Dismantling Public Education in America

For years we have been told that American public education has fallen behind its global competitors and must be fixed. Programs like "No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top" were designed to fix the system's shortcomings. We were informed the United States had no hope of competing in the global marketplace without an educated populace.

But now... across the United States tens of thousands of teachers are being laid off as beleaguered states and municipalities confront unmanageable budget deficits. Funding for public schools and colleges is being slashed to the bone.

Teaching is labor-intensive. It involves long hours trying to interest pupils in something besides I-Tunes, YouTube, texting, trolling the mall and watching television. Not all teachers are created equal. Some few can stimulate the most obstreperous youngsters. Others can bore the pants off the most eager students. Most fall somewhere in between. The larger the class size, the more difficult the challenge.

The nuns at the parochial school I attended in the 1950s proved it is possible to teach large classes. They were able to create an atmosphere of rigid discipline. If you acted up in the line to lunch (military precision was expected), you probably got a not-so-gentle tap from the "clacker" every nun carried. For a classroom breach of behavior, you might be sent to stand at attention in the hall for 15 minutes, then submit to a tongue-lashing that flayed your soul. If misbehavior persisted, you would be sent to "Sister Superior." In class you could be held up to your classmates' ridicule and contempt. If all else failed? You were expelled and sent to the public school system, which had to accept you.

Public educators do not have access to such methods. They are expected to handle larger and larger classes and handle discipline problems without effective tools and with precious little support from either their administrators or communities.

Teachers pay a lot for their education - tens of thousands of dollars, much of it at public colleges. If there are no jobs, students are not going to make that sacrifice to enter the field.

So, as more and more teachers are laid off and the unions that support those that remain are weakened, we will experience further deterioration of public education.

Do we have an alternative? It's difficult to see one at this point. If the funds are not there, they are not there. In a society that no longer makes anything and in which minimum wage jobs and high unemployment have become the norm, the tax revenues do not support the costs.

Are we in deep doodoo? You betcha.