What Our Education System Needs Isnt More Cynical Spun Bullshit

It never ceases to amaze how much incredulous, vacuous bullshit exists in the world. For your consideration: lets take

an in depth look at such bullshit, shall we? What Our Education System Needs Is More Fs by Carl Singleton is such an

example of deceitful and stupid bullshit that well be examining today, savvy? Mr. Singleton tries his best to expose what he

feels are the inadequacies of American education. He singles his premise down to a narrow minded constraint that, if children

(and, by extension, adults) are given more failing grades for not learning the required materials, this will help change the

education system. The warrant in this argument is, in and of itself, a shallow and fleeting example of a disgruntled, angry, cynical

man who has exhausted no thought into his premises and has probably been intransigent for the tenure of his career. In

summarizing Mr. Singletons argument and premises, the author of this paper intends to expose, using a bit of logic and a specific

set of knowledge on this matter, that Carl Singletons entire diatribe is completely fallacious. In fact looking at Singletons work,

it perplexed and struck peculiar to see the number of fallacies and cognitive biases he committed in defending his position, yet

credits himself as an educator (albeit one whose woefully esoteric on the subject of fixing the education system.)

Lets begin with Singletons first premise on why he thinks its a good idea to hand out Fs. Now, if were to isolate

these two sentences from his essay, he states,

Let me make it clear that I recommend giving Fs-by the dozens, hundreds, thousands, even millions- only to students

who havent learned the required material. The basic problem of our educational system is the common practice of giving credit

where none has been earned, a practice that has resulted in the sundry faults delineated by all the reports and studies over recent

years.

The warrant in this premise is students are not willing to learn the required material. Take note of this: Its

specifically misleading for a reason. Singleton goes on to suggest,

Illiteracy among high-school graduates is growing because those students have been passed rather than flunked

This is the first logical fallacy noted from his work, the fallacy of the single cause, also known as a casual

oversimplification. Singletons suggesting that the outcome of a growing trend of illiterate high school graduates is due directly

to the singular cause of giving these children and teens a proverbial rubber stamp. This is simply not true and a gross

misrepresentation. Hes presented no evidence to support his claim, then would have to shift the burden of proof when questioned

and commit another fallacy in the process (onus probandi) and indeed does this, Low-quality teaching because of low- quality

teachers who should have never been certified (This too is also a fallacy, known as appeal to authority, in which the reader of
Carl Singletons work takes his word for it because he is an educator.) The reasons for why high school students are illiterate can

be for multiple reasons outside the scope and context being stated here. Including, but not limited to: learning disabilities,

inability to access technology (especially in agrarian communities,) the unspoken language barrier for the 25 million students

whose native language(s) are not English, the home life of the child or the measure of proficiency versus growth over time.

In raising these questionable claims, Singleton is eliciting a conjunction fallacy in asserting rates of high school student

illiteracy is growing, rates of high school illiteracy are growing and its because teachers are not allowed to fail their students.

Which sounds more probable to you, the reader? Singleton goes even further in shifting the blame, another fallacy of

conventionalist stratagem, towards the children and parents,

[As long] as it is the practice of teachers to pass students who should not be passed, the responsibility will not go

home to the parents, where, I hope, it belongs (I am tempted to make an analogy to the Governor Lester Maddoxs statement

some years ago about prison conditions in Georgia-Well get a better grade of prisons when we get a better grade of prisoners-

but I shall refrain.)

There are several biases occurring in this statement which would make anyone who devoted an iota of time to read such

pedagogical demagoguery want to ask, respectfully, what the hell this man is talking about? The first sentence demonstrates

Singleton jumping to conclusions. This isnt necessarily a logical fallacy, more along the lines of psychological aberration,

known as cognitive distortion. To suggest that its solely the parents responsibility because you, the educators, are not allowed

to fail their kids almost suggests that Singleton believes this to be true in almost all instances. It simply isnt: Theres incredible

oversight in education that doesnt need to be mentioned here. What Singletons advocating for is a return to old standards,

before the higher education acts of 1965, which in turn laid the groundwork of our modern public education system. Singletons

line of thinking falls in with retrospective determinism: insofar that because these actions occurred previously under certain

circumstances, its bound to occur again under those same circumstances.

To support this, Singleton says, As the number of students at various levels were increased by those not being passed,

more money would have to be spent to accommodate them. We could not be accommodating them in the old sense of passing

them on, but by keeping them at one level until they did in time, one way or another, learn the required material.

Its worth noting two specific cognitive biases that are occurring: clustering illusion and illusion of truth. The clustering

illusion is when our brains think that a rise in trend, out of chance randomness, is non-random. Singleton sees this rise of illiterate

students, then erroneously concludes its because theyve passed when we should have failed them. This becomes incorporated as

part of a Texas sharpshooter fallacy, where Singleton is asserting a cause based on a random spike in clusters of data. These kinds

of hasty generalizations he showers with misleading vividness (anecdotal evidence,) which doesnt support his position.
 The second cognitive bias, illusion of truth, comes in play throughout Singletons work: He keeps repeating the same

tired premise repeatedly because he falsely believes that, if the illusory truth is repeated enough, it will be made true. This only

creates more cherry picking, circular reasoning and special pleadings. Singleton then goes on to label all students unfavorably

due to seeing random clusters of occurrence and believing it to be conclusive, when he is allowing confirmation bias to rule over

his emotional mind, simultaneously creating a false dichotomy (or dilemma) that should be wholeheartedly rejected. The fact is:

the literacy rate hasnt changed in the last ten years in the United States.

