Young Americans are dumbs

[DemPGH]

Blaming unions is really a non sequitur. "Workers organize to ask for better conditions, therefore the quality of the product goes down." No. That was certainly never the case before, and to blame unions for the USA's slippage in educational readiness is just short-sighted ideology. After all, other first world countries are more unionized than we are, and in places where unions are weakest education is still poorer! I mean the South.

The actual problem is twofold, and I think I talked about this on here a long time ago.

1. Teacher training is terrible - a big digression, actually. Dumby down the curriculum, coddle the babies, everyone is right, let the kiddies teach themselves, and play / devise games are what teachers are taught to do. That actually gets me worked up, because I believe in content first. I didn't get much of an education until I was exposed to that awesome thing called a professor: A person with a PhD who knows what the hell he or she is talking about. And the really great ones encouraged thinking both in and outside the metaphorical box.

2. The quick fix is to attract scholars as teachers, but given the culture of schools and teacher training, that is highly unlikely. So, teacher training has to improve. We have to make teachers into something that looks like a scholar.

The core, fundamental problem is that teaching is not an attractive job, and continues year after year to be very high in turnover and low in retention.