The 1991 “perfect storm,” made famous by the movie of that name starring George Clooney, resulted from a rare collision of three distinct weather systems that converged to create an exceptionally massive and destructive storm.
We are facing the damage from an educational “perfect storm” that has resulted from the collision of a host of destructive forces converging together at the same time. The results have, in many cases, been disastrous.
The profusion of educational wreckage
Good kids have been left bereft not only of a solid foundation to flourish in contemporary American society, but they have been drained of any interest in or motivation for a life of learning. They cannot read more than a few pages of serious prose, nor write literate prose, nor do basic math. They do not know who Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were, nor have they ever read the Constitution of the United States.
What they do know is that they should not be racist and that no one should be criticized for their moral decisions or lifestyle choices. This constitutes the sum and substance of what their education has left them with. One might have hoped students from Catholic schools would be different, but proportionally, the differences are minor. The biggest exception to the rule is kids who were home-schooled.
Several forces converged to produce the profusion of educational wreckage now washing up on the shores of America’s colleges and universities. Many attribute the problems to the school closings during COVID. There is some truth in this, but it is not the whole story. We would have weathered the school closings better if the educational system had not already been so badly impaired over the previous decades. What caused this impairment?
Several things. One was decades of educational “reforms” that used children in the classroom as experimental lab rats. Failure rates in each were treated as symptoms of resistance on the part of teachers. And educational administrators, instead of listening to those working on “the front lines,” so to speak, doubled down on their ideological efforts to “reform” the laggards who insisted on using the old traditional methods that still worked.
Why were these teachers not defended by their union? Because in many cases, the major teachers’ unions were the ones pushing the latest “reforms.” Like many unions, they allowed themselves to be seduced by the allure of ideology rather than satisfying themselves with “collective bargaining” on behalf of teachers. They also worked against efforts to discipline or dismiss incompetent teachers. The resulting convergence of incompetent teachers and invasive bureaucratic control from above, forcing absurd educational reforms, caused many of the most gifted teachers to flee to more rewarding, better-paying careers.
If you’re going to be treated this way, the thinking goes, why not go into a job where you can make 20 or 30 thousand dollars more per year, especially when “being a teacher” has become an unappreciated, even derided, occupation in American society.
Teachers are not trained to deal with social ills such as depression, alcohol and drug dependency, and various other social pathologies. They are (or should be) trained to teach math, science, history, and literature. And yet the schools are where society dumps kids so they won’t be out rampaging in the streets. Instead, they are rampaging in the schools, and as a result, very few can get a real education in an institution whose purpose is education, not “social control.”
Chaos, apathy, and … sports
The results of the social breakdown of the family have turned up in the schools. Oddly, some parents remain frustrated that the schools and teachers cannot bring about the control of their kids that they themselves are not willing to enforce. They seem surprised that their kids have little or no interest in or respect for education when they have little or none themselves. Too often, parents and students see education as nothing more than a credential, a box you check on your way to a good job and a fulfilling career. Whether that was true in the past, it is certainly not true now. A “good” education now requires the hard-earned development of some basic skills and virtues.
If the education is nothing more than a “credential,” and if that credential has increasingly become meaningless, why pursue it? The apathy of some young people can be explained by the fact that they sense the meaninglessness of what they are being asked to waste their time on. They are right to wonder why they should be kept in “teen prison” and suffer frequent bullying if they are not learning anything substantial, when they could be out working a job, getting needed skills and experience. The more mature ones might even find a mate, get married, and start to enjoy the warmth and pleasure of a conjugal relationship rather than having to sneak away to find the time and place to have the sexual encounters they shouldn’t be having, which will leave them heartbroken and damaged.
The blasé attitude toward school shifts dramatically, however, when it comes to sports. Now this is important. In sports, it is not merely a matter of “attending.” Standards of excellence are clear and demanded. New approaches in training that fail to produce results are identified quickly and rejected. Disciplining oneself in the skill is mandatory. If you don’t want to study, you don’t have to. If you don’t want to run wind sprints, you don’t play. It used to be the case that if players didn’t study, they didn’t play. An important part of sports was thought to be the development of character. But that is no longer the case.
Which brings us to yet another force converging to bring about the storm.
The sad fact is that the most common way of being greeted with open arms by a selective college or university is not by exhibiting excellence in reading, math, or art. You do it by excelling at some popular sport. It is an educational institution, but math proficiency is optional, whereas being a good linebacker for the football team can be a paid position. The degree to which educational institutions have prostituted themselves as American society’s obsession with popular sports is nothing short of shameful.
