The Purpose of Public Education
August 30th, 2006 | by Ken Grandlund |It is not a misstatement to say that education is the equalizer of humanity. If you teach people the skills to master modern civilization, they stand a much better chance of becoming a contributing, responsible member of the species. All parents hope that their children might someday have a better life than they had, whatever their definition of “better” may be, and most embrace education as the vehicle to reach that goal. Our motivations for educating our youth are both self-serving and altruistic. We want an educated society because it is necessary for a productive, peaceful society. We also want our children to become educated for their own improvement and for our own fulfillment. Whether you accept one view, the other, or both, the implication is clear: a society that does not educate its youth is destined to stagnancy while a society that values education will thrive and prosper. Obviously, America, along with most other nations of the world, places importance on the value of education for both reasons. At least, that’s what we claim.
Even as we proclaim unwavering support for the goal of education, our practical application of that goal is a mockery of itself. Many of our schools are overcrowded and dilapidated. Teachers unions resist change in curriculum or organization. Special interest groups demand services that degrade the entire system’s ability to serve all students equally. State and federal regulations impose mandated achievement levels that measure little in the way of actual achievement. Parents are often apathetical and uninvolved in their children’s educational development. Money is thrown into school budgets that gets eaten up by studies that show that graduation rates are increasing while class options are diminishing and extra-curricular programs disappear. The list of hypocrisies goes on but the bottom line is this: when it comes to education, we are speaking out both sides of our mouths.
At the heart of the issue is the importance we do or do not place on educating our children. If we truly believe that education is an important key to prosperity and peaceful existence, it is time we seriously revamp our education system. Everything from schoolhouses to curriculum to administration must be given a fresh look. Everything, including our expectations and our definitions for what makes a successful education. We must put aside all the politically correct nonsense to establish a truly efficient and effective educational program that would serve all the citizens of this country.
While everyone can be educated, everyone cannot be educated equally. Accepting this fact is essential to any meaningful education reform. What this means is simply that all people are not equal with regards to mental capacity, intelligence or practical ability. While some individuals can easily master concepts of higher mathematics and science, others may excel at artistic endeavors or mechanical tasks. Some will learn quickly while others may not be capable of learning much beyond basic personal skills. In our current climate of promoting self-esteem above actual achievement, we have allowed our schools to neglect this important fact of education. This attitude must be changed if we are ever going to progress beyond what is aptly described as either a babysitting service or a diploma mill. Yes, it’s important for people to have a good self-image, but derailing the entire education system to achieve those means is shortsighted behavior. Self-image should come from values instilled at home and not be tied to one’s ability to conquer chemistry or read Latin. Because education serves in part to prepare children for the inevitable day when they will become working, participating adults, more attention should be given to the fact that all jobs are valuable, with the benefit to a smooth society coming from the combined efforts of all.
In this light, equal education is not the goal. Equal access to education is what should be strived for. It would be far more efficient and successful to structure our education in such a way that individuals, at some point along the line, are pointed in a direction most suited to their natural abilities than to maintain the charade of mental equality. During their early years in public education, students should be measured against their peers to determine what level of performance they might achieve. Once this has been ascertained, students of similar learning abilities could be taught together according to their abilities. Success should be measured on the achievement of each student and their ability to master the skills of life and education to their full potential.
Even though all can’t achieve an equal level of knowledge through education, we must still strive to impart certain minimum knowledge levels for all students to master. These skills would include basic reading, writing and math skills. Practical living skills like personal finance, personal communications and personal responsibility should be taught. So should civic responsibility. These are the basic skills an adult must have for a chance at success in the modern world and should not be ignored in education. A general comprehension of U.S. and world history, a basic knowledge of scientific principals, and an appreciation of art could all be important for a more rounded education, and should also be taught.
Because education is a public endeavor, it is only fitting that the costs of education be borne by us all. Simply paying the tax collector is not enough. It is our responsibility as citizens to ensure that the taxes collected are used to educate our children and not used to pad the pockets of administrators, consultants, builders or political committees. The state of our public-school buildings is enough to make one wonder where all the dollars are going, because it sure isn’t into maintenance. This is a problem. While it is true that a willing person can learn as easily in a sandpit as in a lecture hall, the importance we place on education is apparent in the importance we place on our educational buildings, and the subliminal effects of rundown or overcrowded schools only tells our children that we are less interested in their education than we are in saving a buck. Such messages only diminish the value of education among our youth. We must make a conscious decision to place a priority on safe, well-maintained schools. It is a curious society that spends more money creating lavish prison complexes than it does on schoolhouses.
