YES! Magazine devotes a special issue to public education and its findings will not surprise readers of this blog.
The lead article by executive editor Dean Paton is “The Myth Behind Public School Failure,” demonstrating that our public schools are NOT failing. Here is the line that follows the title:
“In the rush to privatize the country’s schools, corporations and politicians have decimated school budgets, replaced teaching with standardized testing, and placed the blame on teachers and students.”
There is also a powerful infographic titled “Why Corporations Want Our Public Schools.”
The answer will not surprise you.
The important point about YES! is that the message about the theft of our public schools is reaching a larger public.
This is good news.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What the article didn’t describe was WHY this is possible: the corporations are able to take over public services by paying for politicians who play to the resentful electorate whose jobs they eliminated as part of the downsizing and outsourcing movements that resulted from globalization….
meaning the resentful electorate buys into the blame being on teachers and public schools?
Yes… and the Karl Rove’s and Koch brothers of this world play this resentment like a fiddle… and progressives have NO one speaking out for the effectiveness of government and/or the need for taxes to provide the services everyone wants…
“It took years of indifference and stupidity to make us as ignorant as we are today. Anyone who has taught college over the last forty years, as I have, can tell you how much less students coming out of high school know every year. At first it was shocking, but it no longer surprises any college instructor that the nice and eager young people enrolled in your classes have no ability to grasp most of the material being taught. Teaching American literature, as I have been doing, has become harder and harder in recent years, since the students read little literature before coming to college and often lack the most basic historical information about the period in which the novel or the poem was written, including what important ideas and issues occupied thinking people at the time.”
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/mar/20/age-of-ignorance/
Yes, education is failing, and yes, corporations will make it worse.
Seth, you are seeing the results of 12 years of Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Obama’s Race to the Top. Kids robbed of a real education.
Exactly, Diane. And K-12 educators are being scapegoated for these failed education policies that have been prescribed by non-educator political and corporate profiteers, which have robbed students of the joy of learning and stripped teachers of autonomy in their classrooms.
In Texas we have dumbed down stuff so much that there is not much legitimate learning going on. A few years ago Little Ricky and his band of merry men decided that every child needed 4 years of Math, Science, Social Studies and English.
The Science must include Chemistry and Physics which then came with End of Course exams. Because of the requirements most schools decided that Chemistry needed to be taught to 10th graders. Most that aren’t developmentally ready or don’t possess the needed Math reasoning skills. You have a large number of “Inclusion students” that should not be in chemistry and physics taking them because it makes the school look good, not because it is good for them.
Chemistry is basically being taught at a level similar to the “9th grade General science” because most schools have an artifical failure rate ceiling. “If you have more than a 20% failure rate, then you will be put on a growth plan”. ( Translation: ITS THE TEACHER’S FAULT)
I am for challenging students but it is not a reasonable plan to make the scale the Grand Canyon when they have enough trouble walking. They must have the needed skills before taking certain classes. Wait we can do that. We must extend to all children the same opportunity to take a course, whether they are qualified, capable or have the least desire to take the cours. If they do take the course it make the school look good but does not benefit the student.
Until more educators, yes superintendents, principals and school board members say they have had enough then nothing will change.
David
No, Seth. What they read are “selections” keyed to the Common Core (and before that, to state standards), out of any sane context, and they concentrate not on what the selections are saying, not on these pieces as communications, but as exempla of various abstract “skills” listed in the standards. The whole thing is a bloody farce.
Seth, I recently came across a Common Core-aligned set of lessons on the Gettysburg Address. It studied the process and persuasiveness of the speech’s techniques. It made NO mention of the Civil War, Lincoln, slavery, or any background knowledge whatsoever. Those of us who are stuck now with CCLS know exactly what you are complaining about: OF COURSE students “lack the most basic historical information about the period in which the novel or the poem was written,” because we’re not expected to teach it. Is education failing? Yes, because of the very policies that the article in YES! addresses.
Many questionable assertions in this article. Here are just a few.
1. “Until about 1980, America’s public schoolteachers were iconic everyday heroes painted with a kind of Norman Rockwell patina—generally respected because they helped most kids learn to read, write and successfully join society.”
Throughout the 1900’s there were criticisms of public schools. Some argued that Progressives (including Dewey) had too much influence. That was the narrative through the early 1960’s
There were a stream of books in the 1960’s like “Death at an Early Age,” “36 Children,” How Children Learn,” etc. from liberal critics, some of whom had taught in public schools.
2. “Jonathan Kozol, the author and tireless advocate for public schools, called vouchers the “single worst, most dangerous idea to have entered education discourse in my adult life.”
Kozol was one of the most vigorous critics of public schools in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Death at An Early Age was his most well known book. But he wrote a lot of criticism and certainly promoted options to district public schools (See, for example, his book called “Free Schools.”
He has decided vouchers are a bad idea (and I agree with him). But he certainly had plenty of criticism of public schools before 1980.
3. “For a dozen or so years, this “accountability movement” was pretty much the only game in town.” People involved day to day know that a lot more has been going on than the accountability movement. There have been big debates about the role and use of various forms of technology. There’s a major debate about how to work effectively with students who don’t speak English as a first language. There’s a lot of debate about how to most effectively prepare teachers and administrators.
Yes accountability has been a big issue. But lots of things had been big issues.
How about holding your corporate patrons *accountable* for their lobbying through 501c3’s, rent-seeking foundation grants, and years of deliberate and malicious misinformation? Would that be fair, Joe?
Well said, Michael!
Ever heard of the 1st. Amendment, Michael?
Harlan, crony capitalism is not protected by the 1st Amendment. What we are seeing in this country is crony capitalism–powerful business oligarchs making cushy deals with powerful politicians to siphon off taxpayer dollars.
Corruption is not protected, but Citizens United is. Once one starts setting conditions for free speech, you wind up with tyranny. Do you want to be the state censor?
Leave it to Joe to try to find outliers that will justify and pump up his longstanding commitment to promoting the privatization of public education.
The article was right on target. It’s so refreshing to see a respectable, mainstream magazine finally telling the truth about the false “failing schools” narrative and the hostile take-over of public education by the political-corporate-profiteering-complex.
Many thanks to Dean Paton and YES! magazine!!!!!
Not sure if your self- description is accurate, but, I have been a public school teacher, my wife has been a public school teacher, and our older daughter is a public school teacher. My long standing commitment (43 years) has been and is to have more excellent public schools.
“Anyone who has taught college over the last forty years, as I have”
I know people from all over the world who remember the shock at how bad the education was here. A third grader, immigrant from Ecuador, who spoke no english, but ended up in 6th grade math. He’s been here for 30 years. He still shakes his head.
The battle cry of the school Rhee-form movement: “If it ain’t broke, break it!”
“If it ain’t broke, convince the uninformed that it is broke, then sell them the product (snake oil) they think they need to fix what wasn’t broke to begin with.”
Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
Yes! Magazine (est. 1997), the winner of the Utne Reader Alternate Press Award for Best Cultural Coverage in 2011, reveals truth about public education in United States and the corporations and politicians who have decimated school budgets while blaming teachers and students for what the Robber Barons and Wolves of Sesame Street caused.
