Episode 332 Show Notes- The Push for Lowering Standards Will Lead to Failure
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Episode Description
Over the last few years, we have witnessed a push for lowering standards in the name of improving access and equity. The idea of lowering standards is not only ludicrous, but it is insulting to every single American regardless of race, religion, gender, and class. A functional nation-state establishes values and standards throughout society. Lowering standards is nothing more than promoting failure. Given where we are as a country, now is not the time to advocate for lowering standards as they are more important now than ever before.
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Show Notes- The Push for Lowering Standards Will Lead to Failure
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Intro
Welcome to The P.A.S. Report Podcast.
I have a very important topic I want to discuss today because it goes to the core of our lives, our families, and our society. It is something that can make or break a nation. It’s something our survival depends on.
It is a simple thing. One that’s a natural part of any society. It’s a thing called standards.
A functional nation-state establishes values and standards throughout society. However, over the last few years, we have witnessed a push for lowering standards in the name of improving access and equity.
It is quite insane when you think about it. When we lower standards, we are saying that we as Americans are not capable human beings, and therefore the bar has to be lowered so you can achieve success and accomplishment. But when we are lowering standards are you really achieving anything? Are you succeeding? Or is it the easy way out?
Even more insulting is how those calling for lowering standards, typically do so through a racial lens.
Think about what they are saying- that the color of your skin determines how capable you are. That the color of your skin determines your destiny, your success or failure. Not you or your life choices. How horrible is that? How insulting is that? I mean if we are going to talk about racism, that sounds pretty racist to me.
But understand, that the calls for lowering standards are now bleeding into all aspects of daily life. There’s no such thing as perfection anymore. Now it’s about doing the bare minimum and a half-assed job. Just enough to get by.
It’s crazy to me. It used to be that no matter what someone did as a trade, they wanted to be a master at their craft. Now, everything is rushed. In and out as long as the imperfections aren’t too noticeable.
It doesn’t matter what industry we talk about. standards are being lowered across the board. Nowhere is this clearer than in academia. Just take a listen to these loons taking an oath upon entry into the University of Minnesota med school program.
Sound Clip University of Minnesota
That sounds more like a cult to me, not a group of deep thinkers looking to advance medicine in the 21st century. I have no problem where they talk about the healing methods of indigenous communities because I think too often, we push powerful drugs and treatments that can poison the body while overlooking natural healing remedies. What I do have a problem with is this idiot, and the idiots reciting the oath, mentioning structural violence, white supremacy, and colonialism in the healthcare system.
I want these students to be trained in the practice of medicine, not critical race theory. Would you rather have a doctor that can competently work on your heart or a doctor that’s trained in pronoun usage? It’s so ridiculous.
Lowering standards is nothing more than promoting failure, and given where we are as a country, now is not the time to advocate for lowering standards. Standards are more important now than ever before.
That’s going to be the focus of this episode, but before I get to it all be sure to subscribe to the podcast, and if you find the show informative, share it with your family and friends. Also, I want to hear what you think. Write a review on Apple podcast or drop me an email at podcast@pasreport.com.
Lowering Standards in Education
For years, the education system has been dumbed down. It surprises me that very few people want to talk about how our entire education system has collapsed. Not just on the K-12 level, but in higher education as well.
Speak to any professor at any school that’s been there for a long time, and they will tell you that the quality of work students submit has significantly declined compared to previous generations. It doesn’t matter what the ideology of the professor is, we are all witnessing the same thing.
Students are not coming into college with the proper knowledge of the subject material. They are not meeting basic proficiency levels. The work ethic sucks. It’s terrible, and since the coronavirus, it has only gotten dramatically worse. It doesn’t matter the school. Nearly every institution has witnessed this same thing, from the community college level up to the private universities and Ivy League institutions.
Very few students take initiative or have pride in their work. Many are satisfied as long as they pass the course. To some, it doesn’t matter if they barely pass, as long as they get their credits.
Academia, as a whole, is in a downward spiral, and it’s all through self-inflicted wounds. The results are clear. Worldwide our rankings continue to drop, not only on the K-12 level but in higher education as well.
Just last week, The Times Higher Education released its World University Rankings. For the fifth straight year, our universities have declined in the standings. At the same time, we are declining in the rankings, our biggest and most dangerous competitor, communist China, continues to gain ground and move up in the rankings.
This should be setting off alarm bells, but sadly it’s not. Instead, what are they talking about? They are talking about further dropping standards throughout the education system, all in the name of improving access and equity.
