Sources of Our 

                   Discontent

 

Travel in time with me to the 1980s when an experienced educator suggested to me that the so-called “Me Generation” of students at that time were headed for a troubled future because of their growing belief that everyone’s opinions were equally valid regardless of established facts. We have equal rights (or should), but it’s foolish to believe that we’re equally right.

Fast forward to the election year of 2016 when my wife and I witnessed a widespread denial of provable facts. We were in an Amtrak station when a fellow passenger I dubbed Alice in Wonderland was on her phone loudly explaining that the 2012 mass murder of students and teachers in Connecticut’s Sandy Hook School was a hoax perpetrated by those wanting “to take our guns.” She told her listener to check it out “on Facebook.” Clearly, we were in the presence of a conspiracist with a social media megaphone. 

We knew there were ridiculous lies lurking in dark corners of the Internet—President Obama wasn’t a citizen, climate change was a hoax, the moon landings never happened—but I hadn’t come across a True Believer before. Watching Angry Alice spread online fiction to who knows how many eventual Believers was both disturbing and sad: disturbing because we were witnessing the spread of a lie and were powerless to stop it; sad because we were seeing a human being with the priceless gift of reason twisting it without evidence to satisfy her own paranoia. Surely, she was taught the habit of critical thinking in school. Apparently, she broke the habit and was a recovering thinker. 

The distinguished essayist Christopher Hitchens called conspiracy theories “the exhaust fumes of democracy.” Smelly, useless, and poisonous.

We later learned that the Sandy Hook “hoax” was promoted by right-wing radio personality Alex Jones, who was sued for defamation by eight grieving families. Jones must pay more than $965 million in damages and has declared bankruptcy. Justice.

Fast forward again to the 2020 presidential election when the losing candidate claimed—with no evidence—that his election was “stolen.” Even though 60 of 61 courts ruled that Biden won fairly (one didn’t rule because of a legal technicality), many of the loser’s followers became True Believers in the Big Lie. Many GOP legislators who know better but are afraid of losing votes became, and remain, election deniers publicly but privately admit the election was fair. 

In his 2017 book The Death of Expertise, Tom Nichols, professor of national security at the US Naval War College and at Harvard, writes about “the emergence of a positive hostility” to established facts and expert views. “This is new in American culture, and it represents the aggressive replacement of expert views or established knowledge with the insistence that every opinion on any matter is as good as every other.” This remarkable change in our public discourse “is not only unprecedented but dangerous.… Indeed, ignorance has now become hip….” But why would anyone prefer fashionable to factual?

Some good news: schools are working to make ignorance unfashionable. An award-winning government teacher at an area high school tells me that most of his students do not believe all opinions to be equally valid and that by the time they graduate, most “are at least decent at understanding credibility of sources and recognizing more reliable versus less reliable information.”

He said that challenges include competition from social media for students’ attention, lingering absenteeism since the pandemic, and, for some, “the tidal wave they get outside of school [regarding] their political socialization and the related ability to think critically about the difference between information and propaganda.” If schools overcome these challenges, our discontents will fade.

 

         

                             Funny Business in School

 

One of the many joys of a school career is that students are often funny. During the first week of a new school year, I was a principal walking the halls just after the bell that started classes when I noticed two freshman girls hanging around a drinking fountain. I didn’t know them well but knew they weren’t troublesome but also weren’t stellar students, so I smiled and said, “Let’s go to class, ladies.” One of them said, “It’s only art class,” so I said, “Only art class? You get to learn about what’s beautiful!” The other instantly replied, “That’s cosmetology.”

Clever! Her quick wit left me speechless for a few heartbeats then I cracked up laughing so hard that tears ran down my face. She was pleased and they went to class. For the rest of the year, every time we passed in the halls, we couldn’t help but laugh, and we soon began chatting regularly. I told the story to her teachers who thought it as funny as I did. Whether they saw her in a new light, or she saw herself differently, or likely both, by year’s end, her grades had improved markedly. 

