Why Kids Aren’t Learned Good

Chris dives into the state of American education, critiquing the systemic failures of teachers' unions, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and societal neglect. Drawing on expert quotes, including Steve Jobs and Thomas Sowell, Markowski examines declining math scores, wasted funding, and the barriers preventing skilled professionals from teaching. With $1.2 trillion spent annually on education, he argues for bold changes, including empowering communities and reforming teacher requirements. www.watchdogonwallstreet.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Why kids aren't learned good? It's kind of making fun
I'm stealing from Zulander there, Remember that Derek Zulander school
for kids that don't read good anyway? Great piece put
together by Larry sand via American Greatness, Still stupid in America.

(00:39):
He starts off with a quote by Steve Jobs, and
this was back in nineteen ninety five where Steve Jobs
said the unions teachers' unions are the worst thing that
ever happened to education because it's not a meritocracy. It
turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened.

(01:00):
The teachers can't teach, the administrators run the place, and
nobody can be fired. It's terrible. I got a couple
more from you. I grabbed a couple from one of
my favorites, Thomas Soul. If you want to see the
poor remain poor generation after generation, just keep the standards
low in their schools. And make excuses for their academic

(01:21):
shortcomings and personal misbehavior. But please don't congratulate yourself on
your compassion. Also said, ours may become the first civilization
destroyed not by the power of our enemies, but by
the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they
are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence,

(01:44):
they are creating artificial stupidity. Back in two thousand and six,
John Stossel, who's working at ABC at the time. He
now works for Reason, put out a documentary entitled Stupid
in America, and it was about public education, and he

(02:08):
was talking about the things that were going on and
the need to face up to it. Again, this is
two thousand and six. The longer kids stay in American schools,
the worse they do in international competition. They do worse
than kids from poor countries that spend much less on education,
ranking not only behind Belgium, but Poland, the Czech Republic,

(02:30):
and South Korea. This should come as no surprise if
you remember that public education in the United States is
a government monopoly. Don't like your public school tough schools
terrible tough. Your taxes fund that school, regardless of whether
it's good or bad. That's why governmentopolies routinely fail their customers.

(02:52):
Union dominated monopolies are even worse since two thousand and six.
It's gotten better. No, it's gotten worse. This is the
latest basically the scores in the Recent Trends in International

(03:16):
Mathematics and Science study. It's an assessment administered to six
one hundred and fifty thousand fourth and eighth graders in
sixty four countries. The twenty twenty three tests. The results
just came out this past week revealed that average US

(03:36):
math scores decline sharply between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty three,
falling eighteen points for fourth graders twenty seven points for
eighth graders. This puts the United States at twenty two
out of sixty three education systems for fourth grade math

(03:57):
and twentieth out of forty five for eighth grade math.
The math scores reverted to performance levels of nineteen ninety five,
that was the first year the test was administered, meaning
any progress made has been for naught. We're an outlier

(04:20):
compared to other countries. Among the twenty nine education systems
that participated both in twenty eleven and twenty nineteen, the
US was the only one that saw widening score gaps
between top and bottom scoring students and both subjects and
both grade levels. Again, we spent one point two trillion

(04:44):
dollars on education in twenty twenty two. The bulk of
that went to elementary and secondary education. That's eighty nine
and ninety three dollars for every household in the United States,
four point six percent of our gross domestic product, fourteen
percent current expenditures. And what do we get more of

(05:11):
the same, Yeah, more of the same teachers. Unions can't
fire teachers, can't get rid of them, can't hire people
from outside the whole teacher industrial complex. I remember doing
a piece on this, writing about this years ago, and
it was an executive. If I'm not mistaken, it was

(05:33):
a chemistry company. I forget what it was. He was
in Texas and he retired CEO of this company. I
thought he was an engineer, had his doctorate in chemistry
and said, you know, I want to go back and
I want to teach high school. I want to go
back and teach high school. Would and let him. Didn't

(05:55):
have the requirements, the education requirement to take educationation classes.
My father was a school teacher, and he became a
school teacher before all of that BS. He was a
microbiologist who was a school teacher. Who do you want

(06:15):
teaching your kids learning chemistry from a chemist or from
a kid? That kind is an education degree? And then
they hand them a lesson plan and say, here, teach this.
But what do you what do you think is better?
How many people out there? I know I'm going to
a lot of accomplished people listening to this program. We're
always looking to give back. Welwis talk about build, create, protect,

(06:40):
and teach. Here that wouldn't say, hey, you know, I
teach a class or two a week. I can carve
that out. I can give back to my community. Why not?
Why not? Why not have an educationistem where you're asking
accomplish people within the community to come and teach class.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
Do it?

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Most certainly could do it. But no, no, no, no,
no no, we don't do that. We don't do that.
We got this system, and we've got tenure and you
can't get fired, and you've got places where you've got
rubber rooms. It's it's an absolute joke. With that being said,
I am well aware. I am well aware that some

(07:23):
school districts, some classrooms. I don't care how good you
are at what you do. You're facing mission impossible. This
is a simple reality, okay, And this is a societal problem.
Bad parents, bad student. I would say probably ninety eight

(07:47):
ninety nine percent of the time. If the parents do
not care about their kids' education, well guess what, the
kid is not going to care. And again, we've got
enough problems here in this country with missing parents, single parents,
parents who don't care, kids going to school, Call home,

(08:11):
Call home to the parents. It's not my problem, it's
your problem. You're the teacher. You're dealing with it. I
won't really How does that work? Again, that's always going
to be a major issue as well. It's one of
the things that we had suggested years ago we were
discussing this here on the program, is you need to
identify these kids at a very young age and they can.

(08:33):
I've got enough friends and people that are educators in
the education some they know they know where the trouble
is from a very young age. You got to cut
a deal with these parents. You got to cut a
deal with these parents. And I'm not talking any sort
of juvenile delinquency type of program or anything of that nature.
It's got to be a special. It's going to be
a Hogwarts type of school where these kids are given

(08:56):
the life skills where they can actually succeed in America.
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