The Feld-Blog

In some ways, the Greeks were more politically and philosophically advanced than we are today. I think their education system may have been better too. They may have thought the sun went around the earth, they may have even thought the earth was flat, but at least they knew what education was for. I think America has forgotten. Athens made it the goal of its educational system to churn out good citizens -- people who could participate in politics. Our compulsory educational system seems aimless. Aristotle even said, “Man is a political animal” and believed that the goal of education was to teach a man (and it was men at this time) everything he needed to know to participate actively in politics.

For a few hundred years, extending up to, and a little bit past the industrial revolution, education was completely based on trades. The goal of the education system then was to groom a person through an apprenticeship to become a master of his or her trade. Even into the early years of American education, this was the goal. Since then however, apprenticeships faded into compulsory general education - reading, writing and ‘rithmetic, etc. Now that we are in compulsory education, what’s the point? We are trying to fulfill the American dream -- that anyone can grow up to be anything he or she wants to be. We only succeed, however, in producing a staggeringly low literacy rate, horrifically remedial math skills, few trade-transferable skills, and little to no concept of how our civic system works.

Apparently now, however, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) added an amendment to Public Law 108-447 designating September 17th (today) National Constitution Day. It is the birthday of the constitution and this declaration obligates public school to use part of the 17th (the 16th this year since today is a Saturday) to educate their students about the constitution and our civics system. It’s about time.

What is our educational system doing? Even college doesn’t really prepare people for the workforce very effectively. Maybe we should figure out what the focus is supposed to be. Here is my proposal. Our government puts a tremendous amount of power in the hands of the average American in the form of the vote. As it stands now, because of our two-party system and the infamous general American apathy, people are casting their votes with no thoughts for the consequences. People don’t understand the system. They don’t understand the candidates. They don’t understand what they are doing and they don’t have the knowledge base to make informed decisions. I say we take a hint from Athens. I say, as long are lobbing generalized education at the American youth, we take the opportunity to educate them about civics. Through this, we could still accomplish literary education, and the necessary math skills, but American youth would graduate knowing how to thrive in our culture rather than merely subsist on it.