The American educational system is badly in need of an upgrade. Today’s schools are a relic and byproduct of the industrial revolution. Until 150 years ago and the industrial revolution, aside from the wealthy, few children went to school and many spent their days with their parents. The industrial revolution made workplaces too dangerous for children. Today, workplaces are as safe or safer than schools. The current elementary and secondary educational systems are answers to problems that no longer exist. They were created to protect and house children during an industrial workday as much as to teach them. It is in the national interest to question the educational system in the most far reaching ways, including the purpose of a school building and a principal. We should share a national goal of creating a new educational paradigm.
We need to question the current proportion of money spent on gifted versus special education. In countries like China and India there is massive funding for gifted education. This is true even in some of the poorer areas, often proving to be a path out of poverty. We should not ignore special education, but perhaps should question our own priorities with respect to our national interest to find the most gifted children, especially in our poorer schools and districts.
We need to question the role colleges and universities play and their tax-exempt status. Colleges and universities often perpetuate those very problems they seek to mitigate. Colleges and universities should be compelled to justify their tax-exempt status. Such status allows schools like Columbia and NYU to devastate local communities along with their affordable housing and often minority tenants. Colleges and universities cannot shirk responsibility and foist it on community colleges. They must fill labor requirements and offer practical training across different industries and levels of training. We must also question the idea that people of similar intelligence and academic skill must be sequestered together for four years or more, and ask if a different distribution is in the national interest. At the same time, companies and unions should be incentivized to hire high-school graduates and to offer training and education as part of a forward-looking introductory program.
Our educational system must also reflect a set of national values that bind us. We know how we are different from China and North Korea and Russia and France. That is easy. What is it that binds us and brings us together? In one word: Law. We have the best laws in the history of mankind, so great that leaders of other nations do business in the USA because of its trusted legal system. Immigrants file asylum cases in the USA because they know that even the undeserving get a fair hearing and the time to prepare for it. We must celebrate our Constitution, our laws and our legal system.
- Propose legislation to fund a test-group of alternative educational methods
- Propose legislation tying non-for-profit status with satisfying national labor needs
- Propose legislation requiring students to study the Constitution, the US Code, the CFR and court decisions/opinions
Regional and National competitions of teams and individuals who can best navigate the legal texts
