The Failure of Utopian Solutions

Not just Utopian, but Comprehensive. That's one of the Left's favorite terms. It's the idea that you can - FINALLY - fix the problems of those aggravating "Little People", with a solution that is imposed, top-down, by the Smart People (trademark pending).

Then, the Elites can go back to ignoring those Peons.

There is a major difference between the thinking of those with post-high school education, the Elite, and those whose children will be affected. In K-12, in the past (much less now), the emphasis was on the acquisition of useful skills. Such skills were:

• Basic ability to read and write - generally not dense and deliberately difficult literature. The students might read Hemingway short stories, or Old Man and the Sea. Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. But, not Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Even the often-assigned Moby Dick was generally reserved to upper-level Honors classes, not the guys that would be heading to a manufacturing job.
• Basic math, what has been called numeracy. Facility with operations, some Algebra, Trig, Geometry for the college-bound. The others concentrated in the practical math used in real life, augmented with hands-on application in Shop class or Home Ec.
• Citizenship - this was primarily American History, Civics, and Geography. In high school, European and/or World History. It wasn't watered down, as it is today. Students could explain their Constitutional Rights, along with using maps to get around (well, at that time, this was a terribly useful skill - still may be, if EMP ever gets us). They could place major events in correct time periods, as well as identify major historical figures.

Few of these skills are taught today. When the same subjects are available, few of those educated "back in the day" would recognize them. They have been watered down, made deliberately different from what their parents and grandparents had been taught, and generally designed to force students to completely trust their teachers' authority on those subjects.

In college, the knowledge is generally theoretical; a funny segment from Rodney Dangerfield's Back to School will demonstrate the distinction between the content taught and the real world.

That professor assumed that the kind of business that is worthy of study is that which is Large, Directed from On-High, run by the Smart People, and using the Lesser People only as unthinking grunts.

When, in fact, many of the more successful businesses are started by those with experience in that field, often as a start-from-the-bottom worker. Their hard-earned expertise enabled them to design a business that was both efficient and profitable.

You see that on Shark Tank. Those that start a business without having worked in a field related to it (preferably on the shop floor) have the WORST ideas. Many of them have not thought through how to get that business from early days to a reasonable profit. MANY of those run by women are set up to work (kind of), only with cash infusions from their husbands.

Educational solutions are often run the same way. Few of those involved have worked as a teacher, or only for a few short years. They won't scale up (work outside of the committed few teachers). They expect that teachers will gladly give up every other aspect of their lives, outside of a classroom. That's not a reasonable model.

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