Keying off KYTOP's comments, I tend to agree that education is a mess. I think it is a mess in large part because society devalues it so much. We expect teachers to be miracle workers for shit wages and then justify it by saying they get summers off. Teachers catch heaps of shit from people who can't be bothered to engage with their own children. If any of these parents gave a fuck, they'd know what their kids were learning.
A long time ago, women had few career opportunities so whip smart women became teachers for shit wages because they had no other choices. We had great schools on the backs of trapped women. Now they do have other choices, and they take them.
I looked into teaching as a second career and laughed at the pay scale. I wasn't expecting much, but it was pathetic enough to make me lose all interest. It is about as easy to become a nurse and earn 50% more, never mind that nurses have many more career opportunities and choices available. Only the most dedicated, or those without much other choice would choose that occupation in my opinion. Building an education that depends on effectively secular nuns is idiotic.
Shiny new bombs and guns? Buy them all!
Invest in people? What are you a pinko socialist? A Liberal elite?
I think the evidence of the consequences of that are everywhere to be seen in US politics.
We have deified ignorance.
What has been the effect of this new understanding of the state of our education system? The call to ban more books. To teach less of this or that. Nowhere do I read about parents rising up because their children can't do algebra, read another language, write a coherent essay, or the like. No, the rage is all about culture war crap. It isn't about education at all.
Rant over.