Another year, a group of freshman boys declared their lunch table an independent country. They had a flag they put on the table every day and elected officers including a secretary of state who conducted relations with foreigners like me. To speak with any of them, I had to arrange a summit meeting through the secretary. They kept this up for the whole year. 

When a guinea pig died after years as a science classroom mascot, bereaved students organized a funeral service in an enclosed courtyard. Wearing choir robes, thirty students walked slowly to the gravesite humming a good imitation of a Gregorian chant, the remains wrapped in a shroud and carried on a board. The guinea pig was laid to rest after a solemn ceremony recognizing its years of friendship. The whole thing was done to be funny but was also oddly touching. 

It was customary for football players to wear their jerseys to school on the first day of the season. Walking through a crowded hall between classes, a player came toward me wearing his number 82. I knew he was a good student with a sense of humor, so I pointed at him and cheerfully said, “I see they’ve issued those IQ shirts.” He stopped, looked down at his 82 for a moment then broke into a big grin and exclaimed “Yes!” while doing a fist pump. Very funny. (I never put much stock in IQs. As a colleague liked to say about school success, “It’s not the IQ. It's the ‘I will.’” 

After years as a principal, I missed teaching history and so took on a U.S. History night class at the Kansas City campus of DeVry Institute of Technology (now DeVry University). Arriving one night, I headed for the wide and graceful stairway that led directly to our second-floor classroom when I saw one of my students waiting for the elevator located next to the stairway. I waved to her saying, “Come on and take the stairs. It’s good for you and faster, too.” She stayed put and said, “This is an institute of technology and I plan to use all of it.” Good one, but I got to class first.

For graduates heading to college or those already there, consider a career in education. You can help make a better world, help students reach their potential, and have some fun along the way. It’s hard work but never routine and always worthwhile. Good teachers are in high demand. Be one. Change the world.

 

    

                                  The Loyal Opposition

 

Speaking in the British parliament in 1826, John Hobhouse coined the term “His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition” meaning that members of a legislature may oppose government policies while still respecting the higher authority of the state and—when applied in the U.S.—the overall framework of the Constitution. In America, with no “Majesty,” the term has long been shortened to “the loyal opposition,” a characteristic of a healthy democracy that allows a party out of power to dissent from government policies without being accused of treason. 

With a loyal opposition, disagreeing with the party in power is not only allowed but is respectable and even essential, giving voters a choice in every election. Dissent gives us options, which is good if the options are based on facts and conform to our democratic traditions and to the Constitution.

Fundamental to the concept of a loyal opposition is the agreement that democracy is rooted in compromise, which is likewise rooted in mutual respect among legislators who trust that the same rules apply to all. Michael Ignatieff, former leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, has written that “in the house of democracy, there are no enemies.” If there are, “legislatures replace relevance with pure partisanship. Party discipline reigns supreme … negotiation and compromise are rarely practiced, and debate … becomes as venomously personal as it is politically meaningless.” 

“No enemies” is a lesson that seems to have been lost by many members of our Republican Party. President Nixon kept an enemies list and late-90s House Speaker Newt Gingrich signed a 1990 memo to GOP legislators recommending they describe Democrats with negative words such as “sick,” “radical,” and “traitors.” Gingrich encouraged a combative approach by the GOP, including hateful language and extreme partisanship, and often questioned Democrats’ patriotism. He compared them to fascists. 

Gingrich saw the GOP as in a war for power, an attitude that took root then blossomed during the Obama Administration. This “war” led directly to the claim, with no evidence, that President Biden didn’t win the 2020 election, to a scheme to appoint fake electors, and ultimately to the violent January 6 assault on the Capitol attempting to stop the official electoral count. All of this disregarded the Constitution and the 224-year tradition of a peaceful transfer of power. The loyal opposition had become a disloyal opposition.

Thankfully, there were Republican heroes, notably Vice-president Pence and several state officials who hadn’t drunk the party-first poison and followed the law despite heavy pressure from the former president. The poison ran deep, though: GOP leaders in the House and Senate blocked a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 assault, no doubt afraid that an investigation would expose many of their party as conspirators disloyal to America. 

