As the previous post shows, the Education Justice Center declared that Nevada has one of the worst funded and most inequitable school systems in the nation. However, the new Republican majority in the State Legislature has a new agenda that does not involve funding:
School prayer. The right to carry weapons on college campuses. End collective bargaining. Vouchers. Merit pay. Firing “bad” teachers. The new majority doesn’t like unions because teachers get too much money and that causes budget problems. Probably the legislators figure if they pay teachers less, they can recruit better teachers. The Governor wants vouchers, but he would have to get the voters’ approval to change the state constitution. Voters have never approved vouchers in any state, so legislators will probably come up with “opportunity scholarships” to subsidize private school tuition.
Assemblyman Jim Wheeler, R-Minden, said that without question improving public education is the top priority of the caucus.
“We will see what the governor wants to do,” he said. “He leads our party and our state. Parental choice is the biggest issue but not the only one. We need to reward good teachers and get rid of bad teachers. We need to see if we can streamline school district administration.
“Obviously throwing money at it isn’t working,” Wheeler said. “We need parental involvement.”
Wheeler has requested a school prayer bill, and said the motivation is to ensure that students are not punished for engaging in prayer, such as making the sign of the cross after a touchdown in a high school football game.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Having lived in Nevada for over fifty years, I could say a great deal about this foolishness. While there are some well-informed and intelligent people in the state, esp. in the southern part of the state, the backward thinking reactionaries and libertarian extremists still call most of the shots throughout. However, I am looking at a bigger picture and I have just completed a book report of sorts as promised on Diane’s first book, “The Troubled Crusade”. I intended to post it as a comment to be added to an earlier post in which Diane had responded to one of my comments, but comments have been closed there now. I would prefer to have this particular conversation directly and privately with her and it is much too lengthy for most of the bloggers here I’m sure, but I have no other place to post or mail it. It is written with all due respect, however I cannot sugar-coat what is in reality a difficult and quite critical analysis relative to thinking too heavily influenced by emotional influence and wishful indulgence. Here now is my report:
ONE CRUSADE IS AS GOOD (OR BAD) AS ANOTHER
Diane Ravitch has become the face of a sizable and significant movement in the US that appears to be concerned primarily with stopping a (hostile) takeover of what might be called our national educational apparatus by a cadre of seemingly pernicious “reformers”. The fierce resistance put up by Ms. Ravitch and her followers of mostly teachers or education professionals to counter the highly organized and well-financed efforts involving aggressive moves to encode, privatize and monetize schooling by those misguided outsiders and gullible insiders harping on myriad reforms is a desperate and (I believe) futile attempt to save the generally revered public schools.
Likewise, those tradition-minded groups fighting the pandemonium caused by agitators and malcontents have expressed a strong principled opposition to the creation of a network of charter schools that compete directly with public schools, which together with the privatization plans of the others would almost certainly dismantle public schooling entirely if carried to their logical conclusions. Voucher systems are a variation on the theme, wherein subsidies are provided for children to attend private schools or schools that are some type of public-private hybrid, supposedly offering superior choices and opportunities.
After watching Ms. Ravitch speaking on several occasions on C-SPAN, news programs or panel shows, I was duly impressed with her knowledge and philosophy. I agreed with friends who called her a hero for taking on the powerful interests undermining the public systems of schooling. She has fought tooth and nail with those meddling “interlopers” and meddlesome amateurs who insist on relying too heavily on technology, on incessant testing, on cookie-cutter curricula, on questionable “accountability”, and on a crass profit motive, or on miscellaneous other improvised and superficial schemes for improving the educational experience. She often uses the language of the progressives and advocates passionately for a more child-centered curriculum when condemning the business oriented privatizers.
Previously, Ms. Ravitch had been heavily involved in many of those same high-pressure trends as a respected “expert” and education historian. She ultimately did a complete reversal after realizing that non-stop measurement through standardized testing, falsely assigning blame for failure on teachers or students, and trying to turn education into a profitable enterprise does little or nothing to enhance the learning environment. She recognized that the proposed solutions and unworkable reforms from numerous insiders and from various education-minded non-educators or ‘foreigners’ merely dabbling in the field actually posed serious risks for children.