There will be those who say: “Yes, all those other things are bad, but not my thing!” Teachers’ unions will insist they are not to blame. Educational reformers will say that their efforts are being unfairly dismissed. Sports boosters who have spent literally billions supporting university sports programs will undoubtedly dismiss my criticism of the way our country’s obsession with sports has corrupted the educational system.
Fine. But I teach these kids, and I actually care about their education and their futures— not about a “system,” not about an educational ideology, not about whether we’re creating the most competitive athletes in the world — but about the young people who sit in front of me every day whose working knowledge of the world, of others, and of themselves has been systematically neglected.
So don’t write and tell me how good these other things can be: how valuable sports can be, how much better the education is now than in the 1950s, how bad things would be if we didn’t have teachers’ unions. My undergraduate education was in the sciences, and so I judge things by their results, not by how well they work on paper or in people’s ideological schemes. And too many of our students can’t read, write, think analytically, or do basic math. And they have little or no sense of the duties and obligations they have to others or to the common good.
I would be negligent, however, if I did not mention another destructive force, one internal to the educational culture I am a part of. This is the problem caused by converting the paradigm for America’s educational institutions from an English-inspired Oxbridge collegiate system, emphasizing small-group teaching, pastoral care, and residential life to the German “research university” model that emphasizes research and the “production” of “knowledge.” I suppose I must point out that I have published seven books, two with Cambridge University Press, and over forty peer-reviewed scholarly articles to get around the obvious objection: “You are only saying this because you can’t hack it.”
I can, and I have. But I don’t assume everyone else in the university should be like me or that excellence should be measured only in one way.
I value great teaching, and I try to be a great teacher. I admire colleagues who are great teachers and who devote themselves to their students, whether they have published a lot or not. They inspire me. Sadly, however, they probably won’t get tenure and promotion unless they publish articles that almost no one will read. This is a silly, corrupt system, and it needs to stop. We need to rededicate ourselves to the goal colleges and universities are meant to serve—not praise for our scholarship, not prestige for the institution, not victories for our sports teams, but the education of our students,
The growing divide
So, let’s review. A focus on woke indoctrination rather than training in reading, writing, and arithmetic; educational reforms that devastated education in subjects like reading, writing, and arithmetic; the oppressive force of teachers’ unions more interested in enforcing ideological educational reforms and bureaucratic processes than in fostering educational excellence; the cultural breakdown of society and the family; the loss of respect for education; approaching education as a check box credential rather the attainment of skills; the obsession with sports over educational attainment; and the emphasis on research and the production of knowledge products rather than on student learning.
It is a perfect—perfectly bad—educational storm.
If you try to tame the storm and reform the system, I applaud your heroism, but you will face some very high waves. Teachers’ unions, sports boosters, and research universities have literally billions of dollars invested in what they do, each of them proclaiming themselves to be “supporting young people” even in the face of a failing educational system. It is always someone else’s fault.
Others will insist, “It’s not so bad.” Tell that to my colleagues trying to teach college kids who can’t read past an eighth-grade level, can’t write a literate paragraph, and can’t do basic math. This would be like reading reports in the news about wounded, bleeding children being taken off a battlefield and insisting, “Oh, things aren’t all that bad. Those kids will be fine.” You can say that when you’re not the doctor operating on them.
There is no good way of escaping the storm completely. It is difficult not to run into one or another of its deleterious effects. But things aren’t hopeless. It is possible to escape at least some of them—in a school that actually teaches skills; in a sports program that actually develops character and cares about education; in a home with parents who care about education and not merely grades; as part of a social group in which reading and discussion is both commonplace and civil; or with adults who make clear the duties owed to others and who model the virtues.
I see kids who have escaped one or more of the deleterious effects of the perfect storm every semester. If the lights are on, and they really want an education, we can give them one. The goal of every dedicated teacher is to be worthy of those kids. But please understand. We can do everything in the world to try to inspire them, but it won’t happen if they just don’t care, if somehow everything else in life is more important than getting an education.
But for most, the divide between the educational “haves” and “have nots” gets wider every day.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Schools have become wholly politicized weapons orchestrated by leftists. When your first priority is political indoctrination rather than liberal education (liberal in the classical sense), then bad things happen. It’s not coincidental that schools have become anvm effective agent against religion. And, just like all totalitarians, their sole motivation is power and control over people’s lives. Pure Marxist ideology.
Want to prove Dr. Randall’s point that today’s youth have lost any ability to think logically? Ask any student about to write a term paper to first produce an outline of the various topical components of the essay with major headings and subsets of these major ideas. This would be an outline as taught in basic writing courses. I dare say that virtually no student could do it. Because their brains, as Professor Kingsley of “The Paper Case” TV program would say, “Their brains are MUSH.”
