We won the “Space Race” but at what cost?

Sputnik’s first message on October 4, 1957, spelled doom for American education. Parents and policy makers became unhinged when the tiny orbiter signaled that the Soviet Union had beaten the United States into outer space. Boys were rounded up from shop classes and hustled into math labs where they would wither for decades. The girls soon followed. Engineering is glamorous. Welding isn’t.

America needed engineers not welders, or so the experts predicted. The truth is that we needed both, but no one wanted to hear the truth in those days. Everyone wanted their child to be a star shooting for the stars.

The result of this thinking is that we have college graduates with degrees but without the skills to earn the kind of money needed to repay their student loans. And, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, we have jobs for craftsmen going unfilled despite the fact that they offer handsome wages.

Was the race to space that important?

President Kennedy said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win…”

What Kennedy did not talk about was the military aspect of the space race.

Gravity provides strategic advantage. Everyone knew this from the dawn of warfare. Soldiers charging downhill have greater force than those struggling uphill. Plunging fire from weapons at higher elevations are more effective than those firing from below. Thus, armies maneuvered to gain the high ground before joining in battle. Space is the ultimate high ground and space would be won by rocket scientists, engineers not welders and auto mechanics. Or so they thought.

The truth is that rockets and spacecraft were designed by engineers but built by craftsmen. Lawyers and administrators smoothed out the details and made sure that the resources were available. Tradesmen, small businessmen, contributed the myriad of parts from which complex systems were fashioned. The whole nation participated and every one of us felt a sense of accomplishment when the missions succeeded.

The lesson we should have learned from this experience is that the needs of mankind are many and varied requiring a kaleidoscope of skills and talents. No one curriculum can satisfy them all. That is why Common Core will fail. We need craftsmen and tradesmen as much as we need scientists and engineers. We need artists and entertainers as well as teachers and researchers. And let us not forget doctors and lawyers, however much we might want to. No one course, no common set of tests and instruction can prepare them all. This is why well-paying jobs stand vacant while college graduates can’t find employment that will come anywhere near paying off their massive education loans.

Education must be diversified among the several states and school districts. Let each respond to their own needs because those are America’s needs as well and no single administrator sitting on high can fathom them all.

Pragmatists tell me that we can’t simply go to Washington and shut down the US Department of Education and decentralize its accumulated power over the nation’s educational institutions. That may well be, but we can begin the process of defanging it.

We can stop the growth of its budget and then reverse it. We can begin downsizing it through attrition. Step by step, we can begin returning control of schools to local districts where administrators are closer in touch with the students and their community’s needs.

Have no fear. There will never be a shortage of those who aspire to become engineers and scientists, and we’ll be better able to answer their educational needs where they live. More importantly, the choice will be theirs. And, the choice of schools will be in the hands of their parents.

Greg Raths

Candidate for U.S. Representative 45th Congressional District