I’ve gotten a fair amount of hatred for my excerpt on Reparations and White Privilege, so how about something a little less controversial? I have formulated the ideas contained herein over the years of all manner of low-skilled and highly skilled jobs, along with running my own businesses. I propose in my book revolutionary ways to solve the minimum wage debate, student loan debt, the ever-increasing generational skill gap, the education world and its multitude of issues, among others. I’ve included these two chapters as they work hand-in-hand. Solve the problems of education and you can start solving the problems with commerce.

And yes, please buy the book if you see something you like and think I’ve got some good ideas. If you think I’m a moron and just bubbling over with idiocy, buy the book anyway. It’ll make a nice prop for that one broken leg on your couch.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1977222730?pf_rd_r=VHCFJJCR1TZ3HRE8Q7MA&pf_rd_p=edaba0ee-c2fe-4124-9f5d-b31d6b1bfbee

Business

Our government has a lot of work to do. That’s why that part of this annoyingly wordy book is long and detailed. Business has some change to do also. As I’ve stated before, I see both sides of an argument, and often fall in the middle, either ideologically or in the nature of the solution. Those who chronically argue without offering solutions just want to hear themselves speak.

Tucker Carlson, if nothing else, is fantastically entertaining for someone who aspires to live life through their intellect and not their emotions. He gathers folks from the lunatic fringe of progressivism and uses the Socratic method to get them to embarrass themselves. I believe this sets him above some of the other Fox News guys, because they argue and criticize. Carlson is more dignified, and uses questions to trap his guests. Neil Cavuto is even better at calmly trapping a person in their own arguments. Carlson sometimes tends to laugh and deride his guests. Cavuto doesn’t typically do this, thereby preserving their dignity. Even though Carlson got his start on a crossfire show, their shows hearken back to the civilized debate that existed before the crossfire format shows that became so popular in the late nineties and 2000’s.

They’ve both had young people (often in line with Bernie Sanders’ philosophies of government) come on and argue for free college tuition, higher minimum wage, and destruction of rape culture on college campuses. I’ve got a solution to all three of these problems, one that can satisfy both sides.

I’m with Bernie Sanders. There I said it. Well, let me back up a bit. I’m with Bernie Sanders as pertains the one issue of student loan debt. There I said it in more specific terms. Heads exploded yet, conservatives? I am feeling a small portion of the Bern. Maybe just enough to singe my eyebrows. I do want to cancel all student loan debt. Not because this is the right thing to do, certainly not. I am still struggling with whether or not it’s the right thing to do. I want to do it because it’ll correct the unacceptable and unsustainable status quos of this system.

I, like millions of others, was tricked as a young adult into saddling my future, more tired, rapidly aging, and increasingly lonely self into a large amount of student loan debt. I also don’t think government should take on student loan debt. That would entail a massive tax increase. I think they should just cancel it. Yes, this will show all these poor graduates that their actions don’t always have consequences, but it will also wildly improve their credit scores, so you take the good with the bad. This will also entail government overstepping their authority by a million-cagillion-plus-infinity-plus-one country miles. It’s why as a conservative I’m so conflicted about it. But I’m rationalizing it by the fact that schools are engaging in deceptive practices in tricking students to take the loans, demanding they take multiple years of expensive classes they don’t need for their future career (classes which are often quite awesome but should be reserved for those who can afford them) and leaning on the government to keep them afloat in the short term until the student is able to start paying them back. It’s the biggest and most elaborate scam ever perpetrated on a totally willing mark. The world’s best hucksters running long cons could take notes. A massive government cancellation will result in some colleges shutting down, and the ones that survive this purge will understand that from here on out, they will need to make their profits in more honest and transparent ways, while also coming to terms with the fact that they will simply make less profit for the foreseeable future. If some PHD’s get downsized in the process and some residence halls are boarded due to smaller student bodies, so be it. The lesson will be duly, albeit harshly learned.

It’s a travesty of travesties that we will trick an 18-year old trying to live better and more comfortably than the conditions they grew up in into accepting tens (sometimes hundreds) of thousands of student loans against the abstract commodity of knowledge, instead of a few thousand dollars to start up or invest in small businesses, which typically have physical commodities that can be reclaimed if the investee defaults. The overhauling of minimum wage and traditional business practices I propose below will also help us fix this problem.

Free college tuition doesn’t really work. Government already pays for free public primary and secondary education. There’s a group of people who are able to recognize how poorly that is turning out. I call them the “Eyes and Ears Open and Functioning Properly Crowd”. You may have heard of them. Post-secondary educational debt is at an all-time high with no reduction in sight. It’s another reason why progressives say that the system is rigged. Government and loan agencies basically can trap you for life (or at least a large chunk of it) through subsidized and unsubsidized student loans. Someone has to pay for education, and I don’t think the government is that someone. Rich, private individuals can’t entirely pay for it, as redistributing their wealth will make it run out at some point, along with their inclination to earn it. I think this is where business can solve this problem.

The military and General Motors models can be altered slightly and applied here. General Motors says that if you give them 30 years of faithful service, they will pay you a collectively bargained pension and health benefits until you die. This used to allow someone the chance to step into the shop at age 18, forego college, and potentially retire comfortably at age 48. This model has been altered by changes to the industry, concessions made by the UAW in 2007, and a diminished U.S. workforce, but is still in place to some degree. The military says that if you give them 4 years of faithful service, they will give you $40,000+ in school tuition. If you give them 20 years of faithful service, they will give you an attractive pension and health benefits until you die. Like Thomas Paine said, honest men engaging in trade do more for this world than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived. Let’s apply this model to business. Here’s my plan:

Stop criticizing big corporations and start utilizing their resources. Social justice warriors love to bemoan the humongous conglomerates that dominate the business world, and the plight of the ma and pa operations that are dying off. These corporations hold tremendous financial power and political clout. One reason small operations are dying off is that we have so many laws that govern business. Only corporations can afford to pay exorbitant licensing fees, retain lawyers, and have research teams keep them on top of current laws. Ma and Pa have drastically fewer assets and you can’t monetize pluck and gumption. A semi-conspiracy theorist might conclude based on lobbying and other factors that corporations try to keep laws stringent, insurance legislation intact, and minimum wages high because these things make running a small business not worth it for many. But that’s just me using the logic I should have learned in school were Logic not forlornly staring in through the classroom windows at a party they were originally invited to but embarrassingly bounced. I’ve already addressed lobbying (it should be outlawed) and insurance (it should be drastically changed to allow the little guy to get ahead), and now, the minimum wage.

Zero out the minimum wage. Oh yes, I went there. Put your torches and pitchforks away. You’ll see why eventually. The minimum wage is a hotly debated item. When people who work low-skilled jobs get their demand for higher wage, they get criticized by conservatives, fired by their bosses, or replaced by machines. While I am compassionate to those who suffer due to low wages, I tend to lean toward the Republican side of this argument.

This is because I’ve worked minimum wage jobs before I was acquired skills through experience and college. I’ve worked two minimum wage jobs at once. I’ve worked higher than minimum wage jobs since I graduated college. I’ve made more than minimum wage running my own business. I’ve lost money on jobs running my own business. I’ve also worked a minimum wage job in order to make extra cash while working my higher-than-minimum job. I’ve been in all sorts of situations. This I do know. If you want to make livable wage, you need to increase your output. It seems harsh, but I’ve been perfectly happy working two jobs that expected something at least in the neighborhood of an eight-hour work day. I have been happy because I know I’m providing for those I love, and I know that if I save my money I can change my situation in the future. This is something the folks clamoring for a $15 minimum don’t seem to understand. There are twenty-four hours in the day. We Americans, due to our comfort and luxury, tend to break the day into three eight-hour chunks; work, leisure/personal, and sleep. Problem is this doesn’t gel with what humans had to do for thousands of years before the industrial age introduced us to said comfort and luxury. Sunup to sundown was the norm in agricultural times, when the work day was dictated by the job needing done, not the mutually agreed upon bare minimum.