As a society, we must recognize the need to reform our education system. As parents, we must recognize the need to reform our own ideas about public school. One of the biggest problems in our educational system is the growing distance of thought among teachers, administrators and parents. No longer are teachers looked up to as role models for our children. Instead, parents vilify a teacher who demands accountability from their students as being too hard or too opinionated. On the other hand, teachers view parents as little more than disinterested chauffeurs dropping the kids off for another day of babysitting and socializing. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle and there needs to be some common ground on which to meet. The task for teachers and parents is to craft an educational plan that meets all the capabilities of the student while defining the responsibilities that are expected of the student, the parent, and the teacher. Children may be like sponges when it comes to obtaining information, but they can also be like sponges in another way. If they are allowed to, they will lie around and do little or nothing to improve themselves. Parents and teachers must come together and form a united front in order for children to excel and master the skills that are expected of them.
In order for our educational efforts to rise beyond the level of today, into a system where costs expended produce a qualified workforce and responsible citizenry, we must rededicate ourselves to the fundamental idea that of all the social services, the ability to provide an equitable education is among the most valuable in terms of sustaining society. We must refuse to continue the ways of power politics and instead focus on the real goal of teaching our children.
[tag]education, public+education[/tag]
19 Responses to “The Purpose of Public Education”
By Jersey McJones on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
Great read, as always, Ken. I have a couple of bullets:
1: Education must be as apolitical as possible. All elected school boards should be eliminated. Education should be accountable to the executive branch of government - that means mayors, governors, the president. The Bloomberg model in NY is what we need:
The devolution of power to local school boards who consist of the loudest parents with an agenda, people who have contractors in the family, and the occasional righteous do-gooder, has been a disaster. Type in “school board embezzlemet” into the Google News Search at any time and you’ll get over a hundred hits. Hardly anyone votes in school board elections, hardly anyone audits them, hardly anyone knows what the hell they’re doing at any given time. Yet these people hold the purse strings over our schools. Have a football player child? Get elected to the school board and vote to put in a new gym! Have a kid who’s a giant pain in the ass? Get on the PTA and bitch and moan about how the teachers are mishandling your darling demon! Have a cousin who’s cement paving business is in the tank? Get an inside man elected to the Board on the playform “we need a new sidewalk for the school!” This is TOO MUCH DEMOCRACY in action.
Education should NOT be democratic. All kids need the same opportunities regardless of where they are from. All parents need sound and stable accountibility that they can turn to with their concerns. All teachers need to be accountible to the kids needs and nothing else. If you want to deal with the (thankfully) very powerful teachers unions, you need experienced and equally powerful politicians to handle them - not goofball-circus school boards.
2: Not everyone needs a liberal arts education. We need more trade schools, more specialty schools. By merging districts into large mutlidisiplinary school systems we can spread the cost of schools over a greater economic class range, which is fair, and give parents and students the choice of what type of education best suits them. It also opens the opportunity for a more diverse spectrum of proffesional teachers. Also, community and county colleges should be free through the first two years as long as you maintain your grades, and should be diversified in training and cirriculae as well. The only people who oppose regional districts are the wealthy because they are too cheap and short-sighted to share their districts money n a broader regional district.
3: The social promotion/grade system should be abandoned altogether. Kids should be able to take the classes they are ready for and need, not whatver classes are available to their age group. I differ from you in your thinking that social promotion is the product of the ostensibly righteous endeavor to build “self-image.” I believe it’s pure laziness. It’s just easier to lump kids together by age than to assess each child’s unique abilities every school year and adjust a schedule to meet that need for all the kids in a given school (specialized schools in regional districts would help to alleviate said difficulty, by the way).
JMJ
By manapp on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
The answer really is simple. Vouchers. When the teachers union is broken and competition in schools is allowed, poor children will have the same opportunity for a private education just like the rich kids have now. When the Dems get out of the pocket of “big education” they will finally allow the program that will help their constituents.
