Education Crisis in American Schools: Training Teachers to Fail

There’s a literacy crisis in American schools as reading scores plummet. Part of the problem lies in newly minted teaching methods. The prevailing mindset includes this piece of wisdom: “The worst thing a teacher can do when students ask questions is answer them…Students only want to write about what they’re interested in.” Teaching the basics of phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension is a thing of the past. When students struggle in reading, teachers are instructed to “. . . utilize shortcuts to ‘increase engagement’ like leveled reading, technology, audiobooks, and graphic novels.”

The Intrusion of PC Culture into Education

The PC culture has intruded into education at all levels. To force students into so-called rigid models of learning or impose so-called dominant ideas upon them is anathema. It doesn’t matter that students are not learning, and are therefore relegated to a future filled with struggle and failure. A common sense approach in education basics is a must, but we won’t get it.

The Stifling of Independent Thinking

No doubt that rigidity is not always good. Students need to be taught to think, to analyze, to extrapolate, and to forecast. Critical thinking is a must. So too is independent thinking. But that’s all the more reason we need effective teaching methods when it comes to reading and writing. And the only way to engage and develop thinking “muscles” is to broaden a student’s horizons and provide answers to their questions.

The Need for Right Assumptions

Of course, critical and independent thinking can’t be rooted in relativism if one is to be truly educated. It’s God’s world, and one must think through His lens in order to see things rightly whether the issue is related to ethics, science, math, history, literature, art, or whatever. We all analyze everything with our own assumptions – our own worldview. There is but one true worldview – God’s. All others are false.

Finally, it’s not inappropriate to point out the inefficiency and even oppression of government education. When education is removed from parents, so too is freedom. When education becomes a matter of prevailing, political opinion, education itself is removed. We’re just a country of useful idiots.

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