And the party-before-country poison is still at work. Last month, former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Ronna McDaniel tried to justify her support for the disgraced former president’s promise to pardon those convicted of participating in the January 6 Capitol assault by saying, “When you’re the RNC Chair, you kind of take one for the whole team.” In a democracy, the team is America, not any party. A loyal opposition would know that.

The party-first poison is so potent that House Republicans are now at war with each other with right-wing extremists threatening to throw out yet another Speaker of their own party for doing his job by cooperating with Democrats to pass vital legislation. Meanwhile, the former president is on trial for election interference and, along with three other pending cases, faces nearly 90 felony charges. He is estimated to have accumulated $100 million in legal fees so far. Early this year, President Obama posted a contrasting observation: “Eight years. Never had to hire a lawyer.”

 

                         

                          Impressive

 

A day and a half after the Baltimore bridge disaster, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg (pictured) gave a press conference at the White House describing the accident in detail, the immediate and long-term effects on Baltimore’s busy port and its employees and area residents, on America’s imports and exports, and on plans for reopening the shipping channel and rebuilding the Interstate bridge. It was an impressive display of how much Buttigieg had learned in a day and a half.

He described the 990-foot-long container ship, the Dali, and noted that it was fully loaded with nearly 4,700 containers giving the ship a weight of more than 100,000 tons—a floating mass heavier than the largest aircraft carriers. With the aid of a video that showed the ship approaching the bridge at night, Buttigieg pointed out that the ship’s lights had gone out, briefly came back on, then gone out again, indicating a main power failure followed by the emergency generator kicking in than another failure. Without power, the ship couldn’t be steered and crashed into a critical support pier at about 9 mph causing the steel structure to collapse. 

The wreckage blocked the port’s navigable channel, and Buttigieg explained that 8,000+ jobs will be affected directly and thousands more indirectly until the port is reopened. He said that $100 million of cargo goes through Baltimore’s port every day. Unless other East Coast ports can handle some of the trade, the supply chains of bulk cargo, cars and farm machinery, and other manufactured and agricultural goods will be disrupted nationwide. Congestion on area roads will increase because of the loss of a major commuter route.

After serious supply disruptions during the pandemic, the recent Jobs and Infrastructure Act created a new freight office in the Transportation Department to coordinate the movement of goods. Buttigieg explained that ocean shipping isn’t centrally controlled like air traffic, so “having these tools allows us to create coordination that just didn’t exist before.”

Buttigieg said that the bridge was built in the 1970s and the Dali is “orders of magnitude bigger than cargo ships in service at the time [typically four times heavier].” He confirmed that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will conduct an independent investigation, and if they “determine anything that should be considered in the regulation, inspection, design, or funding of bridges in the future, we will be ready to apply those findings.”

Meanwhile, Buttigieg said, the federal government was already working with city, county, and state officials, Maryland congresspersons, and the Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers to quickly open the port, remove bridge wreckage, and remove the ship whose bow was pinned to the shallow riverbed by the weight of a bridge section that fell on it. 

Buttigieg confirmed that to expedite recovery, President Biden said that the federal government will pay for the project, including the cost of replacing the bridge. Buttigieg also said “rebuilding will not be quick or easy or cheap, but we will get it done.” Asked by a reporter if he would “go after the shipping company,” the Secretary said, “Any private party that is found responsible and liable will be held accountable.”

Meanwhile, government agencies were wasting no time. The day after the press conference, the largest floating crane on the East Coast arrived from New York soon followed by others. The next day, ironworkers began cutting the bridge wreckage into manageable pieces while divers took sonar scans of the underwater debris in the channel. 

Secretary Buttigieg glanced at his notes once or twice, but mostly spoke eloquently while looking at his audience. His was an impressive example of how to inform the public during an emergency. Good job.

 

                   Classical Education in Schools?

 

A movement is afoot to return a classical curricula to U.S. schools. With fifty years as a teacher and administrator, I’m for it—with some reservations. 

