This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:
I’ll return to my series on Texas Education soon, but I want to share some thoughts after digesting the rhetoric from both national political conventions.
My first and over-riding thought was how baffled Adam Smith and William Jennings Bryan would be if they had somehow been able to return to this world for the last two weeks and had attended these conventions. Neither would understand the split that has occurred in American politics over issues they studied and championed, and both would be shocked at how misunderstood and misapplied their ideas have become.
Smith, the Scottish professor of Moral Philosophy, built his ideas about economics and government in his Wealth of Nations on the foundation of his description of the inherent moral nature of man in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. For the last 250 years, both proponents and opponents of the system of capitalism and free markets that evolved from Smith’s writings based their viewpoints on an analysis of economic behavior that was independent of the morality so central to Smith’s theories. Smith would not have understood either Marx or Rand. To him, the individual pursuing his or her self-interest did so within a context of morality and responsibility. Smith’s total view, in turn, was consistent with the type of system that developed during the 18th and 19th Centuries in the United States—the one de Tocqueville observed and explained in his Democracy In America.
But today, we are more the children of Marx and Rand, than of Smith. So, we see the answers to our problems solely through the lens of rugged individualism, or social-justice collectivism, when both individualism and community are needed for a society of free people to thrive using capitalism and free markets. In essence, our misreading of Smith has set up a false choice between individualism and community that de Tocqueville believed we had avoided.
As a self-proclaimed answer to this false choice, William Jennings Bryan emerged as a political force of nature in the 1890s. Arguably, as one of the early proponents of a form of Progressivism, he was the most influential politician from the 1890s to the 1920s who never became President—though he tried four times. He set out to impose community on rugged individualists through his “applied Christianity,” which was derisively called “Bryanism.” Bryanism called for the federal government to become the source of social justice through interventionist and redistributionist economic policies, and by enforcing a common standard for public and private moral behavior. Between the 1930s and the 1960s, the Democratic Party abandoned the social conservatism of Bryanism, while fully embracing the economic portion of his social justice views.
Meanwhile, in the late 1970s, the social-conservative heirs to the morality of Bryanism turned to the Republican Party to promote their agenda, and they joined economic conservatives to support Ronald Reagan’s “New Republican Party” plan to re-establish a modern society upon the Smith/de Tocqueville model of society. In fact, what Reagan understood was that the real choice for sustaining and improving our free society is not between individualism and community, but between the role of individual morality and responsibility and government regulations and programs in creating and maintaining community among free people. The Smith/de Tocqueville model that Reagan tried to reinvigorate provided the right answer for that real choice.
But instead of disappearing into history, the remnants of Bryanism are alive and well. They are divided into two warring camps still trying to resolve the false choice between individualism and community with wrong or incomplete answers that depend on the exercise of federal government action, and that create strange fissures within both Progressivism and Conservatism in this country.
President Obama’s acceptance speech doubled-down on the economic social-justice model of Bryanism. He recognized that our society is built on both the freedom of the individual and the interdependence of communities, but he embraced the false choice between the two. Then, he sought to answer the false choice by providing community artificially through more government interventions, while rejecting any role for private, individual, moral character and responsibility in shaping and preserving a community. Such an approach provides a wrong answer to the false choice, which will worsen all of the social pathologies that have arisen over the last century, and further isolate neighbors as autonomous wards of one or more federal government programs.
Where are the Republicans in this debate? Unfortunately, we are still arguing between the social conservatism of Bryanism and the economic conservatism of traditional and libertarian Republicans, when Smith, de Tocqueville and Reagan would have told us the choice we are arguing about is false, too. Both are needed for our model of government to work, and we need to stop fighting among ourselves over this fundamental point.
Instead, we need to come together and seize the opportunity we’ve been given to change the debate in this election. By shaping the debate around “community” and the social-justice model, Obama has handed us a rare opportunity to break out of the old paradigms and to reveal the false choice between individualism and community that we have been given over the last century. As we reveal the false choice, we must argue for our Smith/de Tocqueville/Reagan model of a free society and government—an argument we have not made coherently for at least a generation because of our own internal arguments. We need to take the “You did build that” theme, and expand on it with our ageless ideas of creating and maintaining “community” through individual, private, and local action; by showing that the individualism of moral people creates community among neighbors, and that such communities are protected and promoted by local private and public entities, rather than by a federal bureaucracy.
All of the groups we need to persuade to vote for our ticket need to hear the falsity of the choice and answer the Democrats have long promoted, and hear the real argument for the Smith/de Tocqueville/Reagan model that made us exceptional: Latinos and other new immigrant groups who have come to this country to build a better life; African-Americans who have been abandoned to under-education, under-employment and over-incarceration; and women and young people, whose prosperity depends on the economic growth and support that strong neighborhoods provide.
Unless some whiz kid around Romney and Ryan figures out how to make this argument effectively, Obama’s argument will win by default because the false choice has become engrained in our national thinking, and the mood of the country is looking for answers. They’ll embrace even wrong answers to false choices if we don’t show them the choice is false and the answer is wrong, and what is really the right path. We won’t just win this election by doubling-down on social conservatism or rugged individualism, nor do I now think we can limp into the election just focusing on jobs, the budget and government reform. Instead, we need to show why our answers to jobs, the budget and government reform will improve the condition of this country, and to do that we need to address the interrelationship between basic morality, individualism, and strong communities for the success of our model of society and economic growth—an interrelationship that our founders, Smith and de Tocqueville understood and promoted. Then, we need to challenge our neighbors to rebuild this model of society with us.
If Romney articulates the Smith/de Tocqueville/Reagan model effectively, shows why it is relevant to the problems we face, shows how it can work, shows how it will improve lives in the 21st Century, and challenges us to embrace it, he’ll win in a landslide. If not, the public may decide to let their money ride on the wrong bet they made four years ago.
