Education War
January, 2005
To take a Ph.D. in education in most American seminaries, is an enterprise that
requires no more real acumen or information than taking a degree in window
dressing....Most pedagogues...are simply dull persons who have found it easy to
get along by dancing to whatever tune happens to be lined out. At this dancing
they have trained themselves to swallow any imaginable fad or folly, and always
with enthusiasm. The schools reek with this puerile nonsense. Their programs of
study sound like the fantastic inventions of comedians gone insane. The
teaching of the elements is abandoned for a dreadful mass of useless fol-de-rols... Or examine a dozen or so of the
dissertations...turned out by candidates for the doctorate at any eminent
penitentiary for pedagogues, say Teachers College,
Well, THAT being the case!
The cannons have their bowels full of wrath,
And ready mounted are they to spit forth
Their iron indignation 'gainst your walls:
All preparation for a bloody siege...
[King John, II:I]
Ed schools are the main route to certification
and teaching jobs. [If we were guided by the rule, Honesty is the best pollyseed, we should say, Ed schools are a three year
cruise on a Ship of Fools--a journey from Natural Ignorance to Trained
Stupidity.] However, there is increasing evidence that teachers who
avoided ed schools and took alternative routes to certification (e.g., major in
a serious field, receive several months training in instructional communication
and classroom management, get close supervision and on-the-job training in a
good school) teach just as well, as judged by their students'
achievement.
The expansion of effective, less expensive,
faster, and more accountable forms of teacher training is part of a strategy to
weaken the monopoly held by ed schools.
The other part is revealing--for all
right-thinking persons and groups to see--the arrogance, vanity, ineptitude,
and intransigence of most ed schools.
The War in Education
There is a war in public education. The war is over
1. Beliefs about how children learn and what they need to learn.
2. The most
effective ways to teach reading, math, science, history and other bodies of
knowledge.
3. Accountability and moral responsibility
for educational outcomes.
4. What teachers need to know how to do, and who
should train and certify them.
There are two sides to this war. One is the
education establishment. The other is the education anti-establishment.
(A sample of resources will be in our next portion of rant.) Clearly, schools
of education are part of the war. The question many persons ask is
whether they will survive or even should survive it.
It's pretty clear--to Professor Plum--that the
war over schooling is part of a larger war over western civilization--that is,
over western
1. Social
institutions--(a) macro institutions such as the political state, legal,
economic, religious, medical, and military, and (b) local institutions and
groups that stand between persons and the macro institutions (family, church,
club, neighborhood, office).
2. Ways of thinking: reason, critique
of dogma, calculation of costs and benefits.
3. Values: freedom, the person, the
person's moral responsibilities.
4. Core ideas: social contract; there is a
reality independent of whether or what we believe; there are moral and ethical
"oughts" that are independent of whether or
what we believe and how we act; there is Divinity beneath which or within which
we exist.
I'm willing to wager, or bet, that persons and
groups on each side of the education war (the progressive establishment vs. the
traditional anti-establishment) are also on opposite sides of the civilization
war. I would wager that in contrast to the anti-establishment, the ed establishment is
1. More likely to denigrate western
institutions (e.g., to disparage capitalism, the military, the traditional
family, and religion), even to the point of radically changing or eliminating
some of them.
2. Less likely to question its beliefs and
submit them to the test of data. Instead, validation is a matter of the
strength of beliefs (the believer salivates) and the extent to which beliefs
are shared (everyone else--except a few
heretics-- sees things the same way).
3. Less likely to believe there is or could
be anything like immutable laws of ethics and morality (oughts
and ought nots). Instead, facts and truth are
relative and are social constructions.
4. Less cautious about imposing its beliefs
on other persons and groups. Instead, they are certain they are right. Therefore,
they feel both compelled and justified in imposing their beliefs, and not
seeing it as such.
I may be wrong, but that's how I see it.
Here, for me, is the test. You read
stories, with pictures, of women in the middle east sentenced
to having their brains bashed out with rocks because someone suspected them of
adultery. I've discussed this with
colleagues. Except for a few colleagues who see education the way I do,
the rest say that, while it's horrible,
1. "You can't judge other
cultures." [I say, "Why not, idiot?"]
2. "It's not OUR business to
interfere." [I say, "Then whose business IS it, dummy?!"]
3. "What's so great about US?
After all, WE (had slavery, have hanged black persons, and massacred civilians
in
I see these reactions as clear evidence of a
defect that's beyond any words I know. Yes, you can point out the
illogic, the ignorance of history, the incompetence at analysis, the adolescent
pride in thinking that moral and cultural relativism are signs of high
intelligence and deep insight (when in fact they are signs of stupidity and
cowardice), and the use of trivial statements to dismiss moral
responsibility. But the disease is way beyond that. What, I don't
know.