This most recent steamrolling reform machine, which has seemed to appear quite suddenly, and which presumes to represent sincere attempts to improve our institutions dedicated to one description of education or another, has attracted reputable people from diverse backgrounds. Prominent among the promoters of privatization and of intensely business oriented approaches are several billionaires and business moguls, as well as any number of educators, parent organizations, and private citizens anxious for change. All have responded to (or taken advantage of?) harsh criticisms of public schools and a long history of bitter disillusionment with respect to “free” mandatory “education” for the great unwashed masses (a slight dramatization, admittedly). They represent a more virulent strain of the reformist ideologues that have been nipping at the edges all along.
Simultaneously, among the disgruntled critics of schools are also included substantial numbers of other educators, parents and private citizens who have determined that miscellaneous alternative schooling arrangements are better choices for families. Progressive alternatives came first as a response to the sclerotic and often oppressive conditions so often found in the traditional schools of the 19th and 20th centuries. These more nurture-focused and protective options are quite separate and apart from those that privatizing has offered more recently.
These other options include “free schools”, alternative schools, homeschooling, de-schooling, un-schooling, or possibly others. These variations typically involve more hospitable conditions involving less concern with the strict rules and intense study typically imposed in the more authoritarian atmosphere of regular schools. They reject drill, intense pressure to excel academically, or a neurotic focus on the child’s distant future. The child-centered, present-centered approaches of the free school and no-school philosophy are at odds with the lock-step rigidity and misanthropic milieu associated with a highly disciplined social engineering and measurement-focused approach to schooling generally favored by the privatization crowd as well as to a somewhat lesser extent by the majority of traditionalists.
To get a better sense of why Ms. Ravitch has become such a lightening rod in these controversies and what her current thinking might be, I read her book, The Troubled Crusade, American Education 1945 – 1980, published in 1983. She referred me to the book after I posted somewhat abrasive comments on her blog, with which she had taken exception. While three decades have passed since the book was published and her position on charter schools and other issues of importance have changed, certain things appear to have remained consistent in her opinions and attitudes, as well as in her stated positions, which we will try to discern here.
One might reasonably conclude from the title of Ms. Ravitch’s book that she has postulated and traced a crusade of some sort in American education during the thirty-five years surveyed. One can also guess that she discovered that things haven’t gone well for the crusaders she has identified. Reasons for choosing the period between 1945 and 1980 are made quite clear. She distinguishes between a “crusade against ignorance” initiated originally by the founding fathers in the 18th century as logically central to the successful operation of any democracy, and the latter series of bungled quasi-crusades in schooling in the 20th century. There are common threads between each of those unproductive “mini-crusades” during the thirty-five years studied, as well as between the alleged crusading change agents who were active and influential.
Those later efforts chronicled represent to her a period of floundering and ineptitude caused by exotic and unproven new trends or themes that brought education into focus as something less fundamentally authentic or essential than it had been prior to that. She leads one to believe that the supposed progressive ideas didn’t result in any lasting progress and that they were very much apart from the benign and somewhat more modest crusade against ignorance that schooling was originally intended to become by Thomas Jefferson and others. The crusades in her accounts revolve around problematic theoretical solutions and superfluous transitional panaceas addressing common educational dilemmas, that in her opinion disastrously corrupted or perverted what had been a much more manageable and organic paradigm prior to 1945.
In the thirty years since the book was published Ms. Ravitch has remained a staunch defender of the public schools with respect to their worth as educational institutions. She wants them to be more purely and perfectly what she sincerely believes they once were, before they were nearly ruined by naïve reformers, progressive dreamers, and perfection-seekers of various stripes experimenting with magical solutions and silver bullets.
The tough, uncompromising but caring, and strictly business teacher (the business of academics and fostering intellectual growth) is all but worshipped within the cult of school as the ideal model who expertly and methodically molds character and brings out the very best in students. Students may feel put upon and may sometimes even hate this diligent teacher, until the majority eventually mature and become sensible enough to understand and appreciate that it was the love of learning, the love of teaching, and genuine affection for students that made the best teacher(s) pressure them to bear down and study so rigorously in order to equip them to live and work in a demanding world.
This ideal professional who is all about transforming the reluctant child into the critical thinking assiduous scholar and intellectually astute adult is the type of dedicated person that all schools should hope to find and employ as educators. If only that purist formula worked for all students and if only some didn’t chafe continually under the relentless demands or resist by withdrawing, rebelling, or faking it. Unfortunately, numbers and facts don’t lie.