Monday, September 17, 2012
Friday, September 7, 2012
The Election Choice—Can Romney make it simple? Can Romney be Romney?
This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:
Watching all of the pundits say that Romney has to make himself likable is beginning to drive me crazy. Of course no one wants to embrace a dour person (though Richard Nixon was on 4 of 5 winning national tickets, just proving that there are exceptions to every rule), but Romney is not dour, and the times require a serious, steady, positive message. I am going to say something I never thought I would say a few months ago—let’s let Romney be Romney.
What would that mean? It would mean that we should allow Romney to make the case to the American people about the choices we face, and how he is the best man at this time to help us make those choices because he has lived those choices all his life.
Romney knows the correct answer to the fundamental question of this election: Who builds this economy and this country, the federal government or private businesses and the individuals they employee?
And the answer is: private business and the individuals they employ. If you don’t understand that fundamental answer, you do not deserve the public’s trust to hold an office in our government. Period.
It is private business that generates the jobs that provide for families and that build neighborhoods. We spend more time every day with our co-workers than with our families, and the positive bonds formed through this activity ripple out in every direction. Employing people affects the lives of both the employer and the employee, from which both grow. The products or services generated by a business affect customers, and spur innovation by others through competition. But, most importantly, every paycheck signed sets aside a retirement fund, pays for health care, provides for the sustenance of a family, pays for a mortgage and a college education, pays for the charity from a church or non-profit organization, and creates the tax base for the infrastructure and protection of a community.
Government is nothing more than a service that we pay for with the taxes from our paychecks and profits. It is a service through which we have chosen to hire some of our neighbors to provide education to our children, create and maintain a physical infrastructure, provide for our defense and protection our communities and nation, and preserve a safety net for those unable through no fault of their own to help themselves (or find private charitable help), while we work and build the foundation of wealth and happiness for our families, our communities, and our country. In essence, government works for us, at our direction, and to the extent we feel we need it—we do not work for government. To increase government’s role in our society beyond providing these services effectively and efficiently, is to threaten the delicate balance among free people that this system has long maintained—and that makes our experiment in self-government so unique and exceptional.
President Obama and the modern Democratic Party do not believe in this delicate balance. Instead, they want to transform it so that Government indeed becomes the source of all wealth and happiness in our society—and as they do so, they are putting our delicate balance in mortal jeopardy. The Democrats have long wanted to change the fundamental relationships in our private sector, and between the private sector and government, by inserting government more and more into the private relationships that a private-sector paycheck has always supported. This process has reached a tipping point now.
Because no one knows which way our system will tip—how much further the federal government will interfere in the private market and private relationships, and how much taxes will be seized to pay for the massive public spending and debt incurred to fund that interference—a cloud of uncertainty now hangs over our country (and, by extension, over the world economy). And that uncertainty keeps business from hiring people, and that cuts the paychecks that support families and communities. That uncertainty, if allowed to continue, will tip the balance toward a new pervasive government and the nation the Democrats have long tried to create.
We must bring an end to this transformation that disguises itself as “hope and change,” and “moving forward.” This transformation does not promise progress, but, instead, a benign peonage for future generations. Is that what prior generations fought for?
Through his work in the private sector, in his church, and through the charities he has supported, Romney understands, and indeed embodies the best of the balanced system I have just described. He understands the challenge and threat the Democrats’ vision has created for the delicate balance of our unique society. He just needs to be honest with us; and then challenge us to help him stop this transformation, to make the necessary reforms to remove the uncertainty, and to restore the historic balance between the private sector and government, so that private business will write those paychecks again.
It’s that simple. Great speeches by Ann Romney, Chris Christie, Condi Rice, Susana Martinez, and Paul Ryan have all paved the way for him. Now, let’s hope Romney will be Romney.
Watching all of the pundits say that Romney has to make himself likable is beginning to drive me crazy. Of course no one wants to embrace a dour person (though Richard Nixon was on 4 of 5 winning national tickets, just proving that there are exceptions to every rule), but Romney is not dour, and the times require a serious, steady, positive message. I am going to say something I never thought I would say a few months ago—let’s let Romney be Romney.
What would that mean? It would mean that we should allow Romney to make the case to the American people about the choices we face, and how he is the best man at this time to help us make those choices because he has lived those choices all his life.
Romney knows the correct answer to the fundamental question of this election: Who builds this economy and this country, the federal government or private businesses and the individuals they employee?
And the answer is: private business and the individuals they employ. If you don’t understand that fundamental answer, you do not deserve the public’s trust to hold an office in our government. Period.
It is private business that generates the jobs that provide for families and that build neighborhoods. We spend more time every day with our co-workers than with our families, and the positive bonds formed through this activity ripple out in every direction. Employing people affects the lives of both the employer and the employee, from which both grow. The products or services generated by a business affect customers, and spur innovation by others through competition. But, most importantly, every paycheck signed sets aside a retirement fund, pays for health care, provides for the sustenance of a family, pays for a mortgage and a college education, pays for the charity from a church or non-profit organization, and creates the tax base for the infrastructure and protection of a community.
Government is nothing more than a service that we pay for with the taxes from our paychecks and profits. It is a service through which we have chosen to hire some of our neighbors to provide education to our children, create and maintain a physical infrastructure, provide for our defense and protection our communities and nation, and preserve a safety net for those unable through no fault of their own to help themselves (or find private charitable help), while we work and build the foundation of wealth and happiness for our families, our communities, and our country. In essence, government works for us, at our direction, and to the extent we feel we need it—we do not work for government. To increase government’s role in our society beyond providing these services effectively and efficiently, is to threaten the delicate balance among free people that this system has long maintained—and that makes our experiment in self-government so unique and exceptional.
