A Letter to Education Students

 

Well, Professor Plum is back at Ye Olde Ed Asylum.

Everyone is preparing for classes to begin….

Math educators are busily gluing mung beans on popsicle sticks.  These are called math manipulatives.

Social studies educators are practicing saying

“Celebrate diversity”

“Everything is relative”

“Who are we to judge honor killing of defenseless women and genital mutilation of little girls in Muslim countries?”

The early childhood eduquacks are chanting,

“Disadvantaged kids aren’t developmentally ready to learn reading in kindergarten.”
[They’re already three years behind middle class kids, but, the daffy ideology of “developmental appropriateness” trumps science, reason, and morality every time.]

“Literacy methods educators” are hacking up new tenets for their PULP—Painfully-stupid Universal Literacy Philosophy.

The following are taken from real posters in real ed school classrooms. This is the sort of thing ed students end up thinking is high-level stuff. Anyone who is not indoctrinated by ed school psychobabble knows it’s completely insane.

1. “Read is a four-letter word.” [So is moron, if you remove one of the o’s.]

2. “All children have a right to read.” [Totally empty talk. After four courses on “literacy,” ed students still have no idea how to teach reading properly. All they end up with is a goofy “philosophy”–which is as much use a wet sock.]

3. “It’s more important to be MEANING perfect than WORD perfect.” [How are kids supposed to GET the meaning of the written word if they don’t know WHAT the words say? This is a question literacy perfessers don’t answer—possibly because they aren’t quite bright enough to wonder.]

Professor Plum, on the other hand, is preparing a script for the first day in his classes.

Here’s what we have so far.

We think it will be a real crowd pleaser—depending to some small extent on the crowd….

Good afternoon, Dear Hearts.

I, Professor Plum, hope y’all had a pleasant and spiritually fulfilling holiday. I was going to get a snazzy tattoo of a rattlesnake along with the words “Don’t Tread on Me,” but I found out that it’s against my religion. Apparently, the L-rd figures that He owns the thing we call “my body,” and He doesn’t want us to trash it up with ink, scars, or bolts through our nose.

Now listen. I don’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings. Especially folks as bright as you, who are willing to enter a field that pays so well and gives you so much respect. That was a joke. As I was saying, I don’t mean or even want to hurt your feelings. But let’s be honest. A degree in education is not SEEN as being up there with a degree in math, or biology, or nursing, or even English, whose perfessers are so full of themselves that they leak. Not a pretty sight.

But it’s not because YOU are less intelligent than students in biology or math or law. No Siree, Bob.

And it’s not because the field of education has no science in it. It does. Lots of good experimental research on what works and what doesn’t work.

No, education is at the bottom for four simple reasons.

1. This field pushes one bizarre and destructive fad after another, based on ZERO sound research. Examples of fads are whole language, constructivism, inquiry learning, brain-based teaching, learning styles, and multiple intelligence. The IDEAS behind these fads are so ridiculous that they almost sound psychotic. For example, whole language theory says that reading is a “guessing game.” Good readers don’t actually READ words by sounding them out; they GUESS at words using various CUES, such as pictures on the page. Is that how YOU read?

These fads generally dominate public schools for a decade or more, and are ALWAYS harmful to students. They also make the job of teachers frustrating. The teachers try hard, but the kids don’t learn. Of course kids don’t learn. The faddish untested methods are insane.

2. Schools of education say that their mission is to serve the nation, community, schools, and kids. In fact, their mission is to increase their power, hide the fact that ed students leave not knowing how to teach, and give easy jobs to professors.

3. Ed students are not taught exactly how to teach—unless they luck out and get a professor who knows what he’s talking about. Instead, ed students write “philosophies,” make portfolios, create superficial lesson plans, and come up with silly classroom activities. Result? When they stand in front of their own class, they are terrified. “Uh, oh. Now how do you teach?”

4. Most ed professors are AGAINST the kind of teaching (direct teaching, teacher-directed instruction) in which teachers know exactly what they want students to learn; select learning tasks; focus precisely on the objectives; provide practice; continually assess whether students are achieving the objectives; and when possible use commericial programs that have the lessons already planned down to the last word and have been field tested with thousands of kids.

