Railroads Changed the World

Two hundred years ago, on September 27, 1825, the Stockton & Darlington Railway, a 26-mile line in northeast England, opened for public business. Built to haul coal from mines to a river port near Newcastle, trains consisted of wagons with flanged wheels rolling on wrought iron rails and pulled by animals or a newfangled steam engine called Locomotion. The steam trains allowed passengers and could travel at the stately speed of 7 mph. It was the beginning of the Railway Age.

Five years later, regular scheduled steam passenger service began on the dual-track Liverpool & Manchester Railway. Opening day was a national event with Prime Minister the Duke of Wellington among thousands of passengers. The L&M used enclosed coaches rather than open wagons, and improved locomotive technology allowed speeds near 40 mph, faster than humans had ever traveled. Railways soon linked nearly every British city. Their construction, and the accelerated commerce, added to the GDP, reduced produce prices making a better diet widely available, and gave most people personal mobility that added a new dimension of choice to their lives. Those choices eventually led to beneficial social changes.

Railway building booms swept Europe and North America. The first U.S. all-steam common carrier, the Baltimore and Ohio, began operation in 1830 and is today part of CSX Transportation. U.S. rail mileage grew from 13 in 1830 to 254,000 in 1916, including the first transcontinental line completed in 1869. That year also saw the opening of Kansas City’s Hannibal Bridge, the first rail bridge over the Missouri, that led to KC becoming a national rail center. (The Union Pacific’s transcontinental line crossed the river by ferry at Council Bluffs, Iowa, until 1872.)

To cope with rapid freight and passenger growth, technology produced safe automatic couplers, luxurious Pullman sleeper cars, refrigerator cars allowing long-distance transport of perishable foods, Westinghouse air brakes, safer signal systems, the Bessemer steel-making process allowing a transition to more durable steel rails, and more powerful and faster steam locomotives. Britain’s Mallard set a steam record that still stands of 126 mph in 1938.

Meanwhile, Europe developed electric locomotives for tram systems and London’s Underground. After World War II, France and others moved to electrify much of their national rail systems. In the 1920s, German and Swiss companies built diesel-electric switching locomotives, followed in the 1930s by Westinghouse and GE/Baldwin in the U.S. In 1939, GM began selling the 1350 horsepower FT road diesel, four of which, coupled together, equaled the power of a large steam engine and were cleaner, more reliable, and required less maintenance. Eager rail officials lined up to buy them, but most were disappointed when World War II limited diesel production because copper and other vital materials were directed to war production. 

Peace brought a flood of new diesels, and the last U.S. mainline steam ran in 1960. Railroads adopted new technologies: welded rail, better signaling and communications, more powerful diesels, and intermodal freights. Still, they lost business to the new interstate highways and to airlines. In 1971, Amtrak was created to operate nearly all passenger trains.

European and East Asian countries developed high-speed rail (HSR) as the most efficient public transport. HSR features speeds of 125 to 240 mph, dedicated tracks with gentle curves, and no road or rail crossings. Japan led the way in the 1960s with its famous Shinkansen ”bullet” trains followed by the U.K. and most of Europe, Taiwan, South Korea, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and China (pictured). Amtrak operates 125 mph trains on part of its Northeast Corridor, and California is building a 220 mph HSR line from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Now let’s build one from Chicago through St. Louis and KC to Denver.

 

  “Who Controls the Past Controls the Future”

                                                                                        George Orwell, 1984

For 30 million visitors a year, the Smithsonian Institute’s free museums are a highlight of Washington, D.C. Established in 1846 with money willed to the U.S. by Englishman James Smithson for “an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men,” the first of 21 museum buildings (pictured) opened on the Mall in 1855. The Smithsonian is one of the world’s great museums and vividly illustrates the remarkable history of the United States. 

History is the record of what happened in the past, why, and the consequences, both good and bad. Historians study two kinds of evidence: primary (contemporary sources such as eyewitness accounts, recordings, documents, and artifacts) and secondary (analysis, modification, or interpretation of primary sources). Both kinds of evidence need to be carefully examined for biases, ideological agendas, unverified evidence, selective omissions, and other distortions. Done well, the result is a narrative—a story—that explains events and ideas within the context of the time as accurately as the evidence allows. 

History narratives can be books, lectures and discussions, specialized scholarly papers, school texts, audio and visual recordings, and descriptions of museum exhibits. Depending on the historian’s skill, they can be dry as dust or lively stories told with passion that place the topic within a larger, meaningful context.

