Free Redneck Nation by Michael Graham Page B

throats.
    But our public school system is such an overwhelming disaster that choosing the secretary of education from the worst-performing
     state doesn’t seem all that different from choosing one from the best. Or my choice, not having a secretary of education at
     all.
    “But, Michael, we’ve got to have a federal education department; otherwise our public school systems would get even worse!”
    Really? How? How could the public school system get any worse?
    Seriously, think about it. What could be worse than what we have right now? Thousands of parents send their kids to school
     afraid for their physical safety. Hundreds of thousands of students go to schools where we should fear for their intellectual
     safety. And millions of taxpayers watch their money disappear each year into the sinkholeof a $400-billion public school system with no hope of either improvement or accountability.
    At least the schools are safe, for the most part. The odds of any particular kid getting shot while at school are relatively
     small. Unfortunately, so are the odds of him getting smart. If you want your children bulletproofed, you can buy them a Kevlar
     jumpsuit for two grand and save the taxpayers a lot of money.
    Not getting our children shot is a good thing. But we’re spending a national average of $7,000 per pupil each year, and there
     are those of us who believe this ought to buy something resembling an education. The least we ask is for the public schools
     to do no harm. Alas, we are asking too much.
    In 1995, America’s fourth graders ranked twelfth in the world in math skills, according to the Third International Mathematics
     and Science Study (TIMSS), and third in science. After four additional years of taxpayer-funded education, those same students
     ranked eighteenth and nineteenth, respectively. By the time they’re seniors, kids in the third-world country of Cyprus know
     math as well as ours do.
    So, my public school pals, if you’re trying to create another generation of citizens too dumb to figure out how high their
     property taxes are, congratulations! You’re on a roll!
    If the public schools were content not to teach my son math, that would be bad enough. But teaching him to feel great about
     not knowing math, that’s going a little too far. According to a November 2001 report in
Personality and Social Psychology Review
, self-esteem among America’s youth has been on the rise for thirty years… along withtheir weight, their drug use, their illiteracy, their pregnancy rates, and their level of sexually transmitted diseases.
    But not their test scores.
    Self-esteem based on nothing can set people up for disappointment, noted Dr. Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, who
     made this archetypally northern statement to Reuters: “It is more important that a child actually accomplishes something than
     that he or she have high self-esteem. Once a child accomplishes something, self-esteem will follow naturally. Children should
     be praised, but only when the praise has a basis in fact.” Dr. Twenge went on to blame this disconnect between performance
     and self-esteem on classroom techniques that teach children slogans and affirmations such as “I am lovable and capable.” “They
     may also feel that the world owes them something,” Dr. Twenge said, and, as long as that “something” isn’t a real education,
     we should be okay.
    America: We’re ignorant, we’re uninformed… and we feel great about it! Sounds pretty southern to me.
    But wait—fair is fair. When you spend $400 billion a year on schools, teachers, administrators, condoms, Mary Kate and Ashley
     videos, etc., you’re going to get something for all that money. I don’t want to give the impression that our public schools
     don’t transmit anything to our children other than self-esteem. America’s public schools do an extremely effective job of
     inculcating some basic principles into our children.
    Like racism. Since Slobodan