Once again, education has not become a serious and important campaign issue. This is a trend I’ve observed for decades in education for The Times.
Immigration stirs up far more emotion among the electorate, and it’s hard to argue that Donald Trump’s incessant lies and attacks on women’s rights, civil rights, and the very principles of democracy in this country don’t should not trump concerns about curriculum. Then, of course, there are the just plain weird issues that get attention, like Trump’s fascination with Arnold Palmer’s genitals. And we were concerned about President Biden’s mental health?
However, the country has approximately 50 million students enrolled in public schools, not including preschoolers, private school students, parents, teachers and other school personnel who all have a direct personal connection to education. It also doesn’t include the millions of students at community colleges and four-year colleges.
It would not be an exaggeration to estimate that more than half of Americans are directly affected by the education system. This fails to view those of us who simply care about education as the force that will shape future generations.
Yet neither candidate had anything substantive to say on the subject. Predictably, Trump says he would abolish the US Department of Education and return power over schools to the states. At the same time, he said he would cut federal funding for schools that teach subjects he disagrees with, such as critical race theory. It’s sure sounds as federal interference.
He wants to open choice to parents, to the point of authorizing generalized school vouchers including religious schools, even if it is not the parents who pay for public education. These are the taxpayers. Regardless, even if he closed the Department of Education, many of its duties would have to be handled by another agency. The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, a watered-down version of No Child Left Behind with testing and other requirements, is still federal law. Certain agencies must oversee federal student financial aid programs.
Harris had even less to say, limiting herself mainly to brief mentions of pursuing some sort of bailout for people struggling with student debt and expanding career paths for young adults not pursuing no four-year college, accounting for nearly half of all high school graduates. This would include eliminate baccalaureate requirements for half a million federal jobs.
The idea that people can lead a good life without a bachelor’s degree is gaining popularity. It’s a cause close to my heart, after years of degree inflation in which employers required four-year degrees for jobs that really didn’t need them. I even wrote a book about this. But it’s a risky choice for Harris and not very original because Trump took over during his first administration. In June 2020, he signed a decree which prohibits requiring a bachelor’s degree for federal hiring unless it can be demonstrated that the degree is necessary to do the job, which the Biden administration began to come true and Harris would continue.
That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of groundwork to be done. Most of the highest-paying jobs after high school require some level of education, but what’s available now is woefully inadequate. The next president should do everything he can to encourage public-private partnerships that create apprenticeships in a wide variety of fields – not just in blue-collar jobs, which have long had it going for them, but in white collar careers including marketing, human relations, middle management, coding, creative fields and entrepreneurship.
Furthermore, just because the nation has discovered the importance of skills and intelligence does not mean we can forget about access to higher education. Trump pledged to create a free national online university, but after seeing how Trump UniversityI’m going to let this pass. Furthermore, it has not developed an adequate financing mechanism to achieve this; a good online college education is expensive because it requires not only excellent instructors, but also enough teaching assistants to read articles and provide advice, as well as in-person instruction for labs, art equipment, and similar needs.
It’s also time to think about new ideas about K-12 education. The country has too many students who feel disengaged from their schools and curriculum, who struggle to read whole books – in part a consequence of former President Obama’s federal push for a Common Core curriculum that emphasizes excerpts from entire books – or moving past the noise of social media and AI to discover the truth.
With adjustments here and there, the public school curriculum has remained the same, while employers complain that students are not receiving key teaching. SKILLS necessary for work, such as good communication, initiative, analytical thinking, financial literacy and problem solving. The federal government could form a consortium with the participation of teachers and parents to modernize what and how students learn.
A reconfigured curriculum that engages students and prepares them for real life might not make headlines like Harris did by telling Trump that Russian President Vladimir Putin “I eat you for lunch» or the way Trump swing in music for half an hour. But the nation will only get the education it demands from its candidates, and for now, the requirements are too low.