Although the author of this paper discourages sidebar, they must follow up with the parenthetic quote ascribed to

Georgia Governor Lester Maddox. This is another fallacy, known as post hoc ergo propter hoc, or correlation without causation.

Also, a false analogy, wrong direction and more misleading vividness: The idea that prisons would improve if prisoners would

improve doesnt mean anything. Prisoners didnt make prisons worse. If you want better prisons, you need to restructure the laws

that already exist. Laws which are based on racial disparity, including mandatory federal minimums for simple possessions of

controlled substances causes, amongst other effects: mass incarceration, destruction of families, increased unemployment rates,

rises in violent crime, sinking education rates, an overflowing prison population and high recidivism. Those are reasonable

assertions as to why prisons are falling apart, including the fact that our nation has the largest prison population in the world

because of these actions (but I digress.)

In using this false analogy and wrong direction, say we are to view schools as prisons or, in this case, a panopticon. If

we are to follow the structure of a panopticon, the inmates (students) are led to believe they are being watched at all times, and

thus should behave accordingly (since we lead the students to believe we can observe all their behaviors.) Yet somehow, they just

dont behave correctly and rightfully so: Schools are not prisons and the students are not the reason why these institutions became

so poor in terms of quality education. Thats why panopticons dont exist!

Although Singleton does make mention of the lack of education funding at the federal level, he makes no qualms about

state level funding, which is apportioned-based on block grants to schools whose necessities are not being addressed because of

failures of school districts to conform in both state and federal minimum standards. He says, Teaching methods, classroom

presentations, and testing procedures would have to be of a very high standard Oh really, Carl? So what do you think about

schools who dont conform to these, high standards? How do you reconcile this? Lets take a look at what others have done in

the past, shall we?

Senator Jim Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, voted against $5 Billion dollars for local educational agencies & incentive grants,

against shifting $11 billion dollars from corporate tax loopholes to education for funding cuts, yet voting for $75 million dollars

of the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant to teach abstinence-only education. Oh, and guess whose state has the 2 nd highest
teen birth rate in the country? Senator Jim Inhofes, at 4,802 (as of 2014,) thats 38.5 live births per 1,000 teens! So, where were

those, high standards you called for? Do you see the correlation being drawn in this example?

Moving to the federal level, the complexities involved in legislation like No Child Left behind Act and state budgets

vary state-to-state, based on statutory restriction (and no small amount of hyper partisan hackery, thanks Jim and various anti-

education politicians!) In all states, how the students are educated is critical. If we use New York as the control, following the

Regents diploma, then the author of this paper can safely assert that Florida (a state I used to live and attended school in during

8th grade,) is at least one year behind New York in terms of required material that Singleton opines over, yet offering no

standard of his own. Even when the author of this paper was switched into advanced classes in Florida during the 2003 school

year, they were still learning the same material (which is a 7th grade education level in New York at the 8th grade education level

in Florida) as the rest of the students in the schools population. (It was just more coursework to prepare for Advanced

Placement, which set me further behind when I moved back to New York in January 2004.)

Therein lies the problem: Its not the childs fault they dont want to learn required material when they dont know

what it is they should be learning and at what pace. Its never the childs fault and you never blame and shame children, it can

cause severe psychological distress and can have long term consequences for their well-being. Its not the parents fault for not

putting in enough effort in maintaining their childs educational well-being. We write parents bills of rights to openly engage

parents/guardians and to essentially force them to be involved wherever possible.

Its the Politicians fault for crafting, then grandstanding, bad legislation and not funding it properly; implementing

incomplete standards which, for some, feel go against their ideological partisanship on the issue of public and higher education.

In the present where Betsy DeVos, our secretary of education: denies climate change, doesnt support Americans with

Disabilities Act, thinks we need guns in schools to protect children from grizzly bears, doesnt want schools teaching sex

education to teenagers and believes in creationism needing to be openly taught in public school, is there any wonder as to why

theres so many issues with young people being functionally illiterate?

They are being spoon fed cynical-spun bullshit!

Its not these Republican politicians who complain about education spending who are suffering whilst giving tax

deductions to corporations in a bad attempt to replicate trickledown economics (Spoiler alert: trickledown economics have never

worked!)

Its our young people, parents and teachers who are impacted the most.

One fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itselfIn an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the

human species, selfishness is extinction.- Adam Ewing, Cloud Atlas

 A selfish society always shifts blame and its because they are led by selfish leaders who do the same. The cognitive

dissonance Singleton observes is just a symptom of a greater underlying problem in our American society: education isnt valued

enough to be standardized throughout this country, especially if it conflicts with the fringe elements who are being kept woefully

ignorant by the politicians and their many appeals to emotion, regression fallacies, reifications, special pleadings, slippery slopes,

imprecise language and if-by-whiskey fallacies. Why, you ask?