President Obama and the modern Democratic Party do not believe in this delicate balance. Instead, they want to transform it so that Government indeed becomes the source of all wealth and happiness in our society—and as they do so, they are putting our delicate balance in mortal jeopardy. The Democrats have long wanted to change the fundamental relationships in our private sector, and between the private sector and government, by inserting government more and more into the private relationships that a private-sector paycheck has always supported. This process has reached a tipping point now.
Because no one knows which way our system will tip—how much further the federal government will interfere in the private market and private relationships, and how much taxes will be seized to pay for the massive public spending and debt incurred to fund that interference—a cloud of uncertainty now hangs over our country (and, by extension, over the world economy). And that uncertainty keeps business from hiring people, and that cuts the paychecks that support families and communities. That uncertainty, if allowed to continue, will tip the balance toward a new pervasive government and the nation the Democrats have long tried to create.
We must bring an end to this transformation that disguises itself as “hope and change,” and “moving forward.” This transformation does not promise progress, but, instead, a benign peonage for future generations. Is that what prior generations fought for?
Through his work in the private sector, in his church, and through the charities he has supported, Romney understands, and indeed embodies the best of the balanced system I have just described. He understands the challenge and threat the Democrats’ vision has created for the delicate balance of our unique society. He just needs to be honest with us; and then challenge us to help him stop this transformation, to make the necessary reforms to remove the uncertainty, and to restore the historic balance between the private sector and government, so that private business will write those paychecks again.
It’s that simple. Great speeches by Ann Romney, Chris Christie, Condi Rice, Susana Martinez, and Paul Ryan have all paved the way for him. Now, let’s hope Romney will be Romney.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Texas Education IV: A Case Study in the Failure of a Method-Based Curriculum
This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:
I want to thank “Izzy,” who is a frequent commentator on the posts here on Big Jolly Politics, for his very creative comment to my last post, because it helped crystalize for me how I need to start this discussion about reforming our curriculum and our classrooms—very carefully.
You see, one reason reform efforts over the last generation have been so ineffective is that the classroom has become the “third rail” in the debate over education, which we mere mortals dare not discuss—especially if we are conservatives. When we “fools” have rushed in, we have been castigated by the “professionals” for not understanding the realities of teaching and the modern classroom, and our proposals have been dismissed as unenlightened attempts to find the answer to every issue in some bygone, Reaganesque “Golden Age” that never existed. Unfortunately, we conservatives sometimes play into this narrative by the rhetoric we use and the battles we choose to fight.
So, at the outset of this portion of our discussion, let me clarify a few things.
First, I believe teaching is one of the hardest jobs to do well in our society, and I have the utmost admiration for those who pursue teaching as a career. From the moment a teacher walks inside a school each morning to the moment he (or she) leaves at night, he is teaching—content, character, methods, and values—directly in the classroom and indirectly by observation and example. And, this process continues every day of each school year for decades. The reality is that the challenges teachers face have become more difficult over the last few decades as our student bodies have become larger and more culturally and intellectually diverse, as the mission of our public schools has become more opaque, and as the public’s willingness to underwrite the present system has been strained to the breaking point. A primary objective for starting this discussion is to establish a more intelligible system that will help teachers meet their challenges more effectively, and that will gain the public’s confidence and support.
Second, I enter this discussion with a little more than a pedestrian interest. I grew up in a family deeply devoted to education, in which my father served as member of a public school board, and worked on local education issues for many years. In college, I served on the Faculty Curriculum Committee that revised our college’s core curriculum and graduation requirements, and on the college’s Long-Range Planning Committee. Recently, I finished a four-year term as a member, officer, and Chair of the Board of Trustees of a local private school. These experiences, together with my own study over the years, have provided me with insights into the challenges faced by educators, the different missions of public and private schools, the proper boundaries between management of a school as an entity and administration of the operations and classrooms of the school, and the ongoing process of strategic planning for a school.
Third, because public schools are by their nature “public,” there is a political component to the strategic planning for our school system. Therefore, citizens, including old fools like me, have a responsibility to participate in that planning process. Given the state of our public education, and the demands on our public budgets, this strategic planning process is long overdue in Texas.
Finally, I do believe that the first step of any strategic planning process is to define the mission of the entity, and only then to determine how to fulfill that mission. My previous posts focused on offering a clarified mission, and with this post we will start to discuss how to fulfill it. I am sure that some people fear that my stated mission, and the proposals to implement it, will “turn the clock back” on education. To show that this view fundamentally misreads what I have said so far, I’ll briefly recap what I’ve said so far:
Now, with these clarifications behind us, let us “fools” proceed to discuss the curriculum and the classrooms we will need to carry-out a unified mission in the 21st Century.
To do so, let’s start with the fictional classroom that Izzy described in his comment to my last post. I am going to quote it at length (though I’ve done my best to fix the punctuation and paragraphs to enhance its readability) and then use it to discuss the problems illustrated by this story, which underlie the need for curricular reform. I will then use these problems as discussion points for my next posts.
In Izzy’s story, we are shown a class of diverse students—probably a science class of unknown grade level—to whom the teacher is trying to teach the “scientific method”:
I want to put my critique in context, so let’s start with a few of the relevant findings from A Nation at Risk, which I referenced in my last post:
Both the purpose of the lesson—teaching the Scientific Method—and the result—application of the first step to an unrelated, non-scientific scenario, is a waste of educational resources.
Cognitive scientists tell us that teaching a method of thinking without reference to the basic knowledge to which the methodology is to be applied, is a waste of time. However, since A Nation at Risk was issued, much of the educational establishment in this country has re-doubled their efforts to teach such methodology with the hope that it would lead to an expansion of “‘higher order’ intellectual skill” among our children.
