Issues that should be addressed in the election, but are being ignored

 

Coyote Blog has been published since 2004 by Warren Meyer, making it even older than this blog (which I began in January 2008).  It's been an interesting and thought-provoking read for most of that time.

In his latest article, Mr. Meyer addresses "Six Meta Problems That Should Be Issues in the Election, But Are Not".  It's a lengthy piece, but well worth the time for those interested in analyzing what our leaders should be addressing, but for various reasons are not.  He identifies these six issues:

1. The US Federal budget deficit, source of inflation, high mortgage rates, and even the trade deficit;
2. Federal Reserve Policy, which has created the recent K-shaped binodal prosperity profile;
3. K-5 public education, which has hurt everyone but particularly people of color;
4. Conflation of race with culture, which hinders discourse on everything from immigration to education;
5. Complete misunderstanding about how political power works;
6. Special Bonus Meta Issue: Wars of choice.

I can't possibly do an excerpt incorporating all of those elements, so I recommend (highly!) that you click over there to read them for yourselves.  To whet your appetite, here are the author's thoughts on public education.  Emphasis in bold print is mine.

If there is a true example of systemic racism in this country it is the crime against black children perpetrated by the public k-12 education system, and probably in K-5 (once kids get to 6th grade without reading or math they are likely never going to recover).  There has been no worse crime committed against African Americans in this country since Jim Crow.   And the craziest part is that some of the worst examples are in cities with all-black mayors, city council, and school board members.

Take the example of East St Louis.  Here is the school board in E. St Louis -- not many proud boys there.   East St Louis spends over $25,000 per student and has a 12:1 teacher ratio  (the national average is about $18,000 per pupil and 14:1).    Teachers earn beetween $70,000 and $80,000 a year before benefits for about 9 months a year of work.  The student body is 96% black and US News report that in E. St Louis  "4% of high school students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 7% tested at or above that level for math."  Well no surprise that Blacks are struggling when freaking 96% of them graduate from public school systems like this without being able to read.  This is a f*cking crime, and it has nothing to do with white leadership or funding.

This has to be fixed, but in large part the various governments in this country have focused on working hard to NOT fix it.  That is because every time there is a standardized test that points out this failure to educate black children well, it is first dumbed- down, and then made optional, and then eliminated.  Which is insane – its like deciding that the solution to too many cancer diagnoses in some particular area is to stop testing for cancer.

Politicians are often susceptible to cargo-cult thinking and nowhere is this more obvious than in education.  At some point years ago politicians looked at successful people and noticed that successful people typically had college degrees.  Most of us would have said, “Sure, that is because a college degree means they have gained some knowledge, demonstrated critical thinking, can write and do math at some minimum level, can be focused and complete tasks responsibly, and have dedicated themselves to achieving difficult goals over long periods of time.

But politicians don’t think this way – they are not very good at parsing cause and effect.  So if successful people have college degrees, they figured that if we handed out lots more college degrees then there will be more successful people.  But since the K-12 education system could not produce enough qualified people to get into college, then standards had to be lowered, testing requirements eliminated, and high school grades inflated.  To help unprepared folks graduate, new majors with absurdly low standards were invented, grades were inflated and use of AI was winked at.  Not surprisingly, none of this has helped black well-being very much.  All the college DEI and affirmative action in the world is not going to help most black kids because it is 10 years too late -- they were failed by the system way back in K-5.

To complete the sad irony, the very traits that contribute to prosperity and for which college degrees were a proxy – hard work, focus on long term goals, critical thinking, discipline, deferring gratification – have now been labeled by supposed “supporters” of the Black cause as representing whiteness and to be avoided as racist.  Had the KKK come up with a plan to screw the black race in this country, I don’t think they could have done a better job.

Unfortunately, change is difficult since the teacher's unions have an iron grip on public education and many blue state politicians who owe their elections to union cash and get-out-the-vote manpower.  All the extra money we have poured into public education over the last 20-30 years, and there has been billions of it, has mostly been captured by public school employees, both teachers and especially the growing cadre of administrators.  The only possible way is to break the monopoly -- a monopoly far more destructive than companies like Comcast Cable ever were -- is with school choice.  Parents have got to be empowered to move their kids out of the failing monopoly schools.  As a bonus, school choice would quiet the culture war in that parents who want their kids taught there are 53 genders or just 2 can find appropriate schools for their children.

There's much more at the link.

I don't always agree with Mr. Meyer on everything, but in this article, I think he's hit several home runs.  I doubt our current crop of ideologically blinkered politicians will benefit from it, but nevertheless, go read the whole thing.  If enough of us make enough noise about these things, perhaps we can begin to change the calcified channels of politics . . .

Peter