Just because we are used to a different norm doesn’t mean we are entitled to it. I tell my kids, my students, my peers, anyone who will listen to me; The world doesn’t owe you anything. Once you start down the path of entitlement, there is no end to what you think you and your existence are to have bestowed by the effort of others. President Lincoln’s second inaugural address, enshrined in the wall of his memorial, has something to say about men who would make their bread off the backs of others. I know through my experience there’s almost no problem that can’t be solved by a little (or a lot) of work.

So that’s one reason I don’t advocate for government increasing the minimum wage. Those who wish to get ahead can just choose to work harder and work more. Low skilled, low wage jobs, in a perfect world, would be entirely populated by teenagers, college kids, skilled workers looking for extra cash, and bored retirees looking for something to do beyond arguing with their wives and feeding the ducks. Maybe even a small contingent of unskilled adults who are okay with flatlining at a certain life station. Problem is what we have now is twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings, and forty-somethings who have decided to treat a job like a career but then turn around and get mad when their wage doesn’t support increasing costs of living, often extravagant and luxurious at that. They aren’t okay with flatlining at a certain life station but are okay without increasing their output. They don’t know or don’t acknowledge that an engine can’t pick up speed without higher RPM’s.

Another reason is that rising wage does affect the price of things. Whether or not the increases in minimum wage over the years has stayed steady with the rising prices of consumer goods and services, one cannot deny that the price of things has risen steadily since the advent and increase of minimum wage. This is not the best reason, but it is a reason.

Another reason is that I think we could enter an employee market, much like we had back in the heyday of the car industry. Think about it. Companies who lower their wage to charity work won’t ever have anyone work for them. Companies who raise their wages and benefits will always have workers ready to work for them. It’s why GM has had to perform lotteries for employment for many years. They simply had so many applicants they weeded many of them out with an unbiased system. The unskilled worker who works for McDonald’s will more than double their wage and benefits doing unskilled work for GM. Yes, they collectively bargained this with their union, but the market value of the car industry demanded increases anyway, once the wickedness of management was addressed with the labor strikes. Point is, companies should be competing for workers, instead of workers competing for work. And when a worker finds another, better job due to their experience and skills, said companies should be happy for them. We live in an age when the bad actions of a person or company can be disseminated to the world with the click of a button. Any company who mistreats or lowers wages unfairly will not be around very long without changing.

Get government involved to a certain extent. Here’s where the aforementioned resources of corporations could be put to good use. Using the model of the military, we could zero out the minimum wage, corporations could start employing young people in their teenage years when they don’t have to pay for their room and board, and the hours they devote to the company could be banked towards time spent in college, trade school, apprenticeships, or small business investments/startups/latch-ons. They could do this for a mutually-agreed upon amount of time (high school kids working evenings, weekends, and summers), then get their reward at the end of their tenure, just like the military. Once they finish their commitment, the money they’ve banked could be put towards the expense of learning the skills necessary for a career with the aforementioned college, trade schools, apprenticeships, or small business investments. The subsequent positions they get in said careers will pay for the time when they are young adults who want to move into their own places, drive their own cars, and pay their own bills. If a young person decides to forego college/trade school/apprenticeship, the company could give them a cash payout, or (better yet) help get them set up in a small business. I cut lawns and trees for a living. You can make excellent money doing this and you don’t need a college degree. The trades pay better than many college degree jobs. You don’t need to spend four years learning to be a carpenter. Any money banked but not spent can be used to help the young person get set up in their trade, buy a car, rent an apartment, purchase food, pay bills, get caught up in an expensive drug habit, etc.

One necessary offshoot of this revolutionary form of business is that the age of legal adulthood will probably have to be changed. Right now, I have a nineteen-year-old in college. So long as she stays in college, I can claim her as a dependent until the age of twenty-three. However, I can no longer take advantage of the child tax credit which has paid off so many of my bills over the years. As kids go at their own pace (according to my paradigm of education below) to enter the workforce, parents may have to take an extended tax allowance and child tax credit for supporting them. This might even be a non-issue for the most brilliant kids who finish high school at such an early age (according to my paradigm for education below) that they enter the workforce, and all of their future educational accounts are settled by age eighteen. I say we change the age of legal adulthood (and legal voting age also) to compensate for more kids living at home into young adulthood while banking commercial money for their professional futures.

Actually, we could make the legal voting age different for everyone. Those who have finished the prerequisite steps for reaching and maintaining the responsibilities necessary for adulthood should be rewarded with an early voting age. Something like a year of independent living, budgeting, and responsible legal choices is a start. Those who are a little bit behind should have their voting rights withheld until they can attain a comparable level of personal and professional maturity. The cookie-cutter approach of eighteen doesn’t at all account for the individual differences which render such an approach laughable, nor does it compensate for statistical differences, which overwhelmingly show that we men don’t really enter adult maturity until a couple years after our female counterparts. A personal voting age based on choices in the teenage years can be an encouragement for we males to step up and mature in the corporate sense. More importantly, it can be used as an incentive for the brightest and most brilliant among us to stay the course and be ahead of the curve, while being a promise withheld for a measure of time for those who struggle on the path to maturity.

A personalized voting age might actually result in the young people who struggle in the core academics in school achieving a lower statistical voting age than their university-bound counterparts. Think about it. Under my educational plan, which you haven’t read yet, but will, unless you get sick of corny interruptions and unnecessary rabbit trails, these folks would be entering the trades and acquiring lucrative careers while the teachers’ pets are still at university living off scholarships, mommy and daddy’s dime, and money banked with jobs they worked leading up to the transition to college. Worth respect, but not what you’d exactly call independent living. Their reward is farther down the road than those who chose a less-specialized career. And since those who work with their hands tend to vote more conservatively than their liberal university counterparts, this will be one more step in my evil plan to subjugate this entire land under crushing republican control (insert evil laugh and evil fart).

As a young person banks time for their respective company, they should be able to withdraw at reasonable intervals for movies, dates, walking around money, small vacations, getting caught up in an expensive drug habit, and the sort, with the understanding that they will have to make that time up at a later time. This will introduce them to a concept similar to credit cards. It also will show them the idea that almost every action in life is an investment for the future, or a withdrawal for the present. It’s those people who always withdraw for the present who end up on the losing end of life. It’s part of why I don’t subscribe to the “live in the moment” philosophy. I’m playing the long game.

What’s more, young people should be able to work for multiple companies during this banking time. Think about it. If you, as a fifteen-year-old entered an Old Navy store and were told that for the next four years, you’d be folding shirts that customers will continually pull out of place but not put back, you might want to shoot somebody and then shoot the gun that you used with another gun. If you, as a teenager are told that you’d spend six weeks doing that, then go work in a manufacturing plant with robots and machinery for another six weeks, then flip burgers for six weeks, then work on cars for six weeks, then answer phones for six weeks, then shelve library books for six weeks, then hang drywall for six weeks, then drive tractors and bale hay for six weeks, then usher theater patrons to their seats for six weeks, then and then and then (you get the point) you’d inspire all but those who are in severe need of unchanging routine, who should have the option of staying in a workplace they like. This worker exchange idea will not only allow kids to come to peace with working some jobs that are monotonous and repetitive with less-than-perfect supervisors, but it’ll also give them experience in fields they may not choose as a career, but possibly a hobby. It’ll also save them money in the future when they don’t have to pay a guy to do something they already know how to do. See the episode of The Simpsons where Homer saves for an expensive kitchen makeover but feels emasculated by another man coming into his house and doing the work for him. In addition, they might get exposed to something they terribly enjoy, and end up changing the entire direction of their life before they’ve ever incurred a penny’s worth of college debt. You’re welcome, future kids. It was my idea first.

