Public education has gone steadily downhill since the creation of the U. S. Department of Education (DOE), and the loss of local control of schools, and parents' freedom to make vital local decisions about how to educate their children are largely the result of the DOE's crimes against commonsense. And predictably, the annual increases in the budgets of the DOE have enabled, if not caused, more and more crippling state and federal control of local schools. It's an old story, give government money, and they'll give us regulations. Give the government more money, and they'll ruin the "thing" they're supposed to help. Never mind that in 1970 Congress passed a law that forbids the federal government's "direction, supervision or control"over public schools, including "curriculum and instructional materials." That law was smothered in its infancy by the heavy blanket of federal bureaucracy.

Assessment tests, which were supposed to have measured academic strengths and weaknesses, soon followed the birth of the DOE. Today, assessment tests have morphed into psychological testing, and from those tests have come a host of mandates to local schools that have nothing to do with reading, writing and arithmetic. It's all about making students happy with their academic under performances, or failures. It's about the attempted "murder" of competitive excellence: the glorification of dummies.

The DOE has "informed" us, and I quote, "Peer feedback [what fellow failing students say? kk] has been found to be more influential than teacher feedback in obtaining lasting performance results; too much teacher feedback can be harmful (from Druckman and Swets, 1988) … The approval or disapproval of one's peers is the best reinforcer. Excess feedback from the teacher can be perceived as insincere if it is too effusive, and de-motivating if it is too discouraging." Get it? The teacher is demoted in the "education" process. The teacher is to be seen as an "equal" in the learning process, a "facilitator." That, of course, is nonsensical socialist prattle. Enabling the immature mind of the student with "democracy" in the classroom breaks down discipline, and inhibits learning. I believe the teacher must be seen as the absolute authority in the classroom, no "ands, ifs, or buts" about it, or the whole thing breaks down. The idea of the teacher as some sort of committee member and "learning coach" in the classroom has been a disaster brought about by a failed philosophy, and a failed experiment on our kids. Look at the results in our schools and in our streets and in our prisons. The kids on the margin suffer.

The teacher, in the DOE's ideal school, has become less important as "teacher." Consider this bit of idiocy from a Harvard psychologist and "consultant" to the U. S. Department of Education, Dr. Ellen Langer. Dr. Langer (as reported at the time by the APA Monitor, August 1997, p. 97) launched a major initiative to change classroom education from a system based on right answers to one based on "flexible thinking." She proposed that "seven myths infiltrate classroom education that seriously curtails the learning process." She is considered by the Federal Department of Education to be an "authority" on the education process. Here are my summaries of a few of the "myths," remembering it is SHE, not I, who is calling the following time tried and panic tested beliefs and practices "fables and falsehoods": I believe the basics (times tables, spelling etc.) should be learned so well that they become second nature. Langer disagrees and says that "stifles creativity and individual expression." I believe that paying attention means staying focused on what the teacher is teaching. Langer doesn't, "novelty and having fun is the way to hold attention." I didn't think that learning calculus was fun. I hated it, but I learned it well enough to use its fundamentals in ways that I couldn't have imagined as a student. Today, I use calculus, without thinking about it, as a guide in analyzing ideas and arguments, both written and verbal. However, Langer says, "If it isn't fun, it isn't meaningful learning."

Dr. Langer's "zinger" belief, mentioned earlier, is the one dealing with "right and wrong" answers. Normal people believe there are right and wrong answers not only in math, but in grammar, and physic and chemistry, and many other subjects? Dr. Langer says, "Correctness is dependent on context." She believes in teaching "math approximations." Remember folks. She's an "expert" consultant to the DOE in Washington? Enough, already! I'm going to end this rant of mine with the following comments.

Our local school boards, working well with teachers and parents, are still turning out excellent students who do well in college, the ultimate test of a successful system. We have an uphill fight to retain some local control of public education, a fight that we have not yet lost. The potential for state and federally mandated tests to improve, or even contribute to, educational successes in our schools is nil. I think MAP-type tests are a waste of everybody's time and money because the "failure rate" in our schools is the result of broad social problems that go way beyond the responsibility of our schools, and no matter how many tests are given, and no matter how hard teachers work, and no matter how much we "bloat" the "administrative" staff of our schools, the percentage of our children who fail MAP-type tests will roughly equal the percentage of parents in our communities who do not have high school diplomas, and whose children live in homes where fathers have abandoned them. I've "put the pencil to it." The evidence is there. However, that evidence shouldn't give comfort to the few lazy administrators and ill-prepared teachers in our various school districts. We should rather praise the vast majority of good administrators and good teachers in our communities. We can't expect our schools to correct the results of the failed social-engineering experiments of the "Great Society."

Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.