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The Answer to America's Most Serious Problem
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15846 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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1 / 1989 |
1,420 Words |
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Morton A. Kaplan
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The most serious problem facing the nation is education. In a world that is becoming increasingly more complex and dependent on sophisticated talent, the United States is developing a large pool of uneducated and uneducable individuals. This prospective permanent underclass, which by no means is restricted to blacks and Latinos, will become a major drain on our political system and even more on our economic productivity. Furthermore, even those supposedly doing well in school, with honorable exceptions, do not meet reasonable standards, while the teachers--who, even in the past came from among the least successful college graduates--are increasingly only semiliterate. The tests currently proposed to validate the adequacy of teachers, and which the National Education Association is afraid of, in principle should not tax those in their teens let alone attest to the worthiness of the teacher.
Because this problem has not yet created an immediate perceived crisis, it lacks political urgency. However, because the price of coping with the problem will increase geometrically with time, perceptions are not consonant with reality. If the crisis were smaller or affected fewer people, moral considerations concerning the distribution of blame for the problem might make sense. But the crisis is too large for that. Our position as an advanced country is at stake, not as precipitously as is the case in the Soviet Union but no less surely eventually, even though the causes are different.
The belief that we can shelter our middle-class children against this disaster may be comforting psychologically but is removed from reality. We may soften the shocks by such protection, but we cannot escape their effects. Even if we were to forgo concern for good citizenship and the human dignity of others, we would be ill advised to neglect this problem.
The Real Problem
Furthermore, we misperceive the solution. We talk as if the failure of the schools is the cause of the problem. The schools surely have failed and that is a contributing factor, but the truth is that many young people would come to school unequipped for education even if the educational practices of the schools were sound. Although the metaphor is inexact, it is as if we tried to make sweet butter from sour milk.
The human brain is a part of the human neurological system and it is in a rudimentary state at birth. Its ability to function depends upon its experiences and the kinds of environments in which it finds itself. As brain circuitry is developed, many neurons are sloughed off. The ability of the resulting neurological system to function with respect to signals from the environment or even to perceive them in certain ways depends upon the prior production of these pathways and their repeated utilization. Early deficiencies in this process can never be entirely--or even largely--compensated for.
In short, the absence of certain types of early experiences produces an inferior intelligence. Later cultural enrichment, even if available, can never effectively compensate for the earlier deprivations. In the absence of these experiences, we are diminishing the human capital of the nation. We are assuring that some will be charity cases and that many others will be ineffective, or more likely counterproductive, workers in the economy and members of
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