Things
fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. [From W.B. Yeats.
The second coming. 1920]
Above
this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself
alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. The power is
absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority
of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood;
but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well
content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but
rejoicing….Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man
less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower
range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. …Such a power does
not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it
compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation
is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals
[Alexis de Tocqueville. From Democracy in
We as a nation give everything TO the education establishment
and after 13 years the education establishment hands us another generation of
sullen uneducated teenagers with high self-regard and their hats on sideways,
whose heroes are not Moses, Siddharta the Buddha,
Abraham, Jesus Christ, Odysseus, Charlemagne, Anna Comnena,
Joan d’ Arc, Wellington, G. Washington, T. Jefferson, J. Madison A. Lincoln,
Helen Keller, or M.L. King, Jr., but something called Puff Daddy, Eminem (how clever), and Christina Aguilera.
How can this be?
The overriding reason is that the public LETS IT be.
If 25 to 50% of kids who went to hospitals for routine
procedures came out feet first, those hospitals would soon be
burning. [Professor Plum is not advocating violence, you
understand. He just likes to fantasize on occasion.]
Why DOES the public allow schools (not all schools, of course)
to do such a poor job? One reason is that their kids don’t come out feet
first. The harm is hidden. Most families don’t know what to look for,
anyway. And many families (especially middle class) are happy with the
“progressive” methods their kids get. This goes under the heading ”Romantic modernism”—and we’ll deal with it another
time.
But for now, let’s examine what’s going on in a field that works
assiduously decade after decade making kids dumber and dumber.
There are four main reasons: (1) no standards, combined
with egoism; (2) rewards for pushing progressivist
fads; (3) no contractual relationship with consumers; (4) the slop that drips
down from ed schools.
No Standards
Combined With Pathological Egoism
You’ve probably noticed that
medical doctors don’t prescribe coffee enemas as a treatment for ovarian
cancer--although some "New Age healers" have done so. [See,
that’s the key right there!] No physician could logically deduce coffee
enemas from medical knowledge. A physician suggesting such treatment
would be deemed mad.
In other words, medical practice rests on a shared and strong
knowledge base of empirical data--the stock of knowledge expected of
physicians. This fosters social cohesion among physicians (they see
themselves as part of something larger) which in turn (1) lends moral authority
to the knowledge base that is independent of the individual; (2) makes each
physician morally responsible for acting in accordance with the knowledge base;
and (3) makes each physician's actions (assessment, diagnosis, prescription,
treatment) accountable to the field as a whole.
In summary, physicians—as physicians—can’t think and act as they
please (egoistically) and still consider themselves morally responsible,
competent, and respectable. They can’t prescribe treatments that have no
basis in research or that are known not to work, and avoid punishment.
The same may be said of engineering, architecture, military operations,
business decisions, farming, barbering, and other serious endeavors.
Not so in education. Education doesn’t have a knowledge base
shared within and across teachers and education professors, schools, districts,
states, and education schools--a knowledge base resting on scientific
research. Although 100 years of solid research says exactly how to teach
effectively (which I’ve gradually insinuated into these little
rants), there’s no agreement on such fundamental issues as: (1) the
desirability of precise communication and a logical progression of tasks; (2)
error correction; (3) practice; (4) when teachers should be more directive and
when students should guide their own endeavors; (5) when skills are best taught
in isolation (e.g., word lists or math facts) and when they are best taught in
context (in sentences, in problems); and (6) whether all tasks should be taught
to mastery before going on, or whether tasks should be revisited again and
again until they are learned.
And the vast majority (easily 90%) of
"educators" believe in and push exactly the opposite of what
the serious research says on these issues.
This means that education perfessers,
school districts, state departments of public instruction, school principals,
and classroom teachers can require, buy, "implement," and subject
students to the most frightening nonsense--invented spelling, journaling,
sustained silent reading, predicting what words say, learning styles, diversity
education, and oh so many more, and NOT feel like comedians gone insane.
In other words, education is a culture with no standards
despite endless blather about standards. The field resembles an
extortion racket whose members prate about the importance of
honesty. “How come? Sounds
demented.” This is because admitting that there are truths and rules
of reasoning independent of individuals and organizations will “stifle academic
freedom and creativity of the individual.” Which in plain English means, Don't tell us what to do.
