Public Education is Failing Men

Public education is failing men, both young and old. Truly, as a general rule(there are exceptions) it is failing all of our children. The current conceptual approach is out of touch and out of date. And more of us need to start talking about this.

I am more convinced than ever that public education is failing men. Whether they are students, educators, or administrators…strong men are often not welcome in public education any longer. They are persona non grata unless they are silent.

And my friends, this is a huge problem, and it is getting worse every day. As dads, it is far past time that we speak up about this. We need to be talking about it with our kids. We need to be talking about it on social media. We need to be talking about it in our churches.

I have been called every name in the book for speaking out on this, and threatened (by third parties) with everything under the sun. Anyone who dares speak against the current, archaic philosophy is branded crazy. I am gonna keep speaking, and thankfully, Ben Sasse is as well!

If you are a conservative Christian parent with boys, surely you are seeing the problem. Public school system instruction is growing biased towards men with each passing day. There are so few role models., especially in elementary education. Our young men are stuck in seats all day long. They are often forced to read texts and experience gender neutral curriculums which are stripped of any masculinity.

One of my favorite movies is Gran Torino w/ Clint Eastwood playing Walt Kowalski. Walt struggles with the changes in his neighborhood. He is content to sit on his porch, grumble, and watch the world go by until he sees the plight of his neighbors as they deal with violent gangs. Walt begins to teach Thao, played by Bee Vang, how to be a man. He teaches him how to use tools. He teaches him how to talk like a man. He helps him get a job. Walt models this behavior for Thao. In turn, Thao provides Walt with someone to mentor and provides Walt family. Walt proves to be a family protector just like men should be.

There are things more important than test scores. Gasp…I stopped looking at benchmark scores this year. I just don’t care. We have gone too far. How we raise our kids is really what matters, and when we send them to public schools for seven hours a day….I am not sure the return on investment is proving of value.

As parents, you are your child’s greatest advocate. We can not longer sit back and say this is ok. We are failing our children with the data driven approach. Satan wants our kids to be sitting on their butts with no purpose and failing to experience life.

And thank you, Ben Sasse, for refusing to leave this life by taking a wrecking ball to the foundations of our current public education system philosophy. I am so appreciative!!!! Check this out…

I think we’re going to look back on this moment and wonder why we assumed that the passivity was possibly going to produce entrepreneurial, self-motivated workers who could navigate the disrupted economy of the post-digital revolution. ~ Ben Sasse

Institutionalized childhood is failing our young people. Far too often, they lack the ability to critically think. Over and over I hear of college professors who say students can take tests, but they lack the ability to focus on larger texts and assignments. Students are stuck in front of screens. They are stuck learning to take standardized assessments so that we can make a few grown-ups feel better about themselves. They get labelled early-on despite brain based education warning against this, i.e. kids develop at different rates and public schools fail over and over to account for this. But Ben Sasse wasn’t done….

I have been thinking a lot about the institutionalization of childhood. And I think it’s pretty bad overall, but I think it’s obviously bad for the vast majority of boys. The idea that you should be inside, sitting still on passive receive mode for the vast majority of the waking hours every day, I just think is incredibly stupid. ~ Ben Sasse

And it is, indeed, STUPID!!!! Amen, Ben. Amen!

120 years ago, we would have valued an overactive young man who couldn’t sit still. Having that type of energy on a small farm on the frontier would have been an asset. Now, and let’s be real, we are medicating many of those kids so they will sit still in many classrooms – classrooms which stifle experienced based learning.

How many times have we said it in this blog? Children need to learn via experience. That doesn’t mean to ignore learning basic facts and the foundations of learning. In fact, it means understanding what Bloom’s Taxonomy means and applying what we know about it.

Folks, we have too many people in education leadership who haven’t taught in the classroom for 10-15 years(or more!), OR they have never taught an academic subject(mathematics, science, literacy, or social studies). We have some decision makers in central offices across this country who have ZERO educational background. Yet, somehow that same leadership knows better than everybody else how to manage an academic learning environment. In fact, many of those puffed-up folks in leadership are INCAPABLE of implementing the very things they ask of teachers and admin.

And the end result is that we are creating miserable learning environments with an outdated school system model that was once geared to produce skilled factory workers. Our public education learning environments are not preparing our young people for AI dominated work places. Many are stifling innovation in students. What is worse is the test prep focus does not help them once they leave public schools – that philosophy has a limited shelf life.

And if you won’t listen to me, maybe you will listen to a dying dad(Ben Sasse) who has decided not to go quietly.

Final Note: For those of you who support the arts, I also wholeheartedly support the arts and affirm their importance in the next generation of learning environments. In addition to fishing, hiking, and sports….we have a piano and some of our kids have taken lessons for a large portion of their lives. All of our kids can play a musical instrument – most play two or more. In fact, I believe the arts might be one of the only things left in current school environments which has not been gobbled up by data. I also wholeheartedly support athletics, Christian youth groups, and education which doesn’t fit neatly in a state curriculum such as wild land firefighting.