How to Fix American Education: Book Review
Dr. Bernstein’s book makes a powerful case for reforming American education, empowering parental choice and free enterprise, and restoring the meaningful purpose of our schools.
Review of Bernstein, Andrew. Why Johnny Still Can’t Read or Write or Understand Math: And What We Can Do About It. Bombardier Books, an imprint of Post Hill Press, 2022, 256 p.
In this eye-opening, root-cause analysis of the sharp decline of American education over the past century or so, philosophy professor and prolific author Andrew Bernstein quotes the Reverend Jacob Duché on American erudition in the late 18th century:
The poorest laborer upon the shore of the Delaware thinks himself entitled to deliver his sentiments in matters of religion or politics with as much freedom as the gentleman or scholar…. Such is the prevailing taste for books of every kind, that almost every man is a reader. (p. 9)
Alexis de Tocqueville similarly observed:
[I]n the United States, the instruction of the people powerfully contributes to the support of a democratic republic; and such must always be the case, I believe, where instruction which awakens the understanding is not separated from moral education which amends the heart.…[I]f the Americans had not been gradually accustomed to govern themselves, their book-learning would not assist them much at the present day.
(Tocqueville, Alexis de, Phillips Bradley, Henry Reeve, and Francis Bowen. 1945. Democracy in America, Vol. 2, New York: Knopf, p. 323)
Today, regrettably, American educational institutions often ensure the opposite outcome. They produce misguided proponents of utopian causes, indoctrinated to despise their country, traditions, civilization, and even themselves. Many graduate from university with a crippling debt and useless pseudo-knowledge, while remaining ignorant of humanity’s greatest achievements and unable to think outside the box.
Despite the ever-increasing cost per pupil in the public school system, the quality of education has dramatically deteriorated. A growing number of high-school graduates are woefully deficient in basic skills such as reading, writing, and math. Taxpayers are in effect sponsoring an educational system that is not only lacking in academic rigor but encourages groupthink allegiance to progressivist and socialist concepts disguised as politically correct platitudes.
In Part One: The Current Crisis of American Schooling and How It Happened, Bernstein delves into the reasons for this catastrophe: replacement of an outstanding educational tradition, which taught people how to think, with a mind-numbing indoctrination inspired by progressivism, Marxism, and collectivism. Chapter One: The Terrible State of American Schooling provides a sobering diagnosis: “[T]here is no escaping the ugly truth that the prime cause of today’s educational disaster is the schools—and the forces that lie behind them” (p. 8). Chapter Two: Superb Education in America’s Past discusses why American education was exceptional in the 18th and 19th centuries—it employed phonics in teaching children how to read and trained them how to think by having them study the great works of Western civilization and follow what is now known as a liberal arts curriculum. Chapters Three through Five focus on how leftist academics and government bureaucrats began a “war on reading and learning” and aimed to produce uniform thinking and obedience to the state. Chapters Six Through Nine examine the education policy conflicts between progressivists and Marxists, on the one hand, who advocated dumbing down the curriculum and advancing an anti-Western ideology, and “supporters of literacy and learning” in the best traditions of humanity, on the other. Bernstein exposes the detrimental influence of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which has become, unfortunately, the gold standard of history teaching in high schools and universities, despite its low academic quality, serious errors, and blindly prejudiced pseudo-scientific claims.
Part Two: How We Can Fix the Educational Disaster offers concrete steps for overcoming the obstacles that obviate educational success. Chapter Ten: Teacher Training—The Mess that It Is and How We Can Fix It emphasizes the importance of high-level mastery of the subject matter in teachers’ training, supplemented by an engaging delivery when educating young minds. Chapter Eleven: The Impregnable Fortress describes the “interlocking directorate” of educational policy institutions that control the majority of schools and are impossible to reform. Chapters Twelve through Fourteen analyze the importance of parental involvement and suggest various models of successful schooling, such as home schooling, micro-schooling, and tutoring. Chapter Fifteen: The Educational Bonanza of Privatizing Government Schools examines the advantages of abolishing the inefficient and coercive public school system and replacing it with private school options, which offer academic freedom and superior curriculum quality. Creating a competitive private school market would also reduce the tuition cost across the board. Chapters Sixteen and Seventeen discuss respectively “what schooling could and should be like” and the ideal “curricula and order of presentation.”