What’s even more, we’d end the employer’s market we’ve dis-enjoyed for quite some time now. Companies would be competing for the best workers, so their added perks (ex. meals, actual wage on top of banked money for the future, transportation to work, room and board allowances, facilitating your getting caught up in an expensive drug habit, etc.) would be a way to ensure they are getting the best workers (or hold lotteries if the overall quality of available workers rises beyond easily discernible discretion), while still ensuring those who are behind in terms of maturity and industriousness will still be able to work for the companies that have fewer resources to offer perks. One unfortunate offshoot of the need for equal opportunity is that many have (in a socialist mindset) perverted that idea to mean that outcome must needs also be equal. Outcome will never be equal, as humans are never equal in all ways and means. Were we to redistribute the wealth of all the rich, as the poorly veiled rhetoric shows that many American socialists clearly want, five years’ time would show tremendous inequalities of wealth again. People make different choices, desire different levels of extravagance and luxury, have different connections, have different skills, are caught up in less expensive drug habits, and dare I say it, different levels of marketable intelligence and skills. So either regular and routine redistributions would be necessary to stay in line with the propositions of Socialism, or we just don’t do that in the first place. I vote for the latter. All in agreement say “Aye”. The moneyless world of Star Trek can’t even be used as an example, as some people in that world are lofty and laudable starship captains, and some are redshirted ensigns whose job it is to absorb some of these phaser blasts being thrown around at an alarming rate. Socialists who want the former, continue reading this book quietly without an angry external emotional display, if you’re even capable of such a thing. The ayes have it.

People over thirty love to bemoan the general faults of this generation. Too much time on social media, not enough interpersonal skills, entitled, lazy, lower reading skills, expensive drug habits, blah blah blah. I tend to shy away from this because every generation has done this. Every generation looks at the up and coming kids and pontificates about things not being so “in my day”. When my father was twelve years old, he was able to fix broken systems on a car, and even helped his dad pull out an engine and install a new one on the family truck. When I was twelve years old, I could beat Super Mario Brothers 3. So, yeah. Every generation has something to look down on the next one for, and our collective generational skills are declining. I could look down on kids today for using their phones too much, but I know that I do the same thing, just not to the same degree. Plus, I know that sin has always been around, and no generation was perfect or completely all good. My worker exchange idea and my ideas in a later chapter for education should result in the most highly skilled generations of kids entering adulthood until America ends. Point is, companies can network together and make the unskilled labor we all must face as youngsters more appealing through worker exchange programs.

As long as everyone keeps up their end of the bargain, we’ll see a remarkable change in business and culture. Small and large companies alike could contribute by listing their jobs as “career”, “stepping-stone”, and “unskilled”. For anyone they employ in the third category, they could be part of the worker exchange program along with doing their small part of paying for college for low-skilled workers. There could also be a governing body that oversees “stepping-stone” job listings to make sure that these are jobs that can and might lead to lucrative careers. This will make sure companies aren’t able to sneak “unskilled” jobs into this category. There could be checks and balances in a system like this. Workers who are terminated from a job should be able to transfer their time banked, as a few moments of being a bad employee shouldn’t outweigh days, weeks, and months being a good one. In addition, workers should have options for reporting on the environment, treatment, perks, and benefits of working for a specific company. This will raise accountability for them in return. In business terms, all the things I’ve described are win-win. Yes, there will be hiccups, necessary tweaks, growing pains, corruption, fraud, expensive drug habits, and such because you can’t stop humans from being evil. What you can do is encourage them to be better. Money is a fantastic way to do that. Future money is a fantastic way to make sure we behave for the present. I get paid every Friday at my current job. I’m counting on my employer to pay me for time banked the week before. That keeps me from running around giving noogies and wet willies to my coworkers who are so very much asking for it when they get on my nerves. Money years down the road which will serve as an enticement to good choices and eliminate the need to go into debt will work wonders in our culture. We need to change the current system so as to encourage everyone involved to make everyone else involved as much money as possible so everyone involved can have a better life.

So let’s recap. This solves the minimum wage debate. This solves the college tuition and student loan debt debate (once this generation’s debt is either paid or forgiven). The rape and debauchery culture (which stem from too much time on the hands of kids who are living on someone else’s dime) on college campuses can be fought by accountability measures like “hey kid, take twenty-two credits instead of twelve in order to get your tuition money dispersed” (idle hands being the devil’s plaything). This solves the declining generational skill debate. What will old-timers and grey heads complain about now? I’m sure they’ll find something. This solves the corporate conglomeration versus ma and pop debate. This solves the employer’s market debate. This solves the problem of kids who don’t want to do college but still want to make good money debate (Mike Rowe et. al, you’re welcome). This solves the problem of kids getting into jobs but not doing their best because they have no incentive to do their best. This will (not immediately, but eventually) solve the problem of the millions of 20-40 year olds who treat low-skilled jobs as careers. This doesn’t solve the debate of is-Lebron-or-is-Jordan-the-G.O.A.T., but I don’t know that we’ll ever solve that one.

Education

It’s broken. We all know that but can’t agree how to fix it. In the process, we lose sight of whom we should be holding responsible to fix it. Government, teachers, superintendents, districts, and the workers of the industry shouldn’t be the only ones tasked with fixing education. Families and students also should. When I have a menial task to accomplish at home, I can often delegate that task to my teenagers. This frees me up to finish something they can’t do. For instance, I keep my personal question banks for my English classes on a website called Schoology. It’s a fantastic resource, but putting the questions from the textbooks into question banks is a long and tedious process. So, I give my Teacher’s Edition to my eldest son and daughter, instruct them on how to phrase each question for each activity, and let them go on their merry way. They don’t like it, but they don’t have to. They know that a family with one parent can accomplish more with division of labor, not this atrocious paradigm of a single parent who tries to be the cool parent and lets their kids run the house. They respect, honor, and obey their father, so they do the task. That means I have the time to hook up my trailer, drive to a customer’s house, and use my riding mower to cut their lawn. These are tasks they can’t do. Division of labor is a beautiful thing. This idea should be applied to education. Schools don’t produce strong or weak students. Families do. So families should be responsible for fixing schools. Teachers, administrators, and politicians will also have their part to play. Here’s how.

Cut out all summer school and credit recovery programs. These are a joke. Government is the only consumer who pays for a service provider (in this case a student) to fail for nine months, and then pays for that person to spend five weeks in a summer school program, possibly fail again, and then pays for that person to sit in front of a computer for a prerequisite number of hours “recovering” their credits. If you, as a McHungry consumer, drove your McVehicle to the drive-through at McDonalds and ordered McNuggets and they gave you a McBurger instead, you McWouldn’t McPay a McSecond McTime for McThem to McGget your McFirst McOrder McRight. I’ll stop now. When they mess your order up a second time, you wouldn’t throw your hands up in the air and say “Well, let me pay a third time.” That’s foolishness. Government does this though. They pay for a kid to goof off (thereby stressing teachers out and bogging down the system), pay for them to take summer school, and then pay for the kid to recover in an even easier way. Ladies and gentlemen, what logical sense does it make for us to make things incrementally easier on a fool? Shouldn’t that fool at some point feel the sting of their atrocious choices? Isn’t life going to teach that fool something much harsher if we don’t put our foot down, violently yank the hemi-powered engine out of the War Rig, and thunder at them “RICTUS!!!”...I mean...“ENOUGH!”? On my love of soft-and-somewhat-runny French Toast, I wish the logical human being wasn’t an endangered species.