I just love it when people dismiss what's GOING
to happen to these poor woman as irrelevant to THEM,
and in the next breath yammer about "humanistic" teaching.
Surprisingly, you can get sent to jail for punching these people in the
teeth.
"Hey, what's all this? What's all
this!"
"I punched him in the teeth, Officer O'Riley."
"Punched him in the teeth, did you?
He's bleedin' pretty freely."
"Yeah.
Heh Heh."
"And what might the reason be, if you'll be
so kind?"
"He's an eel skin, Officer. A dried bull's pizzle. A churlish, toad-spotted puttock.
A notable coward, and an infinite and endless
liar. A gleeking lout.
A soul so filthy it would demean spit."
"Is he then? All
that, you say? Then you hold him and let ME punch him in the teeth
a few times."
Love those
Who's The Education Establishment?
The education establishment has controlled public
schooling for at least 100 years. The establishment defines itself with terms
such as progressive, child-centered, holistic, constructivist, and
developmentally appropriate. These words are said to describe a coherent and
research-validated philosophy of education, or pedagogy.
The education establishment also promotes
curricula and instructional methods consistent with its dominant philosophy.
Examples include constructivist math and reading curricula (e.g., whole
language and Reading Recovery); so-called discovery or inquiry learning; an
emphasis on process (e.g., children's so-called struggle to construct
knowledge); and a strong rejection of what the establishment labels
traditional, conservative, and developmentally inappropriate methods of
instruction—in particular rejection of an approach (supported by the
preponderance of scientific research cited in the next rant) that stresses
teaching subjects (drawn from traditional bodies of knowledge) to the level of
mastery in a logically progressive sequence of increasingly complex skills,
with the teacher at first assuming a strong directive role providing extensive
practice, systematic correction of errors, and regular assessment to monitor
the effects of instruction.
One branch of the education establishment—calling itself critical pedagogy,
critical ethnography, and postmodernist (found in the work of Michael Apple,
Peter McLaren, Henry Giroux, and Paulo Friere) is based on a marxian
view of society, and has as its alleged aim the liberation of children from the
oppression of schooling and other western social institutions and values.
Who are the actors in the education
establishment? What are their roles?
The education establishment is a large assemblage of like-minded persons and organizations---like-minded in their common intellectual negligibility.
There are education "leaders" (propagandists), spokespersons
(mystifiers), and gurus (purveyors of demented flapdoodle) such as Alfie Kohn, Kenneth Goodman, Frank Smith, Linda Darling-Hammond, and David Berliner.
There are organizations that promulgate the
dominant philosophy of progressivism, certify the proper socialization of
teachers and administrators, and work to legitimize establishment ideas and
establishment-approved curricula and methods. These organizations include
NCATE (National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education), NCTE
(National Council for Teachers of English), NAEYC (National Association for the
Education of Young Children), NCTM (National Council for Teachers of
Mathematics), IRA (International Reading Association), and the NEA (National
Education Association).
There are publishers, such as Heinemann, who
transform establishment ideas into sellable form for wider distribution.
And there are hundreds of schools of education--over 1400, to be exact.
Judging from their websites and publications of faculty, ed
schools with rare exceptions train new teachers within the boundaries of
establishment doctrine. In this way, education schools disseminate and
sustain establishment ideas, values, and social agendas, and pass these on to
the next generation of teachers. And this helps to sustain the
establishment's control over public schooling.
Who's The Education Anti-establishment
The opposition, or anti-establishment, consists
of scholars (such as E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Diane Ravitch,
Chester Finn., Thomas Sowell, John Stone, Lynne Cheney, Sandra Stotsky, Lisa Delpit, Kieran
Egan, Richard Mitchell, and the National Association of Scholars) who
critically examine the foundational so-called progressive, Romantic modernist
beliefs at the core of establishment doctrine.
There are researchers, such as Mike Podgursky (on
whether NCATE approval and National Board certification signify a difference in
teacher quality), Eric Hanushek (on whether advanced
teacher training makes a difference), Lance Izumi and the Pacific Research
Institute (who reveal ed schools' resistance to altering the constructivist
core of their curricula despite major shifts in research and education policy),
and Barak Rosenshine, Edwin
Ellis, Robert Dixon, Edward Kameenui, Deborah
Simmons, Jerry Brophy, Barbara Foorman,
and many others on designing effective instruction.