Lowering Standards Because Courses are too Hard
I recently wrote a piece, published on Fox News, explaining that the biggest scandal in academics was lowering standards. One of the things that inspired me to write the piece was when New York University terminated Maitland Jones Jr.’s contract because students complained that his class was too hard.
This is a guy who was a tenured professor at Yale University. He wrote one of the premier textbooks for organic chemistry. His academic credentials are stellar, but when 82 of his 350 students signed a petition stating the course was too difficult, the cowards in the administration decided to sack him. According to the students, “a class with such a high percentage of withdrawals and low grades has failed to make students’ learning and well-being a priority.”
Completely ridiculous. I remember when I was growing up, if I failed a class and tried using the excuse that the teacher was bad, that the class was too hard, or that everyone failed, my mother would have none of that. She would say she didn’t care if everyone failed. She didn’t care if it was a bad teacher. She didn’t care if the course was too hard. She made clear that it was my responsibility and that I needed to figure it out.
In life, you’re going to have bad teachers just like you are going to have bad bosses. Sometimes you don’t get to pick and choose, and you just have to get the job done. That’s how the real world works, and if you can’t adapt and be flexible, that’s on you. You suck it up and deal with it.
But we have created an entire generation of fragile youth that doesn’t know how to. They are good at complaining, but not so good at problem-solving and overcoming obstacles. Rather than let them fail, and learn from that failure, we are removing the obstacles which don’t serve anyone well.
Placating a Fragile Population
What are we teaching these students in the process? That if they complain loud enough, they’ll get their way? Great, so we can keep feeding the entitlement culture and capitulating to self-entitled spoiled brats. What can possibly go wrong? Sooner or later reality will set in and these types of people won’t be able to survive because they’ve been pampered. Don’t ever capitulate to the mob. Every time you capitulate, the mob keeps growing.
Sorry, but students shouldn’t be the ones in charge of the classroom. We are not customer service representatives that exist to placate your fragile egos, and if a professor is hard, too bad. That’s a part of life.
Students are the Ones Being Shortchanged
But what these students don’t realize is that they are the ones getting screwed by lowering standards. We already know that proficiency levels were disgraceful pre-Covid, and they are even worse now. When we get the actual numbers, we will be horrified.
Consider that before the coronavirus, only 37% of graduating high school seniors that went to college were able to read, write and do math at the college level. Too many students don’t know basic facts in science and history. They don’t know anything about our founding. They don’t know anything about our government. They have no idea what their role is in the system.
It’s a sad state of affairs. It’s as if the K-12 system has given up. When you factor in the coronavirus, it’s far worse. Harvard University estimates that students are behind where they should be by anywhere between 20-50%. And some students are behind a full academic year.
But here’s the critical part. Even knowing that the majority of students are 20-50% behind where they should be, and knowing that some students are a full academic year behind where they should be, how many students got left back? The sad reality is that most of these students, if not all, were simply cycled through to the next grade even though every single person with two brain cells knows that they did not grasp the core concepts they were supposed, and they are not going to be able to grasp core concepts going forward.
See, that’s the dirty little secret. Everyone in academia knows that this problem is going to get much worse, but God forbid administrators and the bureaucrats at state education departments and the U.S. Department of Education listened to teachers.
Students are not prepared academically. Hell, they aren’t even prepared socially, yet we will continue lowering standards and make sure they continue to be cycled through the system.
Those advocating lowering standards are cheapening our profession, and it is the responsibility of every faculty member to speak out. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the K-12 system or higher education. This is a disaster.
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How are Standards Being Dropped?
There are several ways that standards are being dropped, and listen, it varies from school district to school district. Some are crazier than others, and as far as I am aware, there hasn’t been any type of studies to determine the number of districts this is happening in. That’s what makes it so difficult to track.
But we do know that some schools are lowering standards when it comes to grading. In certain schools, students may receive a passing test grade for answering 50% of the questions correctly. See in my day, and the way I currently operate is that that’s a 50. If you only know half the material, you’re only going to get credit for half the material.
Some are advocating for schools to do away with grades entirely and move towards a pass/fail system, which is insane and unrealistic.
When it comes to writing assignments, many schools are allowing students to rewrite an assignment multiple times before a grade is attached. The teacher continually provides feedback, and in some cases directly tells the student what corrections to make, and after 3, 4, or 5 rewrites, the student will get the A.
All of these things have contributed greatly to grade inflation. We are seeing grade inflation throughout K-12, and we are seeing it in higher education as well.
