My attention turned to education this week after seeing the exhibit A Better Life For Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools That Changed America.

IMPACT OF EDUCATION

Rosenwald Experiment

Rosenwald and Washington banded together in 1917 to provide schools that served more than 700,000 rural black children in four decades. At that time, segregation forced rural Black students into substandard public schools. According to research by Tom Hanchett, in North Carolina alone, the state only spent $2.30 per Black student in 1915 compared to nearly $7.40 per white student.

The result? These schools produced economically and statistically significant effects on Black rural school attendance, literacy, school attainment, military test scores, earnings, hourly wages, and South-to-North migration.

The GI Bill Experiment

After World War II, critics of giving veterans a free education abounded. Robert M. Hutchens, President of the University of Chicago – “Colleges and universities …. will find themselves converted into educational hobo jungles . . . . [E]ducation is not a device for coping with mass unemployment.” Harvard University’s president, James B. Conant -lamented that the GI Bill failed “to distinguish between those who can profit most from advanced education and those who cannot” and expressed fear that “we may find the least capable among the war generation. . . flooding the facilities for advanced education.”

The result? For every $1 spent, the original G.I. Bill returned $7 to the economy.

EDUCATION IDEAS FOR THE FUTURE

Nationalization Of Educational Standards and Funding

We are not the same nation as we were in the 1700s. Our state and local system of education is dysfunctional. Standards of education vary across our country and funding is uneven. For instance, each state has its own standards for teacher certification. If you eliminated fifty state teacher certifying departments and set up one, we would save millions on state and local taxes. Then, teachers could move freely about the country rather than having to certify in each state where they want to teach.

Jump-Starting Careers

I believe the basics should be completed by sophomore year in high school. For the next two years the public education system should support students as they learn a trade such as electrical, plumbing, or medical technician or complete two years of college.

The outlook for electricians, for example, is positive. The current median pay (half earn less, half earn more) is $61,590 a year with 11% job growth from 2023 to 2033, much faster than average. Imagine walking off the high school graduation stage and into a well-paying career.

Critical Thinking Skills

Today’s citizens need to be able to evaluate the myriad of information that is flung at us daily. The key to this ability is to incorporate critical thinking skills into our curriculum.

According to the University of Louisville, “Critical thinking has been described as an ability to question; to acknowledge and test previously held assumptions; to recognize ambiguity; to examine, interpret, evaluate, reason, and reflect; to make informed judgments and decisions; and to clarify, articulate, and justify positions.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to manage both your own emotions and understand the emotions of people around you. There are five key elements to EI: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.

Emotional intelligence is a critical skill for success in the workplace. One study found that individuals who have high emotional intelligence make $29,000 more a year than their peers who have low EI scores. Unfortunately, estimates are that only 36% of people have this ability.

These skills are learnable and should be a high priority in public education.

Financial Literacy

Did you know that one in five U.S. teens lack basic personal finance skills? Despite this, only two-thirds of the states require personal finance classes for high school graduation. Without these skills you may find yourself with poor credit, bankruptcy, or living paycheck to paycheck.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION

A solid education for every child in this country is critical for our well-being. We must work, as a nation, not to dismantle free public learning, but to make it stronger and align it with the needs of the 21^st century American.

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