Reading this article made me well up with tears in my heart. THAT is as good a compliment as I can pay Dr. Smith. Thank you.
There is a way to fix this. Phase out public schools. Get the Federal government out of education. Repeal all laws having to do with education at state and local levels. The free market will take care of it. Necessity is the mother of invention. You say “impossible”. Given our culture, you are right.
I agree about the federal part at least.
Horace Mann, the first major influencer and proponent for public ed sought to eliminate sectarian, religious models, followed later by John Dewey. Dewey, perhaps the greatest proponent of rationalization.
As Randall Smith articulates this trend eventually became ideological, reflecting public attitudes and changing moral attitudes rather than learning the sciences. The teachers unions are led by ideologues rather than educators.
Because of this teachers unions should be abolished, responsibility for education returned to local government. However, local government is also undergoing dramatic change regarding our Constitution. Still, it seems subsidiarity is the better approach.
If you want to read about all the failed attempts to “fix” schools, read “Bad Students, Not Bad Schools” by Robert Weissberg. Weissberg presents the academic achievement (A) formula: A = 8I x 4M x R x P x T
Emphasizing that high intelligence (I) and motivation (M) are primary drivers, while resources (R), pedagogy (P), and teaching (T) play marginal roles. The multiplicative structure implies that low student intelligence or motivation results in zero achievement, regardless of school-based improvements. Mainstream educational researchers heavily criticized the text – of course they did because they always want more recourses (R) that has little to do with outcomes, and of course called it “racist.” As a former teacher, I would have added a term to account for student trouble makers. It only takes one in a classroom to completely derail learning.
“Emphasizing that high intelligence (I) and motivation (M) are primary drivers, while resources (R), pedagogy (P), and teaching (T) play marginal roles. ”
Good, experienced instructors, whether in an academic or a corporate/industrial setting will tell you there’s no teaching, there’s only learning. It’s also worth noting that intelligence is directed, it’s more akin to a vector than a scalar and there are people who are brilliant in one thing, but struggle in others. A better word is aptitude.
Sometimes my comments disappear into cyberspace but I’ll try again. I believe motivation is a real factor in achievement but I don’t believe students are any more or less intelligent than in previous generations.
I don’t recall Weissberg implying students becoming less intelligent, although there are indications that attention span has dramatically declined due to “screens”, but that is a different topic. But you put your finger on what has become a problem and that is motivation. Weissberg’s study showed that most attempts to improve education concentrate on the R, P and T terms, which have little impact. However, he did write (working on memory here) if about 10% of the VERY worst teachers were replaced there would be significant improvement. Not to bash teachers, but we ALL know teachers who just mail it in, often due to burnout. The public school system makes it nearly impossible to fire teachers, which is a disservice to both the students and the teacher – who perhaps needs to move on to a different career. His biggest recommendation is exactly what LJ (5:18 pm) writes: “Our school systems began to collapse when society decided that ALL kids must go to college. An awful lot of kids are simply not college material and may in fact be better suited to learn a trade …” This isn’t to say “not college material” students are not intelligent, but they are in courses that are of no interest – which can lead to them being bored and disruptive.
“This isn’t to say “not college material” students are not intelligent, but they are in courses that are of no interest – which can lead to them being bored and disruptive.”
**********
I agree. Vocational schools are a underused resource. I remember years ago hearing a friend share how a school counselor had discouraged her from enrolling her children at a vo-tech school because: “Well, you know the kinds of children who go there…” It was seen as a low status choice. It was actually an excellent vocational school with great teachers & we used to buy plants from their greenhouse for our garden.
And now the trades pay quite well
Unsupported tenure is also a complete waste of the taxpayers money, and is not offered to private company employees.
Check out this new college: The College of St. Joseph the Worker in Steubenville, Ohio that integrates Catholic liberal arts with skilled trade training. It aims to help students earn a degree and learn a trade while graduating with minimal debt. I wonder if it will catch on? https://www.collegeofstjoseph.com/
I don’t recall Weissberg implying students becoming less intelligent, although there are indications that attention span has dramatically declined due to “screens”, but that is a different topic. But you put your finger on what has become a major problem and that is motivation. Weissberg’s study showed that most attempts to improve education concentrate on the R, P and T terms, which have little impact. However, he did write (working on memory here) if about 10% of the VERY worst teachers were replaced there would be significant improvement. Not to bash teachers, but we ALL know teachers who just mail it in, often due to burnout. The public school system makes it nearly impossible to fire teachers, which is a disservice to both the students and the teacher – who perhaps needs to move on to a different career. His biggest recommendation is exactly what LJ (5:18 pm) writes: “Our school systems began to collapse when society decided that ALL kids must go to college. An awful lot of kids are simply not college material and may in fact be better suited to learn a trade …” This isn’t to say “not college material” students are not intelligent, but they are in courses that are of no interest – which can lead to them being bored and disruptive.