Historians see the world through various lenses depending on their expertise and interests: political, economic, social, religious, intellectual, artistic. Fifty years ago and more, school texts tended to focus on political matters—wars, treaties, politicians—but important as these are, there has been a growing focus on social and economic issues and the condition of ordinary citizens, often called “history from the bottom up” rather than from the top down. The Smithsonian recently opened museums dedicated to the experience of African Americans and of the American Indian and plans two new museums about the American Latino and women in America. 

Now comes a president complaining on social media: “Museums all over the country are “the last remaining segment of “WOKE.” The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been—nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.” 

Incorrect English aside, Mr. Trump writes as if he has never been in a Smithsonian museum or given serious thought to the vast evidence about the horrors of slavery and the subsequent evils of Jim Crow, redlining, lynching, and the ongoing resistance to voting rights. In fact, he toured the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2017, saying that it “tells of the great struggle for freedom and equality that prevailed against the sins of slavery and the injustice of discrimination.” It seems his memory has faded since then. And his values.

He also seems unfamiliar with the thousands of exhibits describing American “Success” from the Wright brothers to moon landings, the Internet, and, since he longs for “Brightness,” Edison’s first light bulb. As to the “Future,” museums, like history, illuminate the past through evidence. There is no evidence about the future. 

Trump wants to whitewash history (pun intended), hiding our sins to invent a pseudohistory he thinks more inspiring. A free people deserve not propaganda, but the truth—the whole truth—from their museums, their schoolbooks, and their government. That is inspiring. 

Truthful history has been called “history, warts and all.” Award-winning author Peter Beagle offered one example: “We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers—thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses.” Surely the native Americans who were here when Balboa and Cortez arrived uninvited deserve both our sympathy and our respect in the American story.

                           Energy and Climate Change

The need for sustainable energy has become one of the most pressing challenges of the 21st century. As the global population grows and industrialization continues to expand, the demand for energy is rapidly increasing. However, the world’s continued reliance on fossil fuels—such as coal, oil, and natural gas—has led to severe environmental consequences, including air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and climate change. To address these issues and ensure a healthier, more stable future, transitioning to sustainable energy sources is essential.

Sustainable energy refers to energy derived from resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass. These sources produce little to no harmful emissions and have a much lower environmental impact compared to traditional fossil fuels. Solar panels and wind turbines, for example, generate electricity without emitting carbon dioxide, helping to combat global warming. Additionally, many sustainable energy systems require less water and do not pollute the air, which contributes to better public health and cleaner ecosystems.

Economically, investing in sustainable energy also offers significant benefits. The renewable energy sector has become a major source of job creation, with opportunities in manufacturing, installation, maintenance, and research. As technology advances, the cost of producing and storing renewable energy continues to decline, making it more competitive with conventional energy sources. Energy independence is another key advantage, as countries that develop their own renewable energy infrastructure can reduce their reliance on imported fossil fuels, enhancing national security and economic stability.

From a social perspective, sustainable energy can improve quality of life, particularly in underdeveloped regions. Off-grid solar or wind systems can provide electricity to remote communities that lack access to centralized power grids, enabling access to education, healthcare, and economic opportunities.

However, the transition to sustainable energy requires strong political will, public support, and substantial investment. Governments and private sectors must work together to create policies, incentives, and infrastructure that support clean energy innovation and adoption.

In conclusion, the need for sustainable energy is not just about protecting the environment—it is about ensuring long-term economic prosperity, social equity, and global stability. Embracing sustainable energy is no longer optional; it is a necessary step toward a more resilient and just future for all.

 

Notice: The above summary was written by ChatGPT, a free artificial intelligence (AI) program. I asked it to write 400 words about the need for sustainable energy, which it did in about two seconds. The summary is comprehensive, well-organized, and accurate, but it lacks the distinctive “voice” of a human author. You’ll rarely find clever or memorable phrases in AI writing nor any irony, humor, or passion. Climate change is an emergency, a clear and present danger to life as we’ve known it, but this AI text reads as if it were written by a soulless machine, which it was. Mark Twain it ain’t.

Another weakness of AI writing is like that of social media: there is no referee or editor.  Because AI “learns” what it knows by processing vast amounts of information, often from the Internet, and because a large proportion of that information is false, AI-generated text is prone to what are called “hallucinations.” An Ethics and Information Technology article argues that AI text products are “indifferent to the truth of their outputs,” with statements only accidentally true and accidentally false. Consequently, AI writing must be carefully fact-checked. I checked every fact and claim in the above summary and found them all accurate.

