The only thing most Americans agree on is that the public schools are mediocre. As to why this happened and what we should do next, there is a total bedlam of beliefs and opinions.

People have a hundred theories to explain our ed problems. But here’s the bizarre thing: people don’t want to blame the obvious culprits, that is, the people in charge. In every other field of human endeavor, when things don’t work out, bosses are fired; then new people with new ideas are brought in. That’s a universal formula for dealing with failure. But in education, the public ties itself in knots to avoid blaming the top educators, the ones creating all the problems in the first place.

Has anyone in the Education Establishment ever been fired? For anything less than a major felony? No, they are permitted to drone arrogantly on, even as the country gets more ignorant by the year. These pretenders get promoted. They get grants. They get awards. They are hailed as Educators of the Year.

I should explain that by “Education Establishment” I mean only the people at the very top–500 people at most. The astonishing thing is how successfully this tiny clique dumbs us down, deflects blame, cons the media, and encourages people to fight among themselves over whether parents, kids, unions, drugs, television, computers, etc., etc. are the real villain.

Maybe each of these things causes some damage, but wouldn’t you always want to go to the very top and find the primary cause of large, systemic failure? The point of this little tirade is to say: stop blaming the victims (mainly, that’s kids and parents). Blame the guilty. They’re called educators, even though their main activity is social engineering. Here’s the new mantra: punish the perpetrators.

One comical aspect of this whole thing is that the Education Establishment seems to encourage kindergarten teachers to call themselves “educators.” In this way, there’s no word left over for the people actually in charge. So they become invisible. Who? It was a fad for a while to call these people educationists; we also saw the term educrats. Some people talk about educational establishment in lower case. I consistently use the term Education Establishment to mean specifically the top people. The bosses. The ruling elite. The commissars. The guilty.

Even then I run into the most obtuse comments as when a teacher insists, “I’ve been in the educational establishment for 15 years. I’ve taught at two public schools…” Absurd but when this school teacher hears me criticize the Education Establishment, he takes it personally and starts defending all the nonsense in the public schools.

Please, people, let’s not waste time criticizing 40+ million parents, 25+ million students, and 3+ million teachers. These are vast unwieldy groups. You can’t make any generalizations about them. You can’t change them or move them in any obvious simple way. Let’s talk about the real problem, i.e. the bosses giving the orders and dictating the world-view at the elite ed schools. If you could change their minds, or just replace them, you would see real change quickly. I would love that.

When a corporation is failing, you fire the chief operating officers. You fire the board. You fire the top five or ten people. That’s what we need to do here. Get rid of the top decision-makers at Teachers College, Harvard Graduate School of Education, University of Chicago School of Education and other similar dens of dumbing-down.

I’ve always thought that kids, parents, and teachers are equally victims of the social engineering that John Dewey and his bunch introduced. Reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, foundational knowledge–Dewey actually dismissed them all. His nonsense is now part of the DNA that guides the Education Establishment. Their souls reek of socialist theory and strange sophistries. They have a death-grip on everything that goes on in the public schools. When children are not learning, it’s obviously the fault of these people at the top. Let’s hold them accountable.

(For more on this theme, see “41: Educators, O. J. Simpson, and Guilt” on Improve-Education.org.)

Author Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is the founder of Improve-Education.org, a high-level education and intellectual site. One focus is reading; see “42: Reading Resources.” Another focus is education reform; see “38: Saving Public Schools.” Price is an author, artist and poet. His fifth book is “THE EDUCATION ENIGMA–What Happened to American Education.”

Category: Opinions
Keywords: education, k-12, socialism, dumbing-down, obama, ignorance, National Standards,