I suspect the reason the author failed at being a public school educator is because he clearly misunderstands the purpose of public schools. It is precisely to indoctrinate students to be compliant cogs in the capitalist machine. That requires them to be able to get along with each other despite race color or creed. It does not require math skills anymore, much less writing. This is the brave new world. You can hate the beleaguered and underpaid teachers in public service for being “woke” but their job demands that they remain awake to their and their students place in the machine.
I’ve read that post industrial revolution schooling was model that would enable a better, compliant workforce. But that hasn’t always been a non racist model .
And more efficient (cheaper) I think in our state it’s now an astounding 10k per student formula. Reading scores are not good.
“… the purpose of public schools. It is precisely to indoctrinate students to be compliant cogs in the capitalist machine.” If you think THAT is what is going on in a public school classroom today, you haven’t a clue about public school education at any level. The majority of public school teachers, and both of the major unions to which almost all of them belong, are committed to producing radically socialist, anti-social, anti-western, emotive and irrational agitators. Rather than producing “cogs,” they are churning out brainless “sabots.”
It’s funny that you think that the oligarchs would want rational thinkers. Socialism is the perfect balm for those who would otherwise chafe at huge wealth disparities that late stage capitalism produces. The cogs are produced for the brave new world to accept joblessness due to AI, transient lack of property ownership due to developers and data centers, plastics and pesticides that decrease fertility, and those that define themselves as their masters do, as consumers.
I don’t whether that is more silly than it is paranoid. But you sound like you’ve had a public school education, followed by a B.A. degree in “Oppression Studies.”
“Socialism is the perfect balm for those who would otherwise chafe at huge wealth disparities that late stage capitalism produces.”
Chafe, as in ENVY. Leftists love to make the capital sin of envy into a cardinal virtue.
I really do love when people use phrases such as “late state capitalism”, it shows the pedigree of their indoctrination.
The term was first used by Werner Sombart (1863-1941) to name the new social order which emerged in the aftermath of World War I. However, beyond some brief comments and outlines, never really defined.
Since the 30’s it’s been used as a foil by European socialists and Marxists, was revived without attribution in 1972, and is now a term of derision for the neo-Marxist left as their Swiss Army knife for whatever bee is in their bonnet.
It’s amazing he? can’t remain silent and be thought a fool, rather than write and remove all doubt.
The brain transplant has been successful(!), as described by the Saddleback Church’s Rick Warren at the 2015 World Meeting on Families held in Philadelphia:
“In today’s society, materialism is idolized, immorality is glamorized, truth is minimized, sin is normalized, divorce is rationalized, and abortion is legalized. In TV and movies, crime is legitimized, drug use is minimized, comedy is vulgarized, and sex is trivialized. In movies, the Bible is fictionalized, churches are satirized, God is marginalized, and Christians are demonized. The elderly are dehumanized, the sick are euthanized, the poor are victimized, the mentally ill are ostracized, immigrants are stigmatized, and children are tranquilized. In families around the world, our manners are uncivilized, speech is vulgarized, faith is secularized, and everything is commercialized.”
Our school systems began to collapse when society decided that ALL kids must go to college. An awful lot of kids are simply not college material and may in fact be better suited to learn a trade, at which they will probably earn more money than their college educated peers. Collapse continued when race became a factor in everything from who was admitted to which public school to the lowering of the accepted passing grade. This helped build the notion of “social promotion”— the idea that kids should be moved on to the next grade level even if they hadn’t mastered the current level of work. An idiotic idea which does the child no good in the long term.
Most recently, colleges decided to abolish the need for the SAT for admission and are now learning it will reap them students reading at a 5th grade level. Now (surprize!!) some schools are moving to require it for admission once again.
I resent the ongoing attack on athletes. My son attended a Catholic college on a partial athletic scholarship. He had to meet the required SAT score for entrance to the school like ALL the students (1200 in that era) and maintain passing grades. In addition he had to sign an NCAA document stating he need to maintain his grades to play. Nobody gave my son a pass in any way. I dont know what is different now when some athletes are getting paid actual money to play, but that was not the case with my son.
I think the schools are too occupied with woke ideology and maybe they should get off those topics and actually TEACH the kids something so they can read, do math, and earn a living. .