There are foundations and unions (such as Heartland, Council for Basic
Education, No Excuses, National Right to Read, Heritage, Fordham, and the
American Federation of Teachers) that advocate research-based curricula,
greater consumer control, and argue for either radical reform of schools of
education or their replacement by more effective and less expensive
alternatives.
There are consumer organizations and movements, such as Education Consumers,
Oregon Education Consumers, http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com, home
schooling, and vouchers.
There are national organizations (such as the National Council on Teacher
Quality) that are critical of progressivist
ideologies and social agendas, and are creating alternative forms of teacher
preparation and certification that could be adopted by states.
Finally, there is the federal government (specifically, the Department of
Education) that has criticized ed school curricula; presented an alternative
description of what effective instruction looks like; developed an alternative,
research-validated description of effective reading and early language
instruction; identified the minimum set of skills new teachers need; and,
through the incentive of grant money, is encouraging states to reform
everything from their conception of reading acquisition down to how ed schools
train new teachers to teach reading.
The education anti-establishment is larger than it has ever been. Its
criticisms of dominant, progressive/constructivist philosophy and curricula are
highly focused and widely shared within the anti-establishment (in other words,
the anti-establishment is cohesive and has a focused mission). It is
vocal. And some of its members and organizations have control over money,
law, regulations, and certification.
Here, in brief, is a 10-point summary of the anti-establishment
critique of ed schools.
The Anti-establishment Critique of Ed Schools
First,
ed schools offer little convincing evidence that new
graduates know how to teach. Few education schools (with notable
exceptions in Louisiana, Oregon, Kansas, Texas, and Florida) evaluate students
during and at the end of their curriculum in light of an objective,
performance-based inventory of knowledge and practical skills derived from the
preponderance of scientific research on effective instruction. Nor are
more than a few ed schools able to show that interns
and new graduates foster substantial change in the children they teach.
This absence of direct evidence that ed schools serve their manifest function helps to explain
why ed schools seek certification from organizations such as NCATE. Most ed schools must rely on external organizations to provide a
legitimizing seal of approval. This sustains a symbiotic relationship
between ed schools and certifiers. Indeed, the more ed schools come under criticism from the anti-establishment,
the more new certifying organizations are created—each with a predictable set
of progressivist standards.
Second, new graduates are not taught
exactly how to teach and are ill-prepared when they have their own classrooms.
Ed schools teach students to construct superficial lesson plans, write
reflective journals, create literacy philosophies, and assemble these into
portfolios, but new graduates do not know exactly how to teach concepts, rules,
and cognitive strategies; do not know exactly how to teach school children to
synthesize elementary skills into larger wholes; do not know exactly what sorts
of errors school students will make in each subject and how to correct errors;
do not know exactly how to design instruction so that it fosters the different
phases of learning (acquisition, fluency, generalization, retention, and
independence); and do not know exactly how to teach language, reading, math,
and other subjects.
Third,
the dominant majority of professors in typical ed
schools (i.e., progressive and constructivist) arrogate to themselves and to
their schools a mission and social agenda contrary to what is wanted by the
public. Many education professors portray themselves, and claim that
teachers should see themselves, as stewards of
This as a stunning example of
hubris. No one asked, elected, or appointed education professors
and ed schools to be social reformers. Nor is
there reason to believe that education professors possess the humility and
wisdom needed to do this. And the social agenda surely distracts
education students from the one thing that is mandated and paid for by the
public—namely, to learn exactly how to use research tested routines to teach
most subjects.
Fourth, ed school
teacher training curricula rest on and are misguided by empirically weak and
logically flawed constructivist speculations on how children learn, and
therefore how children should and should not be taught. Examples are below.
Summarizing the demented ed
school canon...
1. Learning is not hard.
2. Knowledge is acquired incidentally,
without explicit instruction.
3. Children do not acquire knowledge from a
teacher; they discover it. Teachers therefore should not teach; they
should merely facilitate.
Fifth,
when teachers use so-called progressive curricula and teaching methods taught
in ed schools (such as a whole language approach to beginning
reading, constructivist math, and inquiry approaches to literature and
science), a substantial proportion of
school children don't learn—as reflected in low school achievement overall
and by enormous discrepancies between students of different social classes and
ethnic groups. Indeed, students most likely to be ill-served (namely, the
disadvantaged and minorities) are the very students whom progressive education
professors claim to champion.
The ed establishment,
for obvious reasons of self-protection, attributes failure to learn to other
factors (family, social class, teacher insensitivity to cultural differences,
too much teacher directedness). In fact, failure to learn is in most
cases simply the result of technically inept instruction. We know how to
teach; ed schools, districts, and schools refuse to do
it.