Part 1, ‘democracy and public education’
As I’ve written previously, education in a democratic society has a special place and purpose. Aristotle saw this more than two millennium ago in arguing for a system of public education in Athens, writing that democratic governance required that “education should be one and the same for all…public, and not private.”
Aristotle perceived the importance of public schooling to democratic citizenship, noting that “each government has a peculiar character…the character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy, and always the better the character, the better the government.” In other words, the mission of public education in a democratic society is to develop democratic beliefs and values. Pericles described them in his funeral oration: popular sovereignty, equality, justice, freedoms, promoting the general welfare. Aristotle and Pericles knew that government can be “of the people, by the people, for the people;” or, it can be controlled by plutocrats.
Kevin Phillips, by the way, pointed out in ‘Wealth and Democracy’ that “by 2000 the United States could be said to have a plutocracy.” That was only exacerbated by Citizens United, which opened the floodgates to corporate spending on politics. As Phillips explained it, “the essence of plutocracy has been the determination and ability of wealth to reach beyond its own realm of money and control politics and government as well.” Think Rupert Murdoch and Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. Think the Koch brothers and Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party. Think Bill Gates and the Waltons (et al) and charters and vouchers and “accountability” and privatization…and public education.
Let’s go back to the beginning. After the Revolution, early state constitutions –– like those of Massachusetts (1780) and New Hampshire (1784) –– set up and stressed the importance of a system of public education. The Land Ordinance of 1785 provided for public school financing in new territories. Thomas Jefferson sought a publicly-funded system of schools in Virginia, believing that an educated citizenry was critical to the well-being of a democratic society, writing in Notes on the State of Virginia (1794) that “The influence over government must be shared among all men.” In the early years of the republic, George Washington, Jefferson, Horace Mann and other early advocates for public schools agreed that democratic citizenship was a primary function of education.
And have contemporary public schools actually taught the nature of democratic citizenship? Or should I say constitutional citizenship?
I do. And so do a lot of other teachers.
@ Harlan:
Far too many teachers and administrators in “contemporary public schools” do not understand the overarching purpose of public schooling. In my estimation, that’s a serious concern.
Too, public schools have been beset by those who claim (falsely) that they are “failing” and “in crisis.” As a result, we’ve gotten NCLB and Race to the Top, and now Common Core. As I’ve explained elsewhere, those “reforms” are not necessary and are based on very faulty premises. And they succeed in driving public education away from an emphasis on democratic citizenship.
I agree with you on the larger question, but i’m not sure i would agree with you about WHAT the principles of democratic citizenship are. What is YOUR philosophy of “democratic citizenship”? Does it include the 1st amendment, for instance? Or the second?
Part 2, ‘democracy and public education’
Over time, access to both public education and voting rights has been broadened, by legislation, by constitutional amendment, and by court decisions. Think, for example, about the impacts of the 13th, 14th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 23rd 24th, and 26th amendments. Or the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Or Brown v Board of Education (1954) in which a unanimous Supreme Court agreed that “ in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” As a result, the United States has become a better, fairer place.
Think also about the ramifications of supply-side, laissez-faire economic policy. It is the orthodoxy of the Republican Party. The rich are fabulously richer. Poverty has grown. The middle class has gotten squeezed. Deficits and debt have piled up as money has been redistributed to the top brackets. Jobs have been off-shored. Wall Street was morphed into a high-stakes casino. The economy suffered a near meltdown, and millions of homes were lost. Unemployment spiked. Taxpayers not only bailed out those who caused the calamity but they continue to subsidize Wall Street banks. Nobody was held “accountable.” None of the culprits took any responsibility for what they did, and now they lay the onus for it on public schools.
Will and Ariel Durant noted in 1968 that there are inherent tensions “between wealth laudation, which favors concentration, and democracy, which promotes distribution.” And, as Kevin Phillips pointed out, “government…is one of the most powerful forces shaping the creation and distribution of wealth within the United States.”
It isn’t very hard to see why the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable and Exxon Mobil and the Waltons and Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and the rest are so “interested” in public education. They can kill (privatize) it while claiming to “save” it, and make money in the process.
Setting the record straight about public education is vitally important. Because it’s not just about schooling. It’s about family income, and wages, and a shared sense of community. It’s about needed services and the public good. It’s about a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” It’s about the vibrancy, well-being and future of democracy itself.
“Jobs have been off-shored.”
Not only have jobs been off-shored but the profits from the increased productivity of the US worker and other ill gotten gains have been off-shored into tax havens allowing the hyper rich to avoid their civic duty, i.e., paying their fair share of taxes.
like
So, are you arguing for a reduction of the tax rate on corporations from its present 39.5% as an incentive to repatriate that money? What should it go down to? 25% Would that do it? What about 0%?
Or do you think the law should just be changed to make all overseas profits taxable in the continental US?
To answer your questions, HU,
No.
It shouldn’t necessarily go down as you suggest.
No.
No.
No.
Straw men dead? YES!
@ Harlan:
the top rate on corporations is not 39.5 percent…and anyone reading the news knows that many of the top corporations do NOT pay anything near the top rate of 35 percent. Just like Mitt Romney pays nothing close to the top individual rate of 39.5 percent.
Thank you for the correction. The question remains though, what SHOULD BE the top corporate rate? What do you personally think that rate should be? The corporations who pay less than the stipulated rate do so by loopholes, though legally so. Wouldn’t it be better to have a low rate without loop holes? I’d say no more than 15%. Above that corporations like to lobby for special advantage. Of course, S corporations, pay at the personal rate.
You seem to be identifying democracy as the essence of the United States government. But this is not a democracy but a republic. Big difference.
What have you left out?
It is not a big difference; a republic is a form of democratic government. Just because we elect representatives does not mean we are not a democracy. It is still a government of, by, and for the people.
It’s not a big difference but it is a crucial difference. “Democratic republic” would be more accurate, don’t you think?
@ Harlan:
Are you really going to stoop to that old canard, that the U.S. is not a democracy, but a republic?
The principles of democracy apply as well to a democratic republic. So do the core values of democracy: popular sovereignty, equality, justice, freedoms for all citizens, tolerance, promoting the general welfare. Those values are embedded in the Constitution.
Not a canard. Just being accurate. From your list you seem to leave out rule of law, unless that is subsumed in your view inside “justice.” Is protection of minority views part of your conception of “democracy”?
My memory has never been worth a tinker’s dam (damn?), but I believe that it was Lewis Lapham who said that our public schools do exactly what they are designed to do. He was making the point that schools train children to be obedient, compliant, more or less unthinking, or at best unintellectual and even anti-intellectual consumers and cannon fodder for the chicken hawk politicians, corporate masters, and the war profiteers who want their hubris and their economic superiority to be confirmed and defended to the death by the riff raff and the commoners of the general public. Regimentation, conformity, rule-following, rat-race type class scheduling and Pavlov dog type responses to bells and commands of authorities is the primary objective and training is the mode and model, irrespective of the educational proclivities of students. Those objectives are either accomplished, or students are suspended, expelled, or allowed to drop out.
