John Ogozalek teaches in upstate Néw York. He read Tom Friedman’s column in the Néw York Times on Sunday and had a strong reaction of cognitive dissonance, as in, why can’t Tom be consistent?
Tom Friedman’s describes a thrilling ride on a nuclear submarine, where there is no room for error. At one point, an admiral says, “There is no multiple-choice exam for running the sub’s nuclear reactor.” If you want to be certified to run any major system on this ship, he added, “everything is an oral and written exam to demonstrate competency.”
John hopes that Tom will remember that when he returns to land.
John writes:
So, Tom Friedman gets a free ride on the U.S.S. New Mexico under the Arctic ice, leading him to gush warmly in today’s Sunday Times. “My strongest impression… was experiencing something you see too little of these days on land: ‘excellence'”, he wrote.
What was so excellent? “‘There is no multiple-choice exam for running the sub’s reactor,'” according to an admiral Tom quotes with obvious admiration, noting that the commander added, “‘Everything is an oral and written exam to demonstrate competency.'”
Okay, Tom. So, mind-numbing, idiotic multiple-choice exams are okay on land, as long as you’re sitting high and dry in public school classrooms across our country. But somehow the laws of physics (not to mention basic common sense) function differently under water?
Is Tom Friedman a hypocrite or is he simply blind to the crappy, half-assed testing being inflicted on our students each day -thanks to the rush to implement the Core-porate curriculum?
Tom, here’s a REAL lesson for you about excellence. One of my former students has served bravely on an attack sub. He’s one of those smart, dedicated young sailors you admire. He stopped by my house not that long ago when he was home on leave. We were talking and, at one point, he dropped the phrase, “NUB”, as in, “That guy was a real nub”.
N.U.B. translates to “Non-useful body”, he told me. It refers to a person not pulling his or her weight on the sub. It’s a big insult, Tom. It’s the people who just use up good air.
You want to improve education? Start with getting the adult NUBs who are clogging our schools off our backs. Who am I talking about? Let’s start with the overpaid consultants who never really teach, useless state bureaucrats spewing their political doublespeak, corporate greed heads peddling nonsensical tests and those hedge fund managers who would last about ten minutes running a real classroom.
Next thing you know Tom Friedman and his cronies at the Times will be supporting efforts to put charter school students on nuclear submarines.
On the sub, “The sense of ownership and mutual accountability is palpable,” according to Tom.
Wouldn’t it be nice if he had the same goals for our children and their teachers back here in the United States.
-John Ogozalek
Diane Ravitch's blog 
BRAVO! I have a new favorite word to enter into my lexicon – NUB! Wonderful piece which says it all! I say we take all the “educator” consultants, Pearson executives, mega millionaire funders of “public” education aka charters and give them standardized test after standardized test on how to operate a submarine. They will have to take tests in the common core style by explaining which passage in the operating manual best describes a list of 4 words lettered A through D. Then, let’s put them in those submarines in the Antartic and tell them to get home on their own using their data-driven/high stakes testing knowledge! They will learn the definition of NUB and just how their highly profitable roll out of “education” mandated for an entire nation will fare for our Career Readiness Assessment Protocal (aka CRAP)!!!!!
And we have a winner!!! I’ll donate money to fund that cause!
Oh and mind you “they” will not be able to read the entire manual. They will gain their knowledge by reading only excerpts within the manual and not necessarily in any logical order…
My personal advice for the war-mongering toady of the 1%ers would be: Go to Hell!
Excellent letter. Friedman is all about cognitive dissonance. I’ve been calling him out on that for years. He’s never responded…maybe he’s blocked my email.
While I agree with the comments above, I thought the response was a little selectively harsh. I perceived that Tom was saluting our brilliant young sailors, as I also do.
The part that stands out is the young man who stopped by his former teacher’s house to see him. This is the impact teachers have; they have a life long effect that no test can measure.
