Global Education – Making Education Worse

(Jim Blockey/The Real Education Expert) – In the July 3^rd, 2012 Education Week, they published an article by Noah Zeichner called Global Education: Bringing the World to Your Classroom. I hate to point this out, especially seeing no one really wants to hear the truth, but we are not succeeding in educating our children locally; so why are we trying to take it globally.

One of the biggest problems with education is that we have made it so complicated, so extensive and so massive that we have failed at the main reasons for education; helping American children read, write, do math and teach the true history of this great country.

According to Zeichner, “The four main elements of the global competence matrix are:

• Investigate the world. • Recognize perspectives. • Communicate ideas. • Take action.

We should be teaching our students these skills, and of course, mastering the competencies ourselves.”

That is a very broad perspective and really confusing, and does anybody have any idea what that means. This kind of education leaves to much left to opinions and conjectures; another reason education is failing. We need to go back to the basics be specific and not left open to liberal opinions.

Another point in the article was history. Zeichner said, “In teaching U.S. history this past school year, I have worked with colleagues to revise our Progressive Era and Great Depression units, incorporating more opportunities for students to develop global competencies.”

That may be part of our history; however, what should be emphasized to our children when learning U. S. History is our Founding Fathers – the Federalist Papers, which explains in detail how and why the founders created America. What Zeichner is focusing on can also lead to a extremely liberal point of view and persuade our children to favor socialism over capitalism. The article went on to explain teaching U. S. History in this way:

In the “Great Depression unit: We redesigned our Great Depression unit to follow an arc that led to a study of the Great Recession of 2007-09. We began by looking at the causes of the 1929 stock market crash and the widespread bank failures that followed. Next, we compared different economic perspectives on the causes of and responses to the Depression, including a theoretical comparison of capitalism and communism.”

They may say they will compare and you may think it will be equal; however, the beliefs of the teachers will have an extremely heavy impact on how it is actually taught. This is what causes so much friction in the politics of education. We need to keep it simple, straight forward and leave all of the controversial issues to the colleges where students have a choice what classes they take.

The article continued:

“Similarly, we ended the Great Depression unit in the present. We looked at the recent economic recession, focusing on the collapse of the housing bubble, and the growing income inequality gap. Students debated three perspectives on economic policy:

• The call for a “New New Deal” and increased taxation of the wealthiest Americans.
• A focus on deficit reduction and tax cuts.
• A call for a new, more just system altogether.

Background materials included rhetoric from the Obama campaign, the Republican Party’s economic platform, and the Occupy Movement.”

If this is talked about similarly to how the media covers it, you can imagine how liberal this will persuade America’s children to become.

How is it that we are unsuccessful at teaching the basics yet those in power desire to make the curriculum more extensive? In business if an employee is unsuccessful at producing in the simple tasks the last thing you would do is give them a more complicated task; yet that is what the powers to be in education are attempting to do.

If America is to return to being America we need to take choice away from teachers and return education to educating not indoctrinating. Stop making education a political debate and money maker for cons, and genuinely care about our children.

What I am saying is that an intelligent person would have to sincerely speculate if our leaders are sincere in their desires to fix education. You see as long as education is failing there will be hundreds and hundreds of programs out there that claim to help children; of course those programs cost tens of thousands of dollars. If education succeeds, those cons no longer pad their pockets.