To process information, AI requires data centers (pictured) which consume enormous amounts of energy, as much as 3 percent of all U.S. electricity this year, projected to increase significantly. This raises electricity rates for consumers and demands more energy sources—preferably sustainable—in a competition between power to the people and power to the machines. 

                              A New Gilded Age

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were

a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
                                                       Mark Twain

 

Mark Twain’s novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, was published in 1873. Twain’s term “Gilded Age” was later adopted by historians to refer to the period between the 1870s and about 1900 when industrial tycoons, real estate developers, financiers, and robber barons built huge fortunes while even skilled workers earned modest wages, and unions were relentlessly fought by moneyed interests. Twain lampooned the greed, graft, racism, and widespread political corruption.

The Gilded Age was not a Golden Age. Most wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few while the gap between the rich and the rest widened significantly. According to historian Howard Zinn, “Most of the fortune building was done legally, with the collaboration of the government and the courts. Sometimes the collaboration had to be paid for. Thomas Edison promised New Jersey politicians $1,000 each in return for favorable legislation.” 

Now we find ourselves in a new Gilded Age thanks to Congressional Republicans who passed, and Trump signed, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act with massive tax cuts, about 60 percent of which will go to the richest 20 percent of Americans, leaving only 40 percent for 80 percent of the people. The independent Tax Policy Center estimates that for taxes filed in 2026, households making from $217,000 to $318,000 will have a 2.6% rise in after-tax income, about $5,400. Those making between $318,000 to $460,000 (the 90^th to 95^th percentile) will have an after-tax increase of about $8,900, or 3.1%.

The biggest percentage tax break goes to households making $460,000 to $1.1 million: 4.4%, or about $21,000. The 1 percent making from $1.1 million to $5 million will have a tax break of 3.5%, while the ultra-rich .1 percent making more than $5 million will enjoy a 3.2% break.

Middle-income households will have much smaller percentage breaks. Those making between $100,000 and $200,000 will have after-tax income about $3,000 more, or 2.5%. Incomes from $75,000 to $100,000 will gain about $1,700, or 2.3%. Incomes between $50,000 to $75,000 will have a $1,000 break.

Low-income earners will have the worst deal of all. Those making between $40,000 and $50,000 will have a cut of about $630; after-tax gains of 1.9% and 1.5%, respectively. Earners in the lowest 20 percent, making less than $34,600, will have a tax decrease of about $150, a .8% increase in after-tax income.

However, tax breaks for many low- and middle-income Americans will be offset by the Act’s sweeping cuts to nutrition assistance, Medicaid, and ACA health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 10.9 million will lose Medicaid or ACA coverage.

Polls repeatedly show that the Act is historically unpopular, with nearly two-thirds of voters opposed. The Act will cause the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in U.S. history and will add $2.8 trillion to our debt by 2034. Among many other provisions, it also rolls back clean energy incentives and promotes fossil fuels as if Earth’s climate—and our future—just doesn’t matter.

Why would Republicans vote for an Act so unpopular? To please their leader and, importantly, their major donors. In Twain’s day, they were called bribes, but in our time, they are large campaign donations. A bribe by any other name would smell as corrupt.

                            Follow the Money

In 2015, no person on the planet had a hundred billion dollars. Now, according to the reputable business magazine Forbes, at least 15 people have that much and more, with Elon Musk topping the list with an estimated $400+ billion.

Such enormous wealth in private hands poses a real danger to democracies because money buys power. The distinguished journalist, political commentator, and President Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary Bill Moyers saw the danger decades ago: “The rich can buy more yachts than the rest of us, but we can’t allow them to buy more democracy.”

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court allowed them to do just that in the 2010 Citizens United decision permitting unlimited political contributions. Mr. Musk took full advantage by giving a massive $290 million to support Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and the campaigns of several Congressional supporters. According to Americans for Tax Fairness, billionaires contributed $13 million to political causes in 2004 exploding 200 times to $2.6 billion in 2024.

In 2003, Moyers said, “The corporate right and the political right declared class warfare on working people a quarter of a century ago and they’ve won…. The rich are getting richer, which arguably wouldn’t matter if the rising tide lifted all boats.” But it hasn’t. The middle class and the working poor “are barely keeping their heads above water [and] the inequality gap is the widest it’s been since 1929.” Today, the gap is the widest, by far, in our history.