Thank you FLolindy for that comment. I agree. I also think that people (in general) do not really understand what types of classroom experiences there are. They look back on their own teachers and sometimes without real clear memories. We paint the entire education system with a broad brush and that is a fallacy. They are incredible teachers and schools and classrooms all over this country. Are they places that need to change? Sure. Are there teachers who do not do an effective job? Absolutely. We need to deal with the reality of what is happening and also trust the people in their own communities to be professionals. That is a big problem some places, too, I know. But…..this new “model” of reform is not going to make it all better and in fact I think there is going to be a lot of “regression to the mean” when creativity, curiosity and innovation is swept away from the teachers who want to make a difference and try a new method and find a way to make a huge difference. Last point: we teach whole people. They don’t come to school, unzip their skulls and present their brains. Understanding human learning and growth is so important. I think William Glasser has a lot of excellent points in The Quality School and The Quality Teacher books and Peter Johnston’s Opening Minds should be a must read for ALL. This includes parents of newborns, veteran teachers and the public in general. There are so many amazing resources for teachers compared to when I started, but I say let’s listen to leading, validated, incredible educators and give them a chance to create schools that work. Then go from there. And I want this for all kids in all areas from all communities with all kinds of various needs. They can all grow and learn. I have seen it and I know it is true. We should not be creating schools where kids are bored and suffer and are given tests that are so difficult they cannot begin to show what they know.
*typo alert. Should be “there” instead of they in a couple of sentences. Typing too fast. Sorry.
I LOVE William Glasser’s “The Quality School.” We have moved SO far from that ideal that it’s disgusting. I try to do what I can in my own classroom, but the endless demands and micromanaging at all levels makes that difficult if not impossible.
Comparing multiple choice exams vs. standardized exams is not a simple matter of “good” vs. “bad”. Both type of tests have their advantages and disadvantages. Multiple choice exams can be graded quickly and objectively but they may unduly reward guessers and on the other hand do not allow for any partial credit. Also there is the danger of flawed questions which are poorly worded or where none of the choices given is correct. It is a good idea in grading multiple choice questions to throw out all questions which are answered correctly by only a very small number of exam-takers as it is likely that due to poor wording many did not understand the question.
On the other hand the grading of essay questions may be highly subjective and is certainly time consuming. To reduce the subjectivity of the grading it may be desirable to have different people independently grade them but this can be cumbersome.
When I graded math homework and exams as an undergraduate and graduate student the problems were such that almost nobody did them correctly so almost everybody’s entire score was the sum of the partial credit I gave them. Deciding how much partial credit to give was very time-consuming. After going through the student’s papers once I had to go back over them to make sure I was giving partial credit in a reasonably consistent way.
If the exams had been multiple choice they wouldn’t have needed to pay me and the average score would have been barely above zero.
Please don’t be discouraged by inane responses. Your understanding of the difficulty of meaningful evaluation indicates that you were a caring and thoughtful teacher. I, also, had similar experiences in graduate school. I hope you (like me) choose to become a teacher. You seem to have ‘the right stuff’.
Of course, times have changed. I found my career to be very satisfying, being allowed to do my best (as a professional) to apply what I thought I knew to helping kids (in my case, at the high school level). Despite my relative poverty, I have no regrets.
Today, however, I might have had a different experience. No longer are teachers allowed to practice their vocation and craft. Instead, they seem to be expected to ‘keep order’ and administer packages of poorly thought out ‘units’ created by people without almost no experience or competence. I hope you are not trapped in this quagmire that is drowning our once-competent (at least) education system.
I’m glad to have retired before this sad condition.
Very well said! Thank YOU!
HU, is that you?!
Excellent post and comments.
When will the Duncanites realize how illogical standardized testing is? “If a student is smart and capable, she will do well on a stadardized test” does not imply that doing well on a standardized test makes her smart and capable. This is same flawed logic that asserts forcing students to act like wind-up toys creates self-discipline and forcing students to write essays about success makes them successful.
