“Unfortunately, in many parts of the United States the condition of the intermediate schools and academics has been grievously neglected; and the authorities of the universities have been compelled to lower their standard, and to admit students totally unprepared for more advanced studies.”* Are you surprised that the foregoing statement was written for the June, 1831, issue of The American Quarterly Review? We seem to keep pedaling--and peddling-- a system that yields little progress as though we’re on a stationary bike.
With regard to education, shouldn’t we ask, at least periodically, about not only our intellectual direction, but also about our means of traveling? That the complaint registered in 1831 is mirrored in similar expressions today seems an indication that education as an institutionalized process has not progressed. Have there been brilliant students and great professors over the past century and a half? Of course. But has the state of educational institutions evolved to eliminate the complaint of 1831? Not really.
You don’t need to read the 1831 article in The American Quarterly Review, but were you to glance through it, you would find almost every issue that plagues discussions about the efficacy of education today: Discipline, testing methods, preparation, selection of faculty, and standards. You might, however, want to ask yourself, “What the heck are we doing with all that money we spend on education?”
Money? How much? The President’s Fiscal Year Budget for 2018 request provides $59 billion in discretionary funding. That’s down from the previous $68 billion budget, but it’s on the back of eliminating more than 30 duplicate programs in the Federal Department of Education. Thirty! Duplicate! Tens of billions of dollars! And no one in the Department teaches anyone. In those expenditures lie $616.8 million for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) “for continued support of research, evaluation, and statistics that help educators, policymakers, and other stakeholders improve outcomes for all students.”**
“So,” asks an alien visitor, “haven’t you Earthlings mastered this education stuff after all these years of educating?” Apparently, we haven’t. Apparently, we’re struggling with the same problems in education we struggled with not just since 1831, but since Prodicus of Ceos, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle tried to teach philosophy more than a couple of millennia ago. Again, what the heck are we doing?
Want more? The states and localities spend money on education in addition to the federal grant money they receive. The National Center for Education Statistics says the USA spent $634 billion (average of $12,509 per student) on education in 2013-14.
Don’t look for change. Sorry, that’s pessimistic, but it seems to be the reality. Way back in the nineteenth century, the author of the The American Quarterly Review article noted the number of universities and colleges in the Western World: “In no country are the colleges of higher schools so numerous, in proportion to the population, as in the United States. In France there are three universities; in Italy, eight, in Great Britain, eight; in Germany, twent-two, and in Russia, seven: whilst in the United States, we have thirteen institutions bearing the title of universities, and thirty-three that of colleges… yet a very wrong inference would be drawn, were we affirm that the education of a nation is always in direct ratio with the number of its higher schools.” And today? Well, for 2013-2014, the National Center for Education Statistics reports 3,039 four-year colleges and 1,685 two-year colleges, all receiving students from not only America’s 98,271 public schools, but also from home-schools, and foreign schools. ***
Yet, we still have the same complaints we had in the nineteenth century—and probably in the Lyceum in Athens in the fourth century B.C.(E.). Ah! The circle of life! Or, the recycling of education.
While we’re on that stationary educational bike pedaling away and going virtually nowhere fast, could we just pick up a book, do a little memorizing, and see whether or not just plain hard work makes a slight difference in the number and kind of complaints? Here’s a generalization: Most of those highly accomplished students and successful graduates of the past two centuries probably worked hard. But it doesn’t matter what I say, and it doesn’t matter how much money we throw into educational research, the process will continue as it has since the time of ancient Greece.
After all--literally millennia--that cycling, what can we say? "The reality of riding a stationary bike is that no matter how much time and energy we have put into pedaling, most riders have ended their efforts in the starting place, and the costs incurred in buying every supposedly 'new' bike have done little or nothing to change that reality."
*The American Quarterly Review, No. XVIII, June, 1831. Online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35739/35739-h/35739-h.htm#Art_II
**Fact Sheet: President Trump’s FY 2018 Budget: A New Foundation for American Greatness Prioritizing Students, Empowering Parents, (Federal) Department of Education.
*** https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84
With regard to education, shouldn’t we ask, at least periodically, about not only our intellectual direction, but also about our means of traveling? That the complaint registered in 1831 is mirrored in similar expressions today seems an indication that education as an institutionalized process has not progressed. Have there been brilliant students and great professors over the past century and a half? Of course. But has the state of educational institutions evolved to eliminate the complaint of 1831? Not really.
You don’t need to read the 1831 article in The American Quarterly Review, but were you to glance through it, you would find almost every issue that plagues discussions about the efficacy of education today: Discipline, testing methods, preparation, selection of faculty, and standards. You might, however, want to ask yourself, “What the heck are we doing with all that money we spend on education?”
Money? How much? The President’s Fiscal Year Budget for 2018 request provides $59 billion in discretionary funding. That’s down from the previous $68 billion budget, but it’s on the back of eliminating more than 30 duplicate programs in the Federal Department of Education. Thirty! Duplicate! Tens of billions of dollars! And no one in the Department teaches anyone. In those expenditures lie $616.8 million for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) “for continued support of research, evaluation, and statistics that help educators, policymakers, and other stakeholders improve outcomes for all students.”**
“So,” asks an alien visitor, “haven’t you Earthlings mastered this education stuff after all these years of educating?” Apparently, we haven’t. Apparently, we’re struggling with the same problems in education we struggled with not just since 1831, but since Prodicus of Ceos, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle tried to teach philosophy more than a couple of millennia ago. Again, what the heck are we doing?
Want more? The states and localities spend money on education in addition to the federal grant money they receive. The National Center for Education Statistics says the USA spent $634 billion (average of $12,509 per student) on education in 2013-14.
Don’t look for change. Sorry, that’s pessimistic, but it seems to be the reality. Way back in the nineteenth century, the author of the The American Quarterly Review article noted the number of universities and colleges in the Western World: “In no country are the colleges of higher schools so numerous, in proportion to the population, as in the United States. In France there are three universities; in Italy, eight, in Great Britain, eight; in Germany, twent-two, and in Russia, seven: whilst in the United States, we have thirteen institutions bearing the title of universities, and thirty-three that of colleges… yet a very wrong inference would be drawn, were we affirm that the education of a nation is always in direct ratio with the number of its higher schools.” And today? Well, for 2013-2014, the National Center for Education Statistics reports 3,039 four-year colleges and 1,685 two-year colleges, all receiving students from not only America’s 98,271 public schools, but also from home-schools, and foreign schools. ***
Yet, we still have the same complaints we had in the nineteenth century—and probably in the Lyceum in Athens in the fourth century B.C.(E.). Ah! The circle of life! Or, the recycling of education.
While we’re on that stationary educational bike pedaling away and going virtually nowhere fast, could we just pick up a book, do a little memorizing, and see whether or not just plain hard work makes a slight difference in the number and kind of complaints? Here’s a generalization: Most of those highly accomplished students and successful graduates of the past two centuries probably worked hard. But it doesn’t matter what I say, and it doesn’t matter how much money we throw into educational research, the process will continue as it has since the time of ancient Greece.
After all--literally millennia--that cycling, what can we say? "The reality of riding a stationary bike is that no matter how much time and energy we have put into pedaling, most riders have ended their efforts in the starting place, and the costs incurred in buying every supposedly 'new' bike have done little or nothing to change that reality."
*The American Quarterly Review, No. XVIII, June, 1831. Online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35739/35739-h/35739-h.htm#Art_II
**Fact Sheet: President Trump’s FY 2018 Budget: A New Foundation for American Greatness Prioritizing Students, Empowering Parents, (Federal) Department of Education.
*** https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84
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