In 2007, in the journal American Educator, Donald T. Willingham presented an analysis of the relevant cognitive science studies in “Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?”. The upshot of the research that Willingham summarizes is that if critical thinking is taught as a methodology, e.g., the scientific method, the historical method, etc., without reference to the subject matter to which it applies and without repetition, it is not retained for future use by students. E.D. Hirsch, Jr., expands on and addresses similar findings in his recent book, The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools.
So, though our fictional teacher was justifiably gratified that there had been a momentary break-thru with the students, the break-thru promises to be just that—momentary. It is unlikely that anything of value from the lesson will be retained by our fictional students for future application.
The language used by the students shows their functional illiteracy, and their lack of readiness for the lesson that is being presented.
These fictional students show virtually no functional grasp of the English language; certainly not enough of a grasp of English to understand the meaning of either “scientific” or “method,” let alone to understand, retain or use anything else related to the teacher’s lesson. These students have not learned either of the necessary reading and listening skills: decoding; and comprehending. Without these skills, the long-term meaning of this lesson was lost on the students described in Izzy’s story.
The functional illiteracy displayed by these students displays a failure of the system to assimilate these students into the America they will inherit.
Why are our fictional students functionally illiterate in the language of our culture? Because our curriculum fails to require instruction in the basic knowledge these children need in order to assimilate into our society, or as Mill described in 1867: to become members of “the culture which each generation purposely gives to those who are to be its successors, in order to qualify them for at least keeping up, and if possible for raising the level of improvement which has been attained….”
Hirsch makes this point persuasively in The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools:
Depending on the age of our fictional students, changing their current life trajectory will take a lot of remedial effort as we transition from the present system to a new knowledge-based curriculum, but we can’t afford to see the students in this class five or ten years from now caught in the same situation. So, in our next post, we’ll pick-up Izzy’s fictional class and discuss how to change these dynamics for future students.
I want to thank “Izzy,” who is a frequent commentator on the posts here on Big Jolly Politics, for his very creative comment to my last post, because it helped crystalize for me how I need to start this discussion about reforming our curriculum and our classrooms—very carefully.
You see, one reason reform efforts over the last generation have been so ineffective is that the classroom has become the “third rail” in the debate over education, which we mere mortals dare not discuss—especially if we are conservatives. When we “fools” have rushed in, we have been castigated by the “professionals” for not understanding the realities of teaching and the modern classroom, and our proposals have been dismissed as unenlightened attempts to find the answer to every issue in some bygone, Reaganesque “Golden Age” that never existed. Unfortunately, we conservatives sometimes play into this narrative by the rhetoric we use and the battles we choose to fight.
So, at the outset of this portion of our discussion, let me clarify a few things.
First, I believe teaching is one of the hardest jobs to do well in our society, and I have the utmost admiration for those who pursue teaching as a career. From the moment a teacher walks inside a school each morning to the moment he (or she) leaves at night, he is teaching—content, character, methods, and values—directly in the classroom and indirectly by observation and example. And, this process continues every day of each school year for decades. The reality is that the challenges teachers face have become more difficult over the last few decades as our student bodies have become larger and more culturally and intellectually diverse, as the mission of our public schools has become more opaque, and as the public’s willingness to underwrite the present system has been strained to the breaking point. A primary objective for starting this discussion is to establish a more intelligible system that will help teachers meet their challenges more effectively, and that will gain the public’s confidence and support.
Second, I enter this discussion with a little more than a pedestrian interest. I grew up in a family deeply devoted to education, in which my father served as member of a public school board, and worked on local education issues for many years. In college, I served on the Faculty Curriculum Committee that revised our college’s core curriculum and graduation requirements, and on the college’s Long-Range Planning Committee. Recently, I finished a four-year term as a member, officer, and Chair of the Board of Trustees of a local private school. These experiences, together with my own study over the years, have provided me with insights into the challenges faced by educators, the different missions of public and private schools, the proper boundaries between management of a school as an entity and administration of the operations and classrooms of the school, and the ongoing process of strategic planning for a school.
Third, because public schools are by their nature “public,” there is a political component to the strategic planning for our school system. Therefore, citizens, including old fools like me, have a responsibility to participate in that planning process. Given the state of our public education, and the demands on our public budgets, this strategic planning process is long overdue in Texas.
Finally, I do believe that the first step of any strategic planning process is to define the mission of the entity, and only then to determine how to fulfill that mission. My previous posts focused on offering a clarified mission, and with this post we will start to discuss how to fulfill it. I am sure that some people fear that my stated mission, and the proposals to implement it, will “turn the clock back” on education. To show that this view fundamentally misreads what I have said so far, I’ll briefly recap what I’ve said so far:
- I agree with John Stuart Mill, who defined “education” in his Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews in 1867, as “the culture which each generation purposely gives to those who are to be its successors, in order to qualify them for at least keeping up, and if possible for raising the level of improvement which has been attained…;”
- I agree with educators, such as John B. Conant and Allan Bloom, who argued that to provide the education that Mill described, there must be a unity of purpose underlying the curriculum of the school system;
- I believe the unity of purpose for the public school system is provided in Article 7, Section 1, of the Texas Constitutions, which states: “A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools…;”
- I have proposed a modern mission for our public school system that applies “the constitutional purpose of Texas education to the 21st Century challenges that will face our children and grandchildren.as a mission”: “the incremental foundation of truths, facts, and principles they will need as adults to function as effective American citizens in a global economy, together with the experiences and tools to use such knowledge effectively and wisely;” and
- The federal government should have little or no role in implementing this new mission, because the history of its involvement over the last few decades has been one of increased bureaucracy and inefficiency without any perceptible improvement in outcomes.
Now, with these clarifications behind us, let us “fools” proceed to discuss the curriculum and the classrooms we will need to carry-out a unified mission in the 21st Century.
