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Some Will Go To College – All Will Go Through Life: Part Three – We’ll Be Amazed

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*There has never been a good answer to the question, “Why do we have to learn this?”  Asked millions of times by millions of students, it is invariably responded to by teachers with avoidance tactics or gibberish because very often the real answer is: you don’t.

We invest heavily in information from the bell curve, yet ignore much of what it tells us.  We know ahead of time that students like Jane, whose classidemic test scores fall in the center or the left of the standardized test bell curve, will not do well in Algebra or Biology class, yet we are compelled to require that they take those courses.  Why?  In order to give them a well-rounded education??Achievement Ladder - We''ll be Amazed

Because they’ll need it to get into college and we must prepare all students for college no matter what??  Or is it because the idea that we all must strive to get to the top of the achievement ladder – that in its essence education IS striving to get to the top of the achievement ladder –  is so ingrained in us that we can’t even question it?

Some Will Go To College – All Will Go Through Life: Part Two- What About Jane?

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*On an autumn day in September of 1962, President John Kennedy challenged a nation to do the impossible and send a man to the moon in just seven short years. Perhaps the thing he his best remembered for other than his unfortunate death, we take his declaration for granted.

What is interesting is that at a time before digital calculators and watches, before microwave ovens and before TV shows were regularly broadcast in color, the audience at Rice University did not greet his proclamation that “We choose to go to the moon” with incredulousness, or appear to wonder how such a monumental goal might be achieved, but instead greeted it with eager applause and giddy enthusiasm.
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Some Will Go To College – All Will Go Through Life: Part One- Curves, Tests and Grades

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Teachers, school administrators, school boards and government agencies across America work diligently to educate our youth, yet the U.S. consistently ranks squarely in the middle of worldwide achievement in Science, Math and Reading.  How can this be in what we all like to think of as the greatest nation on earth?

There are two underlying fundamental problems with the American education system in the 21st century.  The first is that there is not now, nor has there ever been, an American Education System.  From the time of the first New England schoolhouse to today, local education has been paid for by local tax dollars, with local government setting curriculum and standards for hiring teachers in accordance with the bidding of local voters.

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