Consider the proficiency levels I said before. It is an indisputable fact that students lack basic proficiency by the time they get to college. Some will argue that the proficiency levels have remained flat. They haven’t deviated in 40 years, at least until the coronavirus.
While on the surface, the numbers would appear flat, you have to factor in dropping standards. What I mean by that is while the proficiency levels in reading may not have changed that much in 30 years, the standards have changed, and so have the teachers. Consider that the typical high school textbook, including for juniors and seniors, 11th and 12th grade, these textbooks are written at a 7th or 8th-grade level.
How many of you were aware of that? Any normal person would think that if it is a textbook for a 12th-grade course, then it should be written at a 12th-grade reading level otherwise what is that student doing in a 12th-grade course if they are unable to do 12th-grade work? This is why the average college freshman reads at a 7th-grade level.
Even the Department of Education acknowledges that only 37% of graduating high school seniors are academically prepared for college. Yet, while only 37% of graduating seniors are prepared for college, 61.8% of these same seniors will go directly to college according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And that number has dropped. Pre-covid, the number of graduating seniors going directly to college was closer to 70%.
Here’s another kicker for you. From the 1940s to the mid-1990s, the average college student’s GPA was 2.5. From the mid-1990s to the present day, the average GPA increased to 3.1. How does that make sense? If students know less than their predecessors, how are they overperforming academically?
The question is even more important when you look at the changes in student behavior during that same period. Students today read much less than ever before. According to a 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation study, students today spend an average of 38 minutes of their time reading. Compare that to the 7.5 hours they spend on entertainment media, and you see how what’s prioritized. Now, this was a 2010 study, so I suspect the numbers are even more horrific today, especially among the young.
They are reading less and performing at lower standards, yet they are getting higher grades. That’s what I mean by grade inflation, especially when we know that many who graduate college still are unable to develop a cohesive argument, analyze and interpret information, and show little improvement in their ability to think critically.
But let’s keep pretending everything is fine. Right?
Critics of mine, those that call for lowering standards, will accuse me of lying. They will accuse me of misrepresenting. They say they are not asking teachers to lower standards. They argue that they are providing support to create an equal playing field for all students to achieve success. That this is equity.
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Lowering Standards of Acceptable Behavior
It’s not just about lowering standards in academics. We have also lowered standards when it comes to acceptable student behavior.
Throughout the country, there has been a push in many districts to do away with strict disciplinary actions against students who violate the codes of conduct. Now, why would they do this? Why would any sane person advocate to lower disciplinary actions?
Equity of course. See, the loons look at everything through the prism of race, and they say that black students are disproportionately affected by code of conduct policies. Here’s the amazing part…they are not saying that black students are being wrongly targeted and disciplined for things they didn’t do.
Again, to normal people, the color of one’s skin is irrelevant. Whether it’s a black student, a white student, a Hispanic student, or an Asian student, they should all be treated the same. The only thing that maybe administrators should take into account is whether the student has ever been in trouble before. Again, it has nothing to do with color, race, ethnicity, or gender, and everything to do with a student’s behavior.
You are not helping anyone by going easy on students that violate the code of conduct of the school. You are doing a disservice to the student, the parent, the teachers, and the student body as a whole.
But it’s worse than that. Since the days of zero-tolerance have been done away with, we are witnessing increasing violence, both verbal and physical, toward teachers and administrators. (USA Today) The failure of schools to hold these students accountable has had a chilling effect. More importantly, as administrators take a more laissez-affaire approach to discipline, teachers see the lack of support and it begins to affect the quality of their work.
Many studies suggest that violence, verbal and physical, against teachers leads to increasing sick times being used, and creates a disconnect between faculty, administration, and students. The fact is that administrators should have their teacher’s backs, and when they fail to, it demoralizes the entire profession.
We talk about a teacher shortage, and I’ll get into that more in a minute, but we talk about a teacher shortage, who the hell in their right mind would want to be a teacher that’s routinely getting disrespected by 12, 13, 14, 15, 16-year-old kids? Who would want that? Especially if you say anything and complain about the behavior, then you become the problem. It’s completely ridiculous. Not only have the administrators abandoned the teachers, but so have other teachers that promote this crap.
And I am not saying that the disciplinary actions are all that effective. They’re not. You talk about in-school suspension. Okay, so now a student doesn’t have to go to class, and when enough students get an in-school suspension, it’s more of a party, a hangout, than anything else. Then you have out-of-school suspension. Another joke. That’s like a vacation for a student. So the kid gets to stay home while a parent or the parents are working, and they play video games all day and scroll through their social media. Wow, that’s some punishment.