Note the interesting take on moral responsibility in the
following lines of a whole language advocate.
Saying that we are
determined to teach every child to read does not mean that we will teach every
child to read…. The best we can do ... is ... to ensure that, if not every
child lives up to our hopes, there is a minimum of guilt and anguish on the
part of teachers, students, and parents." [Smith,
F. (1992). Learning to read: The never-ending debate.
Phi
Delta Kappan, 74, 432-441.]
You want these guys teaching your kids? Guess what? They
do!
The only question for me is whether this field attracts egoists
or creates them. Probably both. But
Prof Plum will bet his .44 Ruger that there will be
no significant improvement in how this field does business and in what it
produces until We The People demand laws requiring the use of research-tested
curricula and teaching methods (e.g., in reading, math, and science); that
require education schools to teach only research-tested methods; and that
require education schools to give (and make available for public view)
performance tests of the skills of graduates.
How come schools so often do such a poor job? Isn't a trillion
bucks and a hundred years enough?
One reason is that, unlike serious professions, education has NO
shared and strong knowledge base that says, "Teach like this, not (for the
love of G-d!) like that." That knowledge IS
there; always has been. But the field refuses to weaken its hold, and its
opportunities for ever-increasing daffy innovations, by subordinating itself to
an external power--facts and reason.
The absence of an incontrovertible knowledge base frees the egos
of deaducators to think and do what they will to kids
stuck in schools six hours a day, 180 days a year. At the same time, the progressivist ed establishment
hides its real motives--control and self-aggrandizement--behind nauseating
slogans that members never tire of chanting.
"We are the champions of social justice." [Oh,
put a sock in it, will ya?]
"We are the stewards of
Well, you know what all the nibs say about a lie that's repeated
often enough.
Now we'll discuss three more reasons why schools can't seem to
do what millions of home schooling families and many private and charter
schools do every day--often better, far cheaper, and without school yard
bullies, asinine time-filling assignments, and daily soul-destroying
humiliations.
Bogus innovations
(fads, fraud, and folly) disguised as ''best practices''
Instruction in most subjects
could be routine. We’ve known for 2000 years how to teach reading, math,
rhetoric, science, history, writing, art, and other subjects. Most kids
(with and without disabilities) can be taught these subjects—if instruction is well-designed. In fact, knowledge of exactly how to teach these subjects could easily be put (and has been
put) in a cheap and easy to use form, such as commercial curricula, on-line
programs, and CDs.
SRA/McGraw-Hill. Direct Instruction.
Saxon Math.
Curriculum Associates.
Sopris West.
Funnix.com
Headsprout.com
Yoyager Literacy
...to name a few.
But there’s a powerful incentive in education not
to package or use effective instruction—although this would increase teachers'
effectiveness and benefit students. Instead, there’s an incentive continually
to revolutionize pedagogy (theory) and technique. Packaging
and using effective and inexpensive curricula would put the battalions of
sleazy education consultants, half-witted doctrinaire education perfessers, self-appointed social revolutionaries, and
demented gurus...right out of business.
In medicine, law, and business,
clients contract with service providers; generally have direct contact with
providers; and can hold providers accountable for not delivering the contracted
outcomes or for violating professional standards. But in edland, the innovators (e.g., perfessers, workshop
promoters, publishers) have no contract with students, families, and
nation (the consumers). They rarely interact with anyone harmed by their
innovations. They receive no corrective consequences for
"products" that don’t work and damage kids.
When farmers screw up, they starve. When public schools and
ed schools screw up, they get a million dollar
grant for "curriculum reform."
It took me a long time, but finally I see how the game is played.
Ed schools and their supporters (such as the National
Association for the Education of Young Children, the National Council for
Teachers of Mathematics, the National Association for Teachers of English, the
National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, the National Education
Association) regard your children and our schools as THEIRS—theirs to play with,
theirs to muck around with, theirs to experiment on. They call
this Professional Development Systems--in which school districts actually sign
a CONTRACT allowing ed schools to infest districts
with the newest “hot ideas—and then everyone celebrates the “exciting
collaboration."