To do so, let’s start with the fictional classroom that Izzy described in his comment to my last post. I am going to quote it at length (though I’ve done my best to fix the punctuation and paragraphs to enhance its readability) and then use it to discuss the problems illustrated by this story, which underlie the need for curricular reform. I will then use these problems as discussion points for my next posts.
In Izzy’s story, we are shown a class of diverse students—probably a science class of unknown grade level—to whom the teacher is trying to teach the “scientific method”:
… The room darkened. I picked up the remote control and pushed ‘play’. The overhead projector screen glowed blue then white, as the steps of the Scientific Method, listed in black letters became readable. Some students began writing in their journals. I walked back around my desk and stood before the darkened class and slightly shifted my expression.
“Ask a question,” I said, then paused.”
The first step in the Scientific method is….write this down young scientists,” then paused again. “Ask a question.”
The students wrote down step one of the Scientific Method.
“Let’s say that Antinio, has to go from his first period class All THE WAY to Biology without getting caught in ‘tardy sweep’.” I emphasized the words ALL THE WAY, because the students knew that English classes were just downstairs from our Biology classroom. I was being sarcastic. If students were tardy more than nine times, they would have to serve one day of in school suspension. Fifteen times and they would be suspended from school for a day. SWEEP was the term used by the administrators for rounding up tardy students between classes, from the halls and sending them to a common area with other tardy boys and girls.
“Ezweep ez boolcheet,” Antinio said out loud, in heavily Spanish accented english.
Christian, a Hispanic boy sitting on the other side of the classroom on the first row, half-laughed. “Hah,” he blurted out coyly, then, looked around the room for approval.
Raymond noisily wadded up a piece of paper and acted like he might try for a long shot at the garbage can. Carolina and Jasmina baited him, “chood eet, chood eet.”
“Raymond, don’t do that,” I said with a mocking pseudo plead. The projector screen glowed white with the steps of the scientific method. I stared at Raymond for one-half of a second then looked at Antonio and said, “Antinio, please don’t cuss.” Antonio stared at me and didn’t say anything. Juanito sat up and pulled the earbuds out of his ears.
I paused, just for a second, and looked above the class at a National Geographic poster of ‘A Wetland Ecosystem’ on the back wall, and said, “Ask a question.” The class was silent.
“How do I geet frong inglich tu Biologia widhow gettin’ caught by the ‘Meegra?” Antonio asked. Christian, Raymond, Desmond and several other students howled with laughter.
I paused and looked at Antonio. “RIGHT, ANTONIO,” I shouted! I said to the class, “How does Antinio get from English class to Biology without getting caught by the ‘Meegra?” The class laughed.
“Iz lak ezweep por our daddys?” Juanito asked, sincerely, yet softly.
“VERY GOOD YOUNG SCIENTIST,” I said loudly! That’s step one of the scientific method. “Let’s give THAT ‘young scientist’ two claps!” I, and most of the students clapped twice, clap, clap….My guess is that many teachers face this same type of challenging situation many, many times a day in our public schools, and they each try to use a creative approach like the one this fictional teacher used to establish the point they are trying to teach. But, with all due respect to our fictional teacher, the point she thought she had made was probably lost on these students, regardless of their momentary applause—and that is the problem with teaching with a method-based curriculum.
I want to put my critique in context, so let’s start with a few of the relevant findings from A Nation at Risk, which I referenced in my last post:
- “Some 23 million American adults are functionally illiterate by the simplest tests of everyday reading, writing, and comprehension.”
- “About 13 percent of all 17-year-olds in the United States can be considered functionally illiterate. Functional illiteracy among the minority youth may run as high as 40 percent.”
- “Many 17-year-olds do not do not possess the ‘higher order’ intellectual skill we should expect of them. Nearly 40 percent cannot draw inferences from written material; only one-fifth can write a persuasive essay; and only one-third can solve a mathematics problem requiring several steps.”
- “The teacher preparation curriculum is weighted heavily with courses in ‘educational methods’ at the expense of courses in subjects to be taught. A survey of 1,350 institutions training teachers indicated that 41 percent of the time of elementary school teacher candidates is spent in education courses, which reduces the amount of time available for subject matter courses.”
Both the purpose of the lesson—teaching the Scientific Method—and the result—application of the first step to an unrelated, non-scientific scenario, is a waste of educational resources.
Cognitive scientists tell us that teaching a method of thinking without reference to the basic knowledge to which the methodology is to be applied, is a waste of time. However, since A Nation at Risk was issued, much of the educational establishment in this country has re-doubled their efforts to teach such methodology with the hope that it would lead to an expansion of “‘higher order’ intellectual skill” among our children.
In 2007, in the journal American Educator, Donald T. Willingham presented an analysis of the relevant cognitive science studies in “Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?”. The upshot of the research that Willingham summarizes is that if critical thinking is taught as a methodology, e.g., the scientific method, the historical method, etc., without reference to the subject matter to which it applies and without repetition, it is not retained for future use by students. E.D. Hirsch, Jr., expands on and addresses similar findings in his recent book, The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools.
So, though our fictional teacher was justifiably gratified that there had been a momentary break-thru with the students, the break-thru promises to be just that—momentary. It is unlikely that anything of value from the lesson will be retained by our fictional students for future application.
The language used by the students shows their functional illiteracy, and their lack of readiness for the lesson that is being presented.
These fictional students show virtually no functional grasp of the English language; certainly not enough of a grasp of English to understand the meaning of either “scientific” or “method,” let alone to understand, retain or use anything else related to the teacher’s lesson. These students have not learned either of the necessary reading and listening skills: decoding; and comprehending. Without these skills, the long-term meaning of this lesson was lost on the students described in Izzy’s story.
The functional illiteracy displayed by these students displays a failure of the system to assimilate these students into the America they will inherit.