The solution is simple. At some point, a child who will not get with the program should be fiscally responsible (re: their parents should be fiscally responsible) for their continued education. If they can’t pay, then homeschool or working for the school (if we are talking about a teenager) is an option. Seriously, I think that if students act a metaphorical mess at school, they can clean up a literal mess. If their parents have a problem with it, they can take their wild child somewhere else. But many parents who want their child to straighten up will be perfectly fine with them pulling duty as a janitor. I know I would were my student a knucklehead. This would get the problem child away from the classroom he/she so desperately desires to disrupt, teach them how to do hard and unenjoyable work, and encourage them to straighten up and fly right. Point is, school is not here to coddle a young person’s feelings and preserve their sense of self-esteem whenever they make horrific choices. In fact, the earlier a school (maybe even the parent) gives consequences for said choices, the earlier the child will learn to enter civilization and act appropriately. This will clean up much of the problem of young adults (mostly men) entering adulthood with no marketable skills and resorting to crime to make money.

In addition, it will clean up much of the bullying and harassment that is so insidiously tolerated in schools in the name of “second chances” and keeping numbers up so as to maintain funding. Much of this behavior comes from academically unsound students who are bored or in over their heads in the classroom. Nature abhorring a vacuum, as it is wont to do, very rarely means they fill their time with constructive behavior. Steeper consequences will compel students who can be reasoned with to stop or never engage in it in the first place, along with removing more quickly—funding be damned—those who do from the school environment. Title IX was put in place particularly to protect young girls in school from discrimination and intimidating practices. We can’t fully eliminate human evil with education or legislation. We can only restrain it with best practices and consequences. This is particularly true when it comes to gender differences. Young women need protection from aggressive, evil young men, and they are not getting it in the way things are currently going. The standard progressive answer is to say “just teach young men to respect women,'' as if it’s that easy. A school has very little to do with the formation of appropriate behavior in the moral sense for a child. They, especially since religious thought is restrained in schools, typically have to do with the formation of appropriate behavior in the practical sense; that is, how to maintain one’s good standing in the public forum. But this practical education doesn’t engage the heart in a profound meditation on the good. Educating moral behavior is the family’s job. Even when families fail, schools (as all evidence clearly points out) are ill-equipped to mold and release upon the world the morally upright adult.

“Free public education is a right” you say? “Students and parents shouldn’t have to pay” you say? Okay. Maybe that part of our government needs to be changed. The part about something that many students refuse to take advantage of being an entitlement. Free education is the privilege of those who take advantage of the right. For others, it’s just seven hours of babysitting. Seriously, have you looked at reading curriculum from colonial times, when free public education wasn’t a right? It’s on a higher level. When parents made a conscious choice to have lettered children, those children went to school with at least some built in respect, if not an altogether higher value of education, the education was better, and the expectations were higher. Joe Clark, the venerated principal played by Morgan Freeman in Lean on Me, would say that it’s not the school’s job to rescue those who don’t care. It’s the family’s. If the schools stopped taking on this Sisyphean task, the families (of all shapes and sizes) would be forced to step up and do their jobs. There needs to be a shift in philosophy about why a school actually is here.

Schools have got to get it in their head that, despite being a parent-in-place for a set amount of time, they are not a substitute parent. They are professionals running a place of professional business, providing a free but valuable service. This place is teaching a young person to dress up their behavior, communication, and interaction in order to survive in a world that places high demands on professionalism. Schools who make their kids feel “at home” are doing them a disservice. I ask students how they would feel if I came into their bedroom, kicked up my feet on their desk, ate a 3 Musketeers, stuffed the wrapper into a crevice despite easy access to a garbage can, chewed gum, stuck it to the bottom of their dining room table, and then caught an attitude when they took issue with all this. I tell them my classroom is not their home and they’d better act accordingly. This denotes a deep philosophical change that is the fault of parents and educators. For years, parents have allowed schools to act like fill-in parents, and schools have taken that opportunity to try and become too much to students. It becomes a vicious, self-feeding cycle that has resulted in a situation where it’s nigh unto impossible to teach some students at all.

The other philosophical change schools need to embrace is the idea that they don’t need to “keep numbers up.” The advent of the charter school has made public schools compete for bodies. Homeschool and private schools weren’t really taking away that much from public schools, as the parents of these students paid their taxes anyway. But charter schools have started making public schools suffer because they take larger numbers of kids away. This resulted in a mad scramble for carbon units. Metaphorically imagine people with master’s degrees acting like Hungry Hungry Hippos. There is little to no regard for the quality of students. This mad scramble still goes on, and in some schools, is the main priority. You’ll hear superintendents say things like “maintain attendance”, “get numbers up”, “recruit scholars”. These are all epithets for the real concept at work; get the money attached to that child, no matter the cost to teachers’ peace of mind or the quality of education students are getting. I know this is going on because I worked in a charter school, and have worked in many public schools where these conversations take place also. Scrambling for money makes a district lose sight of the quality that is paramount to sending productive citizens into the world. With wholesale philosophical and pragmatic changes to the education system, the schools who scramble for bodies will soon be recognizable to the rational person and easily exposed as corrupt and possessing of screwy priorities.

One reason school leaders throw at teachers for doing their best to keep numbers up is so that they don’t have to reduce staff. This is fallacious reasoning for two reasons. One is that we currently have a teacher shortage nationwide. Turns out, when you make people go tens of thousands of dollars into debt, micromanage them, don’t trust them to do their job without said micromanagement, pay them pittance when put up against the good they do for society, refuse to give them raises without test score results in spite of their dedication and loyalty from year to year, heap all kinds of non-negotiables and mandates on them, force them to teach to standardized tests instead of real critical thinking and problem solving skills, force them to continue their education through unending professional development and continuing college courses, don’t advocate for them when conflicts arise with parents, AND allow the dummies of the student body to stress them out without any recourse or consequences, teachers tend to get burnt out and quit. The teaching field is a leader in the realm of those who leave the profession within five years. By the sword of Damocles, how I yearn for Logic to drop a comeback album.

The second reason is that teachers are working professionals. That phrase can only be applied to humans. Throughout their history, humans have had an uncanny knack for adapting to difficult situations. When teachers are laid off due to necessary reductions in staff, they usually don’t give up on life. They do what working professionals do and go find professional work somewhere else. I’ve said this until I’m blue in the face to my coworkers. If my employer severs their professional relationship with me, I am then free to pursue employment with another employer. “Keeping numbers up” in the name of retaining staff silently implies that educational excellence no longer matters, or at least is a lower priority, along with not giving teachers the credit to go and find work elsewhere. This is the other reason we have a teacher shortage. A job that pays the bills but which you hate ends up feeling like a prison. You can’t search for another job while you’re at work, but are often so stressed out when you get home (along with having stacks of papers to grade) that the laborious process of job searching at home becomes all the more difficult. So teachers don’t find other teaching jobs, because they don’t believe the grass is greener in schools who have the same jacked-up priorities, so they end up leaving the industry, often for much more money and less stress. In a situation like that, the difference you’re making in young people's’ lives pales in comparison. You can’t put a price tag on peace of mind. Rest in peace, logic. We never really knew thee.

