manage a dynamically-growing
organization. Deciding which skills should be hired into the
organization requires a fair amount of technical knowledge of the
business. A bad hire can be disastrous for a small company
which is why many start-ups rely on college roommates or family members
whom the founder knows well.
These entrepreneurial skills are suited for the historical
United States which has traditionally encouraged new
businesses, though that's getting less so in Obama's "You didn't build
that!" America. We can't imagine the skills which
were needed to survive in
Medieval Florence, during Victor Emanuel's wars which united Italy,
Mussolini's Fascism, or the battles during World War II, but whatever
skills were needed, those long-wealthy Florentine families either had
them or acquired them as needed. Being able to learn
quickly is one key to survival; being able to figure out what you need
to learn is the other. Those are the essential skills parents
need to
impart.
A Bit of History
Before public schools were established, parents directly paid
for
whatever knowledge their children acquired or provided it
themselves. Philip of Macedon
hired Aristotle to teach his son Alexander for three years and hired
lesser lights to teach him the military arts. The lessons
must have stuck - Alexander went on to be called "the Great" and
conquered everything between Greece and India. Rich
Roman families purchased educated Greek slaves to tutor their children.
During the Middle Ages, educated wanderers could find a ready
market for their services tutoring the offspring of the 1%.
This tradition has continued down to modern
times. Harold Macmillan, who was Prime Minister of England
until
1963, started learning Greek from a hired tutor at the age of
5. He went on to read the "great books" in their original
languages, which helped him avoid having to re-learn many
politically-disastrous lessons.
Family-guided education even boats ancient Biblical support:
Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child,
differeth
nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; But is under tutors
and governors until the time appointed of the
father.
- Galatians 4:1-2
Family management of education was common until
recently. Two centuries ago, most
families
worked on farms. The wife managed the house, ran the kitchen
garden, and gave the children whatever education they received beyond
watching their parents care for crops and care for the
animals. Primary education, such as it was, was the woman's
job. The
man labored in the fields and didn't have the energy to do much
teaching; feeding the family required maximum focus because if he
failed, it was "game over" regardless of how much his children
had learned.
Parental involvement still makes a huge difference. The Washington
Post emphasized the major impact
parental wealth has on a child's educational achievements:
Wealthy parents are famously pouring more and more into
their children, widening the gap in who has access to piano lessons
and math tutors and French language camp. The biggest investment the
rich can make in their kids, though - one with equally profound
consequences for the poor - has less to do with "enrichment" than real
estate.
Wealthy families can buy pricey homes in nice neighborhoods with
good school districts. As competition for "good schools"
becomes more
intense, buying a house in such neighborhoods usually requires that both
husband and wife work. While the husband still
feeds his family with the income from his job, most if not all of the
wife's income goes to pay for the expensive house in a good school
district. Education is still the wife's job
because all her money either goes to pay the mortgage in a house with a
good school district or pays for a pricey private school.
The Homeschooling Option
Parents who teach their own kids don't have to live in
high-priced
neighborhoods because public school quality doesn't matter much to
them. That makes it marginally more possible for a family to
provide a decent
education on one income, but homeschool families are still stuck
paying for school twice, once with their time, and once in their taxes.
Although homeschooling started out among parents who wanted
to keep their children safe from wicked unGodly ideas promoted in
public schools, more and more non-religious people are opting for
homeschooling because they understand that they can do a better job and
benefit their kids.
Home-schooling has gone so mainstream that the Wall Street
Journal wrote about an $8 million dollar
home school:
The family is part of a small subset of affluent homeowners
who
home-school their kids - but not for typical reasons of wanting to
provide religious instruction or because they don't like the public
schools nearby. Instead, they say they can create their own optimal
learning environments by buying or building homes in which almost
every room is a classroom.
People that rich are a small subset of home-schoolers, but the
number is expanding. Not having to cope with the hassles
imposed by a
school schedule, being able to travel in the off-season, being able to
teach at the maximum rate possible for each child, and being able to
educate kids year-round is worth a lot to families who're willing to
sacrifice one parent's income in return for having a full-time
teacher on-site.