Classical education is built around the liberal arts—language and literature, natural sciences, formal sciences (logic, math, statistics), history, social sciences (civics, economics, psychology, human geography, sociology), and fine arts. They’re called liberal arts because they liberate students (from Latin liberalis—“worthy of a free person”—and ars—“structured practice”). In democracies, that freedom is the foundation of citizenship. 

Vartan Gregorian, esteemed late president of the philanthropic Carnegie Corporation, called liberal education the “soul of democracy” because it prepares students to “appreciate the differences between earning a living and actually living; to cultivate more than a passing familiarity with ethics, history, science, and culture; and to perceive the tragic chasm between the world as it is and the world as it could and ought to be.”    

Classical education typically begins in the early grades, teaching reading through phonics and valuing memorization of multiplication tables, poetry, and the like. A century ago, most Americans learned in these ways, but then, so-called “progressive education” swept the land replacing phonics with learning to read (or not) by context and claiming memorization was mere drill. Too, industrialization needed trained workers, so basic skills and learning for earning replaced rigorous liberal arts and sciences except for the minority of college-bound.   

By high school, classical education involves reading and discussing what some of history’s most influential thinkers had to say about truth, beauty, virtue, and citizenship: How can we find what is true? How do we define what is beautiful? How can we be a good person? How best to govern ourselves? Plato (pictured) favored philosopher-kings; 22 centuries later, America’s founders opted for democracy. Students who read and discuss Plato and Jefferson and Madison (and others between) will have a deeper understanding of the meaning of citizenship. 

Classical education is reviving most notably in charter schools with religious affiliations attracted by the long influence of Christianity on literature and the arts. Secular investors are attracted by their potential as models of excellence for public schools. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies have invested millions in classical schools. Schools in most European countries and many exclusive private schools in America have never lost their focus on the classics.

A weakness of traditional classical education is the narrow focus on European civilization brought to the Americas through conquest and immigration. We’ve been taught that our cultural heritage is from Plato, the Caesars, popes, Luther, Shakespeare, Newton, Beethoven—a long list of dead white men who shaped our world. 

And they did, but ours is only part of the world, and as our population becomes more diverse, it’s time to make the classic contributions of other cultures part of ours. Searching for truths? Read Confucius. Beauty? Examine India’s Taj Mahal. Innovations in the sciences? Moslems invented the hospital with separate wards for different ailments and gave us algebra and chemistry terms such as alcohol. Modern music? The roots of jazz and rock were in the many empires of Sub-Saharan Africa. Great literature? A Japanese woman wrote the world’s first novel a thousand years ago. 

Another classical weakness is the near absence of non-males in the heritage of many cultures, an effect of the traditional view that woman’s role is in the home and not as leaders or agents of change. That is changing, and a classical curricula needs to reflect that.

Taught well, the liberal arts favor no ethnicity or ideology or faith. They liberate students to choose from all that civilization has to offer. That is freedom.

 

                                               

                              Nationalization ceremony for new citizens

Immigration

 

 

We need workers. Immigrants want jobs. We have jobs. It’s a match.

As in nearly all developed countries, the U.S. birthrate is too low to produce enough new workers to replace retirees. We need electricians, plumbers, physicians, nurses, teachers, auto mechanics, food service workers, school bus drivers, carpenters, and on and on. 

Fortunately, immigrants are the answer. Unfortunately, America has an ugly history of bigoted immigration policies. In 1884, the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited Chinese immigration less than 20 years after Chinese were recruited and shipped here to help build the transcontinental railroad, including the most difficult part over the Sierras, where they were found to be reliable and hard workers who didn’t drink. Other Asian immigrants were severely restricted during the early 20^th century.

In 1921, a quota system was introduced to deny entry to most southern and eastern Europeans—Italians, Poles, Jews, and others—who wanted to escape conflict and poverty at home. It was a time when a popular belief in eugenics claimed these “separate and inferior races” would lower the quality and dilute the blood of an America populated mostly by those of supposedly “superior” western European ancestry. Hitler used America’s policies as models and made eugenics part of Nazi ideology. Here, white supremacists used eugenics-based immigration policies to largely freeze America’s racial and ethnic makeup until Congress and President Johnson ended the bigoted quota system with the Nationality Act of 1965.