I am embarrassed for the people on this blog. It may be my opinion alone, but I think you should all be terribly ashamed. I am extremely disappointed that you have fallen into the same old traps and failed to see past the superficiality. Do you honestly want children to be rounded up and herded like so many sheep to be conditioned, programmed, indoctrinated, repressed, and homogenized? You speak reverently about education, yet the trivial pursuits of second-hand inquiry and information, rudely interrupted every 50 minutes by bells and running to the next crowded pen and prescribed according to fatuous experts is anything but education.
Our schools are not failing, if semi-literacy, high drop-out rates, total unpreparedness for meeting the demands of the workplace or family and relationship, drug-abuse, teen-age pregnancy, apathy, depression, and dozens of the other social problems of young people are what we are striving for. Who is kidding whom? Using the same type of criteria and even the same kinds of tests, and being focused on kids competing for the same shiny objects and false rewards to validate the methods and practices that harm millions of kids is not going to advance this country or civilization in the least. I’m sorry.
Instead of waging war against the “free market” privateers and corporate exploiters, how about at least trying to put your house in order first? Pogo said, “I have seen the enemy, and he is us”. Forget about pretending that schools are providing education. There are some phenomenally good teachers and they deserve great recognition and credit. However, the kids who leave school with an education do so in spite of their schooling in many cases, not because of it. We have a disaster on our hands and it isn’t just the egomaniacs like Michele Rhee who are responsible.
To beat that dead horse once again; cramming kids into classrooms where they sit and absorb information or beliefs from adults, no matter how well-meaning or well-educated, is by definition something other than education. An authoritarian bureaucracy is the antithesis of an optimal learning environment. Coercion is antithetical to education. Education that excludes more than it includes to satisfy the lowest common denominator, or education with values, morals, beliefs, religion or creed, culture, and personality stripped away to avoid mixing church and state or the possibility of offending someone is no longer education. I’ve already identified the primary source of the problems. How long will those who call themselves educators deny reality?
I hate to ask where you went to school and when. I don’t remember it with such fear and loathing. We were actually allowed to form opinions, and as we grew older it was natural to question the adults around us and test our own understanding of the world. We added to the growth of this country (60s-70s) as did my folks generation (WWII). I don’t think there are too many people who can identify those magical days of yore when everyone was happy and free. I am deeply disturbed by the changes that have turned the American dream into a joke for the vast majority. It is getting harder to say this climate is better than it was twenty years ago and we should be able to do so.
Democracy, I really appreciate your summaries.
“Barry” is way off base. The kind of education he described is precisely what non-educators from the “political-corporate-profiteering complex” have prescribed for our nation’s children and they have ramped that up intensely during this decade. That means highly regimented, drill for skill, standardized education with scripted curriculum, “coaches” and administrators to ensure teacher fidelity and student compliance, massive test prep and high-stakes testing. This is exactly what genuine educators are rebelling against today.
And no, 2old2teach, “this climate” is definitely not “better” for most Americans than it was 20 years ago.
And your point is? If you became a good “opinion former” form an opinion on something so we can judge how good you are at it.
Although you use the word “climate” as a metaphor, let me ask you to offer us your opinion on the topic of “climate change.”
Or on the 1st amendment.
Or on gun control.
No, Harlan. My opinion on climate change, or gun control, or even first amendment rights have nothing to do with the subject of the post. Whether my opinions are “good” or not is a loaded question since it leads right into subjective judgement of the content of my opinion rather than how well they are articulated. I apologize for using a “wimpy” word. I really did wonder when and where Barry went to school. My own experience was very different. That is not to say that my schooling was always wonderful, but I was lucky enough to enjoy most of it. One of my sisters was verbally abused as a new student to the school by a teacher who had a history of mental illness. Her abuse was picked up by a number of kids. That woman changed how my sister approached school and how she chose her friends from then on. My parents intervened but the damage had been done. I still would have trouble resisting violence against that woman although she must be long dead.
Avoid my question if you wish. Your phrasing seem to me to imply that you think all claims are opinion and that there is no truth. Do you acknowledge that there is a truth to most things, however hard it is to determine what it is? There can be “right” opinions which correspond with “truth” even though their claimant couldn’t tell you WHY their opinion was a truth.
So, in your view, can there be such a thing a “right” opinion among the universe of opinions? If so, then can there also be “wrong” opinions?
If you reject the notion that there can be a way of telling right opinions from wrong opinions, because all opinions are subjective, and cannot be evaluated, then your opinion on anything cannot be relied upon, even your opinion on the subject matter of the post.
You would be contradicting yourself.
Or do you go even further to dispute that self-contradicion invalidates an argument on the face of things.
Most teachers would agree with you, but they are wrong, and that’s why Barry thinks the public schools have failed. They don’t believe in truth any more.
@ 2old:
Thank you. My pleasure.
Reading, writing, math, citizenship, and job training. Sometimes a little structure isn’t a bad thing. Not many adults or self motivated and regimented, moreless children. Look at why the Yahoo CEO made everyone come back to the office.
But I’ve got an open mind, what’s your plan?
And what are the fundamental principles of citizenship, Barry and TC.
Inquiring minds would like to know.
so, in your view education is about what the state needs a person to be and to be able to do….
it’s nothing at all about what the person wants, what his/her gifts and talents are, what brings happiness and fulfilment, what leads to fulfilment of unique potential, to self actualisation….
that’s not education… that’s training to be a cog in the machine….
Citizenship? Duty, rights, and responsibilities. The mechanics of government. Citizenship in the community, nation, and world, however the boy scouts defined it was close enough for me. A reverence and a duty to the earth.
Quite apt and true, in my opinion, Mr. Elliott.
thanks for having the courage to write and publish this here… I agree with you about what public education is and always has been…
I don’t know of “Yes Magazine” but hope MANY PEOPLE AT LARGE DO. I found myself wishing instead that this article were instead in a magazine like “Time” or “Newsweek” – 2 popular magazines with a large segment of the US population. But indeed, this is a good start!
This is very good news indeed. Let me take this occasion to thank you again, Diane, for your de facto leadership of the movement to save public schooling in the United States. You have become a hero to many of us.
“The Michigan Education Achievement Authority has removed a controversial job posting seeking teachers to work “in a Christian setting” after a complaint was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
In a letter to EAA Chancellor John Covington, the head of the EAA, Steinberg said when they heard about a posting that encouraged job seekers to apply to teach “in a Christian setting” they thought it was a prank call.
“Our Constitution wisely requires schools to remain neutral in matters of religion,” Steinberg wrote. “When a school favors one religion over another, or religion over non-religion, those students and teachers who do not subscribe to the favored religion are made to feel like the do not belong.”
In a letter back to Steinberg, Chancellor Covington called the posting an “egregious error,” adding that it was removed after the ACLU notified him about it.
Covington promised the posting — for preschool position at Bethune School, Law Academy, and Brenda Scott Academy in Detroit — would be revised and reposted without a mention of any religion.”
http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2014/02/26/eaa-pulls-job-posting-for-teachers-to-work-in-a-christian-setting/
Steinberg is, of completely wrong in his understanding of the constitution, which only prohibits the government from requiring uniformity in religion. The federal constitution does not prevent a state school from having a Christian climate, even a tax supported school, much less a charter, and a private school of course. I suppose Covington didn’t choose to die on THAT hill this time. When the voucher revolution comes it, the issue will be moot.
