Comparing Our Apples to Their Oranges We Fail Every Time

I am afraid that if I hear another federal politician, bureaucrat, or television talking head blather the propaganda that American schools are horrible and failing and are way behind other developed nations, I will be on my way to jail after pummeling them soundly about the head and shoulders with an iron cudgel. And that goes for their useful idiot followers too! These prevaricators, telling a half-truth is the same as telling a whole lie, have an agenda, i.e. more interference in and control of public education by the federal gummit. (With apologies to Pogo.)

These nattering naybobs are constantly braying that the American educational system does not measure up to the systems of other developed countries. With all the hand-wringing and breast-beating, they are in effect saying that our apples don't give orange juice like the other countries' oranges so our apples are rotten. Of course, they stop short of demanding that our apples be exchanged for oranges because they would then have no position from which to push their agenda of interference and control.

The impossibility of making a fair comparison of systems and results is the fact that our apples are egalitarian while their oranges are elitist. In other words, most other education systems track students into alternative schools for trades if they cannot pass a comprehensive exam in the eighth grade leaving only those students who are able to pass the exam to enter high school and go on to university. The American system takes every child who walks across the school threshold regardless of his or her physical and mental abilities, aptitudes, attitudes, or desires and mandates that they remain in the same track ("college and careers" is what they call it this week) with no alternatives (skilled labor and trades).

When you compare the average scores of all our students with only the best of their students, of course, they will always have the higher ranking. Compare our best with their best, and we shall give them a run for the gold and shine as brightly as they appear to shine now. The educrats will never allow that to happen. Remember, interference and control.

Now that my rant is out of the way, I will freely admit after twenty-five years as a classroom teacher and fifteen years as a public school librarian, that we do have problems in the American educational system. The problems are large and as multi-faceted as the Hope Diamond and their curse has destroyed many a reformer's dreams of a new system. As long as we continue to be egalitarian, striving to educate every child in America, making alarmist and rather supercilious comparisons will not solve any problems.

Great gummit educational fiats, like "No Child Left Behind," solve no problems. The only law that might help would be one requiring every legislator anywhere in America who wants to propose education legislation to teach in a public school for a month before he or she can submit the law. Even that wouldn't help though. The bureaucrat rule writers would foul up even a good piece of legislation: Title IX comes to mind. But that is a rant for another day.