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Why does this not surprise me?

The average American citizen flunked a civics test given by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. What could be worse than that? Our politicians, the ones running our country, did even worse.

How can the average American or our politicians be trusted with preserving our nation, our rights, if they don't even know what either entails?

This is the worst part for me:

The question that received the fewest correct responses, just 16 percent, tested respondents' basic understanding of economic principles, asking why "free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government's centralized planning?"

I blame the universities and the public schools. I mean, Marxist economic theory is routinely taught in classes but naming an economic institute after Nobel Prize winner Milt Friedman? Well now that's controversial.

That's scary, to think that the folks making the decisions in Washington DC and our state capitols have a poor understanding of history or basic economic concepts. No wonder we're in the mess we're faced with. The boobs in Congress went against basic economic principals and in the process screwed up the economy. Such are the wages of ignorance.

If you want to test yourself, the test can be found here.

In case you're wondering, I passed the test with a score of 33 correct out of 33, or 100%. I give credit to my parents and the public schools I attended (well before the disease that started afflicting them took root in the 1970's).

Sometimes synchronicity brings together stories that, on first glance, appear to be totally unrelated. But looking closer reveals there are some connections, though tenuous, where one story reinforces another.

In this case two stories about teachers, one in Massachusetts and the other in Tennessee.

The first deals with the paucity of male teachers in the Commonwealth, particularly at the elementary school level, where the ratio of female to male teachers in Massachusetts can be 4 to 1 or worse. There are questions about whether such an imbalance is causing problems, particularly when it comes to male students and how male and female teachers teach them and handle discipline.

At a time of increased emphasis on improving student achievement, especially in inner-city schools, education specialists are raising serious concerns that male flight from classrooms could be hindering boys' ability to learn.

A study by an associate professor of economics at Swarthmore College, which has been gaining national attention in the debate over single-gender classes, found that boys learned better in reading - a subject in which they typically struggle - when teamed with a male teacher. Similarly, girls did better in math and science with a female teacher.

Even more eyebrow-raising, the research questioned whether a predominantly female teaching force is causing more boys to be labeled as behavior problems because women may struggle in handling the sometimes rambunctious nature of boys. It also questioned whether boys may respond better to a coachlike sternness found in some male teachers.

While low pay has been cited as a cause for the decline in male teachers, there are other factors that many see as an even greater incentive for male teachers to leave the profession. The biggest one, particularly when it comes to elementary schools, is suspicion.

...[T]eaching, especially in the lower grades, is still largely perceived as a woman's job, requiring a nurturing personality that supposedly is not common among men. In other words, something must be wrong with the guy who likes working with children.

Is it any wonder why men are staying away from teaching? To be looked upon as a potential pedophile because they like to teach young kids has got to be wearing. It's also got to be frightening to male teachers, knowing all it takes is an accusation by a parent or student to end one's career even if the accusation is false.

And don't think it can't happen.

That brings us to the second story, that of a high school teacher in Knox County, Tennessee accused of statutory rape and sexual battery, suspended without pay for over a year, under suspicion and under a microscope. But recently all charges were dropped when the prosecutor's case against the teacher fell apart.

"Basically our case evaporated," said John Gill, special counsel to Knox County District Attorney General Randy Nichols.

Defense attorney Mike Nassios had unearthed evidence that called into question the account of [the teacher's] accuser and developed his own evidence that Gill said "explained away" what prosecutors had thought was evidence backing up the student's claim.

Was it a false accusation? No evidence was found to back up the accuser's claim. Does it really matter?

Assuming the teacher is truly innocent, where does he go to get his reputation back? Even though he has tenure, there's absolutely no guarantee he'll be able to get his job back. The school administration "was checking...into whether [he] remains an employee." Sounds iffy to me.

For all intents and purposes, his career as a teacher is over. No matter where he goes, the accusation follows. No school system in the country will want to take the chance on hiring him, knowing it could leave them liable to lawsuits by parents if there's even a hint of trouble, regardless of whether the teacher in question has done anything wrong or not.

Is it any wonder men would shy away from teaching as a profession? I know I would. Who needs that kind of BS? It seems to me it would be less stressful to be in combat rather than teaching under circumstances of perpetual suspicion.

(H/T Erik the Viking and Instapundit)

This is something I've believed for a long time: for most people college is a waste of time.

Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal:

First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn't meet the goal. We will call the goal a "BA."

You would conclude that your colleague was cruel, not to say insane. But that's the system we have in place.

Outside a handful of majors -- engineering and some of the sciences -- a bachelor's degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance. Even a degree in a vocational major like business administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to four years of barely remembered gut courses.

The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took them. They need a certification, not a degree.

The CPA exam is one example used to illustrate how certification would serve much better than a degree. Anyone can take the CPA exam. Anyone passing it has proven they know what they're doing. Plenty of people with degrees in Accounting, even from prestigious institutions of higher learning, fail the CPA exam. The degree doesn't mean you know your supposed area of expertise. Certification does.

I've known plenty of people with engineering degrees incapable of designing or analyzing designs worth a darn, and plenty of people without engineering degrees that were the best damn engineers I've ever had the privilege of knowing or working with. Engineering has something similar to the CPA called PE, or Professional Engineer. Like the CPA exam, it is a standardized exam that certifies the engineer is indeed a master in their field. It is not an easy exam to pass. If you pass it, you've proven you know your subject and can add the coveted P.E. after their name. (In case you're wondering, I have not taken the PE. I'm pretty decent engineer and I make a good living from it, but I doubt I'd pass it the first ten or twenty times I take it.)

There are plenty of people out there with college degrees that, once they have them, end up working so far outside their field of study it seems the degrees they have aren't worth they paid to get them. It's like the old joke that goes something like this:

The scientist asks "What laws of nature define why this happens and can I recreate it?"

The engineer asks, "How can I make this work?"

The marketer asks, "How many of these can I sell and for what kind of profit margin?"

The person with the BA in English asks "Do you want fries with that?"

Yes, it's silly, overblown, and does not reflect reality...or at least it didn't only a few decades or so ago. So many people have degrees they spent four years and a lot of money to obtain, yet they haven't necessarily opened the doors to success that so many of us have been told will open once we have a degree. In reality, the degrees mean nothing. It's what you know. It doesn't matter how you came about that knowledge or experience, only that you have it. That should be the real criteria for so many of the so-called professional jobs out there. Certification is one way to prove that you do have that knowledge and/or experience.

Is it likely changing to certification rather than a degree will ever come to be? I doubt it. But it is something worth thinking about. And it might save a lot of people four years worth of time and money that could be better used to actually learn what it is they need to know.