“If education is to be vastly improved,” concludes Bernstein, “parents—and nobody else—must have 100 percent control over what is and is not taught to their children.”
Bernstein’s book is written with in-depth knowledge and understanding of the problems as well as masterful eloquence. It reads as a fast-paced thriller; yet it swiftly brings the reader back to reality with its painstaking statistics and wealth of factual information. It evokes just indignation when recounting the horror stories of modern educational failures; yet it inspires cautious hope that we can restore the standards of excellence and noble purpose of American education through reinstating the phonics method and curricula with proven success; exercising complete parental control; and privatizing the public school system.
Why Johnny Still Can’t Read or Write or Understand Math: And What We Can Do About It is a must-read for anyone who cares about American education and the future of our country and humanity in general. Education is the long-term battleground for saving the West. We can keep treating the symptoms of the irrational anti-American indoctrination that is destroying our institutions, but in order to succeed in disarming it, we must also address the root cause of the disease.
The root cause is the toxic progressive/Marxist/totalitarian ideology that dominates the education of our children from kindergarten through graduate school. It has infected mainstream media, government institutions, and even private corporations. In contrast, Classical liberal arts education has proven invaluable in teaching students how to think and write, partake of ancient wisdom, and understand their innate rights and freedoms as human beings as well as American citizens. Once we return to sanity and the time-honored models of meaningful learning that trains the mind, we will no longer produce semi-educated “elites” that despise their nation and reject the proven paragons of political and economic liberty.
Even when possessing detailed factual knowledge in a narrowly specialized area, these “elites” are not accustomed to exercising free thought; nor do they appreciate the centuries of wisdom and intransient principles that lie beneath the American founding. As President Reagan famously remarked regarding leftist intellectuals, “The trouble … is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
Dr. Bernstein’s book makes a powerful case for reforming American education, empowering parental choice and free enterprise, and restoring the meaningful purpose of our schools.
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
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Comments
Many thanks to Nora for this book review!
Some nit picks:
The photo is of a previous (worthy) book with a similar title and content.
The idea that there is a conflict between indoctrination and critical thinking is false. The question is “indoctrination into what?” An empty mind cannot engage in critical thinking.
Indoctrination into Western Civilization, a combination of Greek philosophy and the Judeo Christian tradition, is necessary for the continuing existence of our constitutional republic. However, using government coercion to achieve it will always fail because it violates the essence of the subject matter. This is why the government must be removed from the educational process. I think the book is compatible with this goal since it promotes privatization of the education system, and homeschooling.
“Why Johnny Can’t Read” was first published in 1955 (before I was born!). So the problem is long-standing and recognized. The grift in the govt. education infrastructure must be dismantled before anything will be done about it.
“If the Americans had not been gradually accustomed to govern themselves,”
We have been gradually being accustomed to government by the Feds and not the State and local. This is what needs to change.
I am so pleased that you are paying attention to this issue! Please forgive my lengthy comments.
That said, I suggest the following reading.
“Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools” by Chubb and Moe. Explains the problem with education by government monopoly bureaucracy – The One Best System. The first half is the most useful part.
“Disestablishment a Second Time”, Skillen ed. This book explains the sordid history of our system of government schools. It has always been totalitarian and socialist.
https://blogs.cornell.edu/envirobaer/publications/why-a-functional-definition-of-religion-is-necessary-if-justice-is-to-be-achieved-in-public-education/
Explains why “religion” and “education” are inseparable, and why “religious neutrality” is a pernicious myth.
For a really far-out experience, “The Two Income Trap” by Elizabeth and her daughter. Explains the effect of our system of government run school districts on family bankruptcy (Warren’s area of actual expertise). I would like to see some enterprising reporter (as opposed to “journalist”) ask her about this book.
Here’s my book on how to fix American education.
1) Get rid of the teacher’s union and fire every teacher with a class full of kids not proficient at grade level
2) Hire teachers that actually care about educating kids
There. #1 bestseller.