By Jersey McJones on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
Oh yeah, great plan, manapp, then we could have teachers who make 8 bucks an hour! Then we could have private sector schools who try to eek a profit off our kid’s education! Then bad schools can only get worse!
What a stupid, simpleminded, assinie, lifted from the righwing rabble rousers, retarded, insipid, short-sighted, idiotic plan.
#1: Vouchers are useless in far flung rural areas.
#2: Suburban schools are mostly beloved by their suburban constituencies.
#3: Only urban areas would stand to gain from vouchers and your scumbag GOPher, class-warring, piece of shit conservatives would never stand for further funding Democrat, poor, minority, urban districts.
You’re getting played by the Right again, manapp. Will you ever learn?
JMJ
By manapp on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
Your arguments, JMJ are as usual full of holes. Competition among schools would cause teacher pay to go up for the good ones and the bad would be no longer protected by tenure and would be weeded out. Private schools are currently in use and along with charter and home schools have better scores than public. Vouchers would just allow poor and middle income parents the option to have the same access as the rich. I thought liberals were all about leveling the playing field and giving all people the same access. I live in a county of less than 50,000 and we have public, private, charter and home schooling. I cannot imagine anyone who does not have access to home schooling. If you love your current public school, you could use your voucher to continue there. Urban areas are where the most Dems live and yet Republicans are the ones pushing vouchers, Dems are the ones against. So it shows that the GOP really is the party looking out for the poor. And of course my earlier point of the Dems being in the pocket of “Big Ed” aka the teachers union. Look at where the majority of the union money goes. Follow the money. Will you ever learn?
By Jersey McJones on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
Look, goofus, do you realize that waht you are proposing is universally, centrally funded education?
JMJ
By manapp on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
Public education is funded, here in Colorado, by property tax. This is collected at the local level and sent to the state to be distributed equally back to the districts. Here, this would not change. It is not about how education is funded as much as how it is distributed. Vouchers would only allow the parents of a child to take the approx $8000 dollars already spent on their child and give it to the school they wish. This would allow the poor parent currently trapped in the school the government mandates to have a choice. I though choice was a good thing.
And my my but aren’t you a cantankerous old fart? Can’t you respond to a debate without your trademark name calling?
By Jersey McJones on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
Have you thought this through? The GOP has been in charge of everything under thsun for how long now? Do you see vouchers? Give it a rest. You never dealt with my three points - how the fuckin hell can there be a choice for rural people when schools are so few and far between? Why the fuck would suburban people want to send their kids to other districts? The only people who stand to gain are poor, urban kids and the GOP has NO intention of supporting them. Your argument is not only stupid, it’s just a projection of lying, phony rhetoric.
Besides, folks, the schools aren’t really the problem - the anti-intellectual American is the problem.
JMJ
By Paul Merda on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
manapp,
Puke, puke, puke, puke! The only reason the GOP pushes vouchers is push religious education as far as I am concerned.
The major problem, and Ken hit on it, is that there are too many parents and students who DO NOT give a fuck! That’s it, plain and simple. Until we as a society quit trying to educate those who do not want it, forcibly, there will be no improvement. Get the kids out of the schools who do not want to be there. If their familiy really wants them educated they will homeschool or find another way.
Here is exactly why it appears our schools are doing poorly, those that want educated will get educated, those that don’t….
“Why have the reformers failed? I will tell them why.
Ignorance, poverty and vice are populating the world. The gutter is a nursery. People unable even to support themselves fill the tenements, the huts and hovels with children. They depend on the Lord, on luck and charity. They are not intelligent enough to think about consequences or to feel responsibility. At the same time they do not want children, because a child is a curse, a curse to them and to itself. The babe is not welcome, because it is a burden. These unwelcome children fill the jails and prisons, the asylums and hospitals, and they crowd the scaffolds. A few are rescued by chance or charity, but the great majority are failures. They become vicious, ferocious. They live by fraud and violence, and bequeath their vices to their children.” – Col. Robert Ingersoll
The ignorant fucks will raise little ignorant fucks, who will in turn raise more ignorant fucks! I am tired of all the aplogies the schools are being forced to make because both students and parents don’t give a damn… Remove those losers from our schools and let them rot in poverty like they were going to anyway, at least this way we won’t waste valuable resources in the process.