Locally we know 3 multi millionaires who are high-school dropouts. One is a man in his 30’s who owns an excavation company. Another has a similar dirt moving business.
I honestly think we should reconsider the whole student loan/ 4 year degree thing . There has to be a better way. Unless you are going into a professional or scientific field I just don’t see the point.
In our grandparents’ day 8th Grade readers had what today would be college level content. You could teach a rural school at the age of 14 or 15. Which is what the creator of the McGuffey readers did.
One of the advantages or life skills these 3 probably have is they can handle a setback or crisis; likely raised to think on their own for a possible solution. Over 50s are valued now in the workplace because they can access a situation and decide how to proceed. Plus they show up or call if they can’t.
I think that’s true, knowall. And I’ve seen statistics that immigrants can be more successful in business for the same reasons.
When parents over-shield their children from failure & consequences they don’t enable resilient & self-motivated adults.
Hello there, MrsC:
I agree strongly we need to rethink the student loan thing. Recently there was a reclassification of what was considered a “professional” degree and that impacted the ability (possibly) of nurses to obtain more gov’t backed loans. Pre-seminary apparently was kept in the “professional” group.
.
I’m not going to debate on who should, or who should not get loans, and who is worthy or not, but it does occur to me that we may not have as many priests as we would like precisely because many candidates likely come with large student loan debts that various Dioceses really do not want to take on.
.
I’m not sure what the process is, but imagine an otherwise good candidate applying and he already has $50K (or more) in student debt.
Yes, it seems sort of a racket to me. With all the virtual learning resources available today why should it take that much money & so many years to get an education that’s approximately what you’d get for free in high school in our parents’ generation?
And the lack of many college graduates’ acquaintance with general knowledge & history is just astounding to me. It’s not just a lack of scriptural literacy but literature, music, art, geography-you name it.
And more efficient (cheaper) I think in our state it’s now an astounding 10k per student formula. Reading scores are not good.
I’m aware of a case, perhaps 15 years ago, with a candidate who had student debt that prevented entering the seminary. I don’t recall the amount, but it wasn’t trivial. There was a grassroots movement to pay off the debt. In this case, the individual was ordained, and to my knowledge, is still serving in his vocation. But you never know how these situations will work out. I guess you would need to know the candidate and he was serious about the priesthood.
I am nearing the end of a 40+ year career in academia, and I can assure readers that Dr. Smith – like all of us professors – could write much more explicitly about the decline in university studies. It has all become driven by corporate style growth models and top-down organization, with customer satisfaction and increasing revenue streams being the primary measures of “success.” Students who cannot even read or write are nevertheless invited to evaluate me in every course every semester. THEY grade MY competence for an administration too uninterested in academic standards to give a damn about honest evaluation of their own faculty. I feel terribly sorry for the junior faculty who will never experience any degree of respect in their vocation as Catholic teachers.
Respect is not given, it is earned. I’m sure your students could read your contempt for them as well as I do. 40 years has not taught you to respect any perspective but your own. I wish you a peaceful retirement.
Truth is not contempt. If you were anything but a troll of this article and these comments, you might know that.
Respect though should be shown to teachers or anyone in authority, whether we fully agree with their perspectives or not. We’re not required to agree with everything but we are expected to show respect & courtesy.
Such as the contempt you exhibit for people that don’t agree with you?
Catholic Schools Must Close
“A preferential option for the poor” should be maintained in our Catholic Schools. If we find that we cannot afford to keep our schools open to the poor, the Church should be ready to use its resources for something else which can be kept open to the poor. We cannot allow our Church to become a church primarily for the middle-class and rich while throwing a bone to the poor. The priority should be given to the poor even if we have to let the middle-class and rich fend for themselves.
Practically speaking, the Catholic Schools must give up general education in those countries where the State is providing it. The resources of the Church could then be focused on “Confraternity of Christian Doctrine” and other programs which can be kept open to the poor. These resources could then be used to help society become more human in solidarity with the poor. Remember, the Church managed without Catholic Schools for centuries. It can get along without them today. The essential factor from the Christian point of view is to cultivate enough Faith to act in the Gospel Tradition, namely, THE POOR GET PRIORITY. The rich and middle-class are welcome too. But the poor come first.
“Practically speaking, the Catholic Schools must give up general education in those countries where the State is providing it.” That directive is just insane. You have a very poor opinion of the poor to believe that state education is what the need and deserve. In fact, it is the state that should get out of education in ALL respects. ALL education should be privatized, with people freely associating with schools of their choice.
“These resources could then be used to help society become more human in solidarity with the poor.”
Whiskey Tango Alpha Hotel is that supposed to mean?