A Toast to Yost
The Pioneer Press editorial page continues to impress with the contribution from the newest editorial board member, Mark Yost. Today he begins his series on the true causes of outsourcing in the US economy (hint, it's not John Kerry's Benedict Arnold CEOs).
Using Todd Buchholz's book "Bringing the Jobs Home" as his platform, Yost outlines three causes of the problem. Today's column, entitled Outsourcing is Our Own Making, focuses on how the public education system fails us. Excerpt:
Worse yet, the decline [in test scores] has come at a time when the global education landscape is more competitive than ever. Contributing to our demise, we've lost our focus on the basics.
"Teachers and administrators turned from enhancing skills to enhancing self-esteem" Buchholz argues. "Now our kids have high self-esteem but low test scores. American schools have not made our kids dumb. They've made them delusional."
(My interactions with the college age youth of today provides compelling anecdotal evidence to support this contention.)
Of particular concern is our ability to produce enough math and science graduates to sustain our increasingly high tech dependent economy. According to Yost:
Looking at America's increasingly underperforming public-school system, Buchholz notes that U.S. 12th-graders are behind Slovenians and barely ahead of South Africa and Cyprus in math and science. Chinese engineering students outnumber Americans three to one.
The role of the teacher's union in this problem, and their protectionist policies toward credentialing teachers, is quite persuasively emphasized by Yost and Buchholz. And the golden ray of hope that is school choice once again appears as a part of the solution.
Fascinating stuff, and, not to be redundant, but what a pleasure it is to have a part of the institutional voice of our local newspaper advocating, in a professional manner, for these sound, well reasoned positions.
UPDATE: More from King Banaian, on the educational consequences of putting self-esteem before accomplishment.
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