Instead, ed professors advocate what they call progressive and student directed and child centered education. This is supposed to free students from the alleged oppression of the teacher actually teaching. Teachers are supposed to be facilitators, or guides on the side. They are supposed to let children construct knowledge. If you want your class to end up out of control and your students ignorant, just teach that way!

This sounds rude, doesn’t it? Insulting ed schools and ed professors. Well, would you prefer that I keep it a secret from you?

If this were a medical practice, and you were the new patient of a doctor who I know will mutilate you, should I keep it to myself?

You are the consumer, and you have NO ONE to protect you. So, I’m telling you.

Many ed perfessers will try to fill your heads with so much bunk that you will leave more ignorant than you came in. You will spend day after day reading and listening to the most outrageous drivel. But you won’t KNOW it’s drivel. They won’t give you the tools to examine what they preach. They won’t have you read the so-called research that supports what they preach. [Because you would see how phony it is.] They certainly won’t tell you about the research that contradicts what they say. They won’t teach you what evidence means.

Easily ninety-five percent of what you learn and do will be useless when you are in front of your own students.

Now you probably think I’m either crazy or that you’ve gone into the wrong field. Well, I don’t think I’m crazy. In fact, I’m wearing tin foil underwear to ensure I’m protected from harmful rays beaming from Uranus.  That’s not crazy. It’s just cautious.

And don’t fret about being in the wrong field. I’m going to make everything alright.

Yes, most of what you learn in ed schools is either complete and total nonsense–makes no sense at all unless you are a mental case; is false, wrong, and just plain stupid; or is simply irrelevant to your job—which is to teach kids stuff they don’t know.

I mean, you’ve taken a course in ed psych, right? Well, do you really imagine that you’ll be planning lessons at home, saying to yourself, “Now what would Piaget do?” Do you think that when it’s time to teach reading, all that junk you read about John Dewey is going to help one bit? Do you imagine in your wildest nightmare that all those stupid words your professors yammered at you—like construct knowledge, or developmentally appropriate, or authentic, or drill and kill—are going to be of any use at all?

In fact, almost everything you learn about how to teach you will learn on the job, from other teachers. In other words, you’ll spend thousands of bucks for an ed degree, and everything you need to learn you’ll get on the job—if you’re lucky. How do YOU spell scam?

Do you think it’s okay that you will learn how to teach on the job? No offense, Dear Hearts, but I DON’T think it’s okay! What makes you think the teachers in a school where you get your first job know how to teach effectively? You are likely to learn nonsense from them, too! Why? Because THEY went to an ed school!

Now, unlike me, OTHER ed perfessers will be so nice. And because they’ll be so nice you’ll like them. And you’ll think they MUST know what they’re talking about. Oh, yes. They are friendly. And they smile a lot. And they’ll bring donuts and other healthful snacks to class so that y’all can bond and sing Cumbaya and become a big happy family of snackers. And they won’t ask you to do anything real hard. For example, they won’t expect you to demonstrate how to teach all of the reading skills—mostly because THEY don’t know how. Nope, instead you’ll write up your quote literacy philosophy quote—which should take you maybe five minutes even if you have bad cramps.

The result is that you’ll be seduced. Sucked in. You’ll trust them and you’ll believe them. But remember what Hamlet said. The devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape—or words to that effect.

No matter how fluff-filled the courses are, and no matter how ridiculous the stuff they teach you, you MUST take this field and your career and your moral obligations seriously. You must know how to teach effectively—as the research shows.

You see, this is a moral enterprise. In some ways, more important than medicine. After all, aside from surgeons, most physicians merely give you medicine and tell you to rest. Your body does the healing. But no one learns Latin or learns history or science just by letting time pass.

You really WILL have a profound effect on kids–for good or for ill. It depends on whether you know exactly how to teach, or whether you are just fooling around with stupid but fun classroom activities.

But don’t despair! Know why? ‘Cause, I, Professor Plum, well-known in cheap saloons from one end of this fair state to the other, know how to teach. And I will teach that to you. When you are done with this course, you will know how to design logically clear instruction in beginning and remedial reading, history, and literature. We will touch on math, too. AND you will know exactly how to DO the teaching, all the way down to what you will say to your students.

Now, then, let’s go around the room and each of you tell us about yourself. Not too much, though, because I really don’t care and because you aren’t as interesting as your Mama made you think.