Now comes the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed the House with only Republican votes and showing that Moyers was right. The Act is now in the Senate, which will almost certainly make major changes before sending it back to the House for a final vote. 

The House Act extends the Republican tax cuts of 2017, mostly benefitting the richest 20 percent, and will add at least $2.6 trillion to our national debt over ten years on top of the $2.2 trillion added by the 2017 tax cuts. The Act also includes large cuts to SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and Medicaid, both of which provide crucial financial support to help people with limited incomes. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 8.6 million Americans will lose Medicaid coverage in the next few years. The money saved will cover part of the cost of tax cuts—at the expense of healthcare and food, especially children’s food. The Act is the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in U.S. history.

As presently written, the Act makes it more difficult for needy students to receive Pell Grants for college, gives an extra $150 billion to the Defense Department, funds $155 billion for border security (five times this year’s funding), cuts back many clean-energy tax credits vital to minimizing climate change, defunds Planned Parenthood, and other provisions. Perhaps the most curious are prohibitions on courts holding federal officials in contempt for ignoring court orders and a 10-year prohibition of any state legislation or regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), apparently included to please prosperous technocrats who foresee enormous profits and influence as AI matures.

When the Act passed the House, all three major credit rating agencies downgraded U.S. debt from AAA, with Moody’s calling the Act fiscally irresponsible. Unless the Senate amends the Act to benefit middle- and low-income people, who need it most, instead of those who need it least, the gaping gap between the rich and the rest will widen even more. The GOP is waging war on the common good.

 

                                Tariff Turmoil

In the popular 1986 comedy film Ferris Buehller’s Day Off, Buehller skips high school to spend a day in Chicago with his girlfriend and a pal. One of the funniest parts of the film is an economics teacher’s memorably monotonous lecture about the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

There was nothing funny about the Smoot-Hawley tariffs. The economy was sinking into depression, and Senators Reed Smoot (pictured) and Willis Hawley, both Republicans, thought 15-18 percent tariffs on a select third of imports would protect U.S. industries from foreign competition. President Hoover signed the bill despite warnings from senior economists. 

The Smoot-Hawley tariffs didn’t cause the Great Depression but certainly made it worse. Within two years, U.S. imports fell by about 40 percent partly because unemployment meant many people didn’t have money to buy much but partly because tariffs made foreign goods more expensive. 

According to Douglas Irwin, perhaps America’s leading expert on trade policy during the Great Depression, the tariff was seen by other countries as a hostile decision that led to resentment and retaliatory tariffs on American goods. Trade with America declined, which seriously delayed a global economic recovery. Tariffs also made domestic goods more expensive because of reduced foreign competition. Generally, tariffs are taxes on consumers regardless of where goods are produced. 

Because the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were such a disaster, the U.S. has preferred free trade and rarely raised tariffs since 1930 until this year. While Smoot-Hawley was passed by Congress, this year’s tariffs were simply proclaimed by the president in response to an ill-defined “national emergency”—a power delegated to presidents by Congress in 1977 but never used until now. They have been repeatedly raised and lowered and even targeted at an Antarctic island inhabited only by penguins. 

Businesses here and abroad require economic stability to make long-term plans, but instability rules the White House. Two federal courts blocked most of Trump’s tariffs last week, followed shortly by another court which temporarily allowed them. Clearly, the future of those tariffs is unclear.

What is clear is the low opinion of tariffs by Warren Buffett, perhaps the most successful American investor of modern times: “Trade should not be a weapon…. I do think that the more prosperous the rest of the world becomes … the more prosperous we’ll become, and the safer we’ll feel, and your children will feel someday.” “[We should] trade with the rest of the world, and we should do what we do best, and they should do what they do best.”

Tariffs turn others, even loyal allies like the EU, Canada, and Mexico, against us. Because we’re the world’s richest country, others wonder if there’s no end to American greed. The obvious play is to retaliate by levying tariffs on U.S. goods; trade becomes a game where everyone loses. 

The president seems to believe that tariffs will bring revenue to the government to cover at least part of the cost of his $3.7 trillion “big, beautiful bill” to cut taxes, nearly all of it for the rich. Here’s a better idea: raise taxes significantly on incomes above half a million and even more on incomes in the top one percent.

