Dr. Post's most recent books include: Beautifying The Ugly American, (Booklocker.com) and A Patriotic Nightmare (Sunstone Press, 2005).

It was another hot and humid summer morning and I was leisurely reading the morning newspaper and waiting for the local weather forecast in hopes of rain, a traditional Texas past time during summer months. As I reached for my coffee I was startled by a lady in a TV ad saying, “Your children are happy now, but they soon will return to school.”

Is Unhappiness Endemic to Learning? Or Can We Rebuild the System?

We are people who have always viewed schools, and schooling, as the main developmental incubator of our children’s minds. We have claimed that one can’t possess too much knowledge. The more a person knows the more creative he or she will be. Likewise, greater knowledge equals the greater probability that one will be all he or she can be. And all we’ve ever asked of our children is to maximize their potential.

In fact, the Renaissance Man, that person who has a knowledge of everything, has always been an ideal in America. And our public school curricula have historically been geared to producing minds that have a broad knowledge of subject matter. Is the process of learning painful?

I suspect it can be. Especially if one is taught to the tune of the hickory stick, as the old jingle notes. But that doesn’t account for our contemporary dilemma. There has always been a significant degree of discipline in the schooling process, as there usually is in teaching children to be good human beings in general. But before settling on the unhappiness derived from discipline as our culprit, we need to ask why there is so much agitation over schooling throughout the nation.

One doesn’t have to follows the media very closely or for too long to become aware of a wide spread concern felt by most Americans over our present day educational system. Neither does one have to be an education expert to conclude that schooling in America seems to have derailed somewhere along the line. Many citizens are unhappy, if not panicky, because they see signs that many graduates can’t seem to read, write, or manage basic math; those most fundamental skills of literacy.

The major targets for improvement as reported in the media and community conversations are: (1) the need for more modern and hi-tech buildings, (2) higher teacher’s salaries, (3) lower teacher-student ratios, and (4) replacing incompetent teachers with more competent teachers. And there are others. But these big four are usually seen as culprits in our children’s less than sterling educational performance on a national basis. Is this the reason many view schools as places of unhappiness?

Maybe, maybe not. Nonetheless, we may be willing to finance multi-million dollar sports pavilions, but whoa, not schools. Besides, as costs and needs increase every state governor, legislature, and school board in America scrambles to find a painless way to pay the bills. And increased tax proposals trigger angry taxpayers.

And angrier! While improved facilities, increased teacher salaries, better-trained teachers and such, may be critical needs, taxpayers want assurance that if they pony-up and pay for all these expensive items that all the problems will be fixed. In other words, once we spend jillions of dollars and have state-of-the-art facilities, highly paid master teachers in every classroom, and a teacher-student ratio of one to twenty, will every graduate be able to read, write, and speak good English, handle math efficiently, and think critically? Will we then think of schools as happy places? Probably not. Well, will all graduates be well grounded in American and world history, geography, literature, social, behavioral and natural sciences (including higher math), music, art, philosophy, and so forth? Probably not. Will each be bilingual? Probably not. Will schools be seen as happy places? Probably not. But don’t read that as an excuse for refusing to provide the very best school facilities and teacher corps we can. Why is it we can afford the best military apparatus in the world and can’t afford the best educational system for our children?

Yeah, why not? But, let’s not go down that road yet. I’ve got more questions. For example, if these costly remedies won’t produce something we view as a happy learning environment while cranking out intelligent and successful citizens, then taxpayers are really going to be irate. And justifiable so. But I think there is a piece of the puzzle that never gets any attention.

Is there ever. We assume the crux of the problem lies in the school system. Maybe it’s in our society at large. In other words, the overwhelming majority of people believe schools are failing, and thus, unhappy places, because of sorry teachers and, I suspect, sorry, overpaid administrators. And some claim that the problem is often compounded by obese educational administrations.

How true is all this? Are these really the causes behind our unhappy schools and why they fail to graduate people who can read, write, do basic math, and so forth? Or … is it yours and mine?

Although there’s enough truth to these commonly-held assumptions to keep these notions alive and well for years to come, I propose that the basic, underlying structural fault is not teacher’s salaries, not teacher-student ratios, not the facilities, not the curriculum, and not in any administration. Nope, the most serious fault is in our laps. Yours and mine. We are the ones that responsible for programming our children for failure!