EDITORIAL
Teaching Free Citizens in South Carolina Schools..

Part Two on How to Fix the Broken Educational System in Our State - Simplifying The State System..
(part 1)  

November 19, 2007

If the state builds a bridge across a river, it cannot force you to use it. You can choose to fly over the river in a balloon or swim across it. You don't have to cross the river at all. An education, like a bridge, should be AVAILABLE all the time for everyone to use, but none to HAVE TO use. - from part 1

(Columbia, SC) - Until and unless South Carolina makes four radical changes to our educational system, it will continue to subject its most helpless citizens to slavery, endangering the infrastructure of the very state the educational system is intended to help. Those changes are: 1. Abolish mandatory attendance; 2. Replace the current graded system with one based on the achievement of the knowledge of the content certified at each level in each field by comprehensive examination only; 3. All levels of education should be free to all SC residents with severe felony penalties for residence cheating; and, 4. Public education at any level should be accessible at any time for any reason to SC residents, again, with severe felony penalties for residence cheating.

Part one of this editorial involved itself with an argument for the abolition of mandatory attendance in our public schools. Now, I want to examine a system that will allow these four ideas to work in an atmosphere of freedom and knowledge.

Let's say Buddy's parents are a mere parental cipher - non existent for any real purposes. One day, Buddy, at 18, realizes he's not getting the most out of his infrastructure, illiterate and carrying boxes at minimum wage, as he is, and decides he needs something better. Currently, he would have two alternatives. He can turn to a life of crime and spend his wealth of existence there, eventually paying the price to society. Or Buddy can get a high school degree that later might lead to a degree in engineering - the opportunity presents itself more than you know. But the truth is, the degree usually isn't really available where Buddy is, by the time Buddy's ready to be there.

If our schools were continuous learning institutions, students would still be separated by appropriate age, but these subjects would also be taught at a fourth level for adults, possibly at an existing TEC school, college, post-graduate college, etc. in one, continuous institution under the local university. And in any case, there would be no "fourth grade math," for instance, as if it were some holy shrine to be approached only because a certain age had been attained. There would also be no requirement for taking a graded course at all, and no proof of achievement other than proof by examination that the previous necessary knowledge had been attained.

No longer would a child be held back because he hadn't achieved a certain age. No longer would a non-achiever be pushed forward, away from his knowledge base to continue his non-understanding in a Peter-Principle-turned-horror-show that our current system forces itself to be. Instead, each child would travel through school at his appropriate age level, but his studies would be for the level of education he has achieved per subject. This is critical in order to make the new system work.

Let's say you failed the cookbook physics exam which leads to the theoretical physics course. Or didn't go to class at all, but just read about it. No problem. In the new system, you can keep taking the physics proficiency exam as often as it takes to pass it. They're already doing something like this kind of testing in Kentucky, and first results are very promising.

Naturally, the system of learning above middle school would change to a continuous flow of education through Post Graduate level. There would no longer be "high school," per se, but rather, simply, "Upper School." Oh, you can call them "colleges," or "universities," or "purple," for that matter, but the operating function would be the smooth transition from attainment to attainment in any subject, regardless of age, until proficiency is reached in any number of educational paths. The proficiency level would still be set by the institution, which can meet all national standards - nothing there changes. The difference is, that a South Carolina child, who attains the age level of Upper School, no longer has to "be accepted" into college - it is the natural state of the student to be educated collegialy.

Another positive result of this system would be that "publish or perish" pressure would perish, and teachers and professors would be judged on their ability to teach, not do research. We must also rid ourselves of the early 20th century invention that a Doctoral degree should only be granted for new research. It has fostered a flood of second rate scholarship based on incomplete ideas and bad science. On the other hand, good research occurs most frequently and best in private business, although college research would always be welcomed as long as the bill was paid completely by private enterprise.

Teacher assessment would become honest, removed from litigation and its pressures. There would be an annual exit evaluation from each student, and most importantly, a teacher peer review from the faculty group which replaces the cumbersome administration. Also, students who would be in school would WANT to be in school. They may want to be there because their granny wants them there, but voluntary attendance includes acceptance of rules which they break to their peril, rather than the other way round.

Funding would be by a single, universal tax alone, with NO exceptions. Even the poor should participate in a system from which they would benefit exceedingly proportionally. The people who have been carrying this burden all these years - landowners - would not be further penalized: property taxes at all levels would be forever outlawed as the obscenity they are.

Concurrently, it is very important that there should be almost no contact with government except to receive the funds which would have been raised by whatever governmental tax would be decided upon. It does not stretch belief, after so much local evidence, to say that politics kills education.

To this point, the current levels of education administration would cease to exist, in this new system, with which the ancient Greeks shared something similar. In its stead, there would be a very rudimentary enabling mechanism at the state level, which would assist a "gathering" of scholars on a yearly basis to assess and adjust their several curricula and testing assessment guidelines - the State Treasurer already writes the salary checks and oversees the retirement and insurance plans for state workers. Sadly, the State Education Department's purpose for existence resides solely in its own mind. Meanwhile, as I have said elsewhere, a local school office manager is needed, because somebody has to write the checks and interview the coaches and the janitors before the faculty hires them. Nothing will eliminate croneyism, but this system would democracize it.

The universities around the state, after grateful reception of the state funds, and a polite, "Thank you," would gather together to set the proficiency tests, mentioned above, in each subject at each level. Less really is more, and there is no need for a centralized education department. The over 400 people on Forest Drive in Columbia who are making over $50,000 a year, each, should be teaching in this new system. Period. The universities can set their own meetings to determine proficiency. Remember that the State Education department was set up as an experiment in centralization. It has failed.

    In the 21st Century, we hold two truths to be self-evident:
  • everyone - because a just society demands the legal fiction - is created equal, being entitled to liberty, life, and the pursuit of whatever makes them happy, and
  • government does nothing well, except raise money, kill people, and break things. Our armies are the wonder of the modern world, but even road construction is farmed out to an independent business.
But "public education" does not mean that government has to do it. Neither does it mean, necessarily, that private enterprise would run the system any better. The education system would be a third kind of animal, combining the best of surf and turf. But whoever does the funding should ask only that the education be universally accessible, factual, and free. And whoever does the teaching should clearly mark their opinion as such while providing a universal, factual, and free access to knowledge. Those who attend would adhere to the rules of the Lower and Middle schools and the Colleges, or be put out, until such time as they can prove they can return.

Finally, those who would seek control of minds through the education system should eschew this urge as immoral. We cannot conscience the controlling of any mind. Educators should be about the business of liberating minds, instead.

In conclusion, go back and look carefully at the four premises of this old/new system. Aren't we locking up our children, trying to coerce them into learning, and then locking them up if they run for freedom or won't do it on our timetable? I submit that only by making the above changes will we ever free ourselves from educational depravity and ruinous fiscal "education" policy.

As we said in part 1 of this editorial, liberals and conservatives should both want this system. For, if there is oppressive tyranny in our schools "for our own good," will it not be everywhere in the future? Tyranny is only one careless moment away. Our forefathers knew that. So did the ancient Greeks and great thinkers in every civilization.

Right now, we, South Carolinians, have a way to end educational failure, to empower educators, to extinguish the threat of worthless administration overlords, and to end creeping governmental control of all our lives. We must do something, soon, to rescue our children from a failing educational system which threatens us all with slavery and its inherent cycle of ignorance! Let us build together a new system - THIS new system - for a better State with FREE CITIZENS.

- Dick Anderson

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