Education: What to Do?

The other day, rancher, military expert, and college teacher Victor Davis Hanson went shopping in his hometown, the town where six generations of Hansons had gotten “a good, competitive K-12 education.&rdquo:  Not any more.

I noticed that the 20-something cashier could not count out change. The next day, at the electronic outlet store, another young clerk could not read -- much less explain -- the basic English of the buyer’s warranty.

As another school year is set to get under way, it’s worth pondering where this epidemic of ignorance came from.

What should we do about it?  More testing?  That’s not what the Democrats want.  Writes Debra J. Saunders, quoting Rep. George Miller (D-CA):

"Many Americans do not believe that the success of our students or of our schools can be measured by one test administered on one day, and I agree with them. This is not fair."

The reason we have testing, of course, is that the federal government has been churning out cash to local school districts and most of the money has been wasted.  When you dole out taxpayers’ money to government bureaucrats it is very difficult to get any accountability unless you are ruthless about reporting and results.

But parents don’t like it when little Johnny flunks a grade, and teachers don’t like anybody telling them what to do.

So what do we need?  More money?  More compulsion?  More programs?

How about some radical change?  How about we let parents decide where they want their children to go to school?

It’s interesting that the biggest increase in male literacy in Britain was in the years immediately around 1870.  That was the year that Parliament passed a law providing for board schools to fill the gaps in private education.  But by 1880 when British education became compulsory, literacy was already up to 95 percent according to Clark in A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World.

Here’s the point.  In the United States, literacy was always high, whatever education system we had.  In Britain, literacy rose throughout the 19th century and reached a peak right about the time that education became compulsory, i.e., before it had a chance to educate a new generation of children.

So let’s try something different.  Let’s not pretend that government can educate our children.

Let’s return the responsibility for education to parents.