Education and the real, technological, world.

Fairly recently I wrote an item here about romanticizing the past.  Fairly recently, I received some well deserved critical analysis on one of the comments I made there, from a reader, but the comments themselves basically supported the overall thesis of the thread, which was that romanticizing the past  has its dangers.

 

Oil Bowl Rally, 1980, at Natrona County High School.

It may be somewhat okay to romanticize the past, as long as we are cognizant of the realities of what we're doing. And to admire an era in the past, or something about it, is not wrong.  We shouldn't live in the past of course.  But even worse than living in the past, is to believe that the past really is the present.

I bring this up in the context, perhaps surprisingly, of the bond issue here in Natrona County.  The other day I read a well meaning letter to the editor  I set that letter out, in part, here:
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The school bond issue is ridiculous! They designed more than they had funds available assuming approval of more tax money to complete things. Swimming pools are nice but not needed. Times are tough: We don’t need these now. Maybe later.

Recent letters state the Wyoming State Board of Education’s job is to “approve academic standards.” In my opinion they have failed so far. Graduation rates, low test scores for reading and math and high school graduates barely able to read are proof. Despite creating the Department of Education, more money, new standards, etc., we are failing to educate. Forget about Common Core Curriculum or Next Generation Science Standards from a centralized government.

Here’s a thought: Let’s go back to mastering mathematics, (good enough to put man on the moon), reading, science (earth, human, biology facts), government (local, state and U.S.), finance like counting back change and balancing a checkbook) and writing and penmanship. Today’s kids would be in great shape if they were educated the way we were back before any Department of Education or National Education Association. We spent a lot less money. We don’t need the government or “education experts” telling us how to teach our kids. It is our responsibility to get them educated, not the school districts, state board or federal government.

The first comment I'd make here is the "times are tough" comment.  I hear this a lot, but here, they are not.  The entire region is booming due to oil plays. That should be self evident just looking around. To the extent that times are tough here, it's for those moving in who can't afford a place to live. That is pretty common, but the reason that's occurred is that property values have leaped, due to the boom.  Those folks, and they do have a tough situation, aren't the ones whose tax dollars would go to pay for the bond.

In actuality, the state is enjoying good times.  It's times like this in which we should build, and we always claim that we've learned from the last boom/bust cycle and that when times are good, we're going to expand our infrastructure, broaden our base, etc.  The school bond actually seeks to do just that.

But it's actually the following comments that cause me to make this post, as they're so common, and sadly, so off the mark.  We don't live in this world.

Here’s a thought: Let’s go back to mastering mathematics, (good enough to put man on the moon), reading, science (earth, human, biology facts), government (local, state and U.S.), finance like counting back change and balancing a checkbook) and writing and penmanship. Today’s kids would be in great shape if they were educated the way we were back before any Department of Education or National Education Association. We spent a lot less money. We don’t need the government or “education experts” telling us how to teach our kids. It is our responsibility to get them educated, not the school districts, state board or federal government.

"Back to Basics" has been an educational movement for at least 30 years.  Perhaps, although probably not, 30 years ago it made some sense. But that world of 30 years ago has died.  This no longer reflects reality at all.  It's not that these topics are bad, they're not, its just that not only do the schools teach them (except for penmanship, which has passed by the wayside) but they're doing well with them, and have a lot of additional material to teach.  In short, not only do the schools do much better with the basic topics than they were here 30 years ago, they are tasked with a monumental task of educating children for the world we live in today.

I graduated from NCHS in 1981. The first thing that I'll note about that is that, in spite of what people may sometimes romantically recall, the education being offered in the school now is far and away superior to what it was then.

This isn't to say our education was bad. Far from it.  It was pretty good.  Some of the critics of our local district later found that when we graduated we fared pretty well compared to the graduates of public schools elsewhere.  But, having said that, what students are taught presently, and how they are presently taught, has enormously improved.  The number of credits required to graduate has gone up and up and year after year, and the quality of that learning has as well.

And the world that we graduated into in 1981 just isn't the same as the one that exists now.

In 1981, when I graduated, with an oil boom going on, locals could enter a work world in which everything was mechanical.  Most boys messed with cars at the time in a "shade tree mechanic" sense.  When I graduated in1981 I owned a 1974 Ford F100, a vehicle which was only seven years old at the time, and which was purely mechanical.  It didn't last long after that, as it had over 140,000 miles on it, a tremendous number of miles for the time.  I could, however, actually work on it.  We presently have a 1997 Dodge D1500, a roughly equivalent truck, for use by the teenagers and around town here.  It's computerized and there are aspects of it that only a trained technician can work on.