See if it were up to me, the disciplinary action should be something that either benefit the school or community, or the punishment is so bad that the student will never want to misbehave again. If a student violates the code of conduct, fine, here’s a toothbrush and you have to scrub every one of the toilets in the school or every tile in the hallway. Give them a scissor and make them cut the grass. Things of that nature. You’d be surprised at how it may have an immediate impact on student behavior, and guess what, it makes the student take ownership of what they did.
But God forbid we institute personal responsibility and integrity into our disciplinary actions. Some poor snowflakes may get offended. However, you would be creating far more functioning human beings who will add value to society, rather than become a blight on society.
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Teacher Exodus vs. Teacher Shortage
Now I want to get to this idea of a teacher exodus that we’ve been hearing so much about creating a teacher shortage throughout the country. The idea of a teacher exodus is a myth. While the data isn’t great, Brown University did a study and they found that while a slight increase in teacher turnover is a distinct possibility, they did not find any evidence to validate a widespread teacher exodus.
That’s not to say teachers aren’t leaving the profession. Many are. Many are looking to retire as soon as they are eligible, and some are leaving sooner than that. Combine that with the fact that the number of college students studying to become teachers is now less than half it was 50 years ago, and there you have the recipe for creating a teacher shortage.
This raises two important questions. The first question is why are teachers so eager to leave the profession? The second question is why are so few younger people looking to get into the profession.
Some say that teachers are leaving due to low pay. That’s a bunch of nonsense. Pay is based on state and district. Some districts don’t pay well, and other districts do pay well. I will always advocate for teachers to get paid more, but they’re not leaving because of money.
They also get a lot of perks. The hours are great. They get weekends off, holidays off, Christmas break, winter break, spring break, summers off, and good benefits. However, those that got into this profession for the perks, did it for the wrong reasons. These people got into the profession for themselves as opposed to the students, and when a teacher is teaching for the wrong reasons, they will fail. More importantly, it harms the students because the teacher won’t be all that effective.
Also, teachers that got into the profession thinking it’s about imparting their ideology to the students are harming them. These are not educators, they are ideologues. They are not effective in the classroom and contribute greatly to dumbing down the student body.
No one goes into teaching to become rich. Real teachers go into the profession because they have a love for education and a dedication to the students.
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Bureaucrats
I’ve heard from a lot of teachers throughout the country, and I rarely hear that they want to leave because of the money. One of the number one reasons many teachers want to leave is because of the politicization of the classroom.
They are tired of bureaucrats, most of whom never taught in a classroom, being the ones to dictate policies and curriculums. When we are talking about lowering standards, part of the reason our education system has collapsed is that bureaucrats are pushing ideology into the curriculums, and while college professors may have a lot of leeway in how they teach their courses and what to teach, K-12 teachers don’t have nearly as much.
There are so many people that think that all teachers are far-left radicals, but that isn’t true at all. Most teachers are middle of the road, and there are even quite a few that are conservatives. They want to focus on the subject material and not get involved with political nonsense.
Just to give you one example, over 4,500 schools adopted materials to push the 1619 Project, even though the 1619 Project has been thoroughly debunked by both liberal and conservative historians and scholars. As a history teacher, imagine being forced to push something you know is a lie. It’s demoralizing.
Think about it this way, the entire education system has collapsed, and what is the debate taking place within the education system? The raging debate shouldn’t be a debate at all. We shouldn’t be having a conversation or even considering teaching sexuality to children. Students can’t even read or write. They don’t know basic facts. Yet, these people want to push sexuality inside and outside the classroom. It’s completely ridiculous.
Seeing school-sponsored drag shows for little kids- it’s disgusting. I have two sons, both young. Imagine, I hosted an event with strippers. They don’t get fully nude. They stay in their bikinis, dancing, gyrating, and twerking. Think of the outrage. Think of how quickly I would be canceled. Now I would never do that because I’m a responsible and normal human being, but somehow, we are supposed to pretend that grown men, wearing little and rubbing up against kids is okay? It’s horrific. So, if you’re in one of these districts that promote these things, of course, you’re going to begin to feel disaffected and want to leave.
A Changing Dynamic
Factor that in with the worsening behavioral problems of students, especially post-covid, and it’s a toxic mix. As teachers, we’ve been witnessing a major change in social and behavioral issues with students for over a decade. The problem has grown worse with technology, and as a teacher, why should I have to compete with smartphones for my student’s attention?
And of course, if any teacher tells students that they can’t bring their phones to class, the parents and administrators will raise holy hell. You have students that disrespect the teacher. Students hitting teachers. Students fighting in the middle of the classroom.
