Global Courant 2023-05-21 18:00:40
Education expert and president of the Libertas Institute in Utah, Connor Boyack, advocates for school choice, homeschooling, and other alternatives to the public education system. Boyack told Fox News Digital in an interview on Wednesday how the US can turn around its failing school system.
“Only 13% of eighth graders in America are proficient in American history and civics. It’s an alarmingly low figure, especially as these kids are going to grow up and become voters,” said Boyack.
But these students “can’t even pass the citizenship test that we demand of other people,” he stressed.
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Boyack told Fox News Digital in an interview how the US could turn around its failing school system. (Screenshot / Connor Boyack)
The Department of Education recently found that nearly a third of grade 8 students in the US are unable to describe the job structure of the US government.
Boyack hit back at arguments that student failure in fundamental subjects such as history and civics was entirely due to learning loss from COVID-19.
“Yes, COVID had an impact,” said Boyack, “but it can’t be attributed to the low quality of education we have.” That long, downward trend predates COVID, Boyack said.
Some of the main culprits in America’s failing education system are “ineffective teachers, a dulled curriculum” and an “uninspiring mass of factoids,” he said.
It’s a system that fails both teachers and students, according to Boyack. “Many teachers quit. They get fed up. They start their own small microschool or move to another profession,” he said.
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“Yes, COVID had an impact,” said Boyack, “but it can’t be attributed to the low quality of education we have.” That long, downward trend predates COVID, Boyack said. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Boyack also pushed back on bureaucrats and politicians have been pushing for the same education system reforms for years.
“It’s the definition of insanity,” Boyack said. “Those who repeat the same thing over and over and expect a different result are insane. Collectively, we’re just doing the same thing we’ve been doing for years.”
That includes efforts that span Republican and Democratic presidential administrations, Boyack noted, with policies like No Child Left Behind and Common Core.
“So we’re crazy,” Boyack said. “We continue to expect that we can just hack the margins of education in America and expect different outcomes. We need a substantial change. We need a huge change. And I don’t think it will come from central planning. I don’t think that some committee comes together and says, Here’s the new Common Core, the new No Child Left Behind. This needs to be decentralized,” he said.
Boyack continued: “We need to unleash the entrepreneurship and ingenuity of millions of people, that’s why we need so-called school choice or freedom of education, instead of protecting this monopoly, the system which is just old and inefficient. Let’s release those funds, as many states have these easy laws. Let’s free up those funds and empower parents to find the best solutions. And let’s have a marketplace of competitive, great education services instead of just the one-size-fits-all system that we have today.’
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Boyack – the author of a popular children’s book series that emphasizes the importance of natural rights and free market values called the Tuttle Twins – also spoke directly to parents fighting to keep pornographic and ideologically charged books out of the classroom. (Courtesy of Connor Boyack)
Boyack — the author of a popular children’s book series that emphasizes the importance of natural rights and free market values called the Tuttle Twins — also spoke directly to parents fighting to keep pornographic and ideologically charged books out of the classroom.
While parents are rightly “concerned about what they see coming out of the classroom,” Boyack said, they should also pay attention to the curriculum that is central to local schools.
Otherwise, parents risk playing something like “political Whac-A-Mole” with schools.
“These parents are focused on trying to knock down that one mole,” while “another one just pops up.”
Meanwhile, academic decline continues at a rapid pace, Boyack said, mainly because the education system is ossified and conformist in nature.
Even now, said Boyack, “children are expected to conform to the system. There is a system. There are standards. You have to bend your will to it. You have to adapt to the system in order to succeed and thrive within that system.”
But real education focuses on the individual, Boyack said.
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“I think good teaching is that the system or curriculum should adapt to the individual. So we have to say, what are you interested in? What are you inspired by? What are you curious about?”
Jeffrey Clark is associate editor for Fox News Digital. He has previously served as a speechwriter for a cabinet secretary and as a Fulbright teacher in South Korea. Jeffrey graduated from the University of Iowa in 2019 with a degree in English and History.
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