Leonardo da Vinci on Public TV

Leonardo—artist, scientist, engineer, visionary—was a complex and fascinating man. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) will air, on KCPT-19 in Kansas City, on November 18 and 19 at 7 p.m. and repeated on Sunday, November 24 at 12 p.m., a new Ken Burns documentary on Leonardo, Italian Renaissance genius and advisor to kings and princes. Burns’s documentaries on the National Parks, baseball, the Civil War, jazz, and others have been widely popular and have set a high standard for informative television. Leonardo is Burns’s first program on a non-American subject.

Leonardo (1452-1519) helped create the modern world. Born a thousand years after the fall of Rome, he and numerous European contemporaries were humanists who believed that life wasn’t just a short stop on the road to heaven but an opportunity to make a better world by studying how nature worked and by emphasizing the importance of individuals and the power of their ability to reason. 

Humanism was a sea change from the mysticism of the Middle Ages and was an optimistic view that people could produce change for the better. Progress became an expectation. Two generations after Leonardo, Shakespeare wrote, in Hamlet, “What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.”

According to Ken Burns, “No single person can speak to our collective effort to understand the world and ourselves. But Leonardo had a unique genius for inquiry, aided by his extraordinary skill as an artist and scientist, that helps us understand the natural world that we are part of and to appreciate more fully what it means to be alive and human.” 

Leonardo is best known for his sublime paintings, especially Mona Lisa (pictured) and The Last Supper, but he was an avid student of anatomy, mechanics, civil engineering, optics, geology, and more, and made important discoveries in most of these. He invented a device that measured the tensile strength of wire and envisioned flying machines, concentrated solar power, an adding machine, and a steam cannon. He created the first technical drawings with exploded views. Most of his visions couldn’t be made in his time because the necessary technologies didn’t yet exist, but they inspired others for centuries.

Mark your calendar for November 18-19 or 24 and learn about this influential man. Maybe you’ll be inspired as so many others have been. 

 

Presidential Election

 

Finally, no more political ads and texts. Donald Trump got the Get Out of Jail Free Card he desperately wanted while we will get the only president who is a convicted felon and a sex offender. He’s a poor role model for America’s children and I fear America will no longer be a model democracy for other nations. 

Kamala Harris ran a nearly faultless campaign in just 107 days. She provided a refreshing, positive approach to government, and, after the election, said that we only see the stars when it’s darkest and encouraged her supporters to continue working and be stars to brighten the dark.

Missing from both campaigns was a sharp focus on some of the most crucial issues facing us: climate change, the wealth gap between the rich and the rest, more rigorous schooling with well-prepared teachers, affordable public colleges and vocational schools, and gun safety including an assault weapons ban. Surely, both parties can do better.

 

         

                                         Be a Patriot. Vote

 

Voting is how We the People hire those who will help do what the Constitution requires: “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” That’s the job, so the question is which candidates to hire.

Having hired hundreds of employees during my career, I can testify that the most important quality is sound character: honesty, competence, a positive attitude, an open mind, optimism, a willingness to admit mistakes, and respect for others. 

Foremost is honesty. Without it, the other qualities can’t be relied upon because we can’t be sure if the person is being truthful. Who wants to work for—or be led by—someone whose word can’t be trusted? Sadly, too many candidates lack this trait including those who have fallen for The Big Lie, the belief, with no evidence, that President Biden lost the 2020 election. 

More than 60 federal and state courts, including judges of both parties and independents, found election results accurate. Curiously, those who deny the presidential result accept the accuracy of other contests on the same ballot including, in many cases, their own election. The only significant election fraud is by those fertilizing distrust.

So who should we hire with our votes? Above all, no one who is dishonest including no election deniers. We need to flush out officials who refuse to face facts or, knowing the facts, lie about them anyway. Too many Republican politicians have been poisoning our country for too many years. They’re not patriots. They’ve encouraged violence, especially the January 6 attack on our Capitol but also threats to election workers and officials who are just trying to do their jobs.

Let’s hire patriots who are proud of our country and optimistic about helping make it “a more perfect union.” Let’s hire leaders who can build a civil society where hate and division are replaced by mutual respect and public policies arrived at through constructive compromise. 

Last week, the ex-president said, “America is like a garbage can for the world.” Referring to immigrants as “garbage” when they have sacrificed much to seek a better life (as my ancestors and probably yours did) is pure racism.

No one is born racist; it’s learned, and Trump learned it. What he failed to learn is self-discipline. His speeches have always wandered off topic, but lately they’ve become bizarre, irrelevant, and even crude. Last week he talked about a champion golfer’s genitalia. A week earlier, he told an audience that they didn’t need to hear more about policies and spent a half hour on stage swaying and grinning to music. Democratic VP candidate Tim Walz said, “If this was your grandfather, you’d take the keys away.”

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris’s quick wit—and character—showed when she smiled and told some hecklers, “You’re at the wrong rally. You want the smaller one down the street.” She didn’t ask anyone to “punch ‘em in the nose” as her opponent once did. 