A creative idea to raise revenue has been suggested by Joseph Ginocchio of Santa Fe, N.M., in a letter in the April 28 New Yorker. “Why not have corporations that benefit from government intellectual property [including university research funded by federal grants] pay royalties for using it? This would dramatically lighten the tax burden for individuals and small businesses.” Of course, corporations must be prohibited from passing on the cost of royalties to taxpayers, who already paid for the original research.

         Never Forget

Hundreds of convicted criminals who attacked the U.S. Capitol and Congress on January 6, 2021, have been pardoned or their sentences commuted. These 1,300 or so rioters are now free to go where they want and do what they want. 

What the rioters wanted on January 6 was to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as president-elect even though he won election by a margin of seven million votes. They failed in that but succeeded in permanently staining the history of the United States and threatening our democracy itself. Like December 7, 1941, it was “a day that will live in infamy.” 

Told by the losing candidate that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” some of the rioters were ordinary citizens who chose to join the mob and march on the Capitol but didn’t participate in attacks on the police or other violence. Found guilty by judges or juries of trespassing or other minor crimes, they received light sentences. 

Others, however, were thugs, many with weapons and criminal records: far-right extremists and neo-Nazi white supremacists. They fought the police then broke into the building and desecrated the People’s House—our House—threatening to harm members of Congress and Vice-President Pence. These thugs were convicted of major crimes ranging from assaulting officers to conspiracy to seditious conspiracy. During the attack, 174 police officers were injured, and one killed; four other officers committed suicide in the following seven months.

The week after being freed, one of the former convicts was pulled over by an Indiana Highway Patrol officer for a traffic violation, had a gun, and was shot and killed by the officer. The same week, another was arrested on a federal gun charge related to domestic violence and resisting arrest. A third rioter is on the run from Texas police because of an arrest warrant for online solicitation of a minor. Yet another freed rioter said that he plans to buy “some m*********** guns.” Great. Just what we need.

There is a scheme afoot to rewrite our history making the attackers appear to be mostly a group of patriots taking a Capitol tour. The pardons and commutations were a first step followed last week by the firing of senior FBI and Justice Department officials involved in the investigations and prosecutions—officials who were just doing the jobs assigned to them: go after the lawbreakers we all saw on TV. Members of the Congressional January 6 Committee who investigated the attack may be the next targets. 

Congressional Republicans have already “forgotten” what the mob was up to and who put them up to it. Brendon Baliou, an experienced Justice Department lawyer who recently resigned, wrote that in 2021, GOP Representative Elise Stefanik said the rioters “should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” Later, she labelled them “hostages” and has now been chosen our new ambassador to the U.N.; former GOP Senator Kelly Loeffler said, “the violence, the lawlessness and siege of the halls of Congress are abhorrent.” Soon, though, she shifted to calling the House investigation a “sham” and that any indictment “should be dismissed out of hand.” She has been nominated to head the Small Business Administration.

Mr. Baliou emphasized that the rest of us “must keep the horrors of Jan. 6 from being forgotten. Memorialize the day…. Keep it alive in your conversations. Doing so matters. For in a time when many politicians’ careers depend on forgetting, memory itself is an act of resistance.”

If we fail to remember, we won’t have President Lincoln’s government “of the People, by the People, and for the People” anymore. Never forget.

Capitalism for All

Imagine you have a pile of money, and you’d like to have a bigger pile. You learn that the Widget Company has invented a better widget, so you buy shares of Widget stock. The company uses the capital you’ve invested to produce the new widgets. They sell like hot cakes, so more workers are hired, profits roll in, and the value of the stock you own rises. You and the company are richer, more people have jobs, and consumers have better widgets. This is capitalism in action, and so far, so good.

Now imagine that because you’re a big investor who knows how to make a buck, you’re elected to the Widget Company board. You now have a voice in decisions including what to do with the company’s growing profits. Raise your workers’ pay? Upgrade your factory with better machinery? Buy out a competitor so your company will have more of the market? Give larger dividends to investors, including yourself? These are tough decisions, but that’s why you and the company executives make the big bucks.

What to do? You’re a capitalist, after all, so you naturally believe that investors who’ve risked their capital on the company are entitled to first dibs on the profits. They, and you, are in it for the money, so stock dividends and high share prices are top priorities. 

To keep investors happy, you think about how to increase company profits by reducing costs and/or increasing productivity. How about automation? Robots are expensive, but they’ll never want raises, never organize a union to get them (except in science fiction when robots finally become smart enough), and can work 24/7 without tiring. Automation is often a no-brainer.