Demolish all standardized testing. Hear that? It’s the collective cheer of real teachers everywhere reading these words. Standardized testing is a huge industry. But it only exists to make money for the professional development hucksters, keep curriculum administrators who don’t really care about true education excellence in work, and to allow government bureaucrats to justify their existence. Teachers despise standardized testing. It takes away valuable instructional time. One-hundred-eighty school days are not really that when you account for standardized testing. That’s not even mentioning the preparation for it, which includes sneaking in questions that students will see on tests into normal lessons. It’s also leaving out the days that students take practice tests, tutoring in preparation for it (which teachers are often press-ganged into doing), meetings held in preparation for it, and all the stress that they put on schools. Schools with high test scores get funding. Schools with low test scores get extra training for their teachers, threats of being shut down, and less funding, thereby making it harder for them to retain good teachers, thereby making it harder to teach student bodies with struggles, thereby catching them in a cycle of trouble.

And for what? Standardized testing success isn’t causally linked to professional success. What’s the return on investment? Not much, I’m afraid, especially when you consider the effort the adult world puts into finding the best individuals to suit their respective needs. Think about it. When a kid gets a great score on the ACT and SAT, he or she is given offers to attend prestigious colleges. When a kid gets an average score on the tests, they are given offers to attend less prestigious but nonetheless respectable colleges. When a kid gets a below average score on the tests, they are directed to attend community college. But their test scores are only part of the criteria. Their overall GPA high school attendance record, and lack of legal trouble are also determining factors. One could argue it’s more important because what you do over four years of high school is more important than a few days of testing. And when this kid gets an invitation to apply, and accepted, are they just accepted? Sometimes, not always. Sometimes, they have to take college entrance exams.

But wait, isn’t that what standardized testing is supposed to be, a measuring stick for how college-ready they are? So, why are we doubling up on the examinations? Might as well ask why clouds are white, why the sun sets in the west, and why Kim Kardashian is famous. Just because. Oh, and so the aforementioned government bureaucrats can hold a cushy and powerful government job instead of joining the real workforce. So let’s recap. Schools, paid for by taxpayers, have to issue standardized tests, all of the effort and resources for which are paid for by taxpayers, so they can show state government officials whose time and efforts are paid for by taxpayers that they’ve been doing their jobs effectively. Meanwhile universities and colleges, of which even the ones who accept state funding also find private enterprise means to fund their efforts, turn around and put in similar testing efforts to make sure young people who apply are going to be an asset to their organization. Sounds like someone is wasting their time. I’ll go with the organization that takes all, not some of its revenue from taxpayers. This is an easy fix. Abolish all standardized testing. Let teachers teach their curriculum, which is supposed to be reading, writing, analytical thinking, and critical problem-solving skills, not the right bubble to fill in on a test. Let the colleges absorb the work of finding good candidates...which they are already doing. I feel like I’m in a time-loop. Doctor Sam Beckett, save me!

Bring back the classical education. Since you left high school, have you ever of your own volition picked up and read The Last of the Mohicans? The Scarlet Letter? Paradise Lost? Dante’s Inferno? The Iliad and The Odyssey? “The Devil and Tom Walker”? Shakespeare? A fourth grade English primer from the 1700’s? Any number of instantly recognizable classics that have been turned into much easier to understand movies? What’s common among these works? Fill in the blank with your answer (or just skip ahead to mine)____________________________. They are tough reads. Are they tough reads because they make no sense? Of course not. David Lynch can take a hike as far as I’m concerned. They are tough reads because the language skills on display are so high, and our collective language skills have devolved, and are continuing to do so. Don’t believe me? Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I submit for your consideration: LOL, BTW, OMG, R U gonna go 2 the party?, and so on. Call it my bias as an English teacher, but we are rapidly becoming linguistic imbeciles. The classical education, and objective standards of what constitutes great writing need to be put back in their rightful place. We live in an age of self-esteem where objective standards of beauty and art are all but gone, and you can’t tell someone who threw excrement against pictures of vaginas that what they do isn’t art because they’ll shout you down with screams of “FASCIST!” and “I’m a provocateur and you just don’t get it!”

In the time of Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne, young people were translating Greek at age six. They were graduating with a school diploma at age twelve, and finishing college at age eighteen. Not all of them, but many. And you can’t even explain that away with the difference in life expectancy between then and now. They had a tougher curriculum to deal with than we do now. We continually dumb things down to play to the lowest common denominator, instead of heeding the wise words of Edward James Olmos from Stand and Deliver, when he says “Students will rise to the level of expectations, Senior Molina.”

Students back in colonial days had to learn Greek, Latin, French, German, philosophy, ethics, comparative religion, and logic. Outside of electives and college courses, much of those have passed by the wayside. Without Greek and Latin, students don’t learn the foundations for much of our language. Without German and French, students don’t get exposed to the two languages of vastly different style that helped shape ours. Nor do they get a leg up on conversing with people who have immense economic power the world over. Without philosophy, ethics, and religion courses, they don’t understand how others of beliefs different than those outside their homes define right and wrong. Without logic, they don’t come to the understanding of why their actions have consequences. They just float around, making choices, (sometimes) serving the consequences, and making the same choices without ever developing their character. I think I’ve mentioned logic once or thrice in these extravagantly adorned pages (editor’s note: Mr. Roberts, while being a valued client, did not forward to our firm the extra monies for our Extravagantly Adorned Package, so he and his readers can deal with simple black print on white pages).

That’s not even mentioning the inexcusable fact that our high school students aren’t graduating fluent in Spanish, the foreign language it makes the most sense for them to be learning to mastery. In addition, they aren’t studying Asian languages, the practical application of which cannot be overstated, primarily Mandarin and Japanese due to their respective economic influence. Also, students don’t learn to speak Hebrew or Arabic, thereby furthering the already widening gap between our culture and the cultures of Asia Minor. Picking up a Slavic language like, oh, I don’t know, RUSSIAN might help them in the aforementioned realm of economics. There are a myriad of languages practiced in the African continent, in addition to variations on French and Arabic. Students should also be required to learn an African continental language as Africa emerges in the realm of global influence and we strive to be better about teaching African history in our mainstream curriculums. This is all impossible? We’re going to overload kids’ brains? Where will we find the teachers? It is possible. There are many people who learn upwards of thirty to forty languages in their lives; it all starts with the nouns and verbs and expands from there. And Rosetta Stone. I rest my case.

Yes, the world speaks English. Yes, English is the language of money, international airports, and political discourse. But it’s the inconsiderate redneck who arrogantly states “everyone else can learn English because we are the most powerful...blah blah blah.” I can’t even finish that sentence, it infuriates me so. That type of thought is boorish, brainless, classless, and borderline bullying. It also doesn’t prepare our students to be global citizens. Yes, nationalism is on the rise and cultures differ and all that, but we need to teach young people how to think critically and solve problems, not just with people who look and sound like them. With American exceptionalism becoming a thing of the past and the world catching up to our economic power, students need all the help they can get. Not in terms of keeping America number one, but making them as individuals more rounded and ready to work together to benefit everyone.