The Vietnam War led to a wave of Southeast Asians emigrating to the U.S., and the 1980 Refugee Act created a legal process for accepting refugees. The Immigration Act of 1990 allowed for 675,000 migrants annually and, along with the Nationality Act, form the basis of today’s system. 

Currently, our immigration system works slowly, overwhelmed by the number of refugees, many from South and Central America, fleeing violence and/or poverty in their home countries. Courts that rule on asylum status are understaffed and years behind. Still, we’re having some success: Legal immigration is now higher than eight years ago, and more refugees will be resettled this year than any year in the last thirty.

A bipartisan immigration reform bill passed the Senate in 2013 but failed in the Republican-led House. Last month, another bipartisan reform bill with largely Republican policies clearly had enough votes to pass both Houses and have the President sign it, but the GOP presidential candidate in Florida ordered Republicans to block it so he can run on immigration as a campaign issue. Meanwhile, many migrants and their families remain in limbo, their future uncertain and their present anxious. 

Our immigration system needs fixing with a clear path to citizenship including for Dreamers—young people who came here as children, attended our schools, and are, in effect, Americans. We also need a support system so that immigrants can get the education and training to enable them to become the workers we need. (Immigration is not border security, an associated issue which attempts to prevent undesirable people and materials—criminals, drugs, non-native plants, etc.—from entering the country. The bipartisan reform bill currently blocked by Republicans would add thousands of personnel and other measures to improve border security.)

A commission summarized the 1990 Immigration Act’s purposes: “A well-regulated system sets priorities for admission; facilitates nuclear family reunification; gives employers access to a global labor market while protecting U.S. workers; helps to generate jobs and economic growth; and fulfills our commitment to resettle refugees as one of several elements of humanitarian protection of the persecuted.” The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the next decade, immigrants will add $7 trillion to our economy and pay $1 trillion in taxes because of increased productivity and higher demand. Let’s welcome them to our communities.

                                  A Bidenomics Primer

 

America’s economy is having a remarkably successful sea change that The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times first labeled “Bidenomics.” The term is now widely used, including by Biden, for his Administration’s economic policy shift. How does Bidenomics differ from what came before, and how successful has it been in two and a half years? 

Since the Reagan era forty years ago, American economic policy has been based on the supply-side, or “trickle down,” theory that if the rich get richer through lower taxes and business deregulation, much of their greater wealth will trickle down to the rest of us through more jobs and higher wages that businesses can then afford. This hasn’t happened; indeed, the wealth gap between the rich and the rest has increased dramatically. 

As summarized in The Huffington Post, trickle-down policies “favored the private sector over the public, the financial well-being of the rich over the poor, the support of monopolies over small and local business, and the empowerment of bosses over workers.” The result has been to reward wealth, not work.

Bidenomics does the opposite, growing the economy from “the bottom up and the middle out” as the President often says. How is this done? Mostly, through four key Congressional Acts:

 

·       The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, a response to the severe Covid-19 recession, that made cash payments to lower- and middle-income individuals; extended unemployment benefits; expanded child tax credits; helped fund schools and state, local, and tribal governments with budget shortfalls; helped fund small businesses; and paid for a national vaccine program. Low- and middle-income households received more than 70% of the benefits. No Republican voted for it.

·       The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, which invests in roads and bridges, clean power, passenger and freight rail, expanded broadband access, public transportation, clean drinking water, and other public benefits. Passed with bipartisan support.

·       The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 that provides funds and tax credits for U.S. companies producing computer chips in the U.S. and money for research in AI, robotics, quantum computing, and other advanced  technologies. Passed with bipartisan support.

·       The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will significantly reduce carbon emissions using renewable energy technologies, improves health insurance affordability, lowers Medicare drug costs, funds the IRS to better enforce tax reporting, and implements a 15% minimum corporate tax. No Republican voted for it.

 

The results are convincing: With government taking a more active role, the U.S. has had the best economic recovery from the pandemic of any country; GDP has risen steadily; stocks are up nearly 20% this year and on the best run in six years; worker pay has risen faster than inflation, which has declined from 7% a year ago to 3.1% now; consumer spending (the demand side of the economy) is up; the gender pay gap is the smallest in history with women’s earnings at 84% of men’s; and unemployment is the lowest since 1969. 

