EDUCATION AND SURVIVAL OF THE FITTESTS

Common core is a needed in-depth look at education. Society has changed in many ways and education was a major contributing factor that shaped that change. At one time in our history, parents did not know how to read and write or do simple math but also knew their children needed to know these things. The change relates to population growth meaning that as the population grew the more necessary education became. The situation went from knowing that life was easier if they did have this ability to where knowing these things became necessary to survive. In addition to recognizing the need for didactic education, society recognized the need to expand the range of education to college first exemplified by medicine and law, which moved from apprenticeship programs to a didactic program. All of the highly skilled training was sandwiched into the system as vocational education. In most cases, the training of skilled labor was more arduous and required a greater manual skill set than did academia. Recently, meaning within the last 100 years, didactic programs in medicine and veterinary medicine introduced residencies, which are apprenticeship programs. Dentistry was a curiosity being in academia but always centering on practical training. Surgery and dentistry, like carpentry or welding, required both academic as well as manual dexterity. In many ways, the dividing lines between these study areas are artificial. As people made this realization the need for education of all kinds, people became more and more aware that educations cost both time and money. Because they recognized the need, they also became more and more willing to pay the price. In keeping with the growing altruistic nature of our humanization, they adapted the idea of democracy; for example, people were willing to pay to educate children even if they do not have children themselves. By the same token, innate bestial intrinsic played a part; if I earned it, is mine. This innate feeling introduced an important counter barrier to taxation for education. Legislatures codified these thoughts into our system of public education supported by taxation. Religion leaders and politicians introduced the second set of barriers to general education. Their solution was private schools funded by taxpayer dollars, which is counter to public education. This is the basis of the current argument. Parents feel their children should be education the way the want them educated. They all want their children to learn to read and write but also they also want them to be educated as Catholic or Baptist or as Protestants or Jews as well as teaching students to be Democrats or Republicans, depending on the beliefs of the parent. In a democracy, this means teachers should teach neither religion nor politics in public schools; however, it also means local school boards should control educations. The last barrier to good public education is teachers. First, and foremost, they must be respected members of society. The problem is the world becoming more, and more technically complex requiring more and more highly educated with greater and greater sophistication. Teachers need more education to achieve this, which cost more money, which in turn requires the public pay higher salaries, which is counter to the desire to pay less and fewer taxes. All of these things create costs cycles that politicians must face. Also, many teachers feel they are doing a great job and feel insulted when anyone questions the outcomes. Of course, in total to satisfy everyone is an impossible task. Common core was a step in the direction of finding a solution. Trying to look at common core through fresh eyes is the only way it will ever work. If you belonged to anyone of some interest groups, you could find something that Common Core did not answer. I think the principle opposition came from right-wing politicians. Their most publicized, simplistic, and appealing logic is that cutting education costs, cuts taxes, which appeals to many people. The truth is that they want to privatize education because they want the government removed from all activity in society. Again, they have an appealing refrain, which is that we are a society of individuals that have rights. As with some much of right-wing logic, this leads to a self-perpetuating society of social classes that ends with a primitive social structure or a bestial Ayn Rand social structure with massive numbers of people who just do not matter. In evolutionary term, we live according to the Darwinian structure of survival of the fittest. I feel we are better than that. URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated