President Trump wants to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. If you look at the decline of student scores compared to other nations, and the huge increase in college tuition, you might find it hard to defend the 46-year record of the department.
Interestingly, a former Secretary of Education, Bill Bennett, said today that students did better with McGuffey’s Reader than with current methods of teaching them how to read. That reference to McGuffey’s Reader got my attention.
When Will Rogers was 8, he attended Drumgoole School. It had books “such as Ray’s Arithmetic, and McGuffey 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Readers. We had even a Geography around there but we just used it for the pictures of the cattle grazing in the Argentine and the wolves attacking the sleighs in Russia.” (WA #353, Sept. 29, 1929)
“In 1898 Kemper Military School was not being run in accordance with the standards that I thought befitting a growing intellect… I not only left them flat during a dark night, but I quit the entire school business for life.” WA #169, March 7, 1926
Will joked that he “spent ten years in McGuffey’s 4th Reader. I knew more about McGuffey’s 4th than McGuffey.”
This is not the first (or only) time our education system has been sharply criticized. In 1932, Will wrote an entire Weekly Article on deficiencies, especially in colleges. Here are a few key points:
“This modern education gag has sure got me licked… All the kids I know, none of ’em can write so you can read it, none of ’em can spell so you can read it. They can’t figure and don’t know geography, but they are always taking some of the darndest things, political science, international relations, drama, buck dancing, sociology, Latin, and Greek art… but none of ’em that I have seen can write, spell, figure, or tell what bounds Korea…. Course you can’t go out and get a job on [a degree in Latin], but these old professors value it mighty highly. Some of these days they are going to remove so much of the ‘punk and Hooey’ and the thousands of things that the schools have become clogged up with, and we will find that we can educate our broods for about one-tenth the price and learn ’em something they might accidentally use after they escaped… This education is just like everything else. You’ve got to judge it by results. Here we are better educated, according to educational methods, than we ever were. And we are worse off than we ever were, so it’s not living up to its billing…. It’s costing us more than it’s worth. They’ve got to devise some way of giving more for the money.” WA #501, July 31, 1932
Most of the money for public education, about 90% of it, is from local and state taxes. If the federal government delivers the current budget for Education to the states and local school districts, minus the regulations and paperwork, maybe scores will improve.
You may know I come from a family of teachers. And a cousin just graduated and immediately started teaching 5th grade. Total support and encouragement from parents and the community can help students as much or more than an increased budget. And discipline. No more lame excuses for skipping school or misbehaving.
To help with reading scores, bring back McGuffey’s Readers, now available online. The first lesson in the First Reader is ‘A is for Ax,’ which is what Trump wants Congress to do to the Department of Education.