The de-evolving human

It's really easy to blame the dumbing down of society on the increasing number of flaws in our public education, but if we're honest, our educational institutions (particularly in the US) have never been any good.  We have  traditionally never given much effort to educating our young which is why teachers make so very little money, why most schools have limited tools like text books or computers and why some schools in the South still refuse to teach the idea of evolution.  The fact is, no one ever bothered to pay any real attention to education.

We don't hold teachers accountable for not teaching-  teachers unions protect tenure and not quality of work.  We aren't forcing parents to take an active interest in their children's education.  We don't fund schools. We focus more on sports than on math. We create useless tests and seem to think that a multiple choice test is all you need to judge academic success.  The fact that our entire curriculum involves prepping students to pass state exams is criminal.

Here is what I'd like to see change.   First of all, there is no one more important in our society than our teachers.   Teaching needs to be treated like an honorable profession.  Teachers should be well compensated (pay raises are a good start) and held to very high standards in return.  They must continually prove their worthiness to teach not only by student test scores (which are easily manipulated) but also by testing the teacher.   Why wouldn't we demand excellence from the people moulding our future generations?

We also need to make sure every school has the tools it needs to teach effectively.   No more basing school funding on tax revenue because that only short changes the working class kids.  We need a general state fund that will fund each school equally.

We need to make sports strictly extracurricular and in no way tied to school.  Schools are for learning math and science and not for learning the art of making a touchdown.

No more rote memorization.   Instead let's teach critical thinking.   We need to have strong testing but in order to gauge progress.  You shouldn't need a final exam to determine if the student passes the grade if you're doing your job.

We need to keep an open mind.   Recognize that a theory is ok to discuss even if your holy book says something different.  We need to present the facts and allow the student to make up their own mind.  There is nothing wrong with dialogue.

Last but not least, we need to hold parents and legal guardians responsible for their children's education as well.   They need to be involved in monitoring their child's progress and in making sure their child is even making progress.  Parents and teachers need to be in constant contact with one another whether it means mailing each parent a monthly progress report that goes into more detail than the report card or monthly parent teacher conferences.

Learning doesn't stop when school lets out and we shouldn't treat it like it does.  If we don't instill a love of learning in our kids at an early age, you might as well hang it up.  A good education leads to good decisions which in turn leads to a better life.  Unless we want our future generations to be stupid and de-evolved worthless scum, we have to do better than this.