“Ball Don't Lie" as they like to say in sports. In school, the pundits says America is firmly above average in some areas and below average in others. But is “average" really good enough?

PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is “the world’s largest international comparative survey of 15-year-old students, assessing … science, mathematics and reading". Out of 81 countries, the latest 2022 survey ranked U.S. students:

• 9th in reading
• 16th in science
• 34th in math

In a future post we'll look at what's being done. For now, here's how we got here:

In The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff tell us we've been steadily serving students 3 Great Untruths that prepare them poorly to face the real world:

• The Untruth of Fragility wants to protect everyone from danger. Physical safety aside, it's especially anything emotionally and ideologically challenging. No hard truths, no alternative viewpoints, “great job!" for everyone.
• The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning is that protected world where nothing bad should happen. But when it does, feelings override reality and failure seems like a disaster. Students don't get to learn how to deal with adversity.
• The Untruth of Us verses Them self-directs everyone into their own group identity for safety. Theirs is the good group, all others are bad. No need for tolerance, understanding or common ground. It's us verses them.

Diane Ravitch is an author, former professor, and ex-Assistant Secretary of Education. In The Death and Life of the Great American School System she looks into two major factors in the decline of American schools: 

• Testing, which frankly sounds like a good idea, especially when used to diagnose problems and improve teaching. What went wrong is that politics got involved, and turned testing into accountability – what subject matter gets approved, which students move on, which teachers get fired. Testing, not education, became the game everyone played.
• Choice also seems like a good idea, having government subsidize and parents choose where to send their kids to the best public or private school for them. In reality, money flows to schools with the best results, overwhelmingly private (or charter) schools that can select the best students. Public schools have to accept everyone, and results unsurprisingly decline when they lose both their best students and their funding. The American School System isn't working for everyone.

They Came for the Schools: One Town's Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America's Classrooms by Mike Hixenbaugh is a a journalistic report into the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas.

Here in the 7th wealthiest suburb in the United States, Hixenbaugh finds our culture war alive and well in the school system, with big wins by the conservatives in school board representation, book bans, curriculum revisions, minority and LGBTQ rights, and racial indifference.

As the political winds blow, this is a blueprint for where our schools across the country will be headed if we continue down this path, and a warning for all those who would oppose it.

“Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think."  – Hanna Holborn Gray, former President, University of Chicago

Find these books at your local indie bookstore or at our online Karmalize Bookshop.

PC cover photo: RDNE Stock project

“Make It Make Sense” is our way of sharing ideas that go beyond simplistic stereotypical answers to big issues, starting with the UN SDGs. Through this we hope to promote curiosity and understanding of diverse ideas.