This is an ongoing education discussion on an online group. The question that I am trying to answer is what caused the problems in education today the schools or the culture? This website is also helpful and sort of necessary to understand the argument:
What caused the shift. Did it come from the culture (or families or individuals) or did it come from the schools? The answer is both. The interesting thing is how the culture and the schools have influenced and affected each other.
I do not believe in golden ages, but lets posit one to get the argument started. Let's imagine that the early years of public education in America (up through 1968) were a golden age. Why were they good? They were good because we had an intact culture (i.e., students learned a lot of what the public schools are now teaching from their parents and, even more, from the community). People had very similar ideas of right and wrong and about what kids should do and how they should behave. Our reasons for these standards were weak (i.e., we were already forgetting the ideas and commitments that sustained our culture), but our practice was fairly unanimous and solid. Second, all students were being trained for similar jobs because of the expanding (we thought ever expanding) track of industry and manufacturing. I think that the excellent link that Diane posted is making this argument effectively.
After 1968, the collapse of the culture, the schools, and of cultural confidence begins. (BTW, just for clarity I am NOT blaming 60s radicals for the problem. They were simply announcing what was true: the emperor had no clothes--our culture had deep traditions but we had forgotten the underlying faith and philosophy.) Since then the culture HAS turned in on itself (me first...and last). It has become narcissistic (life is all about my possessions and comfort). The schools (and the churches) should of corrected this, but they had lost confidence in their message. Traditional, rigorous cultural education (Latin, Bible, Great Books, Logic (and Math), Rhetoric) looked old and creaky and seemed irrelevant when all that we really needed was an infinite supply of factory workers. So we jettisoned most of the curriculum because we lost confidence in it. As we lost confidence, people forgot (and now are cut off from) the old stories and the wisdom that could have sustained a cultural renewal. We became imminently practical because it was the only thing measurable and measurement was the only thing that we could trust. To tip the hat to an old story, we sold our birthright. We forgot that is was those stories that led to commitments that led to movements that led to truth that led to unshakable principle that gave people courage that led to freedom. We can not have the fruit if we cut off the roots.
At present we are educationally in a world of hurt. We are attempting for force march students through a very rigorous vocational education that promises them wealth and prosperity. The facts, however, say that more and more we are lying. This path will cripple them with debt and not lead to jobs. We have forsaken the sort of education that gives broad transferable skills to people that they can take from job to job (logic and communication). We have cut them off from the stories, history, and literature that could give them answers and backbone. We have loaded a bunch of extra work on public schools and then we wonder why they are distracted and why they breed bureaucracy. AND we can afford none of it.
Seems bleak, but I am still hopeful. Hopeful that economic realities will force us to re-examine how we are doing education. Hopeful that desperation might cause people to ask hard questions and come up with ingenious answers (this is happening to some extent). So who fault is it? My answer: Yes; How did we get here? It is a long and winding road.