The Socialization Scam
Critics assert that home-schooled kids aren't
"socialized." Nay-sayers claim that home-schooled kids are
isolated which means they
don't learn how to get along well with others. Many studies
have
shown, however, that home-schooled students are better socialized than
kids in the public school because they avoid undesirable peer pressure
and because they spend proportionately more time with
adults.
There is one other traditional method of producing successful
outcomes which parents
can
implement but modern public schools
cannot:
Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of
correction shall drive it far from him.
- Proverbs
22:15
Instead of driving foolishness out of children, public schools
collect
all
the foolishness in town, sort it by age,
and put 20 or 30 foolish kids in a classroom managed by one
adult. It's no wonder that kids become more mature
with
the
much smaller class sizes found in home-schools where older children
reinforce their own knowledge by teaching younger siblings.
So What To Teach?
Any parent who pays attention can help children through at least 6th
grade and probably well beyond that given the vast amount of free
learning
materials which are available via the Internet. At some
point,
it may be
advantageous to seek out a "home-school co-op" where parents,
volunteers, and the occasional hired tutor supplement the parents'
efforts. Kids gather 2 or 3 times a week for such learning
activities.
Home school co-ops offer two other forms of socialization which parents
might want to impart: the ability to get along with peers and the
formation of life-long friendships chosen from a like-minded group.
The book Penrod
and Sam by Booth Tarkington was part of an early
homeschooling curriculum. Penrod attended public
school in a time when horses
were being
replaced by automobiles. His
parents
wanted him to learn "social graces," and forced their
reluctant scion to go to dancing classes taught by a stern French
instructor. This exposed him to a different peer group from
his
schoolmates.
The dance season culminated in a "cotillion" where each young
gentleman was required to formally request a young lady to accompany
him, then attend her properly at the dance. Penrod avoided
the dreaded
dance
by falling off a barn, but his invitation and his
note of regret were
delivered correctly even though both he and his "date" were so
unhappy with the prospect that the invitation and acceptance were
proffered through gritted teeth and tears respectively. The
teacher succeeded, though, because everything was done in
the proper form no matter how badly Penrod didn't want to do it.
What
did this accomplish? While growing up, Penrod learned that
there are some things you simply have to do, no matter how repugnant
they may seem. As the old saying has it, "A real man shoots
his own dog."
After Penrod grew up, he could conduct himself
properly in formal settings had he desired to do so,
and as an adult in the early 20th century, this was an essential skill
for getting ahead in life. Even today, softer "character
skills" such
as perseverance, sociability, initiative, creativity, and curiosity are
highly valued by employers.
Modern American culture has fewer consistent formalities than
in Penrod's
day, but it's still beneficial to know how to use the proper fork
when dining, how to behave at a dance, and other such matters which
might be more easily taught in a co-op. In addition, the
students in
the co-op are likely to come from homes with similar educational goals
so their aspirations can reinforce each other instead of tearing down.
Education Strategy
The first step in preparing children to learn is teaching them
to read, preferably starting as they're learning to talk. A
parent who seeks to build a child's vocabulary can pat a wall while
saying "wall." This teaches children that everything has a
matching sound.
At the same time, get some large plastic
letters, trace around them to make signs, and put the signs where they
belong. Then, when you say "wall," sound out the
letters one at a time. This teaches the child that everything
has a sound, sounds are made up of symbols, and each symbol
stands for a sound. After that, reading to your child and
pointing to the words helps get across that "a" has a sound, it has
a shape, and it has a taste which the child explores by chewing it.
None of this is groundbreaking news: it's been known for
years
that reading with your small children makes a world of difference.
What is new is how profoundly the Internet
has expanded educational
opportunities for everyone with access which includes just about
everyone in the West and many in the Third World too.
For example, once your child begins to read, the goal is to
increase their reading speed as much as possible. Doubling a
child's reading speed doubles the learning per unit time spent up to a
point. There are dozens of web sites which help teach kids to
read faster.
