"Panel Proposes Single Standard for All Schools"
Remember the firestorm that erupted last year when President Obama addressed the nation's schoolchildren? Remember how Right Wingnuts screamed about how this Crypto-Socialist was doing nothing so much as indoctrinating impressionable tykes into his unique brand of Hippiepinkocommunism? We suspect that we may look back on that time with nostalgia once LimBeck and Company sink their teeth into this one.
Seems a panel of (shudder) educators has gotten together and proposed basic national standards in math and English to which all students should be held. The federal Department of Education has endorsed the proposal, and states that choose to adopt the standards will be given extra consideration in the awarding of federal education funds. Predictably the teachers' unions and other Stalinists are in favor of this, and somehow these folks have even managed to hornswoggle such normally sensible types as business executives.
Nationally, the only states that refused to participate in writing the standards were (brace yourselves) Texas and Alaska. We know! Interestingly, one of the other states that is less than enthusiastic about the proposed standards is Massachusetts--of course, that's because the Bay State's educational standards are currently a bit higher than the ones under consideration. Still, any policy that garners suspicion from Texas AND Massachusetts does merit some scrutiny. Texas and Massachusetts haven't agreed on anything since Kennedy chose Johnson as his running mate.
In all sincerity, though, we say "Amen." Anything that can get this country closer to educational uniformity--ideally uniformity in a positive direction--is a good thing. Education is one of the last bastions of state sovereignty, and arguably the most wrong-headed. Why would any semi-intelligent person argue that a child in Montana doesn't need to know the same basic principles of algebra or sentence structure as a child in New York. (In an understandable bit of caution, the panel did not yet try to establish standards in more loaded areas like history or about such unproven theories as. . .sigh. . .evolution. We'll take what we can get.)
One of the regular rallying cries of the paleoconservative right has been to abolish the Department of Education. And much as we hate to admit it, we have always somewhat agreed with them. Not because we're against education, but simply because the federal Department of Education has always been a largely toothless dispenser of unfunded mandates (see "No Child Left Behind"). Since there have BEEN no national standards, there has always seemed to us little point in having a national organization. Maybe the near universal endorsement of these new standards will mark a turning point. Maybe the US will join the rest of the industrialized (and much of the unindustrialized) world and establish the idea that all citizens have a right to the same education, regardless of thre state in which they happen to reside.
While national standards for anything is questionable, one has to REALLY be afraid of same for education. JUST AS one has to be afraid of state and local standards. That's because NOBODY CAN LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE! When I was a child (and, granted, that was before there was a History to teach) all most schools were realy concerned about was giving a child A BASIC LEVEL of education. It was (seriously) rudimentary by today's standards. BUT... in EVERY PART of the country, in neighborhoods rich/poor, black/white, progressive/moron EVERY KID could read by the time he/she was 7; EVERY KID knew enough math to function on any level below Algebra; AND... EVERY KID knew SOMETHING about Science, Art, Music, Sports, etc. This was because we asked our teachers to teach these things. We did not ask them to teach Religion; We did not ask them to teach proper social behaviour; we did not ask them to teach ANY of the thousand things kids were supposed to learn FROM THEIR FAMILIES... when there still were such things! Oh, and, by the way, one of the "National" standards is that, by the age o, I believe, 7, all children BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND a book like "Charlotte's Web" WHEN IT IS READ TO THEM. There is NO standard for actually being able to read!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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