Let’s do an extreme example whereby hard core xtian right “madrasas” spring up all over the south, espousing/teaching that revenge, i.e., terroristic tactics were necessary and efficient, was needed for that unjust usurpation of power by the north.
Or something like Gulen espousing/teaching that islamist religious purity was the most desired end of schooling and that terroristic tactics were necessary and efficient, for all the infidels to meet their maker and forms madrasas based on that fact.
Is that the kind of result that you would love to see, because that’s the logical extension of vouchers
Duane, you and I agree on this. The concern that you raise is not farfetched. Sadly, we do have religions that promote intolerance. We do have groups, for example, Christian Jewish and Muslim, promote intolerance for others who are not of their religion. I am not saying all religious groups do this. But some do.
Providing public dollars for k-12 groups that promote one religion over another is a bad idea. There is more than enough polarization in this country now, without using public funds to help support schools that preach the superiority of one religion over all others.
Joe,
Not only “Providing public dollars for k-12 groups that promote one religion over another is a bad idea.” is a bad idea but providing public dollars to any religious group is a bad idea as they are far the most part exempt from most taxes yet enjoy all the services that the public government provides.
Also see my responses to HU if you would.
Thanks!
I have to agree with you, Duane, that the scenarios you offer are possible under a universal voucher system. I would NOT want to see the outcome that you foreshadow.
It is not strictly relevant for me to say so, but that’s why I find the failure of the public schools to teach the true nature of constitutional democracy so painfully galling. The remedy could well be worse than the disease. Why have the public schools driven people like me to the voucher position? Because they in the usual progressive way are soft on tyranny.
It is not enough to say of the Christian right, they should practice self restraint. Fred Phelps is sufficient proof (probably) that when some damned old patriarch gets a crazy idea in his head, the faith in service of which it is claimed to be advanced is not adequate to limit the offensiveness.
I don’t see reform of the public schools coming from within, because at least 70% of the teachers don’t have a clue about the necessity of capitalism to freedom.
It’s a legitimate dilemma. Perhaps vouchers only for secular schools would be the answer.
Would that satisfy YOU?
To answer you last question, HU, no.
And it comes down to something I think I have finally been able to distinguish/differentiate in what TE and, I believe, Joe (correct me if I’m wrong, Joe) claim are “geographically” determined “catchment zones”.
And that is, it is not “geography” that determines the school’s base for admitting students but it is a constitutional base, starting with a state’s constitution for authorization, and then funneling down into the various districts as prescribed by law. This type of constitutional determination for who can and can’t get into a particular school is quite different from those determinations that are not based on the constitution, such as magnet schools, although that has more legitimacy to me as it is still only the district’s students who are allowed to participate, parochial schools, non-district charter schools-whether for or not profit, or any other “private school”. The last categories are not constitutionally mandated and therefore for me should not receive any public funds/taxpayers funds whether in the form of vouchers, direct payment of taxpayer funds for the students, tax credits or any other scheme.
HU,
Please explain what you mean by “the true nature of constitutional democracy”.
“the necessity of capitalism to freedom.” Well I must be part of that at least 70% figure, although I would dispute your opinion on that figure.
Is not man in the natural state, i.e., those who have never been “tainted” by the rest of the world, I’m thinking remote villagers in the Amazon, etc. . . , men and women who have lived, survived and prospered in their own way, who have, it appears, never experienced any form of capitalism the ideal “free” man with no other constraints other than the environment in which they live.
Perhaps capitalism isn’t really necessary for “freedom”.
HU,
Please show me exactly where (the actual wording) in the Constitution “which only prohibits the government from requiring uniformity in religion.
Thanks in advance!
I think that Yes is somewhat circulated…this is the second time this week that someone has called this article to my attention; the other night, a non-educator shared it with me on my Facebook page and told me that this was shared with her by a local politician, running for a local office, who posted it on his page…yeah!
As much I love your blog, I just remain cynical about anything happening to help us teachers. In NY, our DINO governor will be endorsed by the UFT. In DC, Barry and Arnie still endorse RTtheBottom. My colleagues still think all is well.
I used to love this job but I dont see the conversation changing. How can 99% of us be unable to stop Gates, Broad, Obama, Cuomo and their ilk. I try to remain hopeful but I dont see myself teaching much longer due to these insane edicts. Now I have to teach a US History Regents class to eighth graders using shared reading.
I just dont see us winning. Its just my opinion.
SS teacher, this absurd regime will fall, like the one in Ukraine. Lies, lies, lies.
I hope so Diane and I am honored that you took the time to answer.
You are truly doing great work and i try to spread the word about your blog to my colleagues.
SStfSI,
It ain’t going to change any faster unless you (and many others, and they are) join the fight in whatever small way you can.
Duane
Many of my colleagues have been learning about what is going on but it took a long time for them to see the forests for the trees. Many now know of Diane, her importance and her blog. I try to hope for the best and maybe things will change.
Thanks for responding Duane. It was a long day and my frustration just hit the fan.
De nada.
The more that each individual does in little ways, especially for us classroom teachers by way of “enlightening/educating” those around us, can eventually overcome this beast we face.
And we will, because that is the only option!
What does the New York State US History Regents exam require students to know about the Constitution?
Does it have any conceivable application to the state of education in the nation now?
What is YOUR key theme in your teaching of US History?
Do you teach how the fundamental concept of freedom has been replaced in school and media by the progressive/nazi concept of equality?
If not, YOU are part of the problem (the real problem), and not part of the solution.
Check it out for yourself. In fact, check out the hundreds of facts students are expected to know and then explain to us how you would teach this class. Keeping in mind that you will be judged by your students test scores and students will not be allowed to graduate high school without passing the exam.
http://www.nysedregents.org/USHistoryGov/home.html
We will never have a worthy public education system until the self-interests put children first.
Public schools must stop attacking charter and private schools and these non-traditional schools must stop saying public schools are failing children who attend.
Teachers must stay in the “middle” and applaud any education venue that is successful.
But, this a common impediment, teachers, private, and public schools need to reign in…the US Dept. of Education. This education “busy buddy” has imposed its desires on education throughout the country, costing millions of hours and billions of dollars to comply with what edict come from Washington.
Less from the US DOE and greater autonomy within the states and all children will benefit…as the competition between private and public will improve the education experience no matter where a child attends school.
“the competition between private and public will improve the education experience no matter where a child attends school.”
Right, like McDonalds improved their coffee because of Starbucks? NOT. It’s the same coffee, just in a different cup, only now they GIVE you your cream and sugar so you don’t take too much. And their specialty coffees suck compared to Starbucks.
Competition in markets does not necessarily lead to improvement with tangibles, and it’s even less likely with intangibles like education.
“Teachers must stay in the “middle” and applaud any education venue that is successful.”
Have no problem applauding an education venue that is true to its constitutional duties and even its own duties as long as they comport with the constitutional duties.
Have a huge problem with “teachers must stay in the middle”. Now that’s some pure 100% Bovine Exrement for the readers to chew on, and promptly spit out.
