Letter to
Among Professor Plum's numerous contributions are his courses for future school administrators. Our MSA (Master of School Administration) program is very good.
Our MSA graduates---fed a steady diet of anti-progressive diatribes; taught logic and solid research; how to evaluate and select effective curricula; how to persuade staff ("Do what I say or get out." Simple. Effective.);how to predict and how to trace change through a school social system; etc.---know the difference between oompus boompus and what works; they know that they have to insulate the school as much as possible from the central office; they know that almost the entire focus must be on instruction---and they do a danged good job, as judged by...well...me.
However, many (and follow me closely here) got their
undergrad degrees at a
And so, I tell them this...
When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to. http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19293
Theodore Dalrymple
I assume you are mature adults with strength of character, virtues (such as honesty and moral integrity), and self-respect.
I assume you want to learn what will be useful to furthering your mission, and that you want also to learn what will not.
I assume that since you are mature adults, you would prefer that I tell you the truth as I see it, and that I tell it directly and without a thick coating of treacle, as would befit a child who needs honey to disguise the medicine.
I assume, with Plato, that hearing you are mistaken about some things is not pleasant, which may lead to resistance and even anger at the messenger—especially if the messenger treats you as an adult who, as a school leader, will have your beliefs, motives, and intelligence challenged every day. In other words, I believe that you need to be challenged now, and not necessarily in a way you like. Because no one’s going to treat you with kid gloves when you occupy a position of leadership. Do you want to learn to handle that now, or would you rather wait until you are challenged on the job in front of an audience?
Socrates says that education is not knowing more; it is not merely the addition of new information to an existing stock of knowledge. It is not even replacing falsehood, speculation, and opinion with truth. It is going from the shadows of things to the things themselves. From the transitory to the enduring. From examples to the general ideas revealed by the examples. This requires a different way of looking, seeing, and understanding. A reorientation of the soul itself.
But what is reoriented? We are required to turn around and examine what we believe and how we believe it. We are required to adopt a thorough, relentless, and heartless skepticism. And to replace intuition, feelings, preferences, and group opinions and group pressure with logic. In science we would call this adopting the null hypothesis and we would collect data to see if it is false or if it is supported.
As a thinker…
Everything I believe is false.
I have no data to support what I believe. It’s all speculation or herd mentality.
Any data I have are invalid. Subjective. Biased. Irrelevant.
My reasoning from data (experience) to conclusions to implications for decisions and actions is so flawed it is foolish.
I am a nincompoop.
As a teacher….
I don’t know anything.
What I believe about learning and instruction is false or useless.
My explanations for success and failure are trivial, superficial, and wrong.
I don’t teach anything.
My students learn nothing.
The curricula I use are poorly designed.
The instructional methods I use are unsupported by sound research.
The instructional methods I use do not work as well as I think.
My assessments don’t measure what they are supposed to measure.
My assessment data are invalid.
The conclusions I draw from assessment data are unwarranted.
The decisions I make based on assessment data are useless or harmful.
I stink and I turn my students into imbeciles.
Do the data (examined in the light of reasoning—that is, using rules of reasoning) invalidate the above self-critical hypotheses? No? Not sure? Then logically (and morally) you cannot reject the self-critical hypotheses.
Now your soul is properly reoriented. Instead of feeling proud or satisfied with what you think you know and how well you teach, you are humble. [Like me.] Intellectually honest.
One of the first things to critically examine is the words you use.
The words you use are either more or less precise; more or less connected to reality; more or less useful as descriptions (of what is going on), explanations (of why things are as they are), and guidelines (for what to do).
The dominant lingo in education is mostly a set of metaphors and fictions. The litany of words and phrases creates a set of false binary oppositions of good vs. bad, progressive vs. conservative, liberating vs. oppressive. Examples are easily found in journal articles, curriculum guides, at conferences, in national curriculum organizations, and in the works of education leaders and gurus such as Alfie Kohn, Linda Darling-Hammond, Kenneth Goodman, and Ned Noddings.