Other ways to reduce costs include avoiding those tiresome government regulations that require your factory to not foul the air and water and to be a safe workplace for employees, and to avoid taxes in every legal way possible. To dodge these obligations, the company pays lobbyists and contributes to politicians who favor deregulation, restrictions on unions, and lower corporate taxes (and, not coincidentally, lower taxes on wealthy people like yourself). 

Now, forget your imaginary pile of money and consider where capitalism has taken us in this tale. It’s no longer “so far, so good.” It’s too far and too bad for workers who get last dibs on company profits and for all taxpayers who have to make up for what corporations and the rich don’t pay (and some pay no income taxes at all).

Perhaps worse in the long run, the conservative Supreme Court ruled, in 2010, that, as Mitt Romney put it, “corporations are people” entitled to make unlimited political contributions. This gives the small corporate class enormous political clout. It’s extreme capitalism—a beautiful system if you’re one of those few but a deck stacked against you if you aren’t. 

Capitalism is a great engine of prosperity, but without strict regulation and a progressive tax structure, it’s an engine with no train. People who help make the everyday economy work—nurses, truckers, teachers, builders—are left at the station. A healthy economy is a balancing act between private profits and the public good. Today, our economy is unbalanced and unhealthy.

Here’s the cure: We want wealth to flow to the many, not just to the few, so channel excessive wealth to essential public services like education, healthcare, and infrastructure. That’s how we created Social Security, public schools, Medicare, and the original G.I. Bill. It’s how we can provide affordable college/tech schools and universal healthcare. Also, ensure workers have a level playing field by protecting their right to organize and to have significant representation on corporate boards as many other rich capitalist countries do. 

The greedy will no doubt call this cure—or any cure—“socialism.” I call it having a social conscience. It’s capitalism that works for We the People.

When Schools Went Wrong

Sherlock Holmes called public schools “Lighthouses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules, with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future.” Americans have cherished similar hopes but have too often been disappointed, leading over the past century to a series of school reforms that shaped today’s schools—for better and for worse.

Historians trace much of the “worse” to a small red pamphlet published in 1918, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, that called for replacing, for most students, the traditional European liberal arts and sciences curriculum with seven student goals: health, command of fundamental processes, worthy home membership, vocation, citizenship, worthy use of leisure, and ethical character.

The reform’s purpose was to keep more youngsters in school by making it easier and more immediately practical. Academic subjects like history, biology, and algebra would remain as a parallel track for the fewer than one in ten who were college-bound. For the majority, social studies replaced history, geography, economics, and government; general science replaced biology, chemistry, and physics; and practical math and language arts covered “fundamental processes.”

The Cardinal Principles was composed by a committee of the National Education Association chaired by a manual training teacher and including administrators and a professor of education. The authors were driven by the need to assimilate millions of immigrant children, many knowing no English and with little experience of democracy, by the demand for industrial workers, by severe health and social problems including the deadliest influenza epidemic of modern times, and by fear of political unrest in the wake of the Great War. The business community applauded the emphasis on vocational training and lobbied states to adopt the new goals. Over the next decade, they became the norm in much of the country.

The shift from mastery of academic subjects to what reformers saw as meeting children’s “needs” was politically popular. Teaching kids hygiene, marketable skills, and citizenship was hard to criticize, especially when it made success in school easier. Parents liked their children succeeding, and politicians and business leaders liked that such studies made it easier—and cheaper—to train and hire teachers.

The academic community opposed the Cardinal Principles, so much so that schools of education became intellectually divorced from the universities of which they were a part. Teachers became increasingly isolated from scholarship in arts and sciences disciplines. Thousands of experienced teachers resisted the reform, and many were fired.

Making matters worse, the trauma of the Great War led America to adopt an isolationist attitude through the 1920s and 30s. Why bother with the rest of the world and its troubles when the U.S. could withdraw behind its moat of oceans and rely on its own plentiful resources? This further distanced schools from fertile centers of serious thought in Europe and elsewhere. One result that troubles us still was that many fewer students learned foreign languages.

While other countries were improving schools with added rigor and sharper focus on academic disciplines, America chose to ask less of its students and teachers. This continued through the 1950s when complaints about semi-literate graduates and the shock of Sputnik prompted a new round of reforms with increased academic content.

