Too many kids aren’t motivated to learn and too many teachers aren’t motivated to teach; It’s a baby-sitting service

American students are slipping further behind their peers from overseas, according to a study from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

complains Benny Huang.

Out of sixty-four countries surveyed, the US earned a grade of “average” in reading and science, and “below average” in math.

…/… The boondoggle of public education is an American shame. There’s something very wrong with our schools that seems to defy all of our most well-intentioned remedies. Without a clear diagnosis as to what ails our education system, we’ve stumbled around, searching in vain for the right medicine.

 …/… My layman’s diagnosis is pretty simple—our schools fail because ours society fails. Every societal ill eventually finds its way into schools, from unwed motherhood to drugs. Too many kids aren’t motivated to learn and too many teachers aren’t motivated to teach. It’s a baby-sitting service.

Here’s what I remember about being a student in a public school—kids with bangs in their eyes and bad attitudes, waiting for the bell to ring so they could steal away and smoke pot. I remember teachers trying to fill the day with time-consuming fluff, which is so much easier than teaching. I remember educators who chose the profession for ulterior motives, which were almost always political and left-liberal in nature. They taught their students that gay is good, America is bad, and there’s a racist hiding under every bed. Regardless of what subject they were hired to teach, certain teachers invariably blazed their own paths, incorporating white guilt into English class and environmentalist junk science into geography lessons.