This is equally true of everything else in that 1981 world.  All shop equipment was mechanical.  A drilling rig I worked on while in college was purely mechanical. The logging equipment used on that rig was electric and radioactive, with the data recorded in analog fashion.  When I went to basic training the howitzers we trained on were adjusted manually and hydraulically.  If we direct fired, which we only occasionally did, we used the guns telescopic sight.  When I switched to fire support I used a Brunton compass, binoculars, and a map to spot artillery.  I used the Brunton compass again while a geology student at the University of Wyoming, where I also learned how to make maps using a theodolite and plain table, instruments so old that George Washington would have recognized them from his surveying days.

All of this is now a think of the past. While I do feel that the past is much more with us than we imagine, it is folly to pretend that a graduating student today can get by with basic skills in a world in which absolutely nothing remains basic.  Reading, writing, and arithmetic, in their basic forms, are not going to suffice in this world.  A person needs to know how to apply them, or how they can be applied.  Ideally they'll have some experience in applying them.  And, beyond that, hopefully they will have received a solid foundation in history, science and a foreign language.

I should note that I also wrote a letter to the editor, although because of my late submission and my crowding the word length restriction, I'm not sure if it will be published.  It reads as follows.

As a lifelong Natrona County resident familiar with industry and the economics of our communities I’ve often heard that industry and commerce is the lifeblood of our community and that we should do what we can in order to provide an entry way for graduating students into local careers. I’ve also heard from those in business that they wished there was a greater pool of well-trained residents who were ready to enter the work place.  Natrona County School District No. 1’s Center for Advanced and Professional Studies (CAP) is designed to address those needs.

The CAP will provide high school students with a facility that will offer them training in a variety of fields relevant to our community.  Courses in business, agriculture & natural Resources, architecture, construction, and manufacturing & engineering, will be offered, giving those who take them a jump on a later college career or the ability to go directly into work.  For those planning to go directly to work, having these courses increases their chances of finding a good paying job in their immediate future.  For those going to college, exposure to these fields when they are still forming their plans offers them a big advantage later.  For those of us in the community, having this facility available to students increases the chances that our local community will benefit from a well-trained group of motivated young people, something we always claim we desire, and which employers clearly want.

The pending bond will pay for equipment at the CAP facility it will otherwise not be able to obtain.  Having modern equipment available to students is critical in this era in which nearly every industrial, technical and scientific job is now high tech compared to even a decade ago.

This provides another reason to support the bond, and to demonstrate that what we’ve claimed to be our views for many years really are.  In addition to building and repairing the critical swimming pools and upgrading safety facilities in existing schools this provides an ample reason to support the bond.  Please vote yes on May 6.

This touches upon the same topics, but here I'll add one more.  Here in this county, for as long as I have remembered, residents have looked toward the oil and gas industry for employment, while at the same time arguing that we need to broaden our economic base.  But in reality, we're not doing a good job of training people who want to enter these industries to do so at the entry level.  Here too we seem to look towards a romantic past that just no longer exists.  If we're really serious about this we need to adjust accordingly.  Of course, perhaps we really aren't that serious, or perhaps we just don't care to pay for our aspirations, no matter how minor the costs, either.

Young people have been the greatest export of rural areas for some time.  Generally, rural areas do a pretty good job of educating people really, and I think our district is no exception.  But then we find that we ship them off elsewhere to finish their education.  I can't say that these measures will stop this, but I am sure that for those who look back to some time when they imagine a more rigorous basic education, they look back to a world that never existed and which will not be coming back.

Postscript

A thought occurred to me related to my point yesterday on this particular topic.

Regarding the thought that a basic education ought to suffice for the modern high school graduate, the computer system present in a current model automobile is more advanced, and more complicated, than the one that was in the B-52 Stratofortress at the time it was introduced in 1955.

The B-52 is still around, but at no point in its history did they allow people simply to go to work on one without training.  Those who think a basic education suffices in today's world just aren't being realistic, when everything out there is now more complicated than this.

On a related topic, the writer above noted, one of the items was " finance like counting back change and balancing a checkbook".  Again, who actually does that?  It's rapidly becoming the case where everything is done electronically.  Yes, checkbooks still exist, but a lot of people don't use them.

And, based upon the math they're now teaching, the schools have this covered.  Actually, the amount of math expected out of a graduate now, is far more than it was in 1981, when I graduated.