Cardinal Principles had some positive results, recognizing the importance of motivation and of children’s developmental stages among them. But its low expectations and short-term goals in place of deep knowledge and disciplined thinking poisoned American schools for decades. To some degree, it still does. The Sputnik reforms of the 1960s, the Nation at Risk reforms of the 80s and 90s, No Child Left Behind, and now the Common Core have all been attempts to right the wrong course our schools took after 1918. History matters.

Schools Travel a Bumpy Road

As described in the previous column, American schools were harmed for decades by low student expectations and shallow curriculum prompted by the 1918 booklet Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education. Recovery began in the 1950s, thanks partly to World War II veterans who had noticed a higher level of education common in Europe and whose own expectations had been raised by G.I. Bill college study. Too, a best-selling book, Why Johnny Can’t Read, helped focus the nation’s attention on the troubled schools.

But just when a drive to enhance academic offerings was gathering steam, schools were overwhelmed by the postwar baby boom. Thousands of new schools were hurriedly built and new teachers hurriedly trained. States and school districts had all they could handle coping with expansion; academic quality took a back seat and fewer than two-thirds of students finished high school.

The 1957 launch of the Soviet Sputnik I satellite shocked America. The Eisenhower administration and Congress pumped millions into upgrading curricula, classroom equipment, and teacher training, especially in math and the sciences. New textbooks were written, including a biology text so good that updated versions are still used today. History and other subjects were emphasized as part of what came to be called “Sputnik reforms.”

With The Sixties came two of the schools’ greatest successes: supporting national efforts to ensure minority rights and women’s rights. Schools came to be judged by their “holding power” and graduation rates improved significantly. As desirable careers beyond teaching, nursing, and secretarial work opened to educated women, schools did their part. When I graduated in 1961, able girls interested in healthcare were counseled into nursing; when I returned as a teacher eight years later, many were aiming to become physicians.

Ironically, these successes hurt schools. A well-intentioned desire to keep kids in school led to fragmented curriculum in the name of “relevance” and to “social promotion” regardless of learning, both of which discredited schools in the eyes of the public and especially of employers. Financially attractive career opportunities meant the loss to teaching of many of America’s brightest women who had long formed the backbone of school faculties.

Soon, falling test scores (partly due to students from deeper in the talent pool taking ACT and SAT tests) and the post-Watergate suspicion of all things government led to another wave of school criticism. A 1983 blue-ribbon commission report, A Nation at Risk, asserted "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."

The authors called for a longer school year on a par with other developed nations, more academic course requirements, higher student expectations, making teaching a more attractive career, and much else. A Nation at Risk became the most influential call for reform since 1918 and led to needed improvements, though mostly the least expensive.

The No Child Left Behind law of 2001 wasn’t a “reform” as much as an effort to make schools accountable by publicizing test scores in basic skills. Funding was inadequate and one lasting effect was to focus attention on math and language skills at the expense of other learning. Relentless testing soon made it unpopular.

Now comes Common Core, a promising effort begun by nearly all state governors to raise achievement nationwide to global standards. It’s a complex project criticized by many educators for having too much input from for-profit corporations, but promising nonetheless.

Sadly, the Kansas Senate recently voted to not fund Common Core implementation. Any hint of nationwide standards offends conservative ideology, for many senators a higher priority than student learning. I suspect that if Eisenhower’s Interstates were proposed today, Kansas conservatives would object: roads, like schools, convey outside ideas and tie the state to the larger world. Risky business, no? No.

Spying on Schools

Searching for the secrets of high-achieving schools, and aware that inside information is hard to come by, journalist Amanda Ripley (Time, The Atlantic) recruited spies—American exchange students from schools in Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania—who attended ordinary high schools in Finland, South Korea, and Poland, countries where students do exceptionally well on international measures of learning. The result is Ripley’s recent book The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way (Simon and Schuster, 2013).

Much writing about schooling has adult political agendas that detract from achievement issues. Ripley’s book is an exception: a secret agent story where the spies—Kim, Eric, and Tom—are normal teenagers alert to the attitudes and behaviors of their overseas classmates and refreshingly open to comparing their exchange experiences with those of their hometown schools.

Kim’s story is especially compelling. A bright girl from Oklahoma, she yearned for a bigger, more promising world. Her local school had limited curricula, low expectations, a vague focus on academics, and little encouragement from the state legislature. Three times, legislators mandated student achievement standards and tests—routine in high-achieving countries—and three times, legislators backed off at the last minute fearing criticism of poor test scores.

Kim’s school district was one of 530 in Oklahoma and, with only four schools, had ten district administrators and directors as well as principals. Ripley calls this “hyperlocal control, hardwired for inefficiency.” Costly, too.