Why are our fictional students functionally illiterate in the language of our culture? Because our curriculum fails to require instruction in the basic knowledge these children need in order to assimilate into our society, or as Mill described in 1867: to become members of “the culture which each generation purposely gives to those who are to be its successors, in order to qualify them for at least keeping up, and if possible for raising the level of improvement which has been attained….”
Hirsch makes this point persuasively in The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools:
… [E]ffective communication and intellectual competence require shared knowledge over a wide range of topics. … they connect with something less tangible: a sense of belonging to a wider community and a feeling of solidarity with other Americans. When we become full members of the American speech community, we belong to a wider group toward which we feel a sense of loyalty. …
Since language itself depends on shared knowledge and values as well as shared conventions, the aim of bringing children into the public speech community is a more than linguistic aim. All children need to be taught the general knowledge that is silently assumed in that language community. Our schools need to assimilate into the public sphere not just new immigrants but all of our children, regardless of family background. That is the fundamental aim of schooling in a democracy and one that we are not serving very effectively today.Studies show that most parents want schools to assimilate our children (A lot to be thankful for), and the Texas Constitution requires us to provide them with the knowledge needed to assimilate.
Depending on the age of our fictional students, changing their current life trajectory will take a lot of remedial effort as we transition from the present system to a new knowledge-based curriculum, but we can’t afford to see the students in this class five or ten years from now caught in the same situation. So, in our next post, we’ll pick-up Izzy’s fictional class and discuss how to change these dynamics for future students.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Texas Education III: National Policy is not the Answer to the Problem in our Classrooms
This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:
During the Carter Administration, Congress created the Department of Education. Many conservatives denounced this move as federal usurpation of a power left to state and local governments, and Ronald Reagan advocated abolishing the agency. His position of antipathy toward federal involvement in public education has been, more or less, the Republican Party’s official position ever since.
It is at least a little ironic, then, that much of the debate today over the proper curriculum to use in our public schools arose during the Reagan Administration as a result of A Nation at Risk, a 1983 report about the state of public education in our country, which was commissioned by Reagan’s Secretary of Education. Indeed, the reaction to that report spawned three decades of ever-growing federal involvement in education under both Republican and Democratic administrations without any real improvement in the nation’s education.
Arguably, the most important findings in that report were
But any fair-minded person, looking at the results of all of this action over the last 29 years would have to concede that as we’ve tried to mount a national battle for better education little has improved, and in some places (like Detroit, where it recently was estimated that its school system suffers from a 75% drop-out rate before the 12th grade) it has gotten worse. I believe it has gotten worse because we refused to start the reform where it was needed—in the local classroom with the curriculum teachers use to teach our children, and with the tools and facilities they use for teaching. This is a predicament shared by communities throughout the country, but it is primarily a State and local problem to solve.
Over the course of the next few posts, I am going to address each of the findings listed above from A Nation at Risk in the context of the constitutional purpose of public education in Texas and the refinement of that purpose I have proposed in the first two posts of this series, to come up with the contours of a proposed curriculum we will need in our schools, and for the tools and facilities we will need to teach that curriculum. I am going to present my arguments for a “core-knowledge” curriculum, rather than a “method-based” curriculum, discuss how such a curriculum could advance the purpose I have proposed, and outline how such a curriculum should be implemented.
But as I was writing the first post on those topics, I realized that we should pause for a moment and discuss an “800-pound gorilla” in the room—the history of federal involvement in public education in this country, and why federal regulation and money should not be used to “supplement State, local, and other resources” needed to address the classroom reforms I am proposing. In fact, I believe that it is precisely because of our pre-occupation with trying to find a national “silver bullet” to slay our educational problems that we have compounded the problems we face today.
Remember, my first post on this subject in which I quoted the reference in the Texas Declaration of Independence to Mexico’s failure to provide public education in the territory? Well, that concern for public education didn’t occur to Texans out of thin air in 1836. In fact, the drafters of A Nation at Risk were right that there has been a continental civic commitment to public education since the 1630s, when the first public school, Boston Latin School, opened in Massachusetts. In turn, there has been a commitment of national resources since the inception of our national government to establish or supplement an educational infrastructure within the states.
For instance, under the regime of the Articles of Confederation, the national government started establishing an educational infrastructure for each territory prior to statehood. In the Land Ordinance of 1785, Congress stated: “There shall be reserved the lot No. 16, of every township, for the maintenance of public schools within the township….” Then, in Article 3 of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Congress stated: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged.” These laws were among the few from the period of the Articles of Confederation, which were continued by the new Congress under the new Constitution.
This commitment to education at the time of our founding is exemplified by the actions of Thomas Jefferson. He was the driving force behind the creation of three, distinct universities: the United States Military Academy at West Point; the University of Michigan; and the University of Virginia. Each of these schools was established with a distinct purpose: West Point would focus on the military sciences to create a trained officer corps for the defense of the country, and a network of gentlemen to lead our communities after leaving the service; Michigan would provide a practical education in the applied physical and industrial sciences, including agriculture and engineering; and Virginia would provide a liberal arts education, and training in the primary professions of medicine, law and the clergy. Together, these institutions would provide society with models for the type of schools that would provide a full range of educational opportunities needed for the functioning of a free society.
For example, the “University of Michigania” (which Jefferson helped found in 1817, and which later became the University of Michigan) became the model for our land-grant colleges. During the Civil War, our first Republican President proposed, and the Republican Congress enacted, the Morrill Act, that set aside land in each state for the “endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and mechanic arts,…in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life.” The purpose of the Morrill Act had been a basic plank in the platforms of both the Whig and Republican parties since the 1830s.
In other words, for a century after the American Revolution, our founders, and the national government they created, implemented a national policy that provided states with the tools to create an educational infrastructure, from the township through college, which would provide citizens with the diffusion of knowledge and professions necessary for the functioning of a free government and economy. When, by the 1870s, every state had adopted, either by constitution or statute, a system of public education, the federal role in education began to recede and education became almost solely a state and local issue.
