Let's adapt to the best role of education

The D.J. Tice column in the Sunday Strib is reason enough to want to consider buying it. I usually catch up with Mr. Tice in the mid-afternoon Sunday at our McDonald's restaurant. Seems there's less competition these days among patrons to get ahold of "the house paper."
The print media recedes. Isn't USA Today phasing out its print version? Isn't Sports Illustrated laying off a ton of people? Aren't a bunch of suburban Twin Cities newspapers being closed? And oh by the way, informed sources say our Morris paper was on the verge of being closed. Well, that can give one pause. Or maybe not, if you're a young person holding up the ubiquitous phone to stay connected to all things relevant.
The world is changing in a way that can seem foreboding. So Mr. Tice informs us via his Sunday column that contrary to all the rhetoric about how academic standards must be kept high or pushed higher, well, the contrary situation is happening, Which surprises me not one bit.
And why would I conclude that academic demands on kids should actually be lowered? I'll illustrate in an unusual way. Have you seen the TV ads for sneakers that don't even require you to tie shoelaces? Could it be that the skill of shoelace-tying is being phased out as no longer essential? The reason of course is the relentless drive in utilizing tech to create shortcuts and efficiencies all over the place. It is omnipotent.
We are seeing sea changes. "Touch screens" are in our midst allowing hospitality businesses to employ fewer people. People are simply cost items for business, for the bean counters usually situated in distant places who make decisions to optimize a profit. Well, profit is what makes the world go 'round, right?
Problem is, the pure principles of capitalism are being impeded by questionable forces. The president is claiming to have helped create - oh heck, he takes complete credit - "the greatest economy in the history of the world." So it seems odd we are heading to a third straight cut in interest rates. "Quantitative easing" appears once again in play, though its orchestrators are trying to reject the term. A commentator jokingly said the current efforts with the economy should be termed "not QE." Of course it's QE.
At the same time our economy is doing "great," Larry Kudlow talks like he's concerned about the "deep state." He sees it hovering at the Federal Reserve. Let me assert: Larry Kudlow is the deep state. When you're around paranoid people, there is little accountability because finger-pointing always takes over. These people begin their day watching "Fox and Friends."
We should stop feeling surprised by what tech can accomplish. It's no longer essential to tie one's shoes? Del Sarlette of this community had a humor column in the high school newspaper back in about 1971, in which he had a fictitious character named "Tyrone Shoelaces" who Del claimed was from Cyrus. Here's the point: the relentless, unstoppable advances of technology mean the average person just does not need a rigorous education.
Such an education would still be necessary if you are destined to join the truly elite of society, or to become a doctor or lawyer etc. It's hard discussing that because our tendency is to want to talk in such idyllic terms about our kids. We'd like to think they all have the potential for being truly elite. In rough theory the kids of course have that opportunity.
Realistically most are headed to jobs that are considered common or pedestrian, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, you'd better be fired up to assume a job like that, because such jobs are not really "easy." We all know that.
We have historically subscribed to ideals about education, like it's so essential for every kid to try to reach the top rung. Do you trust academia and its self-interest to determine what that top rung is? I remember getting into a pretty intense argument once - it happened to be at the UMM Jazz Fest party - with one of those people of academic stripes who felt teachers needed to be paid "like doctors and lawyers." He argued with intensity: "what is more important than the education of your child?"
I suppose one needs the sharpness of a lawyer to respond to something like that. It's an idyllic, in-your-face argument of the type that seems sympathetic on its face. I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but I'd say kids find most of their motivation from within, that they are not just "empty vessels" in the absence of their educators.
Educators play the important role of facilitating. The kids who are destined for truly elite roles will need teachers who have exacting demands all the way. But let's emphasize this is a minority. I can be more blunt: a common job like with an insurance company - very respectable work of course - isn't going to require much more than reading, writing and arithmetic as a foundation. Beyond that a kid can read and consume on his own.
I remember many of my reading assignments in high school during the strange 1970s, as being garbage, no hyperbole intended. I'd be better off and would have cultivated a more mature attitude about life if I had just read standard mainstream western fiction novels. Academics would have scoffed at such fare. Well, those people had their own little "racket" going for a time. But I think it has largely dissipated. Parents finally took over to assert themselves.
Parents said "you needn't push our kids so hard in classes." Also: "You needn't scare and intimidate our kids so much with your exacting grading system, your 'pop quizzes' designed to scare, etc. Just take care of our kids, love our kids and impart some knowledge."
Our kids have plenty of their own instincts to take care of themselves after that. Our kids are not empty vessels. The subhead for Tice's Sunday column was: "Those overseeing the (education) field have a high-minded approach to relatively low ambitions." Amen and hallelujah, Mr. Tice.
Math scores these days are plummeting, Tice reported. Shall we distinguish here between "math" and "arithmetic?" I consider the distinction essential. I have long bemoaned my own background in which I absolutely polished "arithmetic" skills - to this day I know my multiplication tables - but I "hit the wall" with math after that.
My self-esteem suffered permanent setbacks. This was not necessary.
Mastery of arithmetic gives you life skills that will get you through nearly all day-to-day tasks requiring numbers. Studies beyond that just get theoretical. More and more people consider it a waste of time and an excruciating process of classroom survival.
Tice reports a "wave of reports about low scores and high anxieties where academic testing is concerned." Are we in fact seeing an antiquated set of values in education, a holdover of post-WWII and the Cold War where we were supposed to "compete with the Russians?" Today we have a president of the U.S. who may well have gotten his position because of the Russians.
How do we reconcile all this? An increasing number of students are opting out of taking the state's standardized tests, Tice notes. Kids are getting accommodations on tests due to "disabilities." A kid might be found to have "anxiety." These provisions can obviously be abused, like when Donald Trump got his bone spurs exemption for military service.
Jim McRoberts taught me the expression "figures lie and liars figure." No better source of wisdom.
When it comes to government programs, it's "whoa Nellie."
Well, in the age of touch screens, smartphones and on and on, how "smart" do we really have to be? The hidden truth here, is that the flurry of tech advancements actually make life better. Hard labor after all is not inherently virtuous. You might ask "Tyrone Shoelaces" of Cyrus.
Congratulations to D.J. Tice on his insights.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com