The defense of public schooling by Ms. Ravitch appears now as full-blown zealotry. She is clearly a true believer, not just in the viability of public schooling, but in schooling that preserves the trappings of teacher as designer, director, and disciplinarian. Active adult control over the movements and activities of students is not inherently unhealthy oppression or repression in her less nuanced view, as some believe. The reason seems to be a core belief that children will become undisciplined and unruly if not “savages” if not given specific guidance and motivation in much more than merely multiplication tables, language skills, and academics. Classical behavioral training and the endeavor to provide a “liberal” education based on great literature, scientific knowledge, humanitarian values, and a great diversity of perspectives in the traditional manner are non-negotiable elements for her.
In the absence of miracles, school MUST be there for the education of any and all children. Any distraction or digression is anathema. She displays the same sort of absolute certainty and unchallenged faith in the implied proposition that education and school are virtually synonymous that one would expect from fundamentalist Christians or from a Catholic priest in speaking about Mary the mother of Jesus giving birth in a manger to the son of God the savior who died for our sins upon a cross.
The vilification of people such as Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, and other advocates for alternatives to the public school systems on Ms. Ravitch’s blog, as wrong as they surely are about education, privatization, or other issues is unbecoming to a person of Ms. Ravitch’s stature and to her admirers. She is an avowed apologist for the old school pedagogues who equate school with education, without the slightest possibility for any doubt about that dubious assumption.
She is a stern denier of all the rank and mean criticisms such as my own and virtually thousands of others that actually go to the heart of the matter. She has become a shrill firebrand with respect to the current crop of reviled reformers, failing to recognize that their grand endeavors are merely superficial variations on the same themes that have been proposed many times before. Modifications to the more extreme versions of flawed policies and practices of the authoritarian system that she and her supporters still hold to be near and dear actually fix nothing. The problems remain; and the solutions change little in reality.
The supposed bumbling and babbling crusaders and “reformers” that Ms. Ravitch judiciously but definitively disparages in her book are not so different from her own brand of entrenched education ‘missionaries’ and school crusaders who want (need) to pretend that compelling children to attend and to do the drill will somehow eventually produce acceptable results, whether or not they recognize how school is related to happiness, success, wealth, or knowledge acquisition and education, and despite generations of non-stop fiascos recorded in innumerable places. Their lack of success is not a consequence of bad ideas but the result of barriers to the implementation of great ideas.
A coherent message throughout the chapters appears to encompass the primary message of the book. That message is that, when people look to schools to solve the world’s problems; to be reparative social service agencies, rather than primarily or exclusively an educational service; to satisfy their own particular notions of how education should be defined; to serve everyone who comes through the school doors with absolute perfection and satisfaction, or to lead to a utopian existence, they are sure to mess things up miserably. We agree on these points.
However, from the clumsy early attempts of the “progressives” of the roaring twenties when they tried to make schools into ideal places for learning without any discomfort, rote practice, stern correction, or applied effort, to the current frivolous dreams of technology buffs and egghead-educrats hoping to develop a formulaic science that can be followed faithfully by creating a master curriculum and by inventing esoteric methods and new age principles, she claims that inevitably conflict, confusion, and faddish trends that necessarily prove to be counterproductive will result. All of that has certainly been true, although only as a consequence of the rocky paths we have taken in blindly pursuing the impossible through the use of brute force.
She strongly suggests that crusaders who followed the various concepts and discoveries of progressive leaders since early in that century (20th) all pretty much fell into a facile pattern, somehow failing to see that their great idealism was a bit too abstruse, sophisticated, and unrealistic for adaptation in public schools concerned with more practical matters. Obviously, learning is a serious matter, not child’s play. Or, is it? (See, Dr. Peter Gray’s contemporary work backed up by neuroscience, psychology, education studies, and much else).
Ms Ravitch is nothing if not a highly skilled, articulate, and accurate historian. Her accounts of the events from the “Postwar Initiatives”, (Chapter I) and “The Rise and Fall of Progressive Education”, (Chapter II), through the “New Politics of Education”, (Chapter 8) tell the story of life in the US from 1945 to 1980 through the lens of professional school observers and analysts who were concerned and dedicated. Her overview is often enlightening with respect to how social, political, economic, and other issues and policies affected schools, and vice versa.
