The amount of information that the human race has documented has grown exponentially over time.
This burden of information that has accumulated is weighing down our ability to teach anything useful to anyone.
Until the written word (or symbols) information was passed down verbally in chants, stories, prayers, and songs. Information was practical and entertaining in many cases. Much time was devoted to the repetition of the information so that it could be learned. Specializing began at an early age with some of the young from the village learning to be a shaman and the ways of the herbs while others specialized in hunting or gathering while still others specialized in crafts or building.
In the modern world, especially in the United States our education system has been overtaken by influences that are more self serving than willing to serve greater society or the student.
In the early part of the 1900’s The United States made it mandatory to provide every child with an education up through High School (12th grade) while in Europe this was not universally the case. This is credited with much of the economic growth that occurred throughout the 1900’s in the US and the growth of the largest and most prosperous middle class the world has ever seen.
That era is over. The United States has 300 million citizens and the world has six billion people. That means that the United States is 5% of the worlds population. To maintain our leadership in the world we would have had to make the next levels of education as available as the first 12 years are. We would have had to educate all of our young until they are out of college. We failed. A gallant effort was put into place where it was said that every child can go to college if they get the grades and will only have to pay according to their ability. But that system does not work as advertised.
The education system failed in a much more significant way than opportunity to learn. It failed in information overload. Up until the second world war the history that was taught did not include half of what is taught today. Additionally what is taught to kids in the US about WWII encompasses both the Atlantic and pacific theaters. Kids in Japan are taught the history of WWII but the information on the Atlantic theater is almost nil. The kids in Germany are taught the history of WWII but the information on the Pacific theater is almost nil.
Legislated teaching hours. Special interest groups enact and get passed laws that require the schools to teach their subject of interest thus crowding out any other subjects that could be taught in that time. An example is the required teaching of The Holocaust that defines the hours that must be devoted to itin each grade in over 24 states now. The amount of hours has grown to over 10% of available time for history in many grades. While the holocaust is a significant event in WWII and in History in general it is not alone in it’s significance or horror on the human race in either case to warrant such special treatment. When my child was being taught WWII at one time the Holocaust was such a prominent feature that the teaching of WWI completely ignored all other similar genocidal campaigns completely. The fact that the genocide in of the Jewish civilians is 45/68 of the total amount of civilian lives lost in Europe makes this an even greater tragedy . The fact that the civilian loss of life in Russia alone is larger than ALL the lives lost in Europe yet is not taught because well during the cold war we never cared about Russia other than that they were EVIL.. In China the civilian loss of life is nearly equal to all the civilians killed in Europe with many of them in concentration camps much like those in Germany and being starved to death as well as being medically experimented on in as horrible if not more so ways than the Nazis did. (Notice I do not say that the Germans did those horrible things.) The Holocaust was horrible and must never be forgotten. But what of the other atrocities of similar repugnance such as the Japenese concentration camps for Civilian Chinese? Oh that’s right the Japanese are our friends so we just sweep that under the rug.
The mandatory teaching of Algebra to the second year level is now legislated in all high schools to the point that it alone is the responsibility for much of the students that drop out of high school. As a county we have completely forgotten that we need other skill sets. Simple algebra has and can be taught as shop math for metal working, carpentry, or other trades. Yet we still demand that all students learn polynomials, matrices, and conics as if they are all going to be engineers and scientists. The special interests have lost sight and caused the system to fail.