And what does everyone do? Rather than stop the insanity, they take out their phones and record it. It is out of control, and for God’s sake, you had a “slap a teacher” Tik Tok challenge out there. How come the media hasn’t reported on that? It’s no wonder you have some who want to leave the profession. It’s also obvious why they have trouble getting new teachers.
These types of issues have metastasized over the last two years because of the dictatorial edicts that destroyed an entire generation of youth. As a direct result of these policies, students are way behind developmentally and this trend will continue. We are seeing lower scores on cognitive tests. Younger students have a smaller vocabulary and much more issues when it comes to speech. Depression and anxiety have skyrocketed.
Throughout all this, teachers are told to march forward and continue cycling students through the system. They are told that they need to understand that the students may be going through something in their life. That we have to be more mindful of the households they may be coming from. Sorry, but no we don’t. Teachers aren’t trained to be a psychologist. They never signed up to become behavioral specialists, and the fact that so many want to excuse this behavior and cover it up is unacceptable.
You have parents, administrators, and students who think they shouldn’t have to turn in homework. That they should get unending extensions on their work. That every test should be open-book. Talk about lowering standards. It’s the everyone gets an A mentality. If everyone gets an A, then no one complains even as we are heading down a path toward societal destruction.
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Lowering Standards of Teachers As Well
Not only are they lowering standards for students, but due to the number of open positions, some want to lower standards on teacher credentialing. If we move forward with this, it will only make the problem worse. Legislation dropping the college requirement for teachers is shortsighted and would only worsen student proficiency levels, which are already at historic lows.
Arizona passed a law stating that a student currently in college should be able to teach in the classroom. That’s ridiculous. Part of the problem we have is that there are too many teachers who are no longer experts in the subject material. As a teacher, not only is the subject material important, but classroom management is important as well, particularly for students in their younger years. Teaching is a craft that takes years to hone one’s skills, and the college requirement is essential to understanding the basic foundations of education and pedagogy.
This is not to say that teaching credentials should not be reformed. I don’t believe a master’s degree in education is of any value. Rather, teachers should be experts in their field. All master’s degrees should be focused on the subject material. We already have a new generation of teachers who were not properly trained on the subject material and substitute the material with their ideology. Teachers need to have command over the material through the vast knowledge they acquired in their subject field.
I am not opposed to a temporary measure where professional experience is substituted for a college degree. When someone can bring 20, 30, 40 years of real-world experience into the classroom, it can be enriching to the student body, but this is by no means a permanent solution. The big part of the problem with teachers, particularly college professors, is that they are clueless about the real world. They got their undergraduate degree. Then went on to grad school to get their master’s or Ph. D.s, and they go right into the classroom without any experience in the real world. They operate in the world of theory, and theory is very different from reality.
I believe that we should require real-world experience before teaching. I believe we should pay teachers more, and at the same time, make it much more difficult to become a teacher. That will weed a lot of the bad ones out.
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Closing
We have to do something. When you’re lowering standards in academia, you are lowering standards in all professions. Are you really going to be comfortable visiting a doctor when you know the standards have been dropped? Are you going to be comfortable with your lawyer? Would you rather get on a flight with the best pilots, or would you rather get on a plane knowing that pilot licensing standards have dropped?
Not for nothing, but when we look back at one of the greatest generations, the WWII generation, there’s a reason they get labeled that. It was a generation that understood what they were fighting for. It’s a generation that believed in American power and influence. It was a generation that understood what sacrifice meant.
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One of the more interesting aspects is that when you look at high school graduation rates, it’s not even comparable to today. Throughout the 40s, 50s, and 60s, graduation rates were between 40-70% increasing with each passing decade. It didn’t matter whether they graduated or not. Many still thrived and succeeded. Those that didn’t graduate had street smarts, common sense, survival skills, grit, and determination. There were brilliant thinkers like Milton Friedman. Brilliant generals like MacArthur, Patton, and Eisenhower. Presidents like Eisenhower, and JFK.
Today, high school graduation rates are over 90%, but as I stated, we aren’t educating students. Instead, we are simply cycling them through. Even worse not only aren’t they getting a great academic education, but many also lack common sense. Many lack street smarts. Many lack grit and determination.
The idea of lowering standards is insulting to every single Americans, and we see the results every day, just look at General Milley. We are plenty capable of meeting challenges and overcoming obstacles. Keep the standards high and encourage students to meet those standards. That will allow us to reverse this horrible trend.
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