In addition, unions are growing and becoming more influential thanks partly to new pro-labor policies by the National Labor Relations Board. Importantly, Biden appointed two Board members with union backgrounds.

For the past three years, most economists forecast a painful recession now or soon, but a combination of Bidenomics and careful interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve have eased those fears. Economists now foresee a so-called “soft landing” rather than a hard recession. 

Last month, Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who voted for none of the above Acts, accused Biden of following the legacies of FDR and LBJ by creating “big government programs” to address healthcare, education, rural poverty, and other issues. Asked to respond, Biden said, “I approve of this message.” Good answer.

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.

Healthy, Wealthy, Wise

Ben Franklin’s formula for happiness reminds me of bookends: “healthy” and “wise” support—indeed, make possible— the “wealthy” in the middle, clarifying the wisdom of investing in healthcare and education as the foundations of a good life. This brings me to the heart-warming topic of Canada, and you don’t often find a reference to anything warm in a sentence about Canada.

My Wife the English Teacher and I recently traveled to the Canadian Rockies and Vancouver, driving the six hundred spectacularly scenic miles between. Along the way, two coyotes inspected our car stopped on a quiet mountain road, we joined a dozen people closer than we should have been to a black bear and two cubs eating roadside berries (after concluding that we could outrun at least one of the other spectators), and my wife (who talks with animals) spoke with a large male elk sporting an impressive rack.

But the heart-warming part wasn’t scenery or wildlife. It was the fact that wherever Canadians gather, every one of them—man, woman, and child—has full health insurance sponsored by the federal government and the provinces. Imagine it: stand on a balcony overlooking a crowded mall or on a busy street corner or, for that matter, in a national park, and every citizen you see is insured with no co-pays and no deductibles for medically necessary care. Mauled by a bear? Covered. And some provinces provide limited dental and vision insurance.

Ask Canadians, as we did, and they’ll almost certainly brighten right up on the subject of their healthcare. They love it! One woman in her twenties talked enthusiastically about regular checkups since childhood, prompt visits to her doctor when ill, and the fact that she has “never paid a cent” out-of-pocket. A seventy-six-year-old Vancouver architect expressed dismay at the failure of the U.S. to care about its people. He called universal care “a no-brainer” and clearly felt sorry for Americans.

To Canadians, healthcare, like education, is a basic human right and has been for more than half a century. Tommy Douglas (1904-1986), a Baptist minister-turned-politician, was the father of Canada’s Medicare, as it’s called, and is considered by a large majority the greatest Canadian ever. Douglas is the Abe Lincoln of the nation who freed its people from unnecessary suffering and the fear of financial ruin.

Costs are funded by part of a federal progressive income tax ranging from 15 to 29 percent and provincial/territorial income taxes of from 5 to 15 percent (figures vary annually depending on revenue needs). The quality of care is excellent, patient and physician satisfaction is high (better than 90 percent and 75 percent, respectively), and wait times are little different from the U.S., though service in remote areas can be problematic.

Among its many virtues, Medicare is cost-effective, consuming about 10.1 percent of GDP while insuring everyone. Healthcare in the States consumes about 16.8 percent of GDP while leaving forty-five million uninsured. Per capita costs in 2009 were approximately $4200 in Canada and $7900 in the States (cited in AARP.org).

Finally, help is arriving here. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (known as ACA or Obamacare) has been phasing in and will be mostly effective by late next year. Because of resistance in Congress, the ACA is more complicated and less efficient than Canada’s Medicare, but has eliminated lifetime caps and denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, allows children to remain covered in parents’ plans to age twenty-six, eliminates higher premiums for women, and will eventually extend coverage to more than thirty million uninsured. The rise in healthcare costs has already slowed significantly and is projected to reverse after the ACA takes full effect.

Canadian healthcare is a public service; U.S. care has been about private profit. That’s now changing for the better. People first.