Number 1 is not fair. There are truly dedicated teachers who are stuck with the output of the ghetto. I’ve been in these classrooms myself and seen this firsthand. There might be two or three kids there that want to learn, of the rest of them are making chaos. Eventually, these teachers give up but quitting, or just turning on the classroom television set to some distractive program that preferably has a minority cast. That just keeps the wild animals More calm until they bell rings and they can get rid of the kids. Then they get the next ones when they come in after the next bell rings.
The feed stock is the problem. Not all of the teachers, whether union or not, are bad.
This is because our government bureaucratic monopoly – the “One Best System” – is broken by design. Children with ADHD should not be in a school designed for children without ADHD (an unremitting requirement for unbroken attention for hours). Children who are intentionally disruptive should not be in the classroom.
But there are no alternatives in the “One Best System”. It will not remove those students for two reasons: (good) They don’t want to leave them with no educational possibilities, (bad) Funding for the school is based on the number of attending students.
School choice will not solve all problems for everyone, but the current system is an all around disaster.
I share your concern for good teachers in a broken system. Most of them either leave or become broken themselves.
Thus, why parents need to be held accountable for the behavior of their children. (Medical exceptions, like autism spectrum, notwithstanding. But that is a whole other educational topic.). There’s a reason I was more scared of what would happen when I got home than anything the school could do to me.
Thats my beef with demanding public school with no alternatives.
Another aspect of the current educational system is that it was designed to create little worker bees, trained to do as they’re told, not question authority, and for heaven’s sake not do any of that dangerous critical thinking stuff.
Worker bees certainly don’t need to study the classics and become men of letters; such is unsuitable for peasants and serfs.
The democrats have never lost their taste for slavery.
It’s based on the German model. Hence “kindergarten”.
Inequality finds its roots in unequal education, and Democrats can’t blame Republicans for this debacle; they have owned the decline of education since the 60’s.
This was fed and nurtured by the hopefully now defunct Dept. of “Education.”
“The root cause is the toxic progressive/Marxist/totalitarian ideology that dominates the education of our children from kindergarten through graduate school.”
Unfortunately, it’s worse than that. Not only do communists/racial socialists control most American institutions, but those who call themselves “conservatives”/republicans/”traditionalists” are no better. The latter groups are dominated by class hatred, such that if you don’t have their class and educational background, nothing you have to say counts. You are an “unperson,” even if your arguments and research are vastly superior to theirs.
Everything old is new again, “Why Johnny Can’t Read” was mandatory reading for several classes back when I was in college.
We have had the tools to teach reading mastery for every child for 120 years, but it takes work – not dog and pony shows or high dollar curated reading programs that are sold, retired and sold repeatedly soaking up billions in taxpayer dollars.
I always compare the quandary of teacher performance to buying new tires for your car. When you pay for new tires, you expect 4 new tires to be installed, properly inflated and balanced. If the tire store only replaced 3 tires and 2 are low on air and the 3rd has a violent shimmy, you would insist on a refund. First, the store didn’t do the job they were hired to do and Second, they lose your trust because they did a very bad job and still sent you down the road with an unsafe vehicle. At no point, do we blame the car for not wanting to be repaired. Yet, everyday, it is considered acceptable for schools to have a 25% or more students who cannot read and 50% unable to do so proficiently. Even the ones who are on grade level are shakey. Everyone who allows these kids to move on without the basic skills gets compensated and promoted. When the public speaks out about it, we are told that the children and parents are at fault, not the people who failed at the job they were hired to do.
Is my view oversimplified….. maybe, but I did teach for many years and left because of an administration that demanded and rewarded the dog and pony show, not the actual nuts and bolts of students mastering their skills.
heres how you do it:
stop the public funding of education
direct payments will create a more business like arrangement where there is no more middle man and parents have to make the decisions that directly affect their,, not the governments,,but their own children
too poor to pay??
thats where the *morally superior* ( their words) left wing comes in and pays the teachers directly
its all a contract ;all enforceable in a court of law
radical blmplo have been running america for over 7 decades now
what was once in the shadows has now come to the spotlight as the
2020 riots proved and jasmine crokett is proving currently
radical aka anti american western values can only win when good people do nothing
so we elected trump on the national level but it is in fact at the local level that the takeover is most strong
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