In a history of education spanning thirty-five years totaling a mere 330 pages one would not expect to see a detailed discussion of a comprehensive and complicated topic such as progressive education, with all of the attendant pros and cons and dozens of representative theories and factions in diverse locations around the country, and indeed, around the world. Ms. Ravitch stays on topic and does an admirable job of summarizing and explaining the most salient features and ideas that fit the chosen categories in the time and space available. She gives the more prominent people, such as progressive John Dewey credit for splendid ideas and theory for example, while pointing out parenthetically that his recommendations and beliefs were misunderstood, misapplied, politicized, bastardized, and diluted beyond recognition.
Ms. Ravitch looks with a discerning eye through her eight chapters at the decades-long political struggle to obtain support for federal funding for education. She covers the battles fought over taxes supporting religious schools; the suspicion of teachers and professors who may or may not have earlier had communist sympathies, and the influences of higher education on k-12; the divisiveness of racial segregation and the movement for desegregation and equality, along with the pressures of grinding poverty, discrimination, and gross inequality affecting minorities and many poor white community schools. She examines in several chapters the back and forth pendulum swings of social science and pedagogical theory; the waves of change agents promising grandiose reforms from all directions, including some of the ridiculous and some of the sublime, and finally, the “new politics of education”, once federal aid was eventually provided to states for schooling and certain other issues were ostensibly settled, such as integration, aid to children per se, irrespective of the religious affiliation of their parents or schools, and frilly experiments in seemingly chaotic environments.
It was several months ago when Ms Ravitch suggested that I could be better schooled in this illustrious history by reading her first book. I had made reference in my comments on her blog to authors, such as Colin Greer, who wrote scathing attacks on the mythology and inherent regimentation of public schooling. His book, The Great School Legend, was not mentioned in this book however, although several others of that class were discussed. I could be wrong about the profound lesson she imagined I would presumably learn from her, but I believe the questions at issue and our specific disagreements were quite straightforward and well-defined.
If I understood correctly what she wanted me to take away from her book, it was as has been alluded to above. The thread that runs through the book is that, due to social factors and various demographic and other conditions, schools were targeted for dramatic change because different people had different goals and purposes for them, most of which were not altogether realistic or feasible, given the tumultuous times and circumstances. It became customary for people, and especially those outside the profession to think (foolishly) of schools as the end-all and be-all for social, economic, political, and other ameliorations.
It was incorrect to expect schools alone to deliver on the many promises of democracy and modernity, in her esteemed estimation. I concur. Her book strongly hints that too much was being asked, while far too little was being offered the schools in the way of support, attention, autonomy (for teachers), or conditions conducive to success (such as equality for all children, regardless of race, class, or location). One can presume she still believes that, instead of starting a radical revolution rejecting the model and legal framework based on Prussian military schools, that demands should be made for utilizing this valuable resource more effectively and for tweaking things slightly in order to perfect what was already an excellent framework for educating and socializing youth. Yet, the Prussians had it all wrong and we know it.
It was logical she correctly presumes, to connect education to everything good. No one questions the priceless value of a good education. Schools had worked small miracles in the past in elevating the status, knowledge, and lifestyles of citizens, had they not? But no, I am obliged to say, contrary to popular opinion, they clearly had not. That immense fiction was propagated by the schools themselves and was thoroughly debunked by dozens of blue ribbon studies, innumerable scandalous reports, and by hundreds of eminent scholars who had a list of potent criticisms a mile long. Unfortunately, like so many others, she has conflated school and education, quite blithely and mistakenly.
In every chapter and at every stage during the thirty-five years (and since, if one follows Ms. Ravitch’s blog), the allegation is that there are problems and wild expectations attached to schooling that have little or nothing to do with the actual business of teaching (Did I say business? Assuredly, only for lack of a more appropriate word!). After WWII, things were in flux and everyone was anxious to move on to a peaceful co-existence, until the existential threats of nuclear war and war with the Soviets, who beat us into space, drove us to make “necessary” but highly disruptive and unwise changes to curricula and practices, at least in certain cases and places, or so goes the narrative. This is another example of identifying the wrong problem.
However, even before the First World War, the contingent of “progressives” taking cues from other countries and from new psychology as well as from enthusiasts for new testing ‘sciences’, were doing their utmost in parallel to force changes according to a burgeoning liberal philosophy focusing on self-determination and complete autonomy for students and on ludicrous metrics for evaluation. Despite the germs of good ideas coming from the incipient progressive movement, the patient nearly died, ostensibly because those germs were not applied in a hospitable context. They were rejected by an institutional “immune system” (my poor metaphor), which wasn’t even minimally conducive to the absence of rigor and imposed discipline. