If you really want a candidate who would raise teacher pay and introduce a TRULY innovative education initiative, vote for John Edwards. He wants to raise teacher by up to $15,000 a year, and has a detailed plan to provide at least a year of college for everyone, regardless of economic circumstances.

In public education, again Obama is closer to my ideal than many of his competitors, but still far from ideal. Like your recommendation, I believe education must remain in the “public sphere,” pedagogy must be competent, salaries scalable, and “innovation” (or “competition”) a must. Teachers must be just as accountable for their “performance” as the private market requires its employees.

Unfortunately, teachers’ unions and their monopoly of public education, coupled with recent devaluation of education by extremists, or its “use” for political agendas, spells an immense challenge for any “reform.” At this juncture, the most we can aspire is to “change course.”

My own view of education is that it should be exceptionally diverse and cognizant of different talents and different maturities within a structure that is still accountable for its performance — or lack thereof. Today, the U.S. spends more per pupil for public education than any other industrialized nation, save Switzerland, yet consistently receive significantly inferior results for our “investment.” Where is all this “money” going? After-school events? No. Athletics? No. Bureaucracy? Yep.

The D.C. school district spends about $40,000 per pupil, and still has the lowest graduation, not to mention skills, for its results. Where is all this money going? Counselors. Social consciousness. Activism. Self-esteem schemes. But definitely not “education.” And not just “academic” education, but “social” education, like the arts, music, sport, clubs, etc. Education should include the “whole person,” not just his ability to answer test questions.

Then, the question of “government” as an “interest” appears, such as NCLB, the federal department of Education, and the “education industry,” which feeds off governments’ poor achievements of compulsory education. And every justification for “feeding this trough” is not to educate American citizens of the future, but to engineer cogs in industry. Education “for its own sake” is anathema.

Today, the free-market educators oppose the union monopoly educators, and neither gets the “job” done, because they don’t understand their objectives, let alone their means. At least Obama expands the educational objectives from mere “economic cog” to “literate citizens in a a pluralistic democracy.” I’m unsure of his “means,” but they cannot be worse than at present. At least, his “openness” to alternatives is encouraging.

Because he rejects capitalist education, and is willing to challenge union monopolization, he succeeds better than most of his rivals. That said, he’s deliberately being “coy” about most of his plans in an effort to create an “elan” rather than an “agenda.” It leaves those of us who would like “substance” without much but gut feelings to appraise. Not what an educated class would do, but what our emotions suggest.

Ideally, the nation would establish an Education Accreditation Agency that provides nothing more than guidelines for pedagogical objectives — with no “carrots on a stick,” but mandates of achievement. But as many college accrediting agencies have shown, they are capable of preposterously Low Standards. So, this National Agency must be subject to Political Scrutiny. In this respect, it would be entirely regulatory about the “kind, type, and extent” public education of an “average U.S. citizen.” Civics courses would be mandatory for more than a single semester. When 2/3rds of today’s graduates cannot identify the three branches of our federal government, what justifies public education? Not all students should be expected to “achieve” equal competence, but certain minimum objectives in some disciplines, and tiered objectives in others, must be met.

In a word, we must refocus on Dewey’s educational objectives, but allow ever new means of pedagogy. Some respond to adult lectures, others to heuristics, others to inductive challenges, others to practicals. But these various methods should not dilute the minimum objectives of an “educated citizenry.”

Yes, we must encourage more curiosity in the natural sciences, our education’s total failure, but also in the imagination of literature and art, in creative endeavors of dance and sport, and of the immense wonders of calculus, complexity, biology, etc. We also need to “educate” our youth about our economic system as well as our governmental system — not preach dogmas as my generation tried, but how mixed economies function in this world, how to open a bank account, buy a house, how the workforce is structured.

Finally, we have a requirement to teach our youth a minimum of morality and ethics in a “religious-free” environment. Aristotle’s Ethics nor any modern morality requires a “god” to understand. But if our teachers our indoctrinated by their own narrow ideologies, where “preaching” substitutes for “teaching” in the classroom, don’t expect a massive respect for teachers, education, or reform.

Unfortunately, education has become a “special interest” as opposed to a “public duty,” largely created by the “education interests.” Until that special-interest focus is eliminated, no one will be satisfied — save unions and their members. At least Obama appears inclined not to feed the “milk-and-honey types” with more of their special self interest.