“competition between private and public will improve…”
Humm.
I keep hearing this.
Competition is always an answer, always the thing we need more of, will always improve everything.
Funny. I just cannot think of education as a competition.
Just not buying it.
Thank you Ang…excellent point.
If education is not “competitive” then it must be a “monopoly,” n’cest pas? You’re not in favor of monopolies in oil, or cars are you? Why then, in education?
HU,
False choice fallacy.
maybe
Stay in the middle and join “The Surrender of America’s Liberals”?
Yes, someone has finally taken notice and acknowledged it (See Harper’s March, 2014 cover story )
But be very careful because that looks to be Clinton country –Hillary that is. It’s also thinly veiled Walton turf.
“The Surrender of America’s Liberals” at Moyers & Company:
http://billmoyers.com/segment/the-surrender-of-americas-liberals/
“Think, for example, about the impacts of the 13th, 14th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 23rd 24th, and 26th amendments. Or the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Or Brown v Board of Education (1954) in which a unanimous Supreme Court agreed that “ in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” ”
Harlan, you just gotta read this; there ARE more than two amendments!!! Whodathunkit?
well said
Harlan is consistent…and only his interpretation of free speech, and his love of guns, remains in his Constitutional purview.
Just examples to smoke out those against the rule of law.
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
Several posters have raised questions and objections to my remarks and one or two seem to have taken great umbrage at my negativity. I will endeavor to answer to the best of my ability in the little time that is available.
One person made a comment to the effect that there is value in providing a certain amount of regimentation, organization, structure, order, or discipline for children. I don’t necessarily disagree with that observation. However, I have a number of problems with the state being the entity that mandates the administration of these things via laws that affect students universally, arbitrarily, and indiscriminately. I adamantly refuse to misidentify that sort of behavioral control and conditioning as education. I find the general philosophy that elevates conformity, compliance, obedience, acquiescence, passivity, servility, mass training, and cultural programming over independent thought and personal autonomy from one’s earliest induction in school to graduation to be in error. Talking to sophomores or seniors about thinking for one’s self and becoming autonomous after several years of top-down, rigid training and conditioning oriented toward the opposite direction is too little too late. Experience that molds the child’s thought to focus on an external source for guidance and control (pay attention, be quiet, and do the assignment according to the instructions) for over a decade in the formative years causes one’s ability or proclivity to think for one’s self to atrophy.
However, most important is the truth that one of the author/educators that Joe referred to pointed out. It may have been John Holt. Order, structure, and discipline that is imposed from figures of authority or a system or institution with relentless reinforcement on confined and captive students yields internal disorder, disintegration, a lack of structured thought and confusion, and a very tenuous discipline that is easily undermined and is based on inhibition, fear, or conditioning, rather than on character, self-regard, or a personalized moral base and value system.
Regimentation on steroids might be an accurate description of “what non-educators from the “”political-corporate-profiteering-complex”” have prescribed for our nation’s children and that they have ramped up intensely”. However, they have merely taken what was always a strong influence and increased the focus on those elements. Standardization and a scripted curriculum are nothing new by any stretch of the imagination. They have defined schooling for generations. When power is allocated to authorities, who define what children will do while they are conscripted by the government for the purpose of indoctrination, there must be a consistent message, a reliable narrative that can be identified and replicated, and officially approved and prescribed content for which there can be tests to verify absorption and fidelity.
Some fossil spoke in amazing nostalgic terms about “those magical days of yore when everyone was happy and free.” There is a fairytale fantasy for the storybooks. School is a great social experience for some and most of us have pleasant memories of our successes or of moments when things felt right. I have my own and I am a fossil as well. But again, that says absolutely nothing about education and it ignores the uncounted conflicts, contradictions, humiliations, failures, and traumas that many children suffer.
What are the “fundamental principles of citizenship?” It’s a long story. The condensed version is about being treated as a fully human, competent, dignified, intelligent person at any age. Citizenship isn’t learned as part of a course or by memorizing what dead people did in the distant past. It is learned through experience. It is learned through being respected and treated fairly. It is learned through personal identification with values and principles as a part of a real life, not through vicarious imagination and copycat or manufactured behavior. Schools do indeed train children to be a “cog in the machine”, as someone else said. That’s the antithesis of education.
Diane says that this absurd regime will fall, like the one in Ukraine.” There is your problem. We have regimes rising and falling. We have power that is always from the top down and that merely transfers from one individual or entity to another. That’s the way it has to be, because a power vacuum is created by the dictate that all children must attend. If they must attend, someone has to be the authority. Someone has to spell out in agonizing detail what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable. Indoctrination. Political correctness. Uniformity. Etc. Autonomy is in sharp contrast. And, it isn’t just a question of authority with respect to conduct and the hierarchy. There must be authority with regard to curriculum and knowledge, history, language, science, etc. etc. The ego wars and the expert wars are perpetuating the chaos. Meanwhile, children are pawns. You may win. They will still lose. I still say shame anyone who refuses to acknowledge the destructiveness that is inherent in the current paradigm. It is willful denial, it is dishonest, and it is irresponsible. The consequences are everywhere apparent.
I am that “fossil” who wrote about magical days of yore. At least if you are going to sneer at my opinions, do it accurately. Go back and reread my post. I totally agree with your rejection of current education policy. I do not believe that today is just another iteration of a long history of dismal policy. I hope today is a blip in a continuing evolution in education. We obviously don’t have all or probably even most of “the answers” to creating an engaging and productive process, but we can slowly get better. It is my understanding that you appear to find education a painful process which places unnecessary fetters on young minds AND ALWAYS HAS. I don’t nor do I see a golden age from days of yore either before or after the establishment of a public school system.
Does no one have a sense of humor anymore? Can I get away with saying I was just using humor when I used the name “fossil”? Alright, it was probably in bad taste and I should apologize for using a name that could fell like an insult and that I did in fact use in a slightly questionable manner to suggest being out of touch. In my defense, your chosen ID on the blog refers specifically to your seniority, which one might assume you take some pride in. I am an old fossil and wear my age and experience as a badge of honor and I did refer to myself as a fossil in the same paragraph. Maybe my discretion was affected by the fact that I was awakened at midnight by a phone call about a family emergency and I was writing while half-asleep and distracted by my concerns about the situation.
I had read your comment a couple of times and I have read it yet again. The take away that I still receive from your reference to the golden age of our youth is pretty much identical to what I’ve heard for decades from the people from my generation (born 1941) and older people in general. They have used a lot of creative coloring to nostalgically recall a glorious past that never was. Maybe you were deliriously happy during your entire childhood through graduation, and maybe I’ve been looking through a darkened lens, but the reality for many people was that life was complicated and often cruel. I suspect that we were both oblivious to about 99% of what was happening in the world, since it’s quite normal for young people to be focused intensely on their own lives and the narrow range of things that they see in their immediate surroundings.
