Educational Philosophy

All this generalization is great but it is not reality. Most people do not want to admit that some aspects of their beliefs are founded in something other than total truth. So, the big question is: How should this curriculum be accomplished? When in the child’s development should his or her education begin and what should it consist of? To answer this we must understand and accept five facts.

First of all, we must accept the fact that poverty is the root of ignorance and ignorance is the seed from which all evil grows. If we eliminate ignorance through education we will disperse much of the evil of the world and replace it with truth, justice and peace. (I discuss the elimination of poverty in my business and economics philosophy.)

Second, we must acknowledge that there is only a limited amount of time to educate a child. We must make the most use of this time by making sure that the child is in school and is educated in an area where he or she can excel, be happy and be successful. If we miss that opportunity, that is, if the child graduates from high school without an adequate education then the whole community suffers.

Third, when the education of our children is not the best that it can be, when we allow someone to place their own political goals or personal desires above the needs of our children then everyone suffers – business, government and the general public.

Fourth, politicians, school board members, and businessmen must accept the fact that schools are not a business and cannot be run like a business. One cannot “see” a profit from educating a child until long after that child enters the work force.

Also, schools, unlike businesses, cannot be selective in the raw materials they use to produce their products. While a business that wants to produce a high quality product can reject inferior raw materials, a school must accept all students – the good, the bad and the ugly.

Our schools must take the dyslexic student with the gifted student, the behavior problem student with the well-adjusted student, the abused child and the homeless child, the children from dysfunctional families and the children from broken homes. Schools must accept them all!

If a business had to accept all the raw material that was shipped to it, (most businesses send back substandard and damaged material to whoever shipped it to them) it would hire special employees to sort out the good from the bad. The good would receive normal processing and the bad would receive special, individual care in order to ensure a high quality product.

Schools are no different from businesses in this respect. Special education students – including gifted and talented students – need special, individual care. They cannot be thrown into a class with 30 or 35 other students or even 15 or 20 other students. They need a low teacher/student ratio in order to get that special, individual care they desperately need. To deny them this special, individual care is to give them an inferior education.

Finally, we all need to accept the fact that it takes just as much work to fulfill an academic career as it does to perfect a professional career.

For example, it takes just as many years to become a doctor or lawyer as it does to become a skilled artist or craftsman. It takes many long hours of practice to perfect the art of glass blowing, sculpturing, drawing, playing the flute or violin or any other artistic or professional career one may choose.

It takes many long hours of hard work to learn how to lay down floor tile, fashion furniture, repair appliances, cut and thread pipe or drive an overhead crane and have it look and work professional.

Many people labor under the impression that if a child does not get a college education, then he or she has received an inferior education. But such is just not true.

For example, it may take only an hour or so to learn how to cut and lay tile for a kitchen floor. But it takes many long hours and a lot of hard work coupled with numerous mistakes to learn how to lay tile on a kitchen floor and have that floor looking like a professional did it.

This is a skill that is not taught at college. Further, most of our children are not getting this kind of training while they are in high school! The same may be said of almost any skilled labor or artistic talent.

Often it is next to impossible to know what field a child will enter upon graduation – college or the work force. But most of our children are not receiving any training in vocational skills, skills they will desperately need upon entering the work force.

One may therefore conclude that if a student does not go to college and he or she has not received vocational training in several fields and artistic talents while in high school then that child has not been properly educated; that child’s education has been wasted. Upon graduation he or she will be thrown into shark infested waters without any life saving skills!

There is a lot of expense incurred in educating a child. This is an investment from which the government will not see a return until several years after the child graduates. This is because the child will not put his or her education to work until after he or she graduates.

Further, a child’s education is an intangible asset of the government. This asset is in the form of the citizen’s loyalty to the government. By ensuring that its citizens are getting a quality education, a government is investing is its own future.

An educated person is more of a productive input into the community and into the government than an uneducated person. This is because an educated person will not allow corruption to just come in and take over. An educated person will not allow a self-serving politician to manipulate the laws and take away his or her basic rights. This is because it is harder to lie to and coerce an educated person than it is to deceive and enslave an uneducated person.

However, the government cannot perceive whether a child is getting a quality education until long after he or she enters the work force, as only then can the government ascertain if the education the child received has been of some advantage to the child, to business and to the general population.

Thus, if anyone tries to determine if a child is getting a proper education through standardized testing while the child is still in school then this only increases educational costs without showing any real results.

Also, if the government cuts expenses and sacrifices excellence just to save money then our children are getting an inferior education. One may draw an analogy and say that an army that cuts expenses and sacrifices excellence just to save money is giving the soldier an inferior defense against his enemy.

Students are at war with ignorance. One overcomes ignorance with an education. A student does not get a quality education with inferior equipment. The government needs to concentrate on the quality of the education the students are getting, not on whether or not they can pass assessment tests.

This does not mean that school boards can totally forget about expenses. It’s just that school boards cannot let the cost of education be a major concern. They need to make sure that our schools and classrooms are staffed by quality educators, equipped with state-of-the-art technology and school supplies.

They must make sure that the classrooms are not overcrowded and our schools are not in “disrepair.” If our schools are the best that they can be, then our children are automatically getting the best education that money can buy. Under such conditions, assessment tests will not be needed.

Any student who chooses not to go to college and who does not receive vocational training in several fields then he or she is a liability to the government and business community in which he or she lives. Because whatever business the student enters, that business will have to undergo the expense of training him or her after graduation. (A student must receive training in several fields because no one knows what field the student will eventually enter upon graduation.)

But a student who has received vocational training while still in high school can then step right into the work force upon graduation. He or she will not have to “flip burgers” for a living after graduation while learning a trade on his or her own expense or at the expense of the business community.

Indeed, I am appalled that the only job skill many high school students possess upon graduation is that of flipping burgers, delivering pizza or stacking shelves with new merchandise. I am further appalled that the business community is not up in arms over the fact all our children are not being taught job skills in high school, even such simple things as filing and record keeping.

For example, many students are graduating from high school not knowing how to maintain and balance a check book. If this skill were taught to all students then there would be fewer bounced checks. Students are graduating from high school not knowing how to make and live within a budget. Students are graduating not knowing how to measure a room to paint it, lay carpet or tile in it or to put up curtains. Meanwhile, the government does nothing to stop the raping of our children.

The Curriculum