Representative Congress: Elected According to Their Constituents’ Intelligence?

Perhaps the poor state of America education can be understood in the context of a “cause and effect” relationship. Most things in the world and in life can be understood in such a context. The actual difficult is finding the factor or factors that are actually involved in those relationships, not in understanding how the process plays out once the factors are recognized. And it is not surprising that after the process is identified and explained that everyone will tell you that they always knew the relationships and that it is obvious to the most casual observer. So how do we link the cause and effect between elected politicians and the American education system? Nothing could be so simple!

Our own assessment and the assessment of other leading industrial nations, is that Americans are falling behind in educational achievements. The scientific, technical, industrial and economic consequences from the ever increasing drop of our ranked position amongst our peers is talked about by persons of every ilk; and is pitched in terms of America falling behind competitively. Our leaders tell us that we must improve our educational system or we will lose our America dream, our future and our freedom.

And we talk about who to blame, because it cannot be ourselves. We all want the best education for our children, not the worst. So we blame the teachers, school systems, school boards, school administrators, the Department of Education (state or federal), and some even blame Congress. There are sides that say we spend too little, some say too much. We blame the poor, the rich, the children, and the parents. But all the blaming doesn’t explain anything. There is no cause-effect that makes this understandable. The forces at the core of our failing are not categories of people. Rather the causes are those elusive factors that push or pull the educational process in one direction or another, the actions that move the pea from one cup to another, and the rewards and punishments that induce one type of behavior over another.

What then does this have to do with Congress? Let’s consider the following ‘cause’ and consider its ‘effect’. If the public that elects each and every congressional representative is, well let’s say: not overly informed and knowledgeable, then the politician doesn’t have to worry about an informed constituency. Politicians don’t have to even be marginally smart. They just need to be able to understand what pushes the buttons of their constituents. Not what is a meaningful or important issue that impinges upon the lives and well-being of the voters; but only what will grab their attention and stimulate their reaction of going with the flow. It’s easier for the politician if they don’t have to know facts, to be able to talk knowledgeably about a topic, or to be able to comprehend or assess information required to understand a problem.

If the general public is unable to recognize that the politician is an idiot, a buffoon, or a self-serving con-artist then the politician can avoid having any substance or any gravitas when it comes to being a qualified representative leader.

So political success would motivate politicians to seek and undertake actions that prevent quality and efficiency in our educational process. The larger portion of the population that is competent to choose qualified leaders the worse it is for them. Continue to apply the principle of degrading education from year to year and politician to politician and you get an electorate that is well suited for selecting the type of Congressional representatives we seem to persistently wind up with.

Now I don’t say that this is the only factor influencing the quality of education in the US, but can you deny that it is an important factor? I guess that would depend upon the effectiveness of the education that you received from the system, now wouldn’t it?

American Intelligence Test #10: An Object Lesson About Teachers

Nothing could be more relevant and ironic as the subject of an American Intelligence Test than teachers and their compensation. But as humorous as this idea may seem, it has the potential to be more illuminating than the copious and era-spanning public and political debates about performance/merit-based teachers’ compensation. The performance issue has risen to a top spot in our politicians’ cesspool of ideas, spurred especially by the budget cutting battles occurring between teachers’ unions (and other public sector jobs) and state governors/legislators. So let’s get a sense of what you know about the cost of public education and how to get the best education for American children.


After you complete the questions you will find my answers listed; these are of course are implicitly correct. Your own score, I suspect, you will hold to be correct; and it’s your responsibility to assess that logical assertion. Remember: a willingness to deceive yourself, as to the correctness of your answers or beliefs, is just another measure of the actual intelligence level being measured. To paraphrase Lincoln:

Some of us can fool ourselves all of the time, and all of us can fool ourselves some of the time, but all of us can not fool ourselves all of the time.

Gird yourself for the test; the opportunity to fail awaits you.

Question 1: Classroom performance in national tests have stayed more or less the same or shown some slight declines over the last 40 years.

True   False

Question 2: Over the last 40 years, teachers’ pay has more than doubled.

True   False

Question 3: If the answers to Q-1 and Q-2 were both to be true, then increasing pay has not caused any increase in teachers’ performance?

True   False   Both   Neither

Question 4: Improving the education system in the US is hampered the most by:

A. Politicians
B. Teachers’ unions
C. Political Parties
D. Voters (the public)
E. All of the Above

Question 5: Teacher Pay for Performance would increase the educational value provided to the nation’s children.

True   False   Both   Neither

The Critical Question ‘X’: Who has presented a viable plan for solving our educational systems’ problems that would equip America’s youth with a competitive education?

A. Politicians
B. Teachers’ unions
C. Federal Department of Education
D. States’ Departments of Education
E. Special Interest groups/lobbyist
F. No one

Pencils down! Test over. So how did you do, or which part of Lincoln’s observation did you place yourself in?

Oh yes, here are my answers.

Q1: True All things being equal, we seem to be where we have been for a while.

Q2: True And benefits costs have risen too.

Q3: Neither You’ve probably heard this in Math class somewhere along the line: “you can’t compare apples and oranges”. You have to ask yourself: is this an inflation adjusted statement, and if everything else is unimportant.

Q4: D Our failure results from our collective expectation that ‘wanting it’ is the same thing as ‘getting it’. All the other players, while major contributors to the failure, are simply extremely incompetent at confronting this task.

