Can America's Schools Be Saved

Other than students, no group of people has been more affected by the failure of American education than teachers. Tens of thousands of dedicated, hard-working, and intelligent teachers walk into their schools every day with the intention of helping children learn. Usually, those intentions are unrealized, and the teachers find themselves blamed for the failure. But why do they fail in the first place?

The failure of America's schools is all around us. Often, those who have worked the hardest to prevent that failure, classroom teachers, get blamed.  Unlike most books critical of American education, Can America’s Schools be Saved? was actually written by a veteran teacher.  It takes the position that real source of the failure is the philosophy behind American education. By unknowingly accepting the basic ideas behind John Dewey’s world view, reformers on both ends of American politics miss a fundamental reason that the school system so often fails to deliver on its promises. The solutions found in Can America’s Schools be Saved? are based on traditional understandings of human nature and learning. It is time to re-examine the methods that were abandoned in attempt to fix aspects of education that worked well, like punishments that focused on individual wrongdoing, memorization of actual facts, and a focus on the teacher as the transmitter of information. Can America’s Schools be Saved? raises questions that the educationists and educrats do not want raised, and proposes solutions that would put educational control back into the hands of parents, local communities, and the teachers who know those problems best.

Edwin Benson has endured many attempts to "transform the future of American education." A classroom History teacher since 1984, he once accepted that his education professors knew best how to reach young people, but slowly came to see that many of those teachings and the ideology behind them were just plain wrong. Now nearing retirement, he wants to pass his experience along to other teachers who know that the system is broken, and who are looking for ideas about how it can be fixed. Mr. Benson has a BA from the University of Michigan – Flint, and Masters’ Degrees from Barry University and the University of Maryland. An avid student of American History, he lives in York, Pennsylvania with his wife and daughter. Mr. Benson publishes a blog at www.traditionalistteacher.com.