Long story short, the classical education, with some tweaks to fit the times, should make a comeback. In the time of Hawthorne those who we remember now were exceptional. I will concede that point. But we now have free education for all. So, with only a few examples of psychopaths who won’t get with the unwritten rules of civilization, all students should be exceptional. A few minutes’ drive from my house on the west side of Flint is a children’s museum called Flint Children’s Museum. Simple enough, right? The name explains what it is. On the wall of that museum is a quote I’m very fond of. “Every child is a potential genius.” I’ve repeated it many times to anyone who will listen to my theories of education. Quite simply, when we start young and give students no choice but to be a genius, then geniuses they will be. I’ll get to forcing students to excel in a later section.

Stop making attendance compulsory There are a lot of kids who just won’t join society and live within the social contract. Even more tragic, many of their parents not only don’t force them to do so, they are the ones who taught them their inappropriate social skills. Many of these kids don’t attend regularly, nor do their parents make them, until losing their welfare benefits or calls from Child Protective Services become an issue. Then they make their kids attend, sometimes the minimal amount of time. Because these children come to school so far behind the curve, bereft of appropriate social and focus skills, and only looking to have fun during their school day, they bog the system down. They spend their time in classrooms disrupting instruction, acting a mess during individual/group work time, and earn their way out of the classroom and into the principal’s office more often than not. They often don’t understand what they did wrong because our culture (including our schools) is constantly telling young people to “be yourself”, “live your truth”, or some such other foolish nonsense which doesn’t account for the fact that when hundreds of civilized folk in one building don’t like the self that you are being, it’s not they who have the problem, it’s you and the aforementioned self you are trying to be true to. Keep fighting the power, kid.

These kids also commit the worst crime one can commit in school, barring physical violence or bullying. That is, detracting from the education from others. They disrupt instructional and work time. Think about the time you saw this happen in a classroom. How many students told the kid to straighten up and took it upon themselves to correct them, and how many just sat there and watched it happen, allowing the teacher to do this? When instruction isn’t happening, then the curriculum isn’t moving forward. Make this happen enough times, and students learn less in the span of a year. Never did a young person say at the end of the year “Mr. Roberts, due to behavioral interruptions, school assemblies, snow days, standardized testing, and all the other foolish things schools do/allow to interrupt learning, we didn’t get through the entire textbook, and I refuse to leave school until we do.”

I say we stop making attendance compulsory. Leave welfare and CPS out of the equation. The government shouldn’t give itself the power to take kids away from parents, unless criminal behavior or gross neglect come into the equation. Let the students who won’t get with the program stay home. Eventually their parents will learn what a horrible mistake they’ve made in ruining their child and get that child on track, either with honey or vinegar, or a deftly nuanced combination of both. They can choose to homeschool their kid (nowadays parents don’t even need to be that much of a teacher due to the multitudinous online programs available) or make sure they keep their nose clean when they do send them out into civilization. And this timeline of parents learning from their mistakes will be different for each family. Sometimes, it’ll take less than a month of their child irritating the daylights out of them. Sometimes their little adult will have to enter adulthood and continue being a loser for it to happen. I’ve heard young men in my classroom say “I don’t have to do my work. My ma said I can live with her as long as I choose.” I believe them. There are moms who say this. Many are those who have had awful men come in and out of their lives so often that their son becomes a replacement because it’s masculine love that can’t leave. If they want to raise their children that way, let’s as educators let them. The less that problem students are in the classroom, the better the classroom can move forward with those who have respect for authority, value learning, and want to excel in the professional world. This sounds heartless towards the problem children, but I’ve already addressed the philosophical shift that needs to happen in how schools view what they are and what they should be. In addition, life is full of second, third, fourth, fiftieth, and three-thousandth chances. Eventually, the majority of those kids will get with it.

There is the legal argument to consider here. Time and again, the courts have ruled that withholding a person’s right to an education violates the fourteenth amendment protected right of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Problem is that the “pursuit of happiness” clause has been extended to include pursuing an education so as to extend to personal comfort, luxury, possession, and leisure down the road. Here’s the flaw in that thinking. Many students don’t think about what’s down the road. Many of them only think beyond the current moment, and they know they don’t want to spend it conjugating verbs. By making attendance compulsory, we are actually taking away their pursuit of happiness. They are wildly unhappy in the formal school setting. Furthermore, taking away the compulsory factor isn’t depriving them of their right. It’s just giving them another option. Here is where the argument comes in “but government knows what is better for them”. To that I would ask does government’s foreknowledge supersede parental guidance and decision making? If a kid’s parents don’t care to send them to school consistently, and the kid is happier sitting at home losing round after round of Fortnite, I say let them. They will stop bogging down the system, and the parents will eventually learn what a horrible mistake they made, and force junior to get back on track, which is perfectly fine. Government can’t force people to be intelligent and industrious. They can incentivize it but the decision has to be made in the heart first. The road to maturity is often bumpy, and arrival at the destination is different for everyone.

Now, short of condemning all knuckleheads for not falling in line, I will concede a certain contingent of the kids who just won’t fall in line with education and its paradigms are actually not academically deficient. They are just uninterested in attaining a formal education. Most kids who struggle in the core classrooms tend to struggle in life, but not all. I think our country and its businesses have to do some serious soul-searching regarding this. Forced attendance, forced adherence to school paradigms, and forced graduation from school to attain every adult job in this country just aren’t necessary. I’ve interacted with many people in many walks of life who have shown proficiency in a myriad of skills that they didn’t need to graduate high school in order to gain. Yes, brain surgeons and rocket scientists need formal education. But those are extremes in which only the most extraordinary intellects can actually achieve anyway. I didn’t need school to teach me how to write this book. I just needed to read other, better books by more competent writers. Whether or not formal education could have improved it is another matter, and one of little consequence because skill of language or lack thereof doesn’t affect the lives of others. The guy who fixed my dryer last week didn’t need deep understanding of the Bill of Rights and Federalist Papers to do so, just some mathematical and mechanical skills, all of which he picked up while apprenticing for eight months with an appliance repair professional. I’m an extrovert and I like to find out the life story of anyone who comes into my house, and I did, thereby keeping that guy from his next service call but engaging him in some delightful conversation. I could go on and on. There are some jobs which just don’t need a high school diploma to perform at a high level. Government overreach has imposed a strangulating formula of forcing all kids to attend school, and that they all finish in order to move into the professional side of adulthood. Do away with it, says this humble writer, and you’ll see people many teachers call “dummy” flourish and prosper.

To add to this point, compulsory attendance laws were argued for and put in place during the nineteenth century when the lack of child labor laws allowed for ten-year-olds to work sixty hours a week in dangerous textiles, mills, and manufacturing facilities for abysmal wages. Children who were younger than ten weren’t even tracked statistically because it wasn’t in the best interest of the employers to do so (and you think employers have too much power now?). Eventually the law caught up with the quickly evolving economy and shut down the abuses and injustices of the Industrial Revolution. Compulsory attendance once again became debated during the desegregation movement during the middle of the twentieth century as it was argued in segregated states that the state wouldn’t have to be liable for the safety of black children who weren’t forced to attend school. Desegregation and the Civil Rights bill fixed this perverse argument. These two arguments for compulsory attendance are outdated and their abuses taken away. Now, the argument for compulsory attendance is that a well-educated population is in the best interest of the nation. Opponents of it state that it rubs against the authority of a parent, who should be able to allow their child to be ignorant of academic matters.

