Third World America - Arianna Huffington [45]
Plus, as President Obama pointed out, society’s demands are different than they used to be.114 In the 1950s, only 20 percent of high school graduates were expected to go to college. Another 20 percent were meant to go straight into skilled jobs, such as accounting or middle management.115 The remaining 60 percent would become factory workers or go back to work on their farms. “The problem is,” says Guggenheim, “our schools haven’t changed—but the world around them has.”116
Once again, it’s a question of priorities.117 Just look at the explosion of spending on America’s jails over the past twenty years. During that time, new prisons have been popping up at a rate even McDonald’s would envy—and the number of people living behind bars has tripled, to more than two million.118 In fact, America has more people living behind bars than any other country.119
Sadly, in that prison population are close to 150,000 children.120 With their high dropout rates, too many of America’s schools have become preparatory facilities not for college but for jail. Time after time, when the choice has come down to books versus bars, our political leaders have chosen to build bigger prisons rather than figure out how to send fewer kids to them. How is it that we are willing to spend so much more on kids after they are found guilty of crimes than we are when they could really use the help?
In the end, the blame for the chronic inability to fix our educational system has to be laid at the feet of our leaders in Washington. As predictably as a school bell, every election season our candidates promise to transform our schools—and, just as predictably, they fail to do so.
George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law—but despite its passage, millions and millions of schoolkids have been left behind.
Bill Clinton started his second term vowing, “My number one priority for the next four years is to ensure that all Americans have the best education in the world.”121 But as of 1999, America’s eighth graders ranked nineteenth in the world in math and eighteenth in science.122
We saw a similar pattern with George W’s father, who promised to “revolutionize America’s schools.” “By the year 2000,” Bush 41 vowed in his 1990 State of the Union address, “U.S. students must be the first in the world in math and science achievement.123 Every American adult must be a skilled, literate worker and citizen.… The nation will not accept anything less than excellence in education.” But 2000 arrived, and out of twenty-seven nations, the United States ranked eighteenth in mathematics, fourteenth in science, and fifteenth in reading literacy.124
Far from accepting nothing less than excellence, we’ve grown accustomed to our educational system’s persistent failure, content to point out the occasional jewel spotted amid the dung: a marvelous charter school here, a high-performing inner-city academy there. We’ve allowed that old Washington motto to carry the day: “If it’s broke, don’t fix it.”
But if we are to survive—and avoid turning into Third World America—it’s essential that we make it easier for creativity and fresh thinking to flourish in our classrooms. We need to start looking at things in bold and different ways.
What Abraham Lincoln said in his second annual address to Congress in 1862 applies powerfully to today’s educational crisis: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.… As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.”125
And when it comes to saving our children—and our future—there is not a moment to waste.
MATT STAGLIANO