By Paul Watson The Cranky Brit on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
Manapp,
Given that private schools do not perform better on average than public schools, why should the state subsidise them? Why is getting into private school such a good idea when they’re only as good as the public schools?
By ken grandlund on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
Among other things, manapp notes that “I cannot imagine anyone who does not have access to home schooling. ” Really? What about the single parent who has to work to feed themselves and the kids? Think they can do homeschooling? What about the parent who barely made it through school themselves? Think they’ll make a good teacher for their kids? Clearly this statement is mere drivel if thought through.
Jersey, This post is actually the first of a four part series on education I wrote some time ago. I decided to post it here today because it is timely as a new school year begins. Some of the points you mentioned may be covered in one or more of the other three posts, which I might just put up here in the coming days. For instance, in the second post in the series, I posit that the goal of education is not equal education but equal access to education . Not all people can, want, or need to learn the same things.
As to the unions themselves, I’m not sure that they always have the best interest of the students at heart. And they are often just as resistant to changing conditions as the politicians are. I think I talk about this at some point too.
Paul notes that I hit on the theory that some parents and kids just don’t care. While that is undoubtably true, the blame, to me at least, lies more in the parents than in the kids, at least initially. Placing value on education is a learned behavior and if the parents place no import on a good education, eventually neither will the children.
Vouchers, as Paul notes, are really just a backdoor way of funding private religious schools with public dollars and don’t really address the root problems of an eduactional system gone awry.
But as an educated poopulace is in the country’s best interest, so too is reforming (or repairing) an educational system to achieve the goal of universal education. Note that I am not saying all people should be equally educated, but merely equally able to master some of lifes most basic and needed skills so as to be productive citizens in society. And simply passing people through a system isn’t helping anyone at all.
By Jersey McJones on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
Yeah, I hear ya’, Ken. As for the unions - of course they’re number one interest isn’t the children! It’s the teachers - that’s why they are Teachers’ Unions. And without them, things would be far, far worse. Imagine a world without teachers’ unions! The only people left that would want to be teachers, and take on the considerable debt that goes with that, would be the spouses of the wealthy, retirees, and LOSERS. Thanks f’n God for the unions! Take a look at the educational track records of the “Right to Work” (read: right to earn shit for a living) states. They are ALL at the bottom of the educational pile. What you need are strong executives and administrators with true accountability that can negiotiarte with the unions through strenth, rather than disparate little fuedal school districts that are powerless in the face of organized labor.
JMJ
By Paul Merda on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
Sorry if I came down hard on this subject, its that I personally know some teachers and their hands are tied when it comes to disruptive students and parents who don’t give a damn. The only way to get these kids on board is to change their value systems and I don’t know that anyone can do that.
By Liberal Jarhead on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
Great post, Ken!
Some thoughts:
1. Voucher programs have some serious problems as they are proposed, enough so that they are a destructive force rather than a reform - as often as not, proposals for voucher systems are used as wedge issues rather than being serious proposals anyway. Privatization of education has not worked any better than privatization of prisons - it ends up being a contest between corporations to see who can cut the most corners in order to be the lowest bidder. It also causes havoc in public school systems, because there is typically no provision that the private schools be required to accept any student, as the public schools must. So the private schools get to cherry-pick, leaving the hard-to-educate, hard-to-manage, and special-needs students to the public schools and thereby raising the public schools’ cost per student without increasing their funding per student. Also, they often have lower and more loosely enforced standards for teacher education and competence, and they tend to drive down teachers’ wages and benefits, which are already low enough that the only reason a really bright and talented person will become a teacher is because he or she is an idealist willing to sacrifice his or her standard of living in order to do good. And voucher funding of religious education violates the principle of separation of church and state - no matter how much people yammer about freedom, there’s no way around that.
2. Since public education was created in the U.S., there has been a power struggle between those who think the role of schools is to produce citizens - adults who understand history and their civic responsibilities and who have critical thinking skills - and those who think the schools’ function is to train useful and compliant workers (a typical example was Sam Walton’s view that it was a bad idea for his beloved WalMart to hire people that had gone to college because they tended to be “uppity.”) At the moment, the second group is winning. That’s one of the main driving forces, a hidden agenda, behind this administration’s obsession with tests of the basic skills needed to operate a cash register at the expense of liberal arts and civic literacy.
