What in the World Has Happened to Our System of Education?

(End of the American Dream)—Our kids can’t really read very well.  And it turns out that they aren’t very good at math either.  But those running our system of education continue to tell us that they are doing a wonderful job.  If they just had more funding, they insist, our test scores would go way up.  Of course that is complete and utter nonsense.  Our system of public education was a failure back when I was in school many years ago, and it is much worse now.  At this point, only about one-third of all U.S. students in the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades are proficient in reading…

In 2022, the National Assessment of Educational Progress reported that approximately one-third of students in fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades are proficient in reading. The situation even gets worse for certain groups such as people from a different race, older generations, and those who belong to low-income groups.

So do you know what this means?

It means that approximately two-thirds of all students in the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades are not proficient in reading.

Wow, that is really terrible.

And it is also being reported that 40 percent of our students “are essentially nonreaders”…

Biennial testing through NAEP consistently shows that two thirds of U.S. children are unable to read with proficiency. An astounding 40 percent are essentially nonreaders. Most are taught through phonics—a system of instruction based on sounding out letters that is mandated in at least 32 states and the District of Columbia. The phonics method of converting each letter to a particular sound is totally unsuited to the English language. As but one example, e, the most common letter in print, has 11 different pronunciations (end, eat, vein, eye, etc.), including its role as the much-taught “silent e” (tape, cute, fine, etc.). This failure has been endemic from the early days of the country when Benjamin Franklin fought against phonics. The steady expansion of this mode of instruction will not fix the situation.

Isn’t that great?

We are headed for a future where approximately 40 percent of the entire population cannot even function in society.

In some areas of the country it is even worse.

In Chicago, only about one-sixth of all third graders are able to read at grade level…

About one-sixth of all third-grade students in Chicago Public Schools can read at grade level. For low-income and minority students, the share of proficient readers is even lower.

They tax the living daylights out of us to fund these public schools.

So where is all of that money going?

One activist that was asked about the current state of affairs openly admitted that “the kids can’t read”…

“The kids can’t read – nobody wants to just say that,” said Kareem Weaver, an activist with the NAACP in Oakland, California, who has framed literacy as a civil rights issue.

This is a national disgrace.

Of course our kids are not too good at math either.

In fact, U.S. students just established another all-time record low on an international exam…

American students scored an all-time low in math on a major international exam, which provided the first comparison of global achievement since the pandemic radically changed education around the world.

According to data released Tuesday, American 15-year-olds had a 13 point plunge out of 1000 on the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) exam, which was given last year to 620,000 students in 81 countries worldwide.

Yay for our public schools!

We are hitting levels that our students have never hit before!

But even though our students can’t read, write or do math very well, they just keep getting moved through the system year after year.

As long as you show up, you are going to pass.

We have become a “participation trophy society” where nobody is ever supposed to fail or feel bad about themselves.

This is true even at a formerly elite institution such as Yale University.  At this point, nearly 80 percent of the grades that are given to undergraduates at Yale fall within “the A-range”…

A new report recently revealed that Yale University is apparently handing about grades in the A-range like they are candy. An estimated 78.97% of all the grades given to undergraduates at the prestigious university fell within the A-range.

The surprising development has left both students and faculty alarmed that high grades appear to have lost their value, according to the New York Times. Shelly Kagan, a philosophy professor, said: “When we act as though virtually everything that gets turned in is some kind of A — where A is supposedly meaning ‘excellent work’ — we are simply being dishonest to our students.”

The grade report was put together by economics professor Ray Fair, who noted that the increase in grades started during the COVID-19 pandemic. And it has continued to rise since then, with students averaging a 3.70 GPA, up from 3.60 in 2013-2014. The details of the study were first shared with the Yale Daily News.

How bad do you have to be in order to get a “B” at Yale?

I would honestly like to know.

Of course this isn’t just happening at Yale. All over the nation, “good grades” have essentially become meaningless at our major colleges and universities.

Our kids have come to expect that “success” will just be handed to them, and as a result our system is pumping out millions of young adults that are just like this guy…

On an episode of Caleb Hammer’s YouTube show Financial Audit, 41-year-old Brent of Auston, Texas, reveals he has no steady job, no savings and relies on his parents to pay rent. But he refuses to accept work that’s “beneath” him.

“You’re being a baby,” Hammer told him after he confessed he turned down a job at a fast food restaurant. “Why will you not accept the jobs that you feel are slightly beneath you?”

Our system of education is theoretically supposed to be preparing our kids to face the real world, and that just isn’t happening.

The real world is not pleasant. It does not hand out participation trophies. In fact, there are times when the real world will pick you up and knock the breath out of you.

But now we have vast hordes of young people that cannot deal with the real world, and they are completely and utterly unprepared to deal with the extremely uncertain future that our society is now facing.

We don’t do our kids any favors by coddling them. They need to be challenged, and unfortunately our absolutely pathetic system of education is not challenging them at all.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.