You also need to teach your children to type - maybe someday
voice
recognition software will be reliable, but it's been 10 years away for
nearly half a century now. Teaching typing is actually fairly
simple - insist that they always use the correct fingering which you
can teach in five minutes. If they do that, speed comes with
practice, which online programs excel at enforcing.
Even if someday speech recognition will render
typing less important, they'll still have to correct
anything they've dictated. For now, more than ever, typing
fast pays for itself many
times
over.
On the assumption that the Internet will be around at least
until your kids get out of high school, it's imperative to teach them
to learn from computer-based courses, many of which are
free. Learning in that way gives them experience interacting
with
computers, and jobs which require no computer interaction
are already few and far between.
Knowledge Vs Credentials
The major unsolved problem with on-line learning is
that
nobody knows how to keep students from cheating, so it can be hard to
get employers or colleges to recognize knowledge gained in that
way. A student can claim the equivalent of a high school
graduation certificate by passing GED tests, however, and most states
allow parents to issue their own home school diploma which is accepted
more often than not.
For post-secondary education, CLEP tests
allow
students to get academic credit from participating colleges by passing
tests. As long as the parent makes sure the student is
actually
covering the material, passing tests helps the student gain
certification as
well as
competence.
The Economist had a recent special section
on the amazing
advances which have been made in artificial intelligence
which is
loosely defined as teaching computers how to do things that used to
require people. Nobody knows which new jobs will be created
or old jobs destroyed; this is another reason a child needs to learn
how to learn fast.
Artificial intelligence is making computer-based instruction
more effective as computers "learn" what instruction style is best for
each student. The effects on education are already so
shattering that the Economist's
AI report had a special section on how it will
affect learning.
The leader starts by observing that a Stanford
University course "Introduction to AI" was offered on-line in 2011 and
160,000 people
in 190 countries signed up. "Only" 23,000
completed the course, which has led nay-sayers to complain that on-line
learning has too high a failure rate; advocates argue that the course
taught one thousand times as many students as would have been possible
with traditional brick-and-mortar instruction.
Given that
this course
was offered for free, even those who dropped out probably
benefited from realizing that learning AI was not their dish of tea and
they should seek success elsewhere.
The Economist points out although the
lessons in the
"great books" have stood the test of time, technical know-how goes
stale much more rapidly than it used to.
“The old system will have to be very seriously revised,”
says
Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University. Since 1945, he points out,
educational systems have encouraged specialisation, so students learn
more and more about less and less. But as knowledge becomes obsolete
more quickly, the most important thing will be learning to relearn,
rather than learning how to do one thing very well. Mr Mokyr thinks
that education currently treats people too much like clay—“shape it,
then bake it, and that’s the way it stays”—rather than like putty,
which can be reshaped.
Although apprenticeship is an effective way to learn, long
apprenticeships don't make sense if the knowledge changes
every three to five years. Plumbers have to
keep up with new materials, new standards, and new appliances; truck
drivers will shortly be rendered
obsolete. That's why a solid foundation of literacy and
numeracy is
essential - the rules of algebra and geometry haven't changed in
thousands of years, but the way
different professions use them
changes daily.
These changes will have profound effects on our society and
politicians are being forced to take notice. As John Stuart
Mill
observed, “There cannot be a more
legitimate object of the
legislator’s
care” than looking after those whose livelihoods have been disrupted by
machines.
We can't predict how our politicians will react to the
expanding world of educational technology, but we can help
parents use it to the best advantage for their children. The
next article in this series discusses some on-line learning sites and
ways in which they can be useful.
Parents must realize that
the list changes rapidly enough that only Google can keep
up; the point of the list is to show that any parent can
put
together an effective K-6 or even K-12 curriculum at no cost and which
students can learn at their own pace. Given the wealth of
material which is available to anyone with a decent Internet
connection, there's no reason a diligent student couldn't achieve "16
by 16," that is, learn the expected material contained in 12 years of
grade school and 4 years of college by age 16.
If your offspring are beyond school age, there's no reason
why you shouldn't bestir your own neurons by learning something new.
Are you really confident that you can cruise on to
retirement
doing exactly the same thing you are doing now?