I find Gov. Rounds' comments yesterday about education at once edifying and disturbing. You can read about them here and here. Clearly we need to do a better job of educating young people in math and science. So on that the governor is correct. I worry, though, that he puts too much emphasis on technology. The only report I have seen on this came out of Israel and they found no relation to technology in the classroom and educational attainment. The governor suggests that we set a goal of easing access to laptops for high school students. I respectfully submit as someone who has some knowledge about education in South Dakota that the computer skills of our students are the least of our worries. The worrisome thing is that they cannot write well. A colleague in the English department tells me that the vocabulary of a high school graduate is about half of what it was 40 years ago. How do we expect our students to learn when they cannot understand many of the words they are supposed to read? Their historical ignorance is disturbing. All too many lack a basic idea about the institutions of our government. All this is true not only for South Dakota but around the country. The governor starts, I fear, from a false premise. The purpose of education is not to make us competitive in a global market place. We are not developing employees; we are trying to develop human beings and citizens. There is almost no reason for specialized training in K-12 education. I would submit that there is no reason for a student to touch a computer in the classroom until at least the ninth grade. There is a myth out there that if it is technology it must be good. But there is no evidence that I am aware of that computer programs for five-year-olds are any better at teaching the alphabet and basic reading than good old fashioned blocks. Let the kids use their imagination and physically touch something, not just stare at a screen and let the computer do all the creativity for them.
The governor seems to have fallen under the sway of Thomas Friedman. This is dangerous. For tough reviews of Friedman's latest book on globalism see here and here, but I warn you that there is harsh language in both reviews. By harsh I mean "f-bombs" and the like. I will point out that the second and more temperate review is by Thomas Barnett, who has become my lodestar on many questions of foreign policy and globalism.
If we give our kids a solid education in fundamentals of writing, reading, math, science, history, and citizenship the competition with the world will take care of itself. I also believe in funding the arts so as to give young people the experience of beautiful things and athletics to teach them the value of sacrifice and team work. Finally, although I understand the 2010 E-Initiative is looking into increasing foreign language offerings across the state, the lack of foreign language education in our schools is nothing short of criminal. One of the best ways to improve in English is to gain even a basic understanding of another language. Most everything outside of these strictures is a distraction from the goal of developing good people and good citizens (to the extent those are different things). It's bad enough that our universities are turning into professional schools, let's not do the same in elementary and secondary education. I mentioned a Book TV interview coming up with Prof. Harvey Mansfield of Harvard. Here are his thoughts on university curricula, which I think can inform our thoughts on K-12. There is also the invaluable E.D. Hirsch and his emphasis on Core Knowledge. Finally, I give hearty support to this initiative to get states to direct at least 65% of all education spending to the classroom. The idea that we under fund education is another myth. Compared to 50 years ago in real dollars we are spending about five times more per pupil in education. The problem is that almost all that extra money goes towards bureaucracy. South Dakota currently ranks 39th in the amount of education spending that makes it to the classroom. Let's see if our legislators are willing to do something about that.
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