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Along with the a deepening recession, Iraq war, dealing with immigration, andhealth care, the poor performance of the institution of American Educationcontinues as one of the most severe of the problems seen facing the nation. Yet,depending on the source, the definition of our unease varies widely.

The definition of Educations failure comes in many forms, largely based on thesource from which it originates. The victims (students) of course, have their owndefinition school is boring, useless, with its only value one of meeting friendsand, for some, participating in sports. Try asking a kid what he learned in schooltoday, and you will get the thousand mile stare, which quickly informs you ofyour membership in those who are ancient and intellectually challenged.

Parents have many complaints. If their children are in their teens or older, theyhave changed from the compliant, respectful children so fondly remembered, todefiant, lying, empty-headed, drug-using, promiscuous brats. (Think BeaverCleavermorphing into Damien). They are certain this condition results from their

kids heads being filled with all kinds of ideas that have no place in a traditionalAmerican home. Worse yet, if the parents are financially supporting a $25,000 ayear college tuition to get these results.

Teachers look at their unmotivated, cheating, noisy classes, with occasionaldeadly violence thrown in, and either leave the profession, or stay, longing for thedays when students were eager to learn, respectful, did their homework, andtrembled at the threat of a parent conference or a failing grade.

Employers come closest to describing the problem as they bemoan the inabilityof employees to perform their jobs, their lack of productivity, motivation, and

perhaps most of all, honesty and integrity. Remedial and on-the-job training havebecome the norm rather than the exception in the private sector. There no longerexists a ready pool of exceptional candidates for positions requiring knowledge,skill, and judgment, even with many more graduates coming from the collegesand universities. Instead, employers seek an increasingly immigration-restrictedpool of foreign technical and scientific workers. In Government, from thePresident of the United States all the way down to the lowliest DMV clerk, ragingand complete incompetence is the rule of the day. None of them can get it right,even when they try, Most of the time they dont even make the effort.

If all of the above is true, how have we made the enormous leaps in technology,

science, medicine, and consumer electronics during the last half century? Theanswer, it seems to me, is that this progress has resulted inspite of, rather thanbecause ofthe institution of Education as it exists this country. From therebellious drive that fostered the Revolution through the tenaciousness of the 19th

century inventors, to the non-conforming brilliance of Einstein and the purposefuldrive of the thousands of university academics and their graduate students, westill maintain a hugely rich source of intellectual power. Yet, we no longer standalone as the worlds leader in brain power.

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Billions of dollars, a giant bureaucracy (the Department of Education), newInternet instructional tools, and thousands of people have been thrown at thechallenge, with no evident reversal of this problem. All of the statements aboverepresent different perceptions of the results of educational failure, but fail tomake clear what is and has been missing. Thus, it seems appropriate to attempt

a specific description of those elements of the educational process which haveproved to be so intractable to any and all efforts to remedy them.

If we look at the research, and engage in honest discussion with the participants(educators and students) the missing or distorted pieces of the puzzle are reallynot that difficult to isolate. They come down to three specific failures:Neurobiology, Mission Ambiguity, and Untaught Skills. The origin of these failuresand how to fix them are well beyond the scope of this article; the dialog whichmust first be opened is to secure agreement about just what needs to be fixed.

Knowledge of Neurobiology:

Some things about the development of a growing brain are very evident. Youdon't expect a seventh grade student to handle the concepts of calculus. Youdon't need formal training in neuroscience to understand that this particular brainis just not ready to deal with such complex ideas.

Yet, parents and teachers are puzzled and concerned at the emotionally drivenbehavior demonstrated by high school students. Promiscuous sexual behavior,emotional outbursts, drug and alcohol use, and dangerous driving all come fromthe same cause.

That part of the brain responsible for careful judgment has far less power than

does the amygdala, the center of the brain driving emotional impulse andbehavior. Having peers around makes the situation even worse. Still, with all theresearch already assembled, many adults fail to accept that this is a part of theadolescents storm which must be weathered. Nonetheless, adults interactingwith this kid tend to react with anger, and mete out punishment, rather thanproviding responses appropriate to helping him/her gain control over theproblem.