What I can say with absolute certainty is that the field of education is not slowly evolving in a positive and constructive direction. I can say the same for schooling, which I repeat again, is not education, or anything resembling education. You don’t have to agree with me and I doubt you ever will. This latest iteration is not merely a bump in the road or a temporary diversion. The problems with assessment and evaluation, accountability, discipline, funding, academic performance and achievement, etc., etc. are chronic and immutable. We recycle through the crises and controversies like a broken machine that repeats the same operations without ever completing the cycle properly or getting reset.
No one has all the answers, of course. But we have studied education, psychology, child development, brain processes and neuroscience and related human behavioral subjects to death at a phenomenal expense. The problem is not a lack of information, knowledge, or research. The problem is the inability to apply what we know. You apparently want to reinvent the educational wheel all over again a few thousand times, hoping we will ultimately find the magic formula. That is one of the big errors, also. There is no formula that can be canned and spoon fed to teachers or students. Real educators who truly know their subject, care about kids, and who have the art of teaching worked out quite well cannot establish healthy relationships with students or answer pertinent questions because the design has always been based on trying to anticipate questions and providing correct answers according to arbitrary authority. The law requires a phenomenal cascading set of rules, regulations, guidelines, policies, advisories, prohibitions, and a raft of supposed experts and officials to assure that nothing goes wrong. The consequence is that everything goes wrong and no one has the slightest how to get past the red tape, the top-down hierarchy, the traditions, and the vested interests in order to get back on track.
I do not find education onerous, painful, or forbidding. I see learning as an exciting and exhilarating activity. That’s why I am opposed to compulsory school attendance. Kids want nothing more than to learn. They don’t need to be dragged kicking and screaming, if there is actual opportunity to learn and grow in a free and inviting environment. A free and inviting environment is precluded automatically by the element of coercion and bureaucratic authority enforced by the state. We have different definitions for education and learning. That’s why I’m glad you are too old to teach.
Oh boy. Now, I finally got what you said. I wasn’t even reading for comprehension, but on my one point at least, when I glanced past it I realized you were indeed agreeing with me. Don’t ask me why, but I kept reading your comment as if the word “with” was after the word identify with regard to the golden age of yore. I expected you to be taking that same familiar position and my expectation was reinforced by my reading of your later comment scolding me. I do feel stupid and I apologize. Maybe it was fatigue or maybe it was because of earlier posts that I have read of yours, or maybe it was some of the other things you said. In any case, I was very careless in my interpretation and conclusion and that has wasted your time and mine. At this point, I am quite confused about what your opinions are, but I will try to be more circumspect in the future. But, none of this is personal and I stand by my arguments. Is senility a good defense? For what it’s worth, I am exasperated by all the repetition and backwardness on these blogs to the point of tearing my hair out. I’ve heard the same inane nonsense for fifty years and everybody acts as if they have discovered the Rosetta Stone of educational theory. Most of them are talking out of their backsides.
I am trying to catch up on too many blog post, so I hope my last post in response to you was if not kind at least informative. Thank you for rereading. At some point, you will probably run across a post from me where I totally lose it. I’m not sure it will explain my position(s), but it will illuminate my frustrations. If I lost it with you anyplace, I’m sorry.
You may, Barry Elliot, have provided the insight as to what has been bothering me all these months I have been following this blog. I take you to be saying that the reformers and public school defenders BOTH harbor the same false view of education.
Is that a fair summary?
(Another fossil here, but a living fossil)
Tongue in cheek, Barry. There were no magical days of yore for me or most people although, as you say, I went through a lot of growing up oblivious to most of what was going on or at least not really understanding the import of it.
And you assume wrongly, when you assume I take pride in being too old, which is understandable since you are a relative newcomer to this blog. I am not quite as old as you (63), but I am still adjusting to being excessed. I lost my job teaching special ed, predominantly minority kids, because of my age among other equally bogus reasons. Bottom line; the school district saved money by weeding out its nontenured staff before they were vested (at 4 years), so they could bring on a new cheap cohort of green card and new graduates. And especially with the current climate, it is extremely difficult to find a job for older workers although it has never been easy. I sub.
As for recycling through crises, you are right. One can only hope that someday we will learn to pay attention to the past. Society has advanced but it has taken a particularly ugly turn over the last few decades. Education is not uniformly dismal and certainly the opportunities for many people are much better that before the civil rights movement although it certainly has not been a straight upward trajectory. I think it was probably my generation that began to allow women to explore careers other than teaching or nursing. My grown daughter does not even think of gender issues when she makes choices although I am afraid that she will run up against them since they are still very real. She did not have to fight the same battles in her own head about what a woman could do and be as I did either.
We probably would disagree on educational philosophy. I think I probably feel that kids need a little more guidance than you although we are on the same page when it comes to interference from distant overseers. Judging from our own acknowledgement of our relative cluelessness about the world growing up, I question your confidence in children’s ability to self educate. I can’t identify a time in history where that worked very well. There are a lot of things kids learn better with little adult interference; as we have studied more, we have assumed we should do more. With all of our research on the brain, and our theories about multiple intelligences, learning styles, etc., most of that research is still very much in its infancy. I am not ready to jump on anyone’s bandwagon although I gravitate toward more progressive approaches to education, whatever that means.
So, Barry, I will agree that I probably assumed too much about how my post would be interpreted since I read your claiming “fossilhood” as a weak attempt to cover your ass after a crude attempt at humor at my expense.
to 2old2teach – Keeping up with this blog is a full time job and it’s all too easy to misread or misunderstand posts. But, you were not impolite or impatient at all, esp. considering my continuing to read what I expected, rather than what was as plain as day. I’ve sworn I would give up on this several times, but it does matter and people can be persuaded with enough information and careful reasoning. We may be to old to participate, but we sure as hell can stir up a hornet’s nest.
“We may be to old to participate, but we sure as hell can stir up a hornet’s nest.”
If we are too old to participate, then what is Diane? We may not be welcomed in the classroom, but you are right about stirring up a hornet’s nest.
Thank you for your more than gracious reply.
Do not give up on following this blog. You need to keep stirring up the hornet’s nest.
So, we should be teaching our kids at a young age to not follow orders or directives from “adults” or any other authority-type figure since it oppresses and indoctrinates their individual thoughts? They should be defining their own structure or order in society? Do me a favor and let me know when that day happens so I can stay off the roads to keep safe from all the newly-licensed teenagers who get to create their own rules of the road.
Silly response, Zak. Driving is not a matter of intellectual navigation.
Zak,
It’s odd, but I’ve scanned all the comments quite thoroughly and I haven’t seen where someone said that students should be left without guidance, instruction, adult supervision, or teaching that engenders a love of literature, or even of the less ostensible sexy STEM subjects. Where did you see something like that? I’ve seen some screwy stuff here, but nothing like that. There were people in the 60’ or 70’s who actually thought kids would become better people without any structure and with almost complete freedom to do as they pleased, but that was probably due to a misunderstanding of A.S. Neill’s philosophy in working with disturbed youth who had been totally unmanageable elsewhere and other thinkers who realized that imposed structure is no structure at all, since it leads to all sorts of negative reactions, including apathy, anger, resentment, and confusion about one’s own place in the universe.
