If there is one topic that garners a lot of heated debate it’s the topic of education. Everyone has an opinion; one group blames bad teachers, while the other group blames the lack of funding.
During one of the latest Democratic debates, former Secretary of State and likely Commander in Chief was asked if teacher unions protect bad teachers. Like most politicians who rely on union support, she avoided the question. Instead, she blamed that kind of conversation on those who don’t want to spend more money on education.
Here is the debate clip:
But, wait a minute? Doesn’t the United States already spend a ton of money on education? Yep.
For a very long time, the U.S. has spent more money per student than any other country in the world as the government spent roughly $600 billion per year on its schools. Recently, however, four other OECD countries overtook the U.S.: Austria, Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland. It’s estimated that the U.S. spends more than $11,000 per elementary student and more than $13,000 per high school student. That’s a lot of money.
Is it producing good results? Not really. Here is what CBS News reports:
“The United States routinely trails its rival countries in performances on international exams despite being among the heaviest spenders on education.
“U.S. fourth-graders are 11th in the world in math in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, a separate measure of nations against each other. U.S. eighth-graders ranked ninth in math, according to those 2011 results.
“The Program for International Student Assessment measurement found the United States ranked 31st in math literacy among 15-year-old students and below the international average. The same 2009 tests found the United States ranked 23rd in science among the same students, but posting an average score.”
John Stossel of Fox Business Network (FBN) did a superb segment on the state of education in the U.S., which can be watched below, called “Stupid in America.”
So all this talk of the U.S. spending more money on education is just a disingenuous one. It’s been proven time and again that countries that spend much less than the U.S. often put forward better results. Perhaps it’s because the classroom, once the beacon of learning, challenging the mind and discovering new things, has metastasized into a government indoctrination, worker-training center, where you learn about loving government and hating conservatives.
Here is what economist Thomas Sowell writes about government teachers and their unions:
“These unions have fought bitterly against the testing of teachers or students to assess how the public schools are doing. The reason is simple: Such tests have repeatedly revealed the gross ignorance and incompetence of many teachers and the resulting failure of American students to come up to the standards in other countries, including some Third World countries.
“Unfortunately, years of dumbed-down education may have left many people without the intellectual equipment to see through the self-serving propaganda of the teachers’ unions.”
It must be terrible to be a student today. Here’s what a modern classroom looks like today (SEE: Video: An inside look at modern classrooms).
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