I encounter older people in the workforce who also haven’t a clue how to count out change correctly, so it’s not just an issue of the young and innumerate.

As for the rest of VDH’s argument–the work he dreams of never existed, and in that world special ed kids, minorities, and the poor might not have much of a chance for an education.

That doesn’t change the fact that we don’t do a thorough job of teaching basic calculations to students, I’m just skeptical that innumerate cashiers are a telling observation. I think placing them at registers is just a response to technology, skill sets, and economics.

Actually you can. What’s hard is for them to do anything about that priority.

The ones who can afford to take their kids out of failing public schools do so. Almost all of the rest are told that their kids have to stay in failing public schools. In some cases the argument is that those parents are somehow obligated to fix the schools and that their kids should suffer for their failure to do so. In other cases, the argument is that it’s unfair to let their preference for better schools for their kids give said kids an advantage.

I don’t think Hanson’s argument is about teachers’ unions specifically, although it is difficult to see how significant educational reform is going to work with out the active and full cooperation of the unions. The political agenda of the unions however, often dispaces the needs both of teachers to be treated as actual professional workers and certainly supresedes the needs of the unions self-professed group of interest–the kids.

The fault in Hanson’s argument, if there is one, is that he pines nostagliacly for a world that may not have existed everywhere. Sure, his tiny little town may have done well by its students, but his later argument undermines his earlier recollections. The destruction of the nuclear family, the disintegration of our society and the proseltyization of “social justice” has undermined education in ways that Hanson’s small town problably never realized until recently. In his town, everyone problaby knew everyone and woe unto the child who thought he could get away with something is school or in town and get home without his parents already knowing what happened. Today, such an environment no longer exists, I don’t even know everyone on my court, let alone in my town.

It is not schools that have failed society, is it society that has failed our schools. That is the thrust of the argument.

I got to first grade in 1963, right after Sputnik scared the hell out of the US and lead to a massive reform of educational systems. Education suddenly had become a national priority and it showed not just in the schools, but in all aspects of society. Back then, everyone knew that education was the key to the future.

That all started into decline by the late 1960′s and has completely disappeared today. I’ll bet you couldn’t find even ten percent of parents who would now list “education” as the most important ingredient for their child’s life-long welfare.

All of us are collectively at fault. Sure, there are lots of problems with idiotic schools and teachers, but those problems wouldn’t be allowed to continue if eduction really had the value in our society that it’s supposed to. In the old days, they would have tarred and feathered a dunderhead school administrator who put “zero tolerance” ahead of education. Now, we just say, “tsk, tsk.”

Apparently there were 3 levels back then. Looking back I see it, though I didn’t really get it then.

Students were once tracked from early on, which is not allowed to happen now as well. Schools have changed with the times.

The problem is social as well as educationally systemic. Families need more assistance than ever before, including health services, housing, and early educational support.