What I have said, in effect, is that I really like and respect children. If you like children, you aren’t likely to want to make them into something they are not or to punish them by shoving what you like down their throats under the pretense that it is good for them. I’ve said that most children are not ready for disciplined work and concentration on rigorous academic exercises and literature presented as preparation for some vague future that requires maturity, life experience, cognitive sophistication, and concentrated focus to be appreciated and understood.
I’ve also said that children need to have relationships with adults that are nurturing and mutually respectful. I’ve said that children need to have the opportunity to exercise initiative and to make consequential decisions as individuals and within groups in order to personally experience and learn democratic principles. I’ve said, perhaps too poorly, that kids must have internal order and integrity with respect to the outside world, which are undermined by coercion, regimentation, depersonalization, excessive competition, and the atomization inherent to any bureaucratic and hierarchical institution. The more order and structure that is superimposed from authority figures or in response to anonymous authorities for the supposed purpose of facilitating attention to lessons or concentration on academic exercises, the less children are able to form a coherent and ordered internal framework that has solid bearings in an intentioned and inner-directed and goal-directed orientation toward life and people.
What I have said is that compulsory attendance laws dictate by their very existence that there will be a hierarchical authoritarian bureaucracy and that they give rise inescapably to conditions that are inimical in myriad ways to the educational process and to the health and welfare of children. You can have a school on every block and four schools on the corners. You can have schools in churches, in synagogues, and in your own back yard. Put a school at the top of the Sears Tower. But, why in hell do you think you should threaten parents with separation from their kids unless a case can be made under existing laws for educational or other neglect?
Cramming kids into classrooms, or even having small groups of kids sharing a space and sitting for long periods (for a small child three minutes is a long time to sit motionless) is not conducive to learning or forming an integrated network of cognitive structures useful for edifying and motivating educational endeavors. That’s just one reason why Holt said, “School is bad for kids”. If you want to provide schools that aren’t mandated to perform impossible miracles and if you accept modest functions for them, such as socialization, technical and simple skill training, babysitting, behavioral conditioning and indoctrination, etc. that are not originated by the state or ordered by fiat, the parent is in control and the child’s experience is not rendered irrelevant. The state should pay, since the distribution of public money for the public good is government’s legitimate function. Then, teachers have maximum autonomy, parents are involved and a check on bad teaching, and kids can discover the wonders that the world offers and ask the questions that their explorations and interests naturally lead them to. If parents want rigid discipline and sadistic methods such as common core used, they have the ability to choose that kind of place, but they alone bear the responsibility. In this modern world, the fear that children will be running the streets if there is no attendance law is an irrational and rather bizarre fear.
Authority must be based on proven competence, community regard, experience that is relevant, and demonstrated knowledge. It is given by those who are equal or lesser in those capacities and qualities. It is not taught or compelled. It seldom demands obedience, except where safety and security are at issue.
Bravo, Barry.
J. H. Underhill
I, too am enough of a fossil to recall exactly what has transpired within the field of education lo these past many decades, and what I can say with certainty is that–even with the 55-minute bell-tone interruption–children and youth were ‘taught’ much, much more then than now. It isn’t necessarily a criticism; simply a fact, when one considers what has been ‘required’ curriculua the past few decades: sex-ed, drug awareness, diversity instruction/training, teamwork, bullying intercession, the pseudo-ed list goes on ad nauseam, one wonders where and how to squeeze in some literature, history or math. I have said it many times and will say it again: our public schools have become agencies of and for social change.
The truly big shift accompanied LBJ’s “Great Society”, in all fairness implemented, likely with good intentions, however with drastic results. Instead of bringing up those who were less fortunate, it drew down those who were doing well. Busing, consolidation, elimination of neighborhood schools, (the bigger is better mentality) are just a few of the reasons that contributed to the near destruction of public education–along with the aforementioned curricula bombardment.
Having taught GED and worked with home-schoolers for the GED test (now called something else) for over sixteen years, I have first-hand observation of those who ‘fell through the cracks’ and they were not all intellectually needy–quite the opposite, in fact.
Having taught college level courses at two different prisons for over eleven years to many who also received a GED while incarcerated, and along the way discovered hidden or buried intellectual talents as sophisticated as grasping an absolute understanding of calculus among other things, has added to my take on the situation regarding the state of public school education.
While I am not completely in favor of non-educators taking over education, I have heard too many six-figure paid public school superintendents (fully licensed–some Ed.D) refer to ninth-graders as ‘freshmens’, and quite honestly believe the teacher/administrator hiring practice should be done on an individual basis without the yokes of spuriously attained certificates or licenses. Public school personnel refuse to deal with incompetence.
And, as I have said before, too many of those who so readily want to discard out of hand any attempt to do something more positive with our school-aged children, are in denial of the indisputable negative outcomes of federal government control, union bosses, and glaring stats that prove, at best, a downward spiral.
Those of you who are so very critical of any ‘private’ attempt to make improvement, why, why are not you attempting to wrest control from the feds to the locals with the knowledge that federal mandates have never worked; will never work? Why are you not attempting to persuade your unions to work for you? How does all this federal control come about when you public school employees are supporting your unions with heavy dues? Are they working in your interests? Are they working?
There is strength in numbers; the focus simply is not in the right direction.
Welcome to the fossil club. I agree with you. The unions work to elect Democrats. Democrats are about social control and impose NCLB (I count Bush as a misguided conservative—anyone who holds hands with Teddy Kennedy will come away with pitch on his palms), and now CCSS. In spite of the Network for Public Education protesting these federal impositions, what existed before in public education was equally impositional.
Vote Tea Party to lodge a protest.
Part 1
Barry Elliott has written in other venues that “ Schools can and should transmit culture, social customs and mores, technical information, community values, and things that promote cooperation, health and hygiene, justice and fairness, civic responsibility, and the like…schools can serve useful purposes.”
I agree.
Elliott has also said that “Children need to live democracy” and “education is key.”
This is especially true in a democratic republic. And it’s exactly what I spelled out in my comments above (Part 1 and Part 2, ‘democracy and public education’).
In ‘School and Society,’ John Dewey framed it this way: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children.”
Aristotle wrote about that issue in Politics, circa 350 BCE. He noted the important link between democracy and schooling. In Book Four of Politics, Aristotle pointed out why a strong middle class is vital to democratic governance:
“the middle class is least likely to shrink from rule, or to be over-ambitious for it; both of which are injuries to the state…for when there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.”
We know well what supply-side economic policies have done to the middle class in this country. Going back to the Reagan era, supply-side policies have piled up deficits and debt, increased poverty, enriched the already-rich, and squeezed the middle class. The oligarchs point the finger of blame at public schools, and put their children in private schools.
Correct premises, wrong history, thus incorrect (purely partisan) conclusion. Supply side economics was the only thing in recent history which expanded the economy, expanded the number of those working, and brought prosperity to the middle class.
As long as you lie about economics and who has increased poverty, squeezed the middle class, and has imposed trillions of debt on the country, by which I mean Obama and his loyal Democrat minions, I have to call you on it.
You should come out from behind your anonymous posting name so we can know who you really are and what you do in the world, so we can judge whether you a independent or a paid servant of the regime.
