Why we struggle teaching this generation...

I can recall a moment when Michelle Rhee was interviewed on TV (I think it was on the Colbert Report, but I don't recall) and she once responded to a question about why we see different results from America in the 50's and 60's to America today.  She went on to babble about the lack of a student-centered political initiative or something like that.  I agree but she doesn't go far enough.

I'll offer a simple explanation about why America was number 1 in the 50's versus why we're not number 1 today.  Back in the 1950's, we were in a COLD WAR!

People were unified by a level of nationalism that doesn't exist today.  In the 1950's, the American people accepted the responsibility to educate themselves to better themselves as well as to improve their nation as a whole.  Every American owned up to a civic responsibility and a civic duty to perform well in school.

I mean the goal of JFK as President in the early 1960's was to send a man to the moon!  In order to do this, we need the best and the brightest!  This means, stay in school!  Compare this to George Bush's goal of having every child test at grade level in reading and math by 2014...  Seems like we've regressed...  From going to the moon to reading and math...



Where is this message of urgency today?  Where is this level of nationalism today?  It doesn't exist.  Where's the educational incentive to learn?  We aren't going to the moon anymore, in fact we're cutting NASA's budget.  Our current message of nationalism is one of consumerism, not of academic achievement.

Back in the 50's and 60's at the sound of air-raid sirens students had duck-and-cover drills where they scamper under their desks to protect themselves from the fallout of a Soviet nuclear attack.  Everybody was pretty much on the same page because they envisioned a common enemy of the American people.  Today, it's a burden of a task to convince urban high school students to walk in single-file lines when a fire alarm sounds.

The lack of a uniform and consistent message of urgency to learn is one of the biggest missing pieces in today's society.  We lack a unified message of urgency that America needs educated individuals to do amazing things.  There is one certainty, today, education is no longer glorified as it once was.