Mission Ambiguity

Ask any high-school student to name something he considers important, that he

has learned today, this semester, or for that matter, during his school career todate. The chances are pretty good that he is going to have a difficult timeproviding a credible answer. Have friends who teach? Ask this: Suppose theclasses you teach were removed from your schools class offerings. What wouldstudents taking these classes have lost? If everyone is being honest, anyanswer other than conformity to social expectations is going to be hard to find.

Students spend their lives in public schools, (and a good chunk of theirundergraduate education) wondering just why they are there. For many, it is like

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learning a role for a play. You play your part, are rewarded with good grades,but when the curtain comes down (graduation), what are you left with? It seemsto me that this ambiguity, this undefined sense of purpose and value, explains agood deal of the failure of the institution to impart genuine learning. Without aperception of real value, motivation directed at making use of what is offered

simply is not going to be there.

Untaught Skills

American children spend something in excess of 20,000 hours attending schoolfrom the time they enter elementary education until they graduate some 12 yearslater. Yet, while repeatedly tested, it is really somewhat of a mystery whatlearning actually occurs. And there is a great deal of research that suggests thatapproximately 80% of everything taught in public education consists of rotememorization. Another 10 to 15% of learning is devoted to "problem-solving."This is stuff like solving an algebra problem, programming your computer, orbuilding a birdhouse. Students, in essence, learn rules to achieve certain desiredresults.

When you ask those who are critical of education what it is that students lack,you will repeatedly hear the phrase, "critical thinking skills." Indeed, those arethe skills most students are nevertaught. In 1957, an educational psychologist,Benjamin Bloom, forever changed our understanding of the possibilities forstructuring learning in our schools. He developed what has come to be known asthe Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. This taxonomy (classification system)categorized all learning, using a set of descriptive action verbs, making itpossible to objectively measure whether desired new behavior was or was notacquired by the learner.

Three categories of behavior, to which less than 10% of instructional effort isdevoted, comprise this sought after domain we call critical thinking. Using someof the definitions and examples as applied to employment settings, it is expectedthat most readers will agree that these tasks are while essential, are seldom, ifever a required element of the public school curriculum.

Analysis: Separate material or concepts into component parts so that itsorganizational structure may be understood. Distinguish between factsand inferences. BusinessExamples: Troubleshoot a piece of equipmentby using logical deduction. Recognize logical fallacies in

reasoning. Gather information from a department and select the requiredtasks for training.

Synthesis: Build a structure or pattern from diverse elements. Put partstogether to form a whole, with emphasis on creating a new meaning orstructure. Business Examples: Write a company operations or processmanual. Design a machine to perform a specific task. Integrate training

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from several sources to solve a problem. Revise and process to improvethe outcome.

Evaluation: Make judgments about the value of ideas or materials.Business Examples: Select the most effective solution. Hire the most

qualified candidate. Explain and justify a new budget.For the last forty years, schools have been using a variety of standardized testsand other measurement tools to compete in the mad scramble for funding, andescape the regulatory nightmares imposed by their respective state Departmentsof Education. During that period, these test scores have largely held their own ormade modest gains. School integration, affirmative-action programs, andbilingual education all have impacted to varying degrees on the performancescores which have been reported.

If schools are doing as well or a little better than they did 40 years ago atproviding instruction to students, what then serves to explain the increasing

discontent with school performance? The answer comes from the tremendouschanges in the American workforce during that same time. Our nationalrequirements have changed from a workforce largely composed of those whoperformed physical labor, or provided services to customers to one whichpredominantly requires knowledge workers. Those who are engaged inmanagement, scientific, technical, and creative work must have the skills listedabove, to a far greater degree then earlier required.

This problem will only be addressed if we apply the same principles and methodsof political activism we use to affect public policy, to influencing the curriculumand environment in which public schools operate. There are many pressure

points available to parents and teachers. School board elections, teacherunions, and Parent-Teacher associations all provide entry points to theeducational system. Yet, nothing will change until there is consensus of just whathas to be changed.