3. There are some successful experiments going on, and have been for a long time, but they tend to upset people who are hung up on standardization and are only able to grasp the concrete. For example, my high school, when I attended it (over 30 years ago now) was experimental - it was run like a college. We had modular scheduling rather than periods (i.e. a lab class like chemistry, which took a fair amount of time to set up equipment, could be held twice a week for 1.5 or 1.75 hours at a shot, thereby increasing the amount of productive time, whereas an info-dense lecture class like a math class would be held 5 days a week for 45 minutes a session, by which time people’s brains were saturated.) We had an open campus and no study halls, and a much greater amount of responsibility was placed on the individual students to get their homework done and to show up for classes without anyone breathing down their necks than in most schools. Different subjects were often integrated into combined learning experiences - for example, we studied the history of the Civil War while reading some of its literature, studying contemporary arts from that period, and looking at comparable situations in other times and places; they even brought a Civil War reenactment group to the school and gave us a demonstration of a typical battle. It worked beautifully in terms of academic results, and it allowed more productive use of classroom space and teachers’ time. But after my senior year, the school board decided it was too radical, ignoring the results, and mandated a return to a 6-periods-a-day, closed-campus, study-halls and mandatory assemblies system. Today I see innovations like charter schools and magnet schools, and within-the-classroom techniques like cooperative learning (a team of 4 or so students is given a project to do together that integrates tasks in several subjects) succeed if they’re run right, but they tend to be fought bitterly by conservatives who seem to base their opposition on good old Theory X management, i.e. the view that people are inherently lazy, sneaky, and incompetent, and won’t do anything right unless you line everyone up in silent rows while someone lectures at the front of the room, watch them closely, mandate standardized lockstep processes, and do a lot of threatening and punishing.
My mother was a teacher, and my first wife is a teacher, and I came pretty close to becoming a teacher instead of a therapist as my second career after I retired from the military, so I’ve seen more of this issue up close and done more thinking about it than average. Our educational system is a lot like our health care system - possibly the most wasteful and least effective in the civilized world, and being made worse every time the conservatives tinker with it. It’s enlightening to observe that once you get away from the public school system and up to the level of college education, particularly graduate education, we’re still a world leader - people come from all over the world to go to college here. And because their public school systems are less politicized and more pragmatic than ours, they tend to be a lot better prepared than our own students, who now routinely need extensive remedial work before they can handle basic college freshman coursework.
By chicago dyke on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
going on ten years of highly selective college admissions work, and i’ve got news for you: our schools are fucked, six ways from sunday.
i’ve read tens of thousands of applications from kids in the top 10% academically and otherwise, and i don’t want to tell you the number of times reading that material made me cringe, fear, and weep for the bottom 90%, and our common future. at this point, the list of what’s wrong in our schools (and i’m including $8K a year private ones here) is so long i’d have to write a whole post on it.
but here’s what i tell those friends who are reproducing: take it from me, if you want your child to be a thinking person with a chance at a good college, you have two, and only two choices. spend upwards of $15k/yr for a truly academically inclined private school, or hunker down and homeschool, following a great books/real science tradition.
i’m really glad i don’t have kids. today’s schools are a big part of the reason this country is so fucked up, and they’re getting worse. i was just reading about a DC school that had taken some new science textbooks (first they’d received in years) and thrown them in the trash. i’m sure you all heard the news about SAT scores? lowest in 30 years. i haven’t even started on drugs, gangs, sex/STDs/pregnancy/rape, or the general banality of many of today’s teachers.
i’m so lucky i got a good education, and i pity those who don’t. which these days, is the vast majority. too bad the republicans like it that way.
By windspike on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
CD may be correct, but I don’t think things are as dire and unrectafiable. Ask yourselves the following question: What was the last positive thing a Superintendent did for the students under his or her charge in the last six months? The problems rest in the organizational problems where a system that was established over 150 years ago has not been updated to reflect the changes in the society. If I were in charge of the public school systems, I would do several things:
1 - eleminate the need for a superintendent of schools and move the cash used to fund those offices to directly support studnet learning and high quality teaching.
