Take on the 800-lb Gorilla

Source: US workforce: paying young Americans to learn the right skills

I made the following comment.

Someone has to take on the 800 lb gorilla.  I have seen it in action up close and Bill Gross has pointed out that it really is an 800 lb gorilla.  Here’s Bill Gross.

“…To radically change the system…would be to jeopardize trillions of misdirected investment dollars and financial obligations…” (quoted by permission from http://www.pimco.com/EN/Insights/Pages/School-Daze-School-Daze-Good-Old-Golden-Rule-Days.aspx )

That gorilla is not the American system of high school education.  It is the American system of “higher” education.  Here is how it works.

First, and foremost,

“…advantage [is] taken of [students] by unscrupulous instructors and institutions..[since] the “wants” of students to which competing institutions, departments, and individual faculty members cater are quite different from the “needs” of students…” (From David Riesman’s 1980 On Higher Education: The Academic Enterprise in an Era of Rising Student Consumerism),

Such corrupt behavior ensures that high school teachers don’t even have enough knowledge and understanding of content to be able to teach their subject well. But that’s just for starters.

After getting away with, and becoming acclimated to a lack of any civic responsibility for education (Of course, they do educated their outstanding grad students, but the motive there isn’t usually altruistic.), these institutions, along with the unscrupulous professors who have risen to the top, “degree” PhD’s: for the purpose of peopling lesser schools with professors. These PhD’s are not even competent enough to teach their students enough to be decent high school teachers.

So, it’s no surprise that so many Americans have few, if any, mental skills to adapt.

If you want to understand the story I just told in detail, go to my blog inside-higher-ed.