Mark Gindhart: American education must return to core basics
An educated and informed electorate is one of our society’s core foundational pillars, and as such it is our responsibility to provide a sound educational system to provide for it. We owe it to those who came before us to continue the greatness of America that they gave us, but much more importantly we owe it to our children and grandchildren to provide them with the tools they need to continue the great promise of America.
In recent history we have sadly fallen short. According to a 2018 Business Insider report, the U.S. ranked 38th in math scores and 24th in science; and the U.S. does not even rank in the top ten of the highest ranked countries in education despite massive funding. According to the 2024 World Top 20 Project, whose International Education Database measures and ranks the impact of each nation’s education system based on its economic and social environment, the United States ranks 31st. According to the Institute of Educational Sciences, the independent research and statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Education, in 2019 the United States spent $15,500 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education. That’s roughly $762 billion, which was 38% higher than the average of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries of $11,300. We are spending much more on education in this country than many others in the world yet we are achieving significantly less. How can this be in the United States of America?
In my opinion, we have fallen to this level because we have lost focus on what matters most in education, and what our end goal should be. As our educational system has grown over the years it has become more diversified in a very well-intentioned effort to produce the most well-rounded students, but the cost has been a sacrifice of the basics. We do not need to teach our children everything there is to know; we need only to provide them with a solid knowledge base, the ability to learn, and an appreciation of learning and critical thinking.
In my 40-year career in emergency services, I have been a firefighter, a paramedic, and a police officer. One of the most important things I learned from that career is that one cannot possibly know everything about everything. There is simply too much information in our lives for us to be able to remember by rote for instant recall. Knowing the basics, and how to apply them with critical thinking skill is the key. This was especially apparent to me in my role as a paramedic. In an emergency, I could not possibly recall instantly every salient fact and minuscule detail of the human body. What worked for me was knowing in detail how the body functions and how illnesses, injuries, and medications affected that function.
Then using critical thinking, I could apply that knowledge to any situation or condition I encountered. Calmly and critically thinking through problems often resulted in a positive outcome. The very same reasoning should apply to how we educate our children. We cannot possibly teach them everything, and we must not teach them what to think: We must teach them how to think. Children should be provided with a solid education in mathematics, science, English, history, the arts, and, very importantly, civics. How can we hope for our children and grandchildren to be informed and active participants in our nation if they do not understand how it works? We must also provide them with the ability to think critically and independently so, as adults, they can make intelligent decisions no matter what they face.
Our lives have become so busy that finding the time to adequately provide education is difficult. For the sake of our children’s future we must reconsider how we are preparing them for it. It is imperative that we make the most of the time and resources we have by returning to the core basics that produced past generations of great thinkers and leaders who gave us the remarkable nation we have today. If we try to do too much with the time our children have in school, all we do is water down what they are getting; instead of getting a lot, they really end up only getting a little. We must realize that many things that are presented in schools today are best left to parents to present to their children at a time, and in a manner, of their choosing. No one knows a child better than that child’s parents. Schools should give children a solid educational and critical thinking foundation in line with parents’ desires, then leave the rest to the parents themselves. A parent’s right to educate their child is foundational and inviolate. They only loan a part of that right to a school; they do not relinquish it.
We live in a country that is a beacon of hope in the world, but only by rethinking the current state of our educational system and returning to the solid foundational principles of education that helped light that beacon can our future generations keep it lit.
Mark Gindhart is assistant secretary of the Centennial School Board.
