A list of the 15 top problems in education has been compiled by Malcolm Lawrence, the director of the Maryland Coalition of Concerned Parents on Privacy Rights in Public Schools. This is the same Malcolm Lawrence who originally wrote the controversial Sample Parents Letter asserting parental rights which reached a circulation of a half million.
Some 30 national commissions over the last ten years have reported on what’s wrong with education in America, but Lawrence points out that most of their quick-fix proposals called for more money, additional courses, and increased salaries. Lawrence says that these proposed remedies address form rather than substance, and that curriculum content and teaching methods are in dire need of overhaul.
Here are the top problems in education which Lawrence believes should be addressed. If they are not, he predicts that the quality of public schools will continue to decline and America will lose hope of remaining a competitive nation.
1. Illiteracy is the major problem. Our current ranks of 27 million illiterates increase by 2.3 million every year. The solution is to throw out current failed “look-say” teaching methods and reinstate proven phonics instruction.
2. Teacher training colleges put too much time and effort on methods and not enough on subject matter. They should be reformed to teach teachers what to teach rather than merely how to teach.
3. We need a national teacher evaluation system and merit pay scheme.
4. Current elementary teaching leaves many or most of the pupils to “do their own thing” during much of the school day.
5. Demographics indicate a growing shortage of teachers.
6. The shift in the purpose of education from addressing the cognitive domain (what a student knows) to the affective domain (what a student thinks, feels or believes) has filled the schools with a smorgasbord of non-academic courses and techniques in such things as stress management, guided fantasy, quieting reflex, rap sessions, non-verbal communication, role-playing, sociodrama, self-revelation, personal journals, values clarification, behavior modification, and psychological testing.
7. The schools have forced on the pupils a heavy dosage of courses in social problems such as sex, drugs, death, suicide, child abuse and neglect, nuclear war, globalism, world hunger guilt trips, etc. Developed and promoted by well-paid curriculum writers and social engineers, these courses have squeezed out academic instruction.
8. Grade inflation and social promotions have advanced and graduated students regardless of academic achievement. This contributes to high unemployment and social welfare costs, as well as to unrealistic expectations on the part of our youth.
9. Excessive administrative overhead has resulted in an inadequate share of resources for classroom instruction. This is a common complaint of teachers.
10. Too much federal and state interference has come at the expense of local control. Federal grants and contracts have played a significant role in promoting the non-academic courses and methods.
11. Ignorance on the part of federal and state legislators of education issues and curriculum content has made it difficult for reform to take place. School lobbyists concentrate on political and funding issues rather than on improving education.
12. The monopoly power of public schools protects the present system against any real competition from other public schools as well as from private schools. The situation is made worse by over-regulation and harassment of private schools and of homeschoolers.
13. Disregard for parental rights and the arrogance on the part of many school persons in dealing with parents are main causes of the loss of public support for public schools. The education establishment has lost sight of the fact that they are the employees, and parents and taxpayers are the employers.
14. School boards have become largely rubber stamps with little knowledge of or involvement with curriculum or instruction methods.
15. Permissiveness and loss of direction on the part of the school establishment have perpetuated lack of learning and lack of discipline. School time, resources, and attention have given preeminent influence to an army of school counselors trying to manage the pupils’ problems instead of to teachers teaching academic knowledge and skills.