They [the richest and wealthiest] dont want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They dont want

well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. Theyre not interested in that. That doesnt help them. Thats

against their interests-George Carlin, Life is worth Losing

Politicians, such as the ones we are describing, are there just to appease their bases with what George Carlin would

call the illusion of choice. These people hamstring the democratic process for the rest of us. This includes beguiling the

uneducated to secure their vote. One would hope these politicians would have read what was enshrined into the constitution,

The congress shall have the powerto promote the progress of science and useful arts... Unfortunately, the author of this essay

must make use of their personal experience, once again, to underscore how out of touch our society has become.

In October 2010, when working on the congressional campaign of Scott Murphy in Saratoga Springs, New York, the

author came across his opponent: Chris Gibson (R), former representative of NY-19th and 20th congressional district. During the

campaign, Gibson went so far as to suggest to his constituents that we needed to completely dismantle the department of

education (among other departments,) sponsoring bills (when he was elected) such as Student Testing Improvement and

Accountability Act (STIVA) which would have lowered the amount of standardized tests that were implemented by No Child

Left Behind.

It was an absolute horror show on November 4th, 2010. One tea party voter threw a brick at a fellow canvasser and hit

them directly in the shoulder. The author also was faced with numerous gatekeeper husbands, whose nonverbal language was

one of pissed-off resentment and no small amount of fallacious argument. The best one demonstrated by a voter was that

Democrats and Republicans are like Fords and Chevys (implying they were terrible cars.) The more apt analogy should have

been something along the lines of Democrats being Chryslers (since inspiration comes standard,) and Republicans being your

great grandparents smoking jalopies on cement bricks whose air horns screamed innocuous (and sometimes racist) platitudes

(but I shall refrain.)

 The real critical issue here that most people seemingly gloss over is that there are no universally uniformly applied

standards to public and higher education in this country. This wasnt a clear cut defining moment for our Founding Fathers if they

intended, To promote the sciences and useful arts as a means for establishing national education and vocational laws. As if that

wasnt bad enough, Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY-4) introduced on February 7th, 2017, H.R. 899: a bill designed, to

terminate the department of education by December 31st, 2018.

With so many Republican politicians who now control the congress, a plurality of governorships and state legislatures

(scary, I know,) being anti-education, is it so hard to believe that we have functionally illiterate high school students?

Mr. Singleton, your thoughts?

Mr. Singleton?

You must now cut down the tallest tree in the forest...with...A [RED] HERRING!

The late Neil Postman once said,[Aldous] Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevanceHuxley

feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal

bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the

alert to oppose tyranny failed to [consider] mans almost infinite appetite for distractions.

"I think, if Im understanding your question correctly around proficiency, I would also correlate it to competency and

mastery, so that each student is measured according to the advancement theyre making in each subject area,"

"Well, thats growth. Thats not proficiency."

(Proficiency is completely arbitrary. Mr. Singleton and others, like Betsy Devos in the former quote during her

confirmation with Senator Al Franken, do not fully understand this and serve as a source of distraction to misdirect the public

while marginalizing education for those whose needs are not being fully met because it conflicts with their pernicious beliefs.

Singleton says, Students in our schools and colleges should be permitted to pass only after the have fully met established

standards; borderline cases should be retained. What kind of Nazi speak is that? Foamy the Squirrel, Small, Medium,

Large)

Huxley was rightMonty Python be damned!

 Handing out Fs, dismantling federal bureaucracy by legislation: Its all misdirection! All the politicians who are anti-

education want is to push kids through school, regardless of the quality education they receive, because it will profit them a few

cents (or lose a few cents in this case- Foamy the Squirrel.)

In summarizing Mr. Singletons argument, he suggests that by handing out Fs to students who do not learn the

required material, this will motivate students to learn better and get parents more engaged in their childrens education. This is

the same mantra as, pull yourself by your bootstraps, but the boots are too big on your feet and they are duct tapped with hand

grenades, the shoelaces conspicuously tied to the pins. The premise in Mr. Singletons arguments is that failing grades, much like

the failing education system in America, are a result of rubber stamping passing grades onto students that didnt deserve it. The

warrant, or unspoken assumption in his argument, is that failing motivates people to actually succeed. What he doesnt consider

when suggesting things like the rise in illiteracy with high school students is because of students being passed when they should

have failed includes those who have disabilities or do not speak English as a native language, nor does he make mention of other

variables that were previously aforementioned in this essay, most notably proficiency vs. growth (amongst other contextual

nuances.) He believes that the rise in illiteracy is directly caused by the action of passing failing students, which took several

leaps of faith in defending his position and, ironically enough, Mr. Singleton failed to pass on anything of truth or validity in his

argument.

Final Grade on What our Education System Needs is More Fs by Carl Singleton: F- (for failure of imagination and

unwarranted beard stroking.)