An Educational Pandemic

Prior to Hitlers rise, Germany was the most highly trained society on earth. They had the best trained doctors, lawyers, workmen etc. But highly trained societies cannot protect themselves from losing their liberty. Germany had no strong leaders who had a deep education in liberal arts. Few of their leaders became selfless in the service of their country. Because Germans were only trained and didn't have liberal educations, They fell to the Nazis.

Germany lost its liberty.

Americas educational system can be traced back to John Dewey in the early 1900's. It was modeled after industrial Germany's education system.

This model took a cookie cutter approach to education. It allowed most any student to attend school and to be trained for jobs. The purpose of education no longer remained to prepare clergy (as Harvard and Yale were established to do) nor to give great liberal arts education.  Education became job training.

This educational model was a very industrial approach. I like to call it a conveyer belt or mass production education. This model could have been thrown out after WWII with the success of America in the war. It wasn't. There was another opportunity to get rid of the model, in the 1960's during the science boom and space race. We still didn't change. With the end of the Cold War in the late 1980's, we should have changed, but we didn't. 

 In recent years, it has become painfully clear to every American that our public educational system is broken. 

America has found itself in an educational pandemic.

Nearly ALL American students are failing critical subjects. Our President has called for educational reform. Reform will occur. But what we will never see with reform is American students succeeding in school and competing with other countries.

Why?

Simply put, it is because American students are not passionate about education.

America is a highly trained society. But training and education are not the same thing. Any American will tell you that education is the most important thing for them to have, in order to succeed in life. They confuse education and training.

Our Founding Fathers were educated. They were able to build America because they had worked to attain a deep liberal arts education. There character was moral. Their integrity; strong. They also practiced something called public virtue. They served because it was the right thing to do. They put aside their personal desires for the good of society.

The Founders were leaders. And they were leaders because of their education.

So now we find America in a broken state. We do not have strong, selfless leaders. We do not have educations. We are losing our grip as a world superpower because of this.

What worked for the Industrial Americans has not worked in 70 years. What Americans have yet to realize is that education can no longer be fixed. We have an educational pandemic. Our superpower country has crumbled because of the erosion of our educational system.

What can we do?

Take the public school system for what it is. A pandemic. One of the only solutions is to build a new system. An American system. One that will inspire our students to be passionate about learning. One that will hopefully build leaders who will learn from the founding fathers and practice public virtue.

Education is not job training. We cannot afford to treat it as such. If we do, we will continue to fall and America will find itself where Germany found itself 74 years ago.

Without Liberty.