EDUCATION AS A RELIGION

"Education has become a sort of public religion in this country with its own set of "truths." Those who question the accepted dogma are seen as heretics and face quick political oblivion. Decades of self serving promotion by those working in the education industry have programmed Americans to accept without question one of the most expensive and inefficient systems for passing on knowledge to new generations in the history of mankind.

This hollowed and sacred system guarantees twelve years of "free" public education to all. The majority of high school graduates forget almost everything they learn beyond the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, within ten years of graduating. The taxpayers are effectively asked to pay for twelve years of schooling to get six years of education. No one questions this since a high school diploma has come to signify an absolute good, with little regard for the actual improvement in the life of its holder. True many high school graduates also receive valuable vocational training, but this is denigrated in a society that sees any vocational training as the road to lower social class.

We send millions more young people to colleges and universities than there are actual jobs requiring the education they are to receive there. Young people are promised that a college education is the key to a good job. The truth is that the colleges and universities who promote this view do so to attract students and earn tuitions. They have no way of delivering on their promises. Four years of studying French Literature or Oriental Philosophy may be rewarding in terms of personal growth, but does not guarantee a lucrative career.

We accept the notion that the problems of public education are related to money. Yet there are many examples of people being educated for a fraction of what our schools cost. These same people often exceed the achievements of both public and private schooled students. We confuse education with schooling. Sitting in classrooms, taking notes, studying for tests, doing homework, and all the other school related activities are just one small part of how human beings acquire knowledge and mastery. Since these methods create lots of good paying jobs for teachers and administrators they are the methods sold to the public. Why don't more people question this model?....

A real discussion of education should start with a default position that the government has no role to play in it. From there a good logical analysis should be developed and the problems in a completely voluntary educational model identified. Addressing those problems with the minimal use of government should be the goal. Then will we see a real free market develop to offer competing ideas in educating. This will empower students and parents instead of strangle the taxpayers. Only then will education be both inexpensive and efficient."

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Too Much Schooling? A British Comment

I heartily agree

"More than a century ago the tramlines were set: the more people there are at school, the better; and the more years they spend there, the better. This is especially true of children and young people; why, their proper place is in school. This conventional assumption has nothing to do with actual learning. It's just the right place for them to be. Once, they went in there at 5 and came out at fourteen. Nine years they stayed there; not enough. So the school-leaving age was raised to 15 and then in the sixties to 16. A while after this in the late seventies it was noticed that after 11 years in their proper place, 40 per cent of school children had no usable batch of skills, qualification or learning. Many were illiterate and innumerate.

Did anyone give a sceptical glance at the institution that had demanded so much of these children's time and so much public money? No. In government, nothing succeeds like failure. The problem was that the children and young people had not spent enough time in the institution. They were encouraged, cajoled and now, under Blair bribed to stay on. Not only to stay on but to go to university, or at least institutions which were renamed universities. While some politicians were trying to extend educational attendance at the 'university' end, others were tugging away at the nursery and kindergarten end. The ideal is now clear: children should enter the institution at three and leave at 21, in fact 22 allowing for the very necessary Australian-Thai holiday gap year. What was 9 years is now, for many, 19 years.

The precise numbers need to be spelt out. This institution, schooling, is now allowed and funded to monopolize young people's time for more than 4,000 days or 25,000 hours. Yet it takes a commercial organization only a dozen or so hours to teach someone to drive a car and a commercial language school will get you proficient in a foreign language in several weeks. The state's Little Pied Piper children leave after tens of thousands of hours in state schooling institutions inarticulate in their own language.

Set aside for the moment the arguments about just how little they learn in all those hours, weeks and years. What is never challenged is the assumption that school, or schools called universities, are the right places for children and youth. The assumption is that they should be there and nowhere else. The assumption is revealed in all its thoughtlessness in the literature of the anti-child labour lobby. Where should children not be? At work, of course. And why not? 'Why not, do you really want to push toddlers up chimneys again or have them rooting on rubbish tips or selling their bodies as they do in South America?' No, but then I don't want adults forced up chimneys either. Nor do I want them on rubbish tips or selling their bodies. That is nothing to do with children. It is about work no-one should have to do.

Once this nonsense is put aside, why should children not be at work? Because they will be exploited? Surely their parents would not let them be and nor would a regulatory government. So why not? It comes down to this. Children should not be at work because - wait for it - their proper place is at school. Where school is concerned all the worries of the anti-child labour lobby are thrown aside. They who are so worried about employers coercing and exploiting children don't care that schools have much more power to coerce and exploit children. They don't care that the schooling institutions can keep their charges working for no wage, in many cases, without any demonstrable educational benefit for years on end.... "

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AUSTRALIA'S CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT WARY OF THROWING MONEY DOWN A HOLE

One look at the "success" of the British and American policies would show why

"An OECD education analysis last week found that Australian public investment in education, at 4.4 per cent of GDP, was below the mean of OECD countries.

The deans of education, whose manifesto is aimed at influencing policy during the election campaign, said in Britain the national education budget had doubled in the past decade, as it had in the US since 1996. In Australia, federal spending on education as a percentage of total budget outlays has fallen from more than 9 per cent in 1974-75 to 6 per cent in 2002-03."

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