Sixth,
ed schools do not adequately teach students the logic
of scientific reasoning; specifically, how to define
concepts and judge the adequacy of definitions; how to identify the
propositions and arguments in a text; how to assess the logical validity of an
education professor's or writer's argument and the credibility of
conclusions.
Nor do ed schools 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—so that ed
school students themselves discover the most trustworthy principles of
instruction and the most effective curricula, rather than merely trust what
education professors tell them to believe.
Instead of research articles, data, and logic,
education students are induced into the establishment thought world with a set
of emotionally appealing but empirically empty shibboleths taught in every
course, that are presented as knowledge and not the intellect-numbing mantra
they really are.
Following are examples of common terms and
prescriptions in ed schools that either don't mean
anything or that are invalidated by elementary logic and serious
research. In other words, most of the following terms and prescriptions
are best understood not as a summary of wisdom in the field but as advertising
claims for constructivist, "child centered" methods and publications.
1. “Best Practices.”
[This is the term by which so-called progressive, "child-centered"
education professors and book writers valorize what they preach. No honest or
even logical person could ever claim to know what is best.]
2. “Developmentally appropriate
practices."
[This phrase is used to produce a false binary opposition between (a) the
so-called child-centered, progressive instruction advocated by establishment
education professors (e.g., pre-school children move around the classroom from
one to another "experience center"—blocks, books, paints--to
"inquire") and (b) more teacher-directed, structured instruction for
some subjects as advocated by the anti-establishment. The binary
opposition allows progressivist professors to
demonize (as "developmentally inappropriate") whatever they do
not--at the moment—sell or publish.]
3. “The teacher is a facilitator rather
than a transmitter of knowledge. Students must discover and construct
knowledge on their own.
[This is another false binary opposition. Moreover, the preponderance of
scientific research supports the teacher actually teaching—showing students how
to solve problems, leading them through solutions, testing or checking to see
if students have gotten it, correcting all errors, giving more examples, and
providing more practice and opportunities for independent application in the
future.]
4. “Homogeneous grouping for a short
time each day for certain subjects based on students’ current skills is
bad. It lowers self-esteem and creates tracks. It is
discrimination.”
[This is an example of constructing a politically correct dream world and
expecting other persons to live in it. In fact, teachers learn very
quickly that children in the same class are not equal--that is, are not
identical. Some need more learning opportunities, assistance, individual
attention, and practice than other students. Some students in a class are
ready for harder material than other students. Teaching to a
heterogeneous group (that is, everyone gets the same instruction despite their
differences) means that virtually no children receive the kind of instruction
from which they would most benefit. The call for heterogeneous grouping
(and the rejection of homogeneous grouping for a short time each day in, for
example, reading and math) means that students' initial differences really do become
tracks because the neediest students fall even farther behind.]
5. “Teachers should not correct errors
immediately and consistently. Error correction makes students dependent
on the teacher and threatens self-esteem."
[This prescription flows from the constructivist notion that students should
construct knowledge and not be taught directly. The problem, of course,
is that if the teacher does not teach students what errors are and how to
correct them, many students will not figure it out on
their own. Therefore, errors will be repeated and in time students will
have huge knowledge gaps that are impossible to fill without an enormous
expenditure of time and effort; e.g., reteaching
basic math skills to students who have no idea what is going on in algebra
class. Predictably, these students end up both unskilled and with low
self-esteem.]
6. "Frequent practice is not an effective
way to foster mastery and high self-expectations. Practice is boring and
inhibits creativity. Drill and kill."
[This statement is simply false, but it is consistent with the anti-authority
thread in educational progressivism that sees practice as some form of
regimentation, rather than the only sure route to mastery—an idea taken for
granted in every field (dance, music, martial arts, sports) outside of
education schools.]
7. “Teachers should create their own curricula
and lesson plans, rather than follow field tested programs.
Programs disempower teachers and hinder self
expression.”
[This statement calls for teachers—with virtually no training in how to design
instruction—to prepare not merely a few lessons but whole year-long curricula
in reading, math, spelling, writing, science, and so on. The task is of course
impossible and means that at best students receive ill-designed
instruction. Moreover it means that teachers are implicitly field testing
each lesson on their own students. It is doubtful that many families want
their children to be part of such experiments. Instead of empowering teachers,
this statement, in the end, leads to the disempowerment of teachers as they are
denied the tools (field tested programs) that would make them master
teachers.
Doubtless the underlying reason why education
professors and ed schools abhor effective field tested programs in math, reading,
spelling, writing, and other subjects is that these programs make education
courses and education professors' endless innovations irrelevant to new and
veteran teachers alike. Teachers would not need to take four courses
that superficially cover eight approaches to teaching reading; they would
simply use one of the few programs that work the best.]
