Meanwhile, I know of, and have for many years used, reading programs that teach kindergartners to read on a second grade level in…..wait for it…..three or four months, with100, 15-20 minute lessons. Start reading 12 dollars at Amazon.

As they stand, schools can’t be ungarbaged. And even if they could, too many persons and groups make a living in the garbage business.

In contrast to the real idiots that it takes to screw up public education, it only takes persons with common sense and intelligence (all persons reading this) to design effective and efficient public schools. See if you agree.

1. Starting in kindergarten, kids learn school citizenship: there are times and places for certain behaviors; speaking politely; taking your turn; trying hard.

2. Students who refuse to be good citizens are removed. They are not—as is required by special education laws— kept IN the classes (It’s called “inclusion,” and it’s big business for “inclusion specialists.”) that they continually disrupt, turning classrooms into day treatment centers, filled with noise, violence, and little learning. In time, the culture of the school is poisoned, and teachers are demoralized by the inescapable presence of severe trouble makers—thugs, morons, bullies.

3. By middle school, students who show that they do not have the intelligence and/or drive to learn complex subjects (geometry, serious science and history), are put on a technical-school track. Correct, we return to the 40s and 50’s, and provide technical education, so that less endowed students can make a living and not become drug dealers and welfare “clients.” Technical schools would pay for themselves in increased revenue and in the decreased costs of small “special classes” for “trouble youth,” who remain “troubled” their whole school careers, until they drop out and eventually go to prison.

4. Starting in kindergarten, kids are taught reasoning.

“Boys and girls, imagine a huge elephant walking around the grocery store”. That would be absurd. Elephants don’t GO WITH grocery stores. What if there was a huge truck right in your bathtub. What would THAT be?” absurd. “Yes, that would be absurd. Huge trucks don’t go with your bathtub.”

Keep working on reasoning for the next 10 years. Then, when the kids are adults, and they hear a politician say, “We need to stop corporate profits. Vote for me!”, those kids MAY say, “That is absurd! If corporations don’t get to keep profits, how can they build new plants, or bring new drugs to market, or hire more persons? Besides, if the government takes profits, that is simply robbery.” Maybe they’d have enough brains not to vote for tyrants.

5. Teaching essential subjects—“tool skills” such as reading, math, and science—is done the same way that anyone learned to dance, play a musical instrument, sing, advance in martial arts, learn plumbing or carpentry, or basically anything more complicated than sucking a lollipop. Namely, teachers know exactly what to say and what examples to use to get knowledge across (e.g., how to read, how to solve equations); they provide practice, practice, and more practice until the skills are automatic; they make sure that students have mastered the basics (counting, addition, subtraction) before they teach skills that DEPEND on those basics (multiplication, division). This, of course, requires teachers who know how to teach, not merely how to provide fun activities. [More about colleges of education---Ha! "education" later.]

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Here’s what goes on:

6. Teachers who can’t teach the way outlined in #5 are not hired. Schools provide timely assistance and supervision to ensure that teachers are proficient. They do not waste time with workshops and other bilge (such as multi-cultural sensitivity, and social justice for “transgender” students who think they are REALLY members of the opposite gender) that have ZERO effect on actual teaching.

7. The ONLY agenda of schools is students learning the skills that it takes to build a decent life for themselves and contribute to a democratic republic. No time is spent on fashionable “liberal” agenda items (which are in fact planks in the platform of the Communist Party, and have been for almost a century).

The above is not a fantasy. It describes the operating principles and the operation of effective schools—public and private, charter or regular, with well-off and poor kids. See http://www.kipp.org/ , http://www.achievementfirst.org/, and especially http://charterdayschool.net/

The question is, Who are the idiots who’ve ruined public schools? A related question is, How come they are still able to walk? I can’t answer the second question, but with space kindly provide by the Mad Jewess and David Ben Moshe, I can answer the first.