The opposed terms include developmentally appropriate vs. inappropriate, best practice vs. not best practice; child centered vs. teacher centered; construct knowledge vs. transmit knowledge; liberate students vs. oppress students; authentic vs. inauthentic tasks and materials; holistic vs. merely basic instruction; higher-order thinking vs. rote learning; teacher as facilitator or guide on the side vs. teacher as authority and sage on the stage; politically correct vs. politically incorrect ideas and materials.
These terms have nearly no referential meaning. They signify almost nothing in the world. No
one can say what is best practice, or even define what
best means. Best at
what? Acquisition
of knowledge? Fluency building? Generalization? Retention?
Developmentally appropriate means no more than “likely to work,” but it says nothing about the learner or about features of instructional design that explain effectiveness. In other words, it is empty. And it is supposed to be. It is a way of disguising laziness and ignorance of how things work.
Authentic refers to persons, not books. Higher order thinking is not higher. It is merely thinking about thinking—which is merely another kind of thing to think about. There is nothing trivial about rote learning. It is the foundation of all knowledge systems. To avoid rote learning means to deprive students of the most elementary tools, such as the sounds the letters make or mastery of the basic operations in math. To facilitate means to make easier. It is not incompatible with the teacher taking charge of the instructional process. A skilled teacher who is in charge will facilitate learning.
Political correctness is nothing more than fascism imposed by moral entrepreneurs, Birkenstocked leftist pinheads, and administrators who couldn't run a pop stand. One group has decided that it is morally and intellectually superior and will impose its words on everyone else. To submit is to participate in your political domestication. To support it means you are already enslaved, and like it.
In summary, the pseudo-progressive dogma in education is nothing more than an assortment of cheap devices by which persons and pedagogic cults describe, explain, justify, or valorize what they espouse, and denigrate what they see as their opposition (competitors who may put them out of business), without the trouble of thinking what the words might mean, or conducting research to see if their prescriptions yield benefits to students and teachers. In a nutshell, they are mere ideology and reveal a deep anti-intellectualism, anti-empiricism, and fear of being found wanting.
They will NOT help you to look the part of a competent instructional leader. If used before an audience that knows what technically proficient instruction is, these words (and using them to create a binary opposition---“We are good. They are bad.”), will assuredly make you look vapid, ill-informed, illogical, and not very bright. To anyone with a working brain and knowledge (not opinion and belief) of research on what works and what doesn’t, and why, the ideas of Kohn, Darling-Hammond, Goodman, Berliner, and other grandees in education are somewhere between delusion and fantasy, and certainly little more than edubabble pleasing to listeners with overactive glands.
They will not help you to evaluate, select, replace, and improve curricula or instruction.
They will be of no use at all to train and supervise and assist teachers.
“We will use best practices.”
“What’s that?”
“Uh, practices that are best.”
“Gee, not TOO circular! Who says?”
“Uh, Harvey Danielson.”
“Who made him god? I mean, what curriculum has he ever developed and field tested?”
“Uhhhhhh.”
“We will engage our students with authentic texts.”
”What’s that mean?”
“Uh, it means a text has intrinsic interest.”
I advise you to delete these words from your vocabulary, and to replace them with words (and the ideas behind the words) that concern education as an effort to preserve and improve our civilization by teaching the next generation to identify what is good and not good in our civilization, and, using solid knowledge and reason, and with a large dose of humility, to work to sustain and improve the civilization without weakening the very institutions and values and beliefs and trust that make civilized society possible at all---unless of course you want to find out what real oppression means, as a capitalist constitutional republic resting on laws, values, and an obligation to live up to its historical promise, is replaced by a socialist tyranny resting on pure power, that regards as weaknesses democratic processes, religion, and the belief that truth and morality exist independently of us or are known only by our New Masters.
Instead, use words that define instruction as a game of logical technical proficiency.