However, the fact that there were now public school systems in every state did not mean that everyone sought, or was given an education—far from it; for not every community used the township model and built schools right away, and state laws did not make attendance mandatory throughout the whole country until much later. Moreover, it took decades before the network of land-grant colleges was built and functioning, and, to this day, far less than half the children in this country attend any college or university.
In fact, given the demographics of the nation and the continuous influx and migration of people into and across the country, most children did not regularly attend high school until the Great Depression. Then, as a result of the economic disaster, children were encouraged to stay in school and graduate from high school in order to reserve job opportunities for the adults in the community. The public education system we know today is really a phenomenon of the post-World War II era of general prosperity and economic stability.
It is during this post-war period, as a national-defense response to Sputnik (and a civil-rights response to Brown v. the Board of Education), that the national government re-emerged as a player in educational policy. This time, however, it inserted itself beyond its historic role of providing or supplementing educational infrastructure for the states (and beyond what was necessary to end segregation), and began dictating operations and curriculum. In essence it inserted itself in an area where it lacked constitutional and institutional competence, and it imposed bureaucracies and inefficiencies on our schools, which never addressed the core problem—how our local schools should effectively educate the continuing influx of students of varying backgrounds and talents. That continues to be a peculiarly local problem to solve.
I believe it is the attempt to absorb and educate the vast and ever-changing influx of students of varying backgrounds and talents since the Great Depression that is the cause of the paradox that the drafters of A Nation at Risk observed:
Any meaningful educational reform must start with the core-knowledge to be taught in local classrooms, while addressing the reality that a significant percentage of children of diverse backgrounds and talents will never complete primary and secondary levels of education, let alone attend and graduate from college. While we try to retain these students in our schools as long as possible, and continue to raise their level of literacy, we must begin to focus their training on the “cultural literacy” they will need to be successful adults. Therefore, we must tailor the public school curriculum at each grade level to expose as many of these children as possible to the rudiments of American citizenship and the global economy. In the meantime, we must provide a more demanding curriculum at each higher grade level of school based on a strong foundation of “cultural literacy” in order to improve the quality of the knowledge of those who stay in school and graduate from high school. Each local and state must have the flexibility to tailor this curriculum to the type of diverse student they must educate.
National standards and tests, or even state standardized tests with teachers “teaching to the tests,” may continue to measure our problems as they get worse, but they will not solve these problems. Only local and state reforms will solve the problems our classrooms face.
I’ll start to look at how we address the specifics of a new curriculum in the next post.
During the Carter Administration, Congress created the Department of Education. Many conservatives denounced this move as federal usurpation of a power left to state and local governments, and Ronald Reagan advocated abolishing the agency. His position of antipathy toward federal involvement in public education has been, more or less, the Republican Party’s official position ever since.
It is at least a little ironic, then, that much of the debate today over the proper curriculum to use in our public schools arose during the Reagan Administration as a result of A Nation at Risk, a 1983 report about the state of public education in our country, which was commissioned by Reagan’s Secretary of Education. Indeed, the reaction to that report spawned three decades of ever-growing federal involvement in education under both Republican and Democratic administrations without any real improvement in the nation’s education.
Arguably, the most important findings in that report were
- “Some 23 million American adults are functionally illiterate by the simplest tests of everyday reading, writing, and comprehension.”
- “About 13 percent of all 17-year-olds in the United States can be considered functionally illiterate. Functional illiteracy among the minority youth may run as high as 40 percent.”
- “Many 17-year-olds do not do not possess the ‘higher order’ intellectual skill we should expect of them. Nearly 40 percent cannot draw inferences from written material; only one-fifth can write a persuasive essay; and only one-third can solve a mathematics problem requiring several steps.”
- “For the first time in the history of our country, the educational skills of one generation will not surpass, will not equal, will not even approach, those of their parents.”
- “…the average citizen today is better educated and more knowledgeable than the average citizen of a generation ago—more literate, and exposed to more mathematics, literature, and science. … Nevertheless, the average graduate of our schools and colleges today is not as well-educated as the average graduate of 25 to 35 years ago, when a much smaller proportion of our population completed high school and college.”
- “The teacher preparation curriculum is weighted heavily with courses in ‘educational methods’ at the expense of courses in subjects to be taught. A survey of 1,350 institutions training teachers indicated that 41 percent of the time of elementary school teacher candidates is spent in education courses, which reduces the amount of time available for subject matter courses.”
- “our better understanding of learning and teaching and the implications of this knowledge for school practice, and the numerous examples of local success as a result of superior effort and effective dissemination;” and
- “the equally sound tradition, from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 until today, that the Federal Government should supplement State, local, and other resources to foster national educational goals; ….”
But any fair-minded person, looking at the results of all of this action over the last 29 years would have to concede that as we’ve tried to mount a national battle for better education little has improved, and in some places (like Detroit, where it recently was estimated that its school system suffers from a 75% drop-out rate before the 12th grade) it has gotten worse. I believe it has gotten worse because we refused to start the reform where it was needed—in the local classroom with the curriculum teachers use to teach our children, and with the tools and facilities they use for teaching. This is a predicament shared by communities throughout the country, but it is primarily a State and local problem to solve.
Over the course of the next few posts, I am going to address each of the findings listed above from A Nation at Risk in the context of the constitutional purpose of public education in Texas and the refinement of that purpose I have proposed in the first two posts of this series, to come up with the contours of a proposed curriculum we will need in our schools, and for the tools and facilities we will need to teach that curriculum. I am going to present my arguments for a “core-knowledge” curriculum, rather than a “method-based” curriculum, discuss how such a curriculum could advance the purpose I have proposed, and outline how such a curriculum should be implemented.