These folks aren’t making the best argument. I don’t argue for abolishment of compulsory attendance so parents can be free to bestow the amazing gift of ignorance on their children. I argue for it so parents and children can choose the best path for their child. Many parents take their children out of public schools for homeschooling and private schools. Many parents who can’t afford such options have no choice but to send their kid to public schools on at least a semi-regular basis. Many of these kids know their parents shall impose on them no conditions stricter than making sure they go enough to ensure the government doesn’t bring down the hammer on their family. We are not doing these kids any favors by making them come to school and put on a show of learning. What we educators could be doing is allowing students such as these to enter the workforce under the condition that their path be one which leads to technical skills more marketable than minimum wage jobs. And that’s not even to say we have to limit them to one, like the children I mention below who would start in ninth or tenth grade. If a child began at the age of ten learning a trade, they could have learned, apprenticed, and earned certification in two to four trades by the age of eighteen, allowing for on-schedule learning and faithful apprenticeship. The school could be responsible for him knowing the requisite reading, math, and science involved and the tradesmen working in conjunction (not employed by) the schools would be responsible for the rest, including the child’s safety while under their care. I’ve no doubt incentives like funding, tax breaks, parental oversight and support, and waivers can be devised so tradesmen don’t balk at the idea of having young ones in their places of work. Employers of the Industrial Revolution paid pittance to children because they knew they could get away with it. In a reversal of this abuse, the earlier a child is placed in a trade program, the more money they should be paid. They are, after all, leaving a comfortable school environment and most of the friends they’ve grown up with. This money can be saved in the worker program I discussed earlier in this book, and saved for business startups and the normal expenses young adulthood will expect of them.

Remember, revolutions begin with revolutionary ideas. Some radical ideas spring out of lunacy, but many are only seen as such in relation to established norms. If established norms aren’t seeking and enacting the greatest benefit to the largest number of citizens, why keep them in place? Here’s where I part ways with my conservative brethren. Conservatism is by nature resistant to change. While I admit I am conservative, that has more to do with my moral standards, which don’t really change much once you’ve adopted a moral authority greater than yourself. Political conservatives must be willing to change once it’s apparent governmental systems aren’t producing the best potential results. In this case, they can be happy to change a failing system that is overseen and run by liberals anyway.

Track kids into careers early on so as to give them a taste while they still have time to change course. In fourth grade, much of the learning moves from conceptual to practical. Work becomes more intense, rigorous, and is tracked more closely. By sixth or seventh grade, we know if a child has progressed beyond a fourth grade level in the core classes. By ninth and tenth grade, we know if a child is proficient in reading and writing, and is going to be ready for college by graduation. There’s a common saying that I believe is completely true. It goes “It’s not about how smart you are, it’s about how are you smart.” Is every child going to be a brilliant brain surgeon, engineer, writer, lawyer, orator, athlete, or any of the other professions we place up on a pedestal? Obviously not. What are we now doing for those who aren’t going to be? Precious little. We still force them to take the same courses as their academically proficient counterparts and then push them out the door, horribly unprepared for the professional world.

Look, the world needs people to do menial labor. The world needs people to do the technical jobs. And the world needs people to do those jobs which are so difficult that only the brightest should be placed in them. More and more, there is a growing gap between those who do the highest skilled jobs and those who just find themselves doing menial labor. Hence the diminishing middle class (not entirely the fault of Ford, GM, and Chrysler sending jobs overseas) and the growing “eat the rich” movement. The technical jobs are losing out. Mike Rowe is a prominent advocate for the trades. And he’s right, they are in high demand and not being filled. Students who don’t excel in academics often become so frustrated with organized learning that by the time they graduate they’ve written off continued education, not knowing or caring that you don’t need six years and a master’s degree to be a carpenter, AND to make more money by the end of your training than most of your college-bound counterparts will make in their early and mid-twenties.

Under my system, the eighth, ninth, and tenth grade years will be spent making sure these kids can read and write at an adult level; that is, enough to survive and not be swindled by life. Then, they would spend their time moving into the trades. These would be any job that pays more than menial labor but doesn’t require years worth of university study to earn a certification and begin excelling in it. Think about it. What if Sally Doesn’tsitstillinclass and Johnny ADHD and Leroy Lovestoworkwithhishands and Karen Daydreamsanddoodlesallday were placed into programs where they could learn carpentry, plumbing, x rays, anesthesia, fabrication, nurses assistant, any number of kinesthetic arts, culinary, cosmetics/beautician, handyman/remodeling, landscaping, farming, electrical, gardening, mechanics, tool and dye, or any number of trades of this nature, along with taking business classes so they can learn to write their own paycheck in their twenties instead of working dead-end jobs and racking up debt? The working professionals already established in these trades would have the benefit of cheap labor and passing on their skills to the next generation, along with being able to take part in the contributions to society I list in the business section of this book. Kids could spend their high school years learning their trades, working apprenticeships on the job, and enter adulthood leaving the menial labor to younger teenagers, college students, and bored retirees; the people these jobs should really be reserved for. I’m not talking about a couple of semesters in shop classes or a skill center. Those too often have no effect on a child’s future, or are seen as blow-off classes. I’m talking about full-on educational paths that lead a child to a brighter future than stocking Walmart shelves. Another benefit of this is that the brilliant kids who spend all of their school day in the academic classes could spend their after-school hours or teenage years following early graduation in the same programs, learning things that will at the very least help them in life, if not even give them another career option. Just because a kid can spend eight years in college doesn’t mean they have to. It’s no less noble spending your days fixing broken pipes in customer houses than it is to fly a commercial airliner. The only difference is the rate of pay. Too often, the rate of pay argument can’t even be applied, as the academically brilliant kids go to college and are swindled into gender studies, comparative dance theory, and other majors of learning that don’t render the paychecks but still expect the debt to be repaid.

Make all school curriculum a non-negotiable, and allow students to REALLY do it at their own pace. If we did this and followed through, we may not have to demolish standardized testing, as making every kid learn and complete everything that is on the menu would result in testing scores taking care of themselves. School is not a buffet. I’ve said this so many times to so many students and yet even the best of them treat school as such. “I’ll take this side of roast beef but leave the vegetables” says the kid at the buffet. It’s the wrong mentality. As a teacher I’ve seen far too many kids skip the hardest assignments and projects and do as little as possible to maintain a passing grade. The aforementioned knuckleheads who have poor attendance and even poorer work ethic are worse, as they don’t care about maintaining a passing grade. They know summer school and credit recovery are easier options down the road. It’s the mentality that disregards investments for the future in lieu of withdrawals for today. Being kids, they don’t really understand the long-term ramifications of their choices, as that part of their brain isn’t fully developed yet. I’ve preached until I’m blue in the face that you don’t build a house from the roof down, and the earlier assignments they’ve skipped are the foundation for what we are doing in the present. Schools often say that “failure is not an option” but until they really change their ways, it is an option. So what schools need to do is give them one and only one option. Lock them in a windowless room with no access to the attic and only has one door. Give them the key to the door and tell them that’s the only way out. And mean it when you say it. I’d add to Edward James Olmos words in that I’d say that students will rise to the level of expectations you set and enforce for them. Too often, schools set expectations but don’t enforce them. I’ve already addressed removing summer school and credit recovery options. If we do away with standardized testing (along with the other nonsensical, feel good, self-celebrating, ridiculous interruptions schools engage in), we will have more time in the classroom for what really counts; actual learning.

