Things Fall Apart

December, 2004

 

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

America, Volume II. 1840]

 

 Despite all the computers, networks, CDs, basal readers, history books, math programs, tutoring programs, celebrations of diversity, teacher licensure exams, professional development, school improvement grants, schools of education and all their degree programs and conferences, national organizations for English, math, and social studies, government committees, reform groups, laws, state departments of public instruction and boards of education, thousands of journal articles and books on how to teach everything from rote counting to matrix algebra, and a trillion bucks….anywhere from 25 to 50% of kids can’t read—and therefore can’t learn FROM reading; our students’ math scores are lower than that of kids from Romania (who share pencils); and our students leave high school unable to name half the thirteen original colonies, write a coherent essay, deliver a logical argument, or state why we are the most fortunate people on earth.

 

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 America's children." [Who asked you?]

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.

Singapore 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.   



Absence of Contract, Contact, and Accountability
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 Gullible Elementary School, we will be doing away with grammar altogether! Speak and write any way you want. That’s the ticket!"

[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

 



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