But as I was writing the first post on those topics, I realized that we should pause for a moment and discuss an “800-pound gorilla” in the room—the history of federal involvement in public education in this country, and why federal regulation and money should not be used to “supplement State, local, and other resources” needed to address the classroom reforms I am proposing. In fact, I believe that it is precisely because of our pre-occupation with trying to find a national “silver bullet” to slay our educational problems that we have compounded the problems we face today.
Remember, my first post on this subject in which I quoted the reference in the Texas Declaration of Independence to Mexico’s failure to provide public education in the territory? Well, that concern for public education didn’t occur to Texans out of thin air in 1836. In fact, the drafters of A Nation at Risk were right that there has been a continental civic commitment to public education since the 1630s, when the first public school, Boston Latin School, opened in Massachusetts. In turn, there has been a commitment of national resources since the inception of our national government to establish or supplement an educational infrastructure within the states.
For instance, under the regime of the Articles of Confederation, the national government started establishing an educational infrastructure for each territory prior to statehood. In the Land Ordinance of 1785, Congress stated: “There shall be reserved the lot No. 16, of every township, for the maintenance of public schools within the township….” Then, in Article 3 of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Congress stated: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged.” These laws were among the few from the period of the Articles of Confederation, which were continued by the new Congress under the new Constitution.
This commitment to education at the time of our founding is exemplified by the actions of Thomas Jefferson. He was the driving force behind the creation of three, distinct universities: the United States Military Academy at West Point; the University of Michigan; and the University of Virginia. Each of these schools was established with a distinct purpose: West Point would focus on the military sciences to create a trained officer corps for the defense of the country, and a network of gentlemen to lead our communities after leaving the service; Michigan would provide a practical education in the applied physical and industrial sciences, including agriculture and engineering; and Virginia would provide a liberal arts education, and training in the primary professions of medicine, law and the clergy. Together, these institutions would provide society with models for the type of schools that would provide a full range of educational opportunities needed for the functioning of a free society.
For example, the “University of Michigania” (which Jefferson helped found in 1817, and which later became the University of Michigan) became the model for our land-grant colleges. During the Civil War, our first Republican President proposed, and the Republican Congress enacted, the Morrill Act, that set aside land in each state for the “endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and mechanic arts,…in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life.” The purpose of the Morrill Act had been a basic plank in the platforms of both the Whig and Republican parties since the 1830s.
In other words, for a century after the American Revolution, our founders, and the national government they created, implemented a national policy that provided states with the tools to create an educational infrastructure, from the township through college, which would provide citizens with the diffusion of knowledge and professions necessary for the functioning of a free government and economy. When, by the 1870s, every state had adopted, either by constitution or statute, a system of public education, the federal role in education began to recede and education became almost solely a state and local issue.
However, the fact that there were now public school systems in every state did not mean that everyone sought, or was given an education—far from it; for not every community used the township model and built schools right away, and state laws did not make attendance mandatory throughout the whole country until much later. Moreover, it took decades before the network of land-grant colleges was built and functioning, and, to this day, far less than half the children in this country attend any college or university.
In fact, given the demographics of the nation and the continuous influx and migration of people into and across the country, most children did not regularly attend high school until the Great Depression. Then, as a result of the economic disaster, children were encouraged to stay in school and graduate from high school in order to reserve job opportunities for the adults in the community. The public education system we know today is really a phenomenon of the post-World War II era of general prosperity and economic stability.
It is during this post-war period, as a national-defense response to Sputnik (and a civil-rights response to Brown v. the Board of Education), that the national government re-emerged as a player in educational policy. This time, however, it inserted itself beyond its historic role of providing or supplementing educational infrastructure for the states (and beyond what was necessary to end segregation), and began dictating operations and curriculum. In essence it inserted itself in an area where it lacked constitutional and institutional competence, and it imposed bureaucracies and inefficiencies on our schools, which never addressed the core problem—how our local schools should effectively educate the continuing influx of students of varying backgrounds and talents. That continues to be a peculiarly local problem to solve.
I believe it is the attempt to absorb and educate the vast and ever-changing influx of students of varying backgrounds and talents since the Great Depression that is the cause of the paradox that the drafters of A Nation at Risk observed:
…the average citizen today is better educated and more knowledgeable than the average citizen of a generation ago—more literate, and exposed to more mathematics, literature, and science. … Nevertheless, the average graduate of our schools and colleges today is not as well-educated as the average graduate of 25 to 35 years ago, when a much smaller proportion of our population completed high school and college.This phenomena also explains why educational outcomes and drop-out rates vary so widely between localities and among the states—because the influx of diverse students has been so unevenly distributed across the country over the decades. The challenges faced by schools in Los Angeles, Detroit and Houston differ substantially from each other, and from suburban and rural schools.
Any meaningful educational reform must start with the core-knowledge to be taught in local classrooms, while addressing the reality that a significant percentage of children of diverse backgrounds and talents will never complete primary and secondary levels of education, let alone attend and graduate from college. While we try to retain these students in our schools as long as possible, and continue to raise their level of literacy, we must begin to focus their training on the “cultural literacy” they will need to be successful adults. Therefore, we must tailor the public school curriculum at each grade level to expose as many of these children as possible to the rudiments of American citizenship and the global economy. In the meantime, we must provide a more demanding curriculum at each higher grade level of school based on a strong foundation of “cultural literacy” in order to improve the quality of the knowledge of those who stay in school and graduate from high school. Each local and state must have the flexibility to tailor this curriculum to the type of diverse student they must educate.
National standards and tests, or even state standardized tests with teachers “teaching to the tests,” may continue to measure our problems as they get worse, but they will not solve these problems. Only local and state reforms will solve the problems our classrooms face.
I’ll start to look at how we address the specifics of a new curriculum in the next post.
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