Part 2
Aristotle explained why this is bad for democracy:
” education should be one and the same for all, and that it should be public, and not private- not as at present, when every one looks after his own children separately, and gives them separate instruction of the sort which he thinks best; the training in things which are of common interest should be the same for all. Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, for they all belong to the state, and are each of them a part of the state, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole.”
John Dewey understood this. He grasped why public education and democratic government were inextricably linked. And that’s what’s sorely missing from most of the current talk about education “reform:” democratic citizenship. But that’s not a new phenomenon. Critics of public education have long complained about the “basics.”
There have been earlier debates and disagreements about and pendular swings in public school pedagogy. For example, in Quincy, Massachusetts in the 1870s a system of public education emphasized “observing, describing and understanding, and only when those abilities had begun to manifest themselves, among the faculty as well as the students, were more conventional studies introduced.” There was grumbling in the community that the schools were not teaching the “basics.”
As David Tyack writes in in “The Transformation of the School,”
“When an independent survey…revealed that Quincy’s youngsters excelled at reading, writing, as spelling…the survey was simply dismissed by critics as biased and unfair.”
In the 1930s, concern over how well American public schools were preparing students “to work up to the level of [their] intellectual powers,” and their alleged inability “to create conditions necessary for effective learning” or to give students “insight into the great political, social, and economic problems of our nation,” led to a study of how high school might improve to better serve youth. The Eight-Year Study compared the college performance of students from traditional, basic curriculum and instruction to students from schools that created their own programs, based, in essence, on the question, “How do we best prepare our students for life in a democratic republic.”
Meticulously measured, the results of the Eight-Year Study were striking. As reported by Tyack, students from the experimental schools:
“earned a slightly …grade average; received slightly more academic honors; seemed to possess a higher degree of intellectual curiosity and drive; seemed to be more precise, systematic and objective in their thinking; seemed to have developed clearer ideas concerning the meaning of education; demonstrated a high degree of resourcefulness in meeting new situations;participated more and more frequently in organized student groups; earned a higher percentage of nonacademic honors; and demonstrated a more active concern with national and world affairs.”
In other words, those from the experimental schools were better educated. They’d been taught to think better (critically). And they had a greater awareness of themselves and the world in which they lived. The students from the most experimental schools, those that developed a student-centered curriculum that integrated disciplines and that was inquiry-focused, had the best results.
Nazi premises about education, both Aristotle and Dewey, but a correct conclusion about what good education is.
Couldn’t you manage to get your premises aligned with your conclusions????
Part 3
People have disagreed about how to best to educate our future citizens, and how to develop the democratic citizen, but for the most part, people have agreed that the purpose of public education was to do so. The current brand of education reform has abandoned the precept of the public good just as it has largely discarded the central role of public education in advancing the “character of democracy.”
Top-down, business-model “reformers” place all of the blame and responsibility –– and accountability –– for improving public education on teachers and schools. They disregard the larger role of socioeconomic factors, and routinely use misinformation to argue their agenda. They buy into the private over the public, the “free market” over the common good, the oligarchic over the democratic.
John Goodlad observed that the pedagogical structures, practices and policies employed by schools are the means by which they “implicitly teach values.” Moreover, an explicit purpose of the school must be to “open up the desire to learn, not turn it off.”
The anecdotal and empirical evidence is mounting that we are teaching the wrong values, dumbing-down the quality of schooling, and undermining the citizenship education mission of public education.
Isn’t it clear what the road to real reform looks like?
Horace Mann argued, like Aristotle, that education is “the balance-wheel of the social machinery” in a democratic society. University of Chicago social scientist Earl Johnson wrote that “the supreme end of education in a democracy is the making of the democratic character.” Gordon Hullfish and Philip Smith considered the development of critical intelligence –– “reflective reconstruction of knowledge, insights and values” –– essential to the maintenance of a democratic society. And John Dewey subscribed to the belief that “the democracy which proclaims equality of opportunity as its ideal requires an education in which learning and social application, ideas and practice…are united from the beginning and for all.”
The explicit purpose of the Common Core, however, is to prepare kids “to compete successfully in the global economy,” not to be citizens in a democratic society who are critically thoughtful and reflective, and who both understand and are committed to popular sovereignty, equality, justice, freedoms for all citizens, tolerance, and promoting the general welfare of the nation.
Education reform in Finland was based to a large degree on Dewey,’s ideas. The citizenship purpose of public schooling is taken seriously. The goal of education reform is equity, with all of the attendant policy programs aligned. Education is seen “as an instrument to even out social inequality.” That is simply not the case in the United States, where the rich have gotten richer (with public subsidies), poverty has increased (especially child poverty), the middle class has been squeezed, and income stratification leads the developed world. The result is that “causal sequences of risk that contribute to demographic differences in educational achievement and physical well-being threaten our country’s democratic ideals by undermining the national credo of equal opportunity.”
We would do well as a nation to heed the sage advice of Aristotle and John Dewey.
It’s clear that (1) there’s an awful lot of work to do, and (2) most of the current crop of political and educational “leaders” are not up to the task.
Yes, Professor “democracy.” There IS a lot of work to do and the current crop of political and educational leaders are not up to the task.
I even find YOU, as you offer a critique of contemporary education policy, confused and self contradictory.
Our founding documents offer us (among other rights) “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
I submit that education is not a “right” in the sense that those other three are rights. I also submit that equal opportunity is not congruent with “even out social inequality.”
By whom is your final quote, Dewey? It smacks of his confusional style. He WAS a socialist you know, and as a champion of progressivism was as much a Nazi as was Goebbels. He did not seem to understand the purpose of the United States Constitution was to promote and protect freedom, not to bring about equality and equity. He is the godfather of modern American public education—Diane Ravitch quotes him as the epigraph of her book Reign of Error— and to the extent people have followed his confusions blindly, he has corrupted American educational philosophy.
Again, I call for you to disclose your real identity.
Your articulation of these issues reflects a deep understanding about what it means to be educated and what that means for our nation and society. But, the inmates have taken over the asylum. When we have people expressing anger that schools might sometimes provide social services to students in need and people speaking of Dewey and Nazis in the same breath, you know we have crossed the Rubicon or some crucial marker. Instead of talking about and understanding what happens to children, with knowledge of the fundamentals that are known to good teachers and illuminated by the most recent and sophisticated research, people are up in arms about unions and charters and what Arne Duncan said. They want to fight a war to determine who has power and influence, without taking into account the cost to everyone and the fact that children will not be free or educated when the smoke clears, if it ever does. Sad. Very sad.
we should print out the infographic and mail it Obama, Arne, and congress with a little note that says
“We know what you’re doing and who you are doing it for. Stop selling our kids future to Wall Street sociopaths or we will replace you.”
I doubt, Mike Dixon, that any public school teacher will abandon their “Democrat” principles (i.e. membership in the liberal mob) to replace anyone anywhere. Obama is himself in bed with the Wall Street sociopaths, which makes him a sociopath.
Tea Party Patriots, 5 year anniversary today.
Not until you can swallow the tea party program will any possible defense against reform occur. And, of course, if you do drink the tea, you won’t want to defend public education against privatization.
Oh, you hard working class room teachers, WHY oh WHY have you driven the country to radical privatization as the only remedy for collectivist education???
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.