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I recently received the following e-mail:

To: Gary Beatty From: ************** Thu, Jun 1 at 12:28 PM

Mr Beaty

While researching I came accross your online post titled An educational failure on a website for a Colorado newspaper so i looked you up and found a website that has a lot of articles you wrote and a lot of them critcze education and teachers. Why do you hate education and teachers. The bio at the bottomof your articles says you have a doctorate so you have benifitted from education. whats you problem

A proud teacher

Setting aside that its obvious A proud teacher apparently does not teach grammar or composition (or maybe does which is scarier!) he/she/whatever asks a legitimate question.

What exactly is my problem with current public education?

I normally dont respond to such unsolicited comments on my columns, but in this case I did. Ill share my response:

Dear Proud Teacher,

Thank you for the question! I obviously dont hate education or teachers since (as you so astutely point out) I am both educated, and a teacher. You make the common mistake now-a-days of confusing hate with legitimate criticism.

Since I have no basis to doubt you are, as you claim, a teacher, I will make certain assumptions based on my life experience. You attended college, and at some point took classes in a education department of that college since that is the usual path to becoming a teacher.

Having been educated about education in such a department you are no doubt familiar with the writings of John Dewey, the so-called father of modern education theory. At the core of that theory is the idea that the role of teachers is to be, as Professor Thomas Sowell observes, agents of social change, not simply transmitters of a heritage of knowledge.

It is that core which I challenge.

Dr. Jordan Peterson describes our current education system as it has evolved since the early 1900s as a miracle of stupidity a sentiment I share based on my own experience in the post-WWII American public education system. I attended primary and secondary school in the 50s and 60s; undergrad college in 60s and 70s; then law school in the 80s.

I had a child in the public education system during the 70s, 80s and 90s grandchildren in the 2000s and now a great-grandchild in a public school. Thats over a half-century of participation in, and direct observation of, the miracle of stupidity which is getting progressively (no pun intended) worse.

The older I get, the more I realize with the exception of law school how little which is actually useful my public education taught me that I couldnt have learned through reading on my own. And how much more Ive learned from reading since.

I was fortunate that, by the time I was in the third grade, I was able to read well enough to begin to expand my knowledge of the world beyond what my teachers were telling me. Thats when my true education began.

My father, a self-employed plumber, only briefly attended college in the mid-1930s. My mom, an English war bride from WWII, had only the equivalent of the 8th grade education working class girls of her generation were given in the UK. I did not come from an academic upbringing.

As an adult, I learned from my parents that when I was in third grade, the school system decided that because of my working class background I should be put on track to learn a trade, like my father because that would be the limit of my intellectual capability. My parents trusted that the educators who decided my fate were experts who knew best.

Apparently the fact I could read several grade levels above my actual grade was an aberration because well there is no way my teachers could be wrong in their assessment of my intellect. They were professional educators after all.

Then in the 6th grade, when I got the highest grade in my class in reading comprehension, my fate was changed. The educators advised my parents that college was in my future, if I would simply learn to apply myself because they had determined I was an underachiever! (It apparently never occurred to these experts that they may have had something to do with that.)

So in the 7th grade, I was one of six students selected to be taught to speed read. This was during the Kennedy presidency. He could speed read so it became the latest fad among educators. ( I can still read very rapidly though not as well since Ive aged and have to deliberately slow down when reading for work or about very technical subjects.)

From that point on the educators told me in effect that if I didnt get into college I would be a failure. After all, they had all gone to college, so they knew best. But I continued to confound them.

Between being the class clown, and never turning in homework on time, the educators decided their first assessment of me as being limited intellectually had been correct after all. They told my parents so. But when my father asked why I was able to get As on exams the experts had no explanation. Nor were they able to explain how I scored in the top 95th percentile on the SAT.

By then my parents had figured out the educators didnt know their asses from their elbows, and told me to be whatever I wanted to be but if that meant going to college I needed to pay for it myself. The GI Bill took care of most of it. Working while going to school covered the rest, but it limited the time I had to devote to study.

It was my ability to read well that got me through both undergrad, and law school. The public schools taught me to read, but little else beyond the basics of math, history, geography, and science, etc. Everything else Ive learned about those subjects I acquired myself through reading.

Im living proof that if the schools simply focus on teaching reading skills, the rest of education can take care of itself. What I know, and write about, comes from my own reading NOT from what I was supposedly taught by educators.

Most of what I hear nowadays from teachers in the public schools (including universities) thats being regurgitated by students, is either politically distorted or flat out wrong. Schools are indoctrinating rather than educating.

So forgive me, proud teacher, if I dont take you (or your system) seriously. It needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch. Its producing narcissists with literacy skills limited to texting, who believe having a smart phone is a substitute for life experience and acquired wisdom.

The system isnt transmitting our heritage of knowledge. But the kids damn sure know which pronouns to use so I guess Deweys modern education theory about teachers being agents of social change can be considered a success by those who believe that nonsense.

As for the rest of us, considering the poor results that theory is producing (based on the low literacy rates of our current crop of students and young adults) were curious what is it you are so proud of?

Too damn many of them cant read well enough to educate themselves as I was able to.

But if the goal is to produce functionally illiterate serfs ignorant of even basic history geography, and certainly biology who can be kept compliant by the government through social media then I guess you have every reason to be proud.

I hope that answers your question.

Gary Beatty

Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.

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