United States Citizens are Ignoramuses, but There’s a Remedy in Knowledge-Intensive Public Education for That

It has come to my attention that citizens in the United States are ignoramuses.

 

I write to dispel the ignorance:

 

Americans are poorly educated:

 

Even those who hold undergraduate and graduate degrees lack firm knowledge bases in mathematics, natural science, history, government, economics, world and American literature, world languages, visual art, and music;  most are inept at manual skills that leave them ever needing to call upon the services of auto mechanics, plumbers, and carpenters.  Those who have attended colleges and universities emerge at best as well-trained specialists, devoid of knowledge bases in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts.

 

Ignorance is especially cultivated by wretched systems of K-12 education, of which the district of the Minneapolis Pubic Schools is just a subset.  The same fundamentally abysmal level of education typifies even those suburban systems of undeserved reputation for excellence.  Students at grade levels preK-5 learn nothing substantive about the natural sciences, history, government, or economics.  They gain little introduction to quality American ethnic or world literature.  Instruction in the fine arts is poor.  Mathematics is poorly taught, yielding students unable to perform basic calculations or to apply these to the realms of economics, finance, and consumer purchase.

 

Middle school (typically grades 6-8) instruction is just as bad.  Students take courses that bear labels denoting science, socials studies (a problematic mishmash of subjects), and English, and they get low-level introduction in world languages.  But instruction is so poor and approach to curriculum so debased that the woeful ignorance that defined them at grade 5 abides still for students graduating from grade eight.

 

Anything of value at the high school (grades 9-12) level depends on availability of Advanced Placement (AP) courses, preparation to succeed at that level, and having one of those few teachers with the ability to teach challenging AP courses;  those conditions are rare, and otherwise the same deficiencies that define the elementary and middle school experiences remain still even for those students who manage to graduate, strolling across the stage to claim a piece of paper that is a diploma in name only.

 

Two-thirds of students graduating from the Minneapolis Public Schools require remedial education once matriculating on college and university campuses.  This is typical for students graduating from locally centralized public school districts that ill-serve students from families facing challenges of poverty and functionality;  further, students who graduate from suburban systems of best reputation are ill-prepared in many fields to gain abundant knowledge from the collegiate experience.

 

Students who do manage to struggle on through to graduation from colleges or universities fulfill a few requirements in broad categories from key academic disciplines in the natural sciences and humanities but chasms across the academic terrain of mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, government, economics, literature, English literature, world languages, music, and visual art remain.  Students ultimately focus on narrow specialties defined by majors;  some go on to even narrower training in graduate and professional schools.

 

But this experience in our wretched primary, secondary, and post-secondary education produces citizens who lack the knowledge to make informed political decisions or good judgments in matters of national crisis:  Covid-19, climate change, governmental leadership.  Thus has the United States suffered from irresponsible behavior in the midst of the pandemic;  either denied the reality of climate change or responded inadequately;  and revealed a high enough level of comfort with a moral degenerate and governmentally inept president that forty-five percent of the electorate and 28 states will most likely still vote for a person with of that quality of ethical conduct and corrupt policy formation.

 

When sensing that something is wrong, citizens have reactively marched in the streets, pulled down statues, erased names from buildings, and issued a string of bromides;  but they have yet to generate meaningful consensus for restructuring police departments or identified those policies most likely to address inequities across ethnicity and class.

 

We will get nothing of paramount importance right until we overhaul curriculum at the K-12 level for knowledge-intensity and train teachers capable of imparting such a curriculum, then provide students at college and universities broad as well as specialized education.

 

Until we do that, citizens in the United States will remain the ignoramuses they are at present, and that creates the clear and present danger of current American circumstance.