Kim’s modern high school was not hardwired for scholarship. Its “jewel” was the basketball court, not the library or science labs. Parents were involved in booster clubs and the PTA, but in little related to academic achievement. The principal told Ripley his biggest problem was “expectations.” He said they were “too high.” Really? Half the graduates went on to Oklahoma’s public colleges, but more than half of those were placed in remedial classes.

Kim, Eric, and Tom studied overseas in 2011-2012. Through thousands of emails and phone calls as well as on-site visits, Ripley picked the brains of her spies and their friends and met with school officials and testing experts here and abroad. She found some things much the same here and there, including electronic youth culture. Schools, though, were dramatically different.

The most obvious difference, in every country, was a total focus on academic learning. Schools had no other purpose. Sports and other activities were mostly outside school, sponsored by community organizations.

The spies found less testing overseas, particularly in Finland, but the major nationwide tests were serious business. Students studied for months, and scores could determine their future learning and career opportunities. In South Korea, airports rescheduled flights to avoid jet noise near schools on test days.

Teachers in host countries were drawn from the top of the talent pool, rigorously trained (often at public expense) and influential. Teaching was a prestigious profession.

In no subject were differences as clear as in math. Math is critical as a system of logic that trains young minds to think straight, not to mention as the key to the sciences and to desirable careers. As early as third grade, American kids have easier math assignments then lose time every fall reviewing what they’ve lost over their long summer breaks. More than other subjects, math builds on what is learned before, so early weakness compounds with time.

The overseas students overwhelmingly attributed success to hard work, not to inbred talent as  Americans tend to believe.

Host schools used little technology compared to schools here. No interactive white boards, no “clickers,” often no calculators.  

The New York Times calls Ripley’s a “masterly book,” but wonders if it “can also generate the will to make changes.” It can only if concerned citizens read it and act on it.

Teachers: Glamour Everlasting

Describing Our Miss Brooks, the popular 1950s TV program starring Eve Arden as a witty, sarcastic English teacher beloved by her students, The Kansas City Star recently noted that Arden portrayed “an intelligent woman in an unglamorous profession.” I suppose glamour, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. What could be more glamorous than passing on the wonders of nature and civilization to the next generation while helping them learn to think rigorously and live well, thereby strengthening our country and helping ensure a better future?

I mention this because of the importance of improving our schools. Recent studies of successful school systems around the world confirm what we’ve known all along but haven’t acted on: that teaching in those places is viewed as a glamorous profession or, if not glamorous, certainly prestigious. In the high-achieving countries of East Asia and Europe, teachers enjoy a status similar to that of physicians and judges here. The contrast with the American tradition is sharp, and the negative impact on our children clear.

In How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top, a two-year study of twenty-five systems including ten of the best, McKinsey & Company, the gold standard of global management consultants, concluded that most attempts to improve low-performing systems—restructuring, reducing class sizes, charter schools, and the like—make little or no difference. What makes a difference is teachers: “The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.”

All the best-performing systems select teachers from the top third or higher of college students: the top 5 percent in South Korea, 10 percent in Finland, 30 percent in Singapore and others. Most do this by limiting the number of teacher-training slots and admitting only those who score well on tests of literacy, numeracy, and problem solving, and who demonstrate outstanding communications and interpersonal skills. (In Finland, only one in ten applicants is admitted.) Once selected, students receive intensive training under master teachers, often at public expense including paid internships.

Such careful selection and early rewards elevates respect for teaching and helps attract the best applicants. Top countries also sweeten the pot by paying beginning teachers roughly equal to the average of other demanding fields. In addition, top-performing systems typically have strong teacher unions with a major voice in school standards and operations.

In America, prospective teachers tend to come from the lowest third of college students. Admission standards to teacher-training programs are generally low, tuition is high, internships are short and unpaid, and beginning salaries below average. The inevitable result is the Star’s “unglamorous profession” where thousands who train to teach never do and nearly half of those who do teach leave within five years. Aside from the waste of public resources and of these graduates’ investments, the public perception—and children’s perception—is that teaching—and, therefore, learning—isn’t important; it’s seen as a job for those with few other options.

Compounding the error, politicians in some states have been cutting school resources, attacking teacher unions, and insisting that teachers be accountable for better results while paying no attention to the compelling evidence for how to get those results. We need good teachers, and we need good politicians to create a system to attract more of them.

February 3, 2012