Oh.. and after reading Tom Friedman.. I am left pondering his ability to think critically… we have just had one of the strangest weather cycles in recorded weather history and it just came out that 95 % of climatologists agree it is due to man made pollutants. And global warming is melting the polar icecaps at a faster rate than ever and this has a huge impact on weather (a dangerous impact). So why does Mr. Friedman not express concern about melting glaciers seen first hand while on the submarine? Instead he says this of his submarine observations, “But this wasn’t tourism. Climate scientists predict that if warming trends continue, the Arctic’s ice cap will melt enough that — in this century — it will become a navigable ocean for commercial shipping year round, and for mineral and oil exploration. Russia has already made extensive claims to the Arctic, based on the reach of its continental shelf, beyond the usual 12 miles from its coastline; these are in dispute…” Hmmmm…
Friedman’s expository tics are so predictable – the home spun neoliberalism of the cabbies he claims to quote from, the witless aphorisms, the compulsive adherence to American Exceptionalism, etc. – that there is actually a Thomas Friedman Op/Ed Generator, which magically transubstantiates Friedman’s verbal dross into comedy gold.
And I know it’s inappropriate, but what’s with the 70’s porn star mustache?
Sorry, so busy being inappropriate that I forgot the link:
http://www.thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com
Reading Friedman, even in tiny doses, is a sick pleasure, I know, but if you suffer from it, then this site will give you some jollies.
It also slays him forever by showing that in reality he’s a bio-kinetic self-parody loop.
Sometimes a mustache is just a mustache.
When people prattle on about the excellence of any certain thing, I think often they are making sure people know they are lined up with whatever it is they think is excellent. They are casting a vote for themselves by uplifting something to show their own “good judgement.”
Better to use actual descriptors of things than glory, laud and honor.
A submarine might leave no room for error, but so does driving a school bus full of children on the interstate.
The hallowed language, I think, was just the writer’s way of aligning himself with the impressive nature of operating a submarine. It was about him, more than about the submarine because he realized how he actually has nothing to do with the excellence of operating a submarine, but he wanted to. Like a many carrying on about a beautiful woman he will never know (in the Biblical sense).
We have to be careful of this tendency in the education debate. In truth, there will be pros and cons to everything we try. Better to list those objectively, then try to vicariously align with something by over-emphasizing its virtues with words like “excellent.”
Two autocorrects:
Man, not many
Than, not then
“Like a man carrying on about a beautiful woman he will never know (in the Biblical sense).”
Does that biblical sense mean like Joseph “knew” Mary? Obviously, he couldn’t have “known” her in a certain way as she was a supposed virgin and all.
My favorite line of Arne’s will be “goodbye; it was a pleasure serving as Sec of Ed but I need to move on now.”
Waiting for it.
Posted this in the wrong spot.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.
My favorite line (of the future) will be a headline in every newspaper across the land stating that true public education is alive and well while listing the prison sentences of all those involved in “corporate ed reform” corruption whose policies and actions ruined the love of learning for so many of our nation’s youth during the NCLB and RTTT years and destroyed the livelihoods and careers of so many professional educators.
Thanks again to Diane for all you do.
I just went back and found your post about NYS Commissioner of Education John B. King’s wacky comment about school reform……his idea that we should build the plane as we fly it. https://dianeravitch.net/2013/08/14/john-king-should-resign/ King’s bizarre analogy has been rattling around in my brain since I wrote to you.
Because Tom Friedman seems more interested in the nautical realm, I’m trying to imagine someone building a submarine while it is deep underwater. And, our children are meant to be sitting in those subs! What kind of excellent endeavor is THAT, Tom? Is that any sort of a vessel you’d ever set foot on?
-John O.
In NYC, they took large schools of 1000-1500 students and divided them up into smaller academies of 300-500 students. This added more principals, assistant principals, deans, secretaries and displaced teachers, making classes smaller. The APs in my school are hard to find when you need them, but what did you think, solitaire plays itself?
This is a great post. The listing of NUBs is spot-on.
In public education, there are now and there have been for quite some time an awful lot of NUBs.
Yes, the NUBs include many if not most of the ‘top-shelf’ consultants who peddle educational drivel. And the NUBs include the superintendents and administrators who hire them, and lap up eagerly their drivel and force it on classroom teachers.
And the NUBs include the heads of education organizations that signed off on NCLB, Race to the Top, and Common Core (some of whom get lauded on this blog).
By definition, it appears also that there are plenty of mainstream education reporters who qualify as NUBs.
NUBs, it seems, are abysmal critical thinkers (ACTs). Thus, ACTs are NUBs.
So, Tom Friedman is an ACTing NUB.
When it comes to education ‘reform,’ he has a lot of company.