How everyone can strengthen their own and their families’ education (at the PK-12 levels) to provide a broader, deeper, and Liberal Education at the collegiate level.

1. Provide a performance-based end of secondary examination, like the International Baccalaureate (IB) examination, and examinations provided by the education systems in most industrial countries. All responses in secondary examinations and entry level examinations to higher education must be in writing - - no multiple-choice responses in entrance examinations to assure all entry level students can write. As pointed out centuries ago: if you can’t write you can’t think.

2. By the end of secondary school all students must be competent in writing, but preferably by the end of 6th grade when all students should be examined in the 3 R’s.

3. Mathematics should be improved, so that all students are mathematically literate. US students score below average in national and international assessments of mathematics. In a fourth-grade comparison in the 80s with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean classes, most competent students in math in America scored below the lowest achieving students in math in Asia. We need to focus on teaching fractions in the fourth grade.

4. In addition to the above comments about improving instruction in the 3 R’s, we need to improve instruction in all subjects. Certainly, the teachers’ colleges can improve instruction as proposed by Stigler and Hiebert. However, we need to recognize that many aspects of teaching skills are learned on the job! Note the important research in observing how the teachers in Japan, China, and Korea learn to become expert teachers by investing at least 20% of their time discussing and analyzing current activities and planning for the future – lifelong! See: James Stigler and James Hiebert, in The Teaching Gap.

5. We should require some sort of Community Service component. The best program I know of is in the Palo Alto schools where they have student newspapers in which the students get their stories from their own community: city officials, city council, police, the courts, the state services to the communities and water/wastewater plants. (All with very little control by the faculty or adults. Initiated by Esther Wojcicki of Creative Commons)

6. Work-based learning with at least three months of internship should be required for all students. Choosing a career is one of the most problematic decisions in everyone’s life and some work-based learning is valuable to help make this choice.

7. Reorganize schools:

   • Increasing the length of secondary school to six years, namely 7-12 grades, so that students have more opportunities to have broader and deeper education in the basic subjects. For example, algebra should be taught in 7th grade so it can be used in all sciences.

   • The school week should be organized as in most European schools so that in the case of sciences: physics, chemistry, and biology, all should be taught for two sessions per week starting in the 7th grade and all taught continuously until graduation. (Currently in America, one year without seeing the relationships among the sciences is not adequate.)

8. Character Education or SEL is taught in all grades.

9. Reading aloud should be provided, especially in the inner cities (with outside resources,) starting with one-year olds. If students are missing 30,000,000 words with adults, they are unable to be educated. See Read-Aloud Handbook and The Enchanted Hour.

10. Foreign Languages should be taught in the primary grades as is done in all foreign non-English speaking countries (Foreign languages at an early age make children smarter!)

11. The broadening of history courses to restore history as a subject. To call it social studies (starting a century ago) has basically killed history, so most Americans are not historically literate, especially in their own history and understanding our own remarkable history. Note the Bradley Report of 1989, Historical Literacy. World History, European History, and American History should be part of K-12 education experiences for all students. Howard Zinns’ book on American History has been a best seller and is inappropriate by itself.

12. Physical Fitness is an area that needs more resources to make certain all US students are physically fit and healthy, as required by the Ancient Greeks. Spectator sports may be valuable for a few students but not for those sitting on the benches. (I used to love football games!) A selective service officer in 1965 authored a book called The Wasted Generation in which he pointed out only 50% of the male students qualified for national services versus 75% of Europe. As a possibility for World War III, we do not have enough people to raise an Army, Navy, or Air Force. What then?

13. Music literacy is essential and should start with five-year-olds with hundreds of folk songs. One hour a week, which most schools provide for music, is all that is needed.

Blouke Carus

(These opportunities for strengthening education will be written in greater detail and with references in my forthcoming autobiography)

October 2024