Without a background in logic, and ignorant of
independent bodies of research literature, education students are unable to
engage in the reflection so often spoken of in schools of education, to see if
there is anything credible in the mantra of progressivism they are taught.
Seventh,
education professors typically read little that challenges what they already
believe; ignore research that invalidates their child-centered,
constructivist thought world; and mount disingenuous arguments against the
preponderance of scientific research that challenges what they teach. For
example, education professors do not read the Report of the National Reading
Panel (one of many huge literature reviews), and do not have their students
read this and other reviews. Or, they dismiss these reviews, and teach
their students to dismiss these reviews, with off-handed comments such as,
"All research is flawed" or "This document is politically
motivated." This self-imposed and self-defensive ignorance helps to
ensure that what education professors believe and teach remains, to them,
unchallenged.
This ignorance also gives any right-thinking
person good reason to dismiss the scholarly pretensions of education professors
and, instead, to see ed schools as ideology-driven, nonrational,
disconnected from external bodies of scientific research, unaccountable for
what they teach, and therefore vulnerable to the charge that ed schools have
many of the features of a closed society, or cult.
In addition, ed schools sustain a progressivist-constructivist thought world by hiring
persons who are educationally correct—i.e., who espouse the same doctrine as
the committee that hires them, and therefore won't upset existing relations of
power and won't (by drawing on different bodies of research) challenge anyone
to think very hard.
An
eighth criticism is that education professors and ed schools generally occupy a
safe distance from the public that: (a) pays them and (b)
is harmed by the pernicious and worthless fads (whole language, brain-based
learning, multiple intelligence, learning styles, constructivist math)
that come from education professors and that continually infest schools.
Education professors and ed schools have no contract
with children, families, teachers, and schools; have little direct contact with
children, families, teachers, and schools; and receive no corrective consequences
for sending ill-trained new teachers and destructive fads into the schools.
This insularity enables ed
professors and ed schools to regard their activities as a form of play.
They adopt a philosophy (say, constructivism or postmodernism); they think
of interesting ways it could be used in schools; they have exciting
conversations with like-minded colleagues; they get a grant (or at least get a
school) that will enable them to implement their new idea; they take some kind
of data, usually field notes that support what they already believe; and then
publish a series of articles that bring tenure and prestige.
This a perversion of the idea of scholarship and
of the mandate that ed schools turn out teachers who know exactly how to teach,
and not turn out fanciful and fashionable projects that waste children's
irreplaceable time and in essence constitute exploitation of public schools.
A
ninth criticism is that ed schools attempt to maintain the appearance of being
self-reflective, in touch with scientific research in the field,
and responsive to the needs of schools by conjuring up one after another
innovation or initiative. But these innovations and initiatives do nothing to
change the core progressivist thought world and
teacher training curricula, and often do little or nothing to assist public
schools. Recent examples are the so-called infusion of technology into
public schools (e.g., computerized reading programs) and extraordinarily
expensive remedial reading programs of questionable merit (Reading Recovery).
A final criticism is that unlike medicine,
structural engineering, and food science, ed schools do not have a knowledge base shared within and across schools,
and that rests on scientific research--i.e., experimental, longitudinal,
quantitative, replicated research whose findings are turned into conclusions
and instructional implications only after they are examined in the light of the
rules of right reasoning.
In other words, ed
schools are anomic (lawless, normless)
cultures. Neither old nor allegedly innovative
curricula and methods are generated by a solid body of empirical
propositions that say, If you do X, Y will happen. Nor are so-called
innovative curricula and methods rejected because they are found to be
logically absurd and empirically pernicious to children. For, there are
no empirical research generalizations and no rules for reasoning that are
accepted as being independent of and as having an authority greater than what
the education professor or school may think of them, and that therefore oblige
an intellectually honest professor or school to reject groundless beliefs and
fanciful innovations.
Indeed, the tenets of constructivism and postmodernism
attack the very possibility that there can be any truths and rules for
reasoning external to the individual—for these independent truths and rules
(given the egoism bred by the Romantic modernist thought world) are said to
stifle the academic freedom and creativity of the individual. Unfortunately,
this anomie has left unchallenged fatally flawed curricula that damage the life
chances of many children who depend on the honesty, humility, and rationality
of educators.
I suspect that ed schools will not notice the
criticisms against them, will not examine themselves, and will not improve
themselves. Nor are universities likely to dump ed
schools, widely known as cash cows. Perhaps the most feasible course is
simply to make ed schools irrelevant by promoting
alternative certification and training.