2 - I would invert the system that forces new teachers into the most remedial programs and let’s experienced teachers get away with teaching the easy honors style courses
3 - change how we think about the academic year and move toward a year round system that is flexible and allows students to integrate realworld work related experince into their schedules
4 - advocate for an adopt a school system were business and whole communities become the key supports for buildings, infrastructure, and the schools where the people of the community become directly involved in the schools they support
5 - oh, I could go on, but i have posted in other locations that there needs to be a revamp of the complete curriculum such that we ignight the fire for learning as opposed to extinguish enthusiasm for discovery….
I rest here and perhaps will come back for another round later.
Oh, and one other 6 - shift blame for poor student performance from directly and solely on the schools themselves and point the finger at parents and a general lack of involvment by many in their own children’s education…
Blog on all.
By Jersey McJones on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
I have an ironic little anecdote that a few us know well: Here in Red, elderly, conservative, Right to Work Florida the government is so desperate to get out of the nation’s educational gutter (Florida perennially ranks at the bottom of the nation in academics) this year’s election features both Democrat AND Republican candidates proposing raising teachers’ salaries. These proposals are showcased in most all candidates ads. I guess after breaking the unions, raising all the revenues for education locally, teaching the three R’s over everything else, and No Child Left Behind, it was time to get real down here, huh?
JMJ
By Dr. Forbush on Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
Ken,
I agree with your goal of offering equal access to education as our main goal for education. Unfortunately the reality of the situation is a decline in the public demand for quality education. This is a cultural issue that begins with the respect of education in general. If there was a universal respect for education, then parent would be working to ensure that there kids were doing their homework, and behaving in school. If there was a universal respect for education teachers would be making salaries in line with management wages and people would be bending over backward trying donate time and services to all education oriented organizations in the community.
There are many reasons why education has lost respect. First there are people who don’t believe that education is more than acquiring workplace skills in order to make a bit more money. Education is more than that. It is a collection of knowledge that needs to be passed on to future generations so that it won’t be lost. It is also the skill of rational thought that allows people to discover how the politicians and advertisers distort the facts to get you to do what they want you to do. It is also a pool of common knowledge that allows people to discuss the world around them on a higher level of understanding. It is also the key to protecting the community from dangers, like diseases, poisons and other less obvious things.
Second there are cultural biases against education that have seeped into our country. Some subcultures regard education as dangerous, especially for women or minorities. Some subcultures place less emphasis on education, claiming it isn’t cool, or it doesn’t give us the “whole” truth. There subcultures set a dangerous precedent encouraging children to skip school, or disrupt classrooms.
Third, parents find keeping tabs on their children too tedious and taxing. Many families have both parents working out of economic necessity. Parents come home from work to tired to deal with the children and end up sitting them in front of a TV or video game. When young children have questions about homework or topics covered in school many parents are too tired to answer the questions, or they have adopted the attitude that the school is responsible for there child’s education and they tell their children to wait until the next day for them to ask the teacher. A child with a helpful parent will learn much quicker than one with a parent who doesn’t give a damn.
Schools are an important part of the equation, but they are not the only part. An overall respect for the education system as a whole would go a lot further in repairing the damage than any suggestion that I have heard. This is because an overall respect for the system would take away some of these projects with ulterior motives like school vouchers. Everyone should realize by now that school vouchers are a way proposed by the religious right to enable the siphoning of education dollars out of the public education system to support schools that already exist free of government money. Catholic schools have survived without this extra money, that would come from every student already enrolled. By virtue of supply and demand the same students would remain enrolled and the tuition would increase respectively until each student would be paying the same amount that they already pay. The net benefit would be the private schools with the surplus cash. The net losers would be the public schools that would lose this money. Obviously taxpayers would not be willing to raise taxes to pay for the newly supported private schools. If people had a healthy respect for education they would respect how private schools actually benefit the public schools by allowing their tax dollars to go further.
Unfortunately the only way to change a “disrespect” for education into a “respect” for education is a re-education in the culture. This is an enormous task, and it isn’t clear that it can even be done. At this point everyone is way too cynical to respond to any type of education campaign.