Or they call it “action
research”—in which education perfessers and grad students “try something”
in a school. [What if the “something” bombs? Well, sorry, the
“project” is over. “See ya
next time we
think of something interesting!”] Meanwhile, they'll publish
articles and give workshops on the "research," and get tenure. Most satisfying to their tiny egos,
they'll make the news.
The Evening News With Dan Blather
“Professors at the
Dipsy Doodle School of Education believe they have
made a breakthrough in literacy education. Working closely with teachers
at I. B. Gullible Elementary School, the good professors have done away with
systematic instruction in grammar." [Camera pans to an obvious idiot who
says] "All that emphasis on proper grammar stifles children’s
creativity. Language is a living, breathing thing. There is no need
for stodgy rules or for drill in clear communication. So, at the
[Pan back to
Dan. (Clever rhyme scheme--a a)]
"So, there you have it. It's a brave new world that has such people in't--or in it, as the case may be."
In a year or two, when their kids come home speaking as if they
just had a stroke, parents will wonder—too late—what happened. But by then
the perfessers and gurus will be onto another hot
idea.
"How about
having kids lay on the floor and twist themselves into
the shapes of the letters? We could call it 'orthopedic phonics'.
Of course, w will be pretty tough,
but kids with scoliosis can probably do it!"
[You think I'm kiddin', don't ya? I mentioned this to some colleagues at a faculty
meeting. I was JOking.
They took me seriously! "Hmm, has possibilities.
Surely they will learn the shapes if their whole body is involved." Demented!]
Why do districts and schools go for
this--obvious--exploitation? Simple. No
knowledge base! They don't KNOW ahead of time what is likely
to be beneficial and what is likely to be a horror. AND, they see ed perfessers as much smarter than
they are. So, they show deference.
"Oh, certainly. Come on in. Our
classrooms are yours!"
[Why not drop a brown recluse spider down your shorts, too?!]
In summary, there can be
no compelling sense of moral responsibility where self-importance and arrogance
are bred by egoism, where no adverse consequences follow fraud and folly, and
where there is no external, professional code similar to the Hippocratic oath in medicine.
Neither is there a “Guido’s Oath” as in the construction
trades. “You sell me damaged goods, me and Nunzio
here gonna break dem legs o' yours.”
Education
Schools as the Primordial Soup of Fad, Folly, and Fraud
Schools of education are for the
most part the source of pernicious innovations. They are the carriers of
the progressivist doctrine. They induct new
teachers and administrators into the progressivist
thought world, and thereby ensure that another generation is prepared to injure
kids with progressivist innovations.
For example, ed school teacher training rests on progressivist (constructivist, child centered, developmentally
appropriate) shibboleths concerning how children learn and therefore how
children should and should not be taught: drill and kill; be a guide on the
side, not a sage on the stage; teachers should facilitate but not directly
teach; students should construct knowledge; don’t correct spelling
errors. These are repeated in course after course, book after book, and
exam after exam in education schools.
Ed schools do not (in fact,
they DARE not) teach students the logic of scientific reasoning—especially how
to assess the validity of an education professor's or writer's argument and the
credibility of conclusions. Nor do ed schools commonly have students read
original works (to see if in fact Piaget said what is claimed for him), to read
original research articles, meta-analyses, and other literature reviews.
The result is that ed students don’t have the skill to
determine the validity of the progressivist
propositions and curricula they are taught; they must rely on what their
professors tell them to believe.
Finally, ed schools are remarkable in their
intellectual poverty, or cognitive squalor (patent
pending). Ed professors rarely read anything but what they already
believe; they ignore research that absolutely demolishes their child-centered,
constructivist delusions; and they mount bumbling arguments against research
that challenges what they teach. And of course, ed faculty only hire
persons who are educationally correct—who believe the same doctrine as the
committee that hires them, and therefore won't upset existing relations of
power or challenge anyone to desist with the mooing and try thinking.
As long as there's only one
game in town, that's the game you play if you have to play. If there is
only one place for kids to be educated, and one place for eager students to
become teachers, then whoever controls these places controls the market.
It is therefore in the best interest of our kids and our nation to support
charter schools (but still hold them accountable for achievement), private schools,
home schooling, and vouchers, as well as alternative forms of teacher training
and certification.
see
www.abcte.org