I've been told by a carpenter that it was difficult to teach young employees how to use a yardstick or tape measure because they'd never learned about fractions..and, similarly, a machinist made the same point about learning to use micrometers when one had never learned decimal arithmetic.
Starting wages in the trades are so low that you simply can't attract people with much on the ball. Better to get a job driving a truck for Amazon. Corporate America combined with the misplaced sympathies of the professional managerial classes have made it economically unreasonable for people to work the trades.
Education shouldn't be an instrument of national power. The very idea that government should shape minds, direct careers, allocate talent, and steer science toward geopolitical objectives is fundamentally hostile to individual freedom and human nature.
People are not resources for the state to manage. Education belongs to individuals, not politicians.
Innovation, discovery, and prosperity emerge from voluntary exchange, private institutions, and entrepreneurial freedom—not bureaucrats commanding society in the name of “national interest.”
If you accept the premise that educational policy is a critical part of national defense policy (I don’t, in that almost everything could be construed critical: mining, energy, water, railroads, interstate highways, food production, industrial base, border integrity, national debt, healthcare, near-earth orbit, etc.); you have to admit the focus must be on the top tier, say 10%, of our students, especially those in STEM programs. You don’t train everyone for the Olympics, only the best. Everybody deserves a reasonably good public education, however you define it.
In order for this to happen, you have to completely change the governance structure and replace almost all of the staff. God only knows where you would find the replacements. Industry is going to have to step up to train its employees but that's not public education. So divert the funds to support Industry programs.
Two problems with that are (1) determining which particular industry government should favor, and (2) addressing the disincentive of individual companies to invest in training workers, when the workers then have the incentive to obtain higher paying jobs with their competitors.
I think that two better approaches are (1) courses in public high schools and community colleges that teach certain technical skills for students not planning to advance to a traditional four-year degree (at least not initially) and (2) apprentice programs by individual companies that pay market wages to apprentices (supplemented where applicable by the existing federal earned income tax credit).
There is a benefit to making sure the population can read and be able to do the most basic mathematics. We could hire high school graduates to teach, China did so and they've done ok with it. We should also require certain proficiencies to pass beyond each grade level. No one should enter middle school who can't read and do long division.
15% of kids have IQs at 85 or below, and they should get a basic education that will allow them to be participants in society. 20% of adults are functionally illiterate and half read at or below the sixth grade level.
Much of our public education is simply child care. Keeping the kids busy while mom and dad work. We would do well to teach those who can learn, and teach at a lower level for those who can't.
Trying to fix the whole thing may be too great a challenge. Incentives to allow some localized improvements may work better.
It would be useful to provide models of how better outcomes in K-12 for both general STEM and gifted STEM could be incentivized. And separately how to incentivize higher domestic STEM enrollment in Universities and higher retention for international enrollment.
I've been told by a carpenter that it was difficult to teach young employees how to use a yardstick or tape measure because they'd never learned about fractions..and, similarly, a machinist made the same point about learning to use micrometers when one had never learned decimal arithmetic.
Starting wages in the trades are so low that you simply can't attract people with much on the ball. Better to get a job driving a truck for Amazon. Corporate America combined with the misplaced sympathies of the professional managerial classes have made it economically unreasonable for people to work the trades.
Education shouldn't be an instrument of national power. The very idea that government should shape minds, direct careers, allocate talent, and steer science toward geopolitical objectives is fundamentally hostile to individual freedom and human nature.
People are not resources for the state to manage. Education belongs to individuals, not politicians.
Innovation, discovery, and prosperity emerge from voluntary exchange, private institutions, and entrepreneurial freedom—not bureaucrats commanding society in the name of “national interest.”
If you accept the premise that educational policy is a critical part of national defense policy (I don’t, in that almost everything could be construed critical: mining, energy, water, railroads, interstate highways, food production, industrial base, border integrity, national debt, healthcare, near-earth orbit, etc.); you have to admit the focus must be on the top tier, say 10%, of our students, especially those in STEM programs. You don’t train everyone for the Olympics, only the best. Everybody deserves a reasonably good public education, however you define it.
In order for this to happen, you have to completely change the governance structure and replace almost all of the staff. God only knows where you would find the replacements. Industry is going to have to step up to train its employees but that's not public education. So divert the funds to support Industry programs.
Two problems with that are (1) determining which particular industry government should favor, and (2) addressing the disincentive of individual companies to invest in training workers, when the workers then have the incentive to obtain higher paying jobs with their competitors.
I think that two better approaches are (1) courses in public high schools and community colleges that teach certain technical skills for students not planning to advance to a traditional four-year degree (at least not initially) and (2) apprentice programs by individual companies that pay market wages to apprentices (supplemented where applicable by the existing federal earned income tax credit).
There is a benefit to making sure the population can read and be able to do the most basic mathematics. We could hire high school graduates to teach, China did so and they've done ok with it. We should also require certain proficiencies to pass beyond each grade level. No one should enter middle school who can't read and do long division.
15% of kids have IQs at 85 or below, and they should get a basic education that will allow them to be participants in society. 20% of adults are functionally illiterate and half read at or below the sixth grade level.
Much of our public education is simply child care. Keeping the kids busy while mom and dad work. We would do well to teach those who can learn, and teach at a lower level for those who can't.
Trying to fix the whole thing may be too great a challenge. Incentives to allow some localized improvements may work better.
It would be useful to provide models of how better outcomes in K-12 for both general STEM and gifted STEM could be incentivized. And separately how to incentivize higher domestic STEM enrollment in Universities and higher retention for international enrollment.