Sowers: Tackling three big issues in education
Arthur E. Sowers is a resident of Harbeson.
Several Daily State News letters over the last year or so discussed issues in education in Delaware. Here, I will discuss just three. First, the low student test scores. Second, what is causing those low scores and, third, what can we do about it?
National test scores ranked Delaware fifth from the bottom out of 50 states. Nothing to smile about there. But my search on the internet also said that 50% of adults in this country cannot read at an eighth grade level. One reference said that 75% of us cannot write. And, after high school, some 30% never read another book in their lives. That is even worse, and this is for all over, not just Delaware. That is my short summary of the first issue.
Regarding the second issue — what is causing educational shortcomings? — I would like to suggest that people carefully think instead of knee-jerk think about this. For example, Frank Daniels’ earlier anti-Kamala Harris letter had the phrase, “the further demise of our education system,” as part of a long list of other bad things he said we would have gotten if Harris had been elected instead of Donald Trump (“Democrats could destroy constitutional republic”). He connected one factor (liberal-, Democrat-, Harris-, Joe Biden-type “politics”) to a premature conclusion (our “demised” educational system becoming “further demised”). Well, if it is “demised,” then that is the endpoint. It cannot be further demised.
Please think about the following multiple factors — compared to Daniels’ “one factor” — which surely play large roles in contributing to low student performance. For example, various polls report that 20%-30% of students are smoking dope. They are also using drugs and alcohol on some regular basis. Some students are “high” while in school. And today, we have kids bringing knives and firearms to school and shooting and physically assaulting other kids and teachers. The rate of diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in both kids and adults has also been increasing. I also have seen several articles showing that watching “junky TV” makes you dumber.
Moreover, primary and secondary students now have cellphones and smartphones. They also have to deal with toxic social media, bully texting, sexting, teen suicides, doxxing, catfishing, images of kids in various states of undress going in all directions, teen mental health issues (including depression) and violence in school. The COVID-19 virus spread all over the world starting in 2020 and — according to multiple sources — had a big additional negative effect on student test scores everywhere, too. Then, we have parents that are, for various reasons, disengaged with their kids. Or the kid lives in a home with a dysfunctional family. Some families are in poverty.
All these factors are in our culture and very much outside of and beyond much control of either politics or our educational system. In addition, I started reading newspaper articles while I was in high school, over 50 years ago. I can distinctly remember that many were about “What’s wrong with our educational system?” In other words, some but not all of our current issues in education may not really be new.
In an attempt to deal with cellphones, smartphones and toxic social media, Australia has now banned anyone under 16 from social media (I have read many articles that say — among other things — that the brains of high school kids are just not developed or ready enough for what goes around on social networks). In another possibly good move, Instagram has launched “teen-safe” accounts in further recognition of the problem. And some sort of control of cellphones in Delaware schools has also recently been started. We shall see over time how all those innovations work out. These three actions — as they each are focused on one particular factor — seem to me to be easier, cheaper to do, more rational and realistically likely to work than just getting a particular political candidate into office whose major “bright idea” is to terminate the U.S. Department of Education.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