Q5: Neither It may be one possible outcome, but it is not the only outcome that could result from being implemented. And what if the performance we want/need costs more not less; will you support that?

QX: F The public debate focuses on protester sign issues and answers; not on what America wants its educational goals to be, and what America is required to be responsible for to achieve them.

So let’s all keep running down the road with sharp scissors and our eyes closed because that always works out well for everyone.

Congress: The Legacy of Unsuccessful Students

We have to step back in disbelief when we observe the intellectual ineptitude displayed by Congress, even when Congress strives to do the right things. The things for which they are Constitutionally responsible. The things for which they advocate and champion policy, laws and governance. The things for which they collect our taxes, institute public agencies to carry out, and allocate their budgets to paradoxically over and underfund simultaneously. And often those essential things that are at the heart of our democratic nation. This is no less the case for American education than for any of the other gladiatorial arenas that our representatives contest over with the feckless skills of an untrained juggler attempting five balls simultaneously before a live audience.

Once the best educated citizenry in the world, we are witness to the accelerating retrograde of our global educational position in general, scientific, technical, business, and even knowledge of the arts to a lesser light in the darkness. And this intellectual recession is not a brief momentary period brought about by some small transient error in judgment or direction by a small dedicated though misguided group of Congressional leaders; but rather is the result of the prolonged diligent efforts on the part of every amalgam of Congressional compositions assembled by the American electorate over decades.

Sure Congress has had the occasional serendipitous stumble into some legislative actions that promoted either a slight impetus toward advancement or at least impeded our rush toward decline; but overall Congress has not managed to pass the grade. Oh yes, they have managed and continue to spend an enormous amount of the public treasury on education. But only with the results that we see about us daily, and hear about now and again when some study illuminates the accumulating anti-achievements from their accredited attention to the education of the nation's children and our society's future.

Perhaps it is not to be unexpected that a nation that has failed for decades to maintain an adequate level of public education, let alone a superior one, has produced political leaders (and correspondingly their electorate) that are unable to face and especially unable to meet the challenge of national education. We may only have to look to science to provide an explanation, something of course difficult for the ill-educated to do. Many of these politicians were of course educated by the same educational system that has failed so many others. As products of these institutions they are thus the recipients of the quality of intellectual DNA transferred from annual school crop to crop. And as genetics will tell you, if you create a selection bias for recessive or harmful traits then you will progressively year over year, generation over generation cultivate a weaker and weaker species. Hence, even if you subscribe to the theory of 'the best and brightest' in pubic service, you will find that the quality of individuals at the 'top' is ever declining.

How then to salvage the American educational system? For Congress the answer to this lies in the same process that saves alcoholics and addicts; they have to admit that they have a problem and that they cannot solve it on their own. Congress's strength (enfeeblement?), their courage (cowardice?) or their vision (blindness?) requires that they seek out wisdom and understanding beyond their comprehension. They may find that the same principles that have fostered the decline can be employed to guide the improvement of the breed. Oddly, Congress could rely upon a basic American principle to gain success in this endeavor; they could depend upon capitalistic competition to restore America to preeminence in education. They only need to find people who can show them how to make it work because their only excuse for not having already done so is that they are not sufficiently capable of doing it by themselves.

Whether they are Republican or Democrat, our legislators and administrations of the moment must learn to hold true to ideals of our founding fathers, to forgo the personal advantage from special-interests, and to serve the pubic need. Education must be returned to a primary obligation of the nation and hence of federal, state and local politicians. Education must be more important than party, than affiliation, than special-interest; it must be once again a pillar of our freedom.

No Child Allowed Ahead – An American Education

While the US economy is struggling to recover from the recession wrought from our imprudent ways, we have received yet another reality check on the soundness of our societal commitment to educating our children. Relative to other nations that we compete with on the international stage, the US continues to decline as others advance. We recede in math, sciences and reading and wonder why our nation struggles to provide the skilled and capable employees needed by American businesses. And what was the great undertaking by our political leaders, an unfunded mandate called “No Child Left Behind” by the Bush administration that seems to have achieved its goal not by elevating the achievement of our schools but by holding back those students who managed succeed thus preventing any other child from being left behind. If no one succeeds, then no one is left behind.
With the Obama administration, our school system is going to succeed by a “Race to the Top” spending more money on education. It does sound more achievement oriented then its predecessor's touchy-feelly random walk approach; but its going to run up against some significant resistance in the cut-spending campaign that will be a non-stop political whipping post for the next two years.
Is it possible that the political parties are in favor of a poorly educated public. We just had a Republican and Democratic compromise on the continuation of the Bush era tax-cuts (now to be known as the Obama era tax cuts) that continues to underfund Government revenues while simultaneously spending more. I suppose as long as Americans can't do the math, aren't capable of reading and understanding what is happening in the world, and don't have a scientific comprehension of the forces at work in their lives that I can't be surprised that they have elected the type of politicians who would continue to pursue the most idiotic and addle-brained policies that have failed to make a difference.
If America wants an education system that creates the competitive and world-leading citizenry essential to sustaining our democracy and economic vitality then the public (and their representatives) need to link the performance of our education system to the interests of our governmental, industrial and commercial entities. If a failing education system penalizes the interests of the powerful then like the hangman's noose, it will focus the mind's attention quite effectively on making sure that we succeed.