Did you notice that both Obama and Romney agree on the need for better education? The key word here is "better" and that means ending up with students who know something and are prepared to earn a living. It is really not enough to just be able to earn a living, how about paying back all the public tax money that was invested in them? It was clear from the debate that Obama thinks that we need to spend more per student by hiring more teachers and having them teach smaller classes. Obama did say that we needed more science and math teachers. The problems is how are we going to develop these out of "cloth" that starts with the lowest SAT scores of any college major?
I think that I have stated in prior blogs that I have never seen anything that was "complicated". If you understand a situation or a problem, they are all simple. If you don't understand something, it seems complicated. I have my own plane and have been flying it on floats, That means landing and taking off on lakes in the area. To most, that sounds risky and complicated. That is because they don't understand float plane flying. It is a lot easier than flying my Supercub on wheels and that is a fact. I just mention this to point out that if you understand the subject, it turns out to be simple. That is my position on education. I agree with both Obama and Romney that our people need to be much better educated, but that is where we part company. I do not want to spend a dime more, I want to spend less and I know we can do it. We spend more than any other country and have less to show for it. Does that make you think that we just may not be doing this whole thing right? Yes, it does~!!
The first thing that I would do is to get the Federal government out of education at all levels. They could keep the military academies, but that is it. I would stop all Federal funding of research in our state owned and operated colleges and universities. Federal money only corrupts the system. If you can think of anything that has been produced from Federal funding of research in our state owned colleges and universities in the past 25 years, I want to hear about it. I know that it funds many Phd's in bull shit subjects, but what is their value? 99% of these types of Phd's are both a waste of tax money plus they waste many productive years of the student's life. This does not even count the supervising professors who direct the student's "research". Total waste, get rid of it. Did I also mention that 90% of the Phd's in technical areas are by students who were not born in the USA? How about that?
The second thing that I would do is to "rank order" all the courses taught at each college or university in terms of their "social value". By "social value", I mean in terms of the student's ability to "pay back" to the tax payers the tax money that was invested in them. If there is not at least a 80% or 90% chance of paying the tax money back, the course should be on the block for elimination. My goal would be to eliminate 25% of courses and the professors who were teaching them. If the professors are so smart, they should have no problem getting a regular job in private industry. This would save a lot of tax money and get some productive work out of professors. It would also prevent the wasting of student's time taking worthless courses. I am not sure that 25% would be enough, but it would be a start.
The third thing would be to get rid of student loans and make public colleges and universities "free", but entry would be on the basis of "merit". If we cut the size, we would have enough money to eliminate tuition for the fewer students. We would need to get the word out to high schools that if the student is not prepared for college and can not meet the "merit" requirement, it is the fault of the student. There has to be both a positive and negative incentive to go to college. If you can't make it, try harder. If you don't have the required "merit", don't expect to live in a fine home or have a nice car. I lived in a tent and under a bridge, so I know what it means to have "negative" incentive. I would put Darwin back into the process. He has been doing very well for the past few thousand years, so why give up on him now?
The last thing that I would do is to put the teaching positions up for bid every 4 years. I would have reasonable specifications, bases on a test, not degrees for the teaching positions based on ability and performance, not what they had taken this course or that. I would only pay for "doing", not what classes they have taken as it is done now. Teachers could be unionized, but I don't know what the unions would be doing since the jobs are put up for public bid every 4 years. I would not require a college degree unless it was specifically needed. What is the difference between two teachers who one has completed 100% of the required classes and one who never took the required PE classes and thus can not graduate? This is just one example of how Micky Mouse the current system is.
Oh, there is one final thing. I would require 100% of all high school kids to take exactly the same set of classes. Do you really think that some kid 13 or 14 years old is in a position to select the classes that they need to prepare them for life? That is what is happening. They take easy classes and get on the honor roll. Is that a waste or what? If we make every student took the same set of classes, it would reduce the cost of our high schools by at least 50% and we would be able to get rid of at least 25% of the teachers and their expensive class rooms.
I know that Obama and Romney are not serious, because they do not want to really confront the problem with our education system. Most of the countries of the world do it just like I have set out above and most do a much better job than we do. We need to wake up. Money and more teachers are not the solution. The reason Gold is so valuable is that it is scarce and we need to do the same with education dollars, then education may be seen are more valuable. When it comes to being fair, the USA has never been more fair. Our future is driven by merit, hard work, responsible conduct and education, not the "class" that you were born into. I love it!!!!