It must be said because it can’t be assumed, that a teacher’s yearly curriculum should be under the purview (with administrative review) of said teacher. One problem of the Common Core, Grade Level Content Expectations, and other forms of government oversight give no agency to teachers to run their own classrooms. They actually turn teachers into obedient drones, merely pressing buttons here and there to produce desired and equal results in all students. This is an enemy of true education. Individual schools and teachers should be given the liberty to choose, implement, and enforce their own curricula and entice parents to make the choice to send their students there based on this and other beneficial factors. Quite simply put, I should as a teacher, pick books and resources which fulfill my grade level expectations, hand them out to the students at the beginning of the year, and tell them that they are not going to move on to the next grade’s work until they finish all assignments contained herein, and that I’ll be at my desk browsing eHarmony profiles should anyone need my help. JK on that last independent clause.

I’m an English teacher. One of the challenges to teaching English is that unlike much of math, social studies, and science, there is not always an objective answer. Until you get into conceptual math, two plus two equals four. Until you start talking about analyzing why an historical event happened, the Declaration of Independence was signed and the Revolutionary War began in 1776. Until you start into theorizing on things which don’t satisfy the scientific method (observable, recordable, repeatable), acids and bases cancel each other out. Ask a student what the theme(s) is/are in the book Of Mice and Men and you’ll get a blank stare. Student’s don’t like subjective answers. They think there is a right answer to everything, so even the most brilliant avoid venturing a guess on the meaning of that novel. Subjective answers are intimidating when you’re used to the right/wrong paradigm. That’s why I start with the foundational parts of our language, the often-ignored realm of grammar.

I won’t get too much into the Common Core and its shortcomings. That’s a topic for its own book. What I will say is that the CC is frustrating for a high school English teacher because it doesn’t stress the foundations of our language. There’s only one strand devoted to mastery of the language foundations and it’s really there to get standardized test questions about parallel structure and subject-verb agreement into the curriculum. When you look at the strands devoted to college-level reading and writing skills, it’d be possible to avoid the grammar strand altogether due to time constraints or whatever excuse you wish to contrive. I attended a private school and I was still pointing out gerunds and diagramming sentences in twelfth grade. Problem is, as I said above, you don’t build a house from the roof down. You don’t start a race by breaking the tape. You don’t cook dinner by taking the chicken off the grill. You don’t mainline heroin by first tying off your arm. Pick whatever metaphor you want. Ignoring language foundations so kids can read and write at a college level is downright stupid. Excuse my harsh language. I usually don’t get this worked up. Thinking about soft and somewhat runny French Toast and………….we’re good.

I see the four main components of an English classroom as grammar, literature, vocabulary acquisition, and writing. Instead of jumping around from component to component, I give them their own block of dedicated time. I start with grammar, move to reading skills, combine literature and vocabulary acquisition, and finish the year with writing. As I mentioned before, I give students much of their work on Schoology. It’s a resource that makes my life easier. All objective questions can be answered and graded automatically. Students can see what they got wrong (instantaneous feedback instead of delayed feedback because their teacher has a stack of papers sitting on his desk at home but didn’t get to them because the Lions were losing another game) and redo it immediately for a better grade (instead of waiting until they get their paper back when the concept might not be fresh in their minds anymore). Schoology allows me to assign an entire year’s sequence of learning and force students to get a passing grade on one assignment before they are allowed to move to the next. This removes the possibility of treating school as a buffet. So then, passing or failing are the only options. If students don’t have credit recovery or summer school as an option, the overwhelming majority of them will rise to the level of expectations. Those who don’t can take a hike. Sorry, but life is tough. If I can’t teach you, then life will teach you. When life teaches you some of its harsh lessons, come talk to me and then we can have a fresh start and do something great together. Forced sequential learning is a beautiful thing. Other sites like Khan Academy, Study Island, and others have similar paradigms. I like Schoology (I use Study Island in the reading skills portion of my learning also) because it allows me to make my own question banks.

Here’s where the self-paced learning comes into play. As a teacher I’ve said many times I should be able to hand a student a grammar book, a writing book, and a literature book at the beginning of the school year and tell them they will pass my class when they are all finished. Same goes for a teacher in the other cores. What makes it easier for them is that their learning can often come from a single textbook, and that learning is sequentially laid out already. I hand my students a grammar book, tell them to read, take notes, learn the first concept, and then go to Schoology to finish the assignment attached to that learning. Seeing the hardworking ones do it on their own is a beautiful thing, as it allows me to engage in small group time with the not-so-hardworking and answer the occasional questions the self-guided kids have. And because I know my students’ reading levels, I can accommodate on Schoology with questions that are easier for the lower skilled and special needs students without any other students ever knowing that they are receiving accommodations/modifications. Having them read from a book (I’m still not onboard with the “have them watch a YouTube video to learn how to conjugate a verb” mentality) to learn the concept satisfies my desire to keep things somewhat old school (there’s research to support the practice of reading a physical book) while having them do their work digitally (on top of the grading time it saves me) satisfies modern students’ desire to have electronic stimulation (along with the administrators’ desire to have 21st century learning happening) and we all win in the process (enough parenthetical breaks in one sentence for you?).

And now, here’s the rub. We have one-hundred-eighty school days in a year. If every teacher across the land made their entire curriculum a non-negotiable and were supported in this measure by administration, many students will need every second of those one-hundred-eighty days (maybe more) to finish their year’s worth of work. I call this Year-to-Year Accountability (trademark pending, but not really). However, many brilliant students will finish quite early. They’ll work on their weekday evenings, Friday nights, Saturday mornings, Sunday afternoons, and holiday breaks to finish early. Come March, April, and even February of that school year, many of them will be finishing that year’s work. Instead of sitting and waiting for the teacher to control the knuckleheads and silently laughing at the learning time that’s being wasted, they will be plugging away, making investments for the future. What do we do with them then? Simple, we give them the next year’s work. Why should a kid who finishes early not be given the chance to go on to the next grade? Or, reward them by saving all of the field trips (both academic and fun-based) and job shadowing for the end of the year when the warmth and nice weather makes them more enjoyable and safer anyway. They can come to school each day knowing they’ll be going somewhere and doing something fun. Removing an ever-growing chunk of kids from campus for the day will reduce distractions for the strugglers while also providing them an incentive to finish things up (and making classroom management much easier for the teachers who stay on campus). We educators talk about self-paced learning and individualized learning plans. More often than not, it’s just an epithet for slowing down to keep to the struggling students in the game. It does a horrible disservice to those who don’t struggle. If they were allowed to finish at their own pace, we’d see a whole spate of kids graduating high school at ages twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and so on. What then? Well then we put them in the trades programs I’ve discussed above, the menial labor workforce to save up for college, or early entrance into college for those whose parents can afford it or those who are given scholarships. The options aren’t limited at all. Doogie Howser, while a fictional character, was a wonderful example of what we’d see, and not even close to being farfetched. I yearn for the days when Iron Man’s flying techno battle suit of awesomeness isn’t all that farfetched but it probably won’t happen until I’m old and worn down.

What do we do with those who struggle? Well, their self-paced learning will often lead into the summer just because of their struggles, but they will start feeling the pinch around April and May, know that they won’t be given the option of summer school, and start to buckle down. If they graduate high school at age seventeen, eighteen, or even beyond that, so be it. At least they did it. Having a slower entrance into adulthood doesn’t mean it’s ruined for them. It does no good to push them through in the name of curbing rates of retention. We did our part in forcing them to do theirs. In turn, this will lead, in about a generation, to the most skilled and naturally hardworking group of young adults we’ve ever had in this country. The drops in crime, teenage pregnancy, underage substance abuse (kids can’t debauch themselves with their nose in a book), depression/suicide (people are less depressed when they have a goal and purpose and work is the best form of those), and government dependency will all be icing on the cake.