The ex-president brags about his good economy, and it was, but he never mentions that the economy grew for a record 75 consecutive months under Obama and continued to do so at about the same rate through Trump’s time until the global pandemic recession. Trump’s economy was Obama’s. Trump’s chief economic impact was huge tax cuts for the rich and corporations which added about $2 trillion to our nation’s debt.

The Economist is a British news magazine relied upon by corporate and government leaders worldwide for its honest, unbiased, carefully fact-checked analyses of global developments. The cover story of the October 17 issue called America’s economy “the envy of the world” and “bigger and better than ever.” 

Productivity is solid, unemployment low, wages rising, inflation barely above normal, and the dollar strong. Credit goes to Federal Reserve policies that avoided a post-pandemic recession, to Biden-Harris legislation on infrastructure, climate/energy, and pandemic recovery, and to “America’s world-beating ingenuity” in science and technology. Be a patriot. Vote to keep our economy “the envy of the world.”

                     

                      Country Before Party

 

In August, former Georgia Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan, addressing his fellow Republicans, said, “If you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024, you’re not a Democrat. You’re a patriot.” 

Hundreds of prominent Republicans have endorsed Harris for president. The growing list include ultra-conservative former Vice-President Dick Cheney, leading conservative legal scholar and retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig, dozens of other retired Republican judges, former Republican Senators and Representatives including former Kansas Senator Nancy Kassebaum and other former Kansas officials, 238 former presidential staff from four Republican presidential tickets, and former Trump White House officials including 20 of his Cabinet members. In addition, scores of retired top military officers and more than 700 of the most senior national security leaders of both parties and independents have endorsed Harris. Trump’s vice-president has refused to endorse him.

Most of these Republicans surely disagree with many of Harris’s policies but put country before party because they understand that Trump is a clear and present danger to the American experiment in self-rule. Dick Cheney: “In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again.” Judge Luttig: “In the presidential election of 2024 there is only one political party and one candidate for the presidency that can claim the mantle of defender and protector of America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law.”

Fortunately, that “one candidate for the presidency” is an optimistic and experienced public servant who has defended the people’s interests as attorney general of our largest state and as a senator and vice-president. She has run a nearly faultless campaign holding dozens of rallies and interviews without once resorting to the often-dangerous lies that are a daily feature of the Trump campaign. Harris dominated him in their debate so thoroughly that he was exposed as weak and small. He refuses to debate her again.

Harris helped shape economic policies that ended the failed Republican “trickle down” policies dating to the 1980s. Policies now favor workers over the wealthy. Unions have been reinvigorated after decades of decline, and their successes have helped drive a 4 percent rise in wages in the past year (with women making significant gains). America now enjoys the healthiest economy of any major nation, with a growing GDP, low unemployment, nearly normal inflation, rising wages, and a record high stock market. 

Crime is related to the economy, and FBI data show that violent crime is at a 50-year low. Homicides fell 12 percent from 2022 to 2023, the largest one-year drop in nearly six decades—hardly the hellscape that Trump rages about. He likes to blame immigrants for an imaginary crime wave, but the crime rate among immigrants is lower than among long-time Americans. Ironically, Trump is a crime wave himself with 34 felony convictions, adjudication as a sex offender, and indictments for several additional felonies including his role in the deadly Capitol riot of 2021. 

Less interested in the nation’s good than his own, Trump didn’t want the border situation improved so he could campaign on it. When a bipartisan, but mostly Republican, immigration bill looked as if it would pass Congress this year, he told Republicans to drop it, which they did. 

Harris was directly involved in passing the Infrastructure Law now improving roads, bridges, and more across the country, in the most comprehensive climate change legislation of any country, and has vowed to work to restore women’s right to make their own reproductive decisions. Both her record and her vision make her the patriotic choice.

Early voting begins in Kansas on Saturday, October 19. Election Day is November 5. Be a patriot. Vote.

       

                            Supreme Court 

             Strikes Out

 

Imagine you’re at Kauffman Stadium to watch the Royals play the New York Yankees. The game is about to start as the umpires walk onto the field, but instead of wearing their usual dark uniforms, they’re in Yankee pinstripes. You suspect that balls and strikes might not be called fairly.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has described the Court’s job as “calling balls and strikes,” which should mean not favoring any partisan positions, but for the Roberts Court, this often is not the case. Of the nine Justices, five, often six, heavily favor Republican causes or individuals.

The most recent instance is the June ruling in Trump v. United States conferring on former presidents immunity from prosecution for crimes committed as part of official duties. All six conservative justices—three appointed by Trump—signed on to the ruling (one with reservations), while the other three dissented. Part of Justice Sotomayor’s dissent said, “The court effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding.” So ends the cherished American tradition that no person is above the law.

The immunity case is the latest in a series of controversial rulings with little Constitutional basis or Court precedent: ending women’s right to make reproductive decisions, declaring that “corporations are people” entitled to nearly unlimited political contributions, striking down state and local laws regulating guns in public, limiting the ability of agencies like the FDA and the EPA to regulate in areas of their expertise—all rulings favored by the GOP. It’s no wonder that only 1 in 3 Americans trust the Court, an all-time low.

Bias isn’t the only problem. Justices Alito and Thomas have serious ethical issues. Thomas has been treated to expensive vacations by wealthy conservative Harlan Crow who also paid private school costs for Thomas’s great-nephew, none of which was reported as required. Crow donated large sums to organizations filing briefs before the Court, one of which has Thomas’s wife as a trustee, an obvious conflict of interest, but Thomas has refused to recuse himself from the cases.

Shortly after the deadly Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, Justice Alito’s home flew an upside-down U.S. flag, a symbol of election deniers; later, a flag favored by hard-right extremists appeared at his beach house. Alito blamed his wife, an activist involved in the January 6 episode, and indicated he will not recuse himself from relevant cases. He also failed to report an Alaska fishing trip by private jet with a billionaire GOP donor.

Two of the Court’s conservatives owe their seats to Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell who, in 2016, refused to allow a vote on an Obama nominee “because it was an election year” even though the election was nine months away and the Senate had a duty to vote. Trump eventually made the appointment. In 2020, a vacancy occurred six weeks before an election and McConnell changed his own rule and hustled another conservative through a quickie conformation. 

To rebuild confidence in the Court, President Biden has proposed three reforms: a “No One Is Above the Law Amendment” to the Constitution, staggered term limits of 18 years, and an enforceable code of ethics (as in all other federal courts). An amendment is difficult, requiring broad bipartisan support, and term limits might also require an amendment. An ethics code requires only Congressional and presidential approval.

Vice-President Harris has endorsed the Biden reforms. GOP Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has called them “dead on arrival.” 

We the People can save them by electing reform supporters to Congress and the presidency. Court reform is one of many compelling reasons to be informed and vote in the coming election. 

 

No Contest

 

The much anticipated debate between Vice-President Harris and ex-President Trump was like a Navy destroyer doing battle with an old tugboat.

It was a blowout. Harris was in command from the start when she walked to his podium to shake his clearly reluctant hand. After that, it was a master class by a disciplined candidate who had done her homework and a desperate man who usually wandered off topic and sometimes seemed angrily hysterical.

And the ex-president is desperate. Already convicted of 34 felonies in his business finances and judged liable for sexual assault, the presidency would shield him from current federal charges of conspiracy and theft of classified documents.

The debate covered a range of topics. Harris promoted her “opportunity economy” with plans for cash or tax credits for small businesses, first-time home buyers, and new parents, and protections for organized labor. Her opponent called her “a Marxist” and offered no plan to help workers, pushing, instead, tariffs “to make China [and others] pay.” (Tariffs often raise consumer prices here on imported goods from clothing and electronics to vehicles and food, adding to inflation.) 

The ex-president bragged about overturning Roe v. Wade, leaving states to vote on abortion as “everybody wanted,” even though that’s certainly not what “everybody” wanted. Harris promised to work for and sign legislation that would restore women’s freedom to choose.

Asked if he would have done anything differently during the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Trump blamed others, saying Speaker Pelosi and the D.C. mayor were responsible for security. Asked again, he changed the subject. Harris said, “Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. Clearly, he has a very difficult time processing that.” Her tone was that of a patient adult discussing a child unwilling to face facts.

On foreign policy, Harris was asked about the hurried U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. She pointed out that Trump had negotiated a weak withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, and President Biden was obliged to meet its terms. About Ukraine, she made a forceful case for defending democracy against Putin’s aggression; Trump complained about the cost and refused to say if he wanted Ukraine to win.

Ah, immigration. Baiting Trump for the umpteenth time, Harris invited debate viewers to attend a Trump rally and notice that people, possibly bored, were leaving early. That sent him into a rant about how he had the biggest numbers ever seen and soon launched his usual racist description of America as “a failing country,” blaming immigrant criminals who are ruining “the blood of America.” He said Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pet cats and dogs. (This is far-right Internet garbage with no factual basis.) 

On energy policy, Trump claimed that solar and wind wouldn’t make us “strong,” and said, “Germany tried that, and within one year, they were back to building normal energy plants.” More garbage. The German Foreign Office soon issued a rebuttal: “Like it or not, Germany’s energy system is fully operational, with more than 50% renewables. And we are shutting down—not building—coal and nuclear plants. Coal will be off the grid by 2038 at the latest. P.S.: We also don’t eat cats and dogs.” 

It's sad when our allies feel compelled to make fun of a candidate for president. London’s Evening Standard, a generally conservative paper, called Trump “a laughingstock.”

The morning after the debate, Trump criticized ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis, who had done a fine job, calling them “enemies of the people” (again, someone else’s fault). Trump said, “It was my best debate ever” and refused another debate, claiming that only losers want “a rematch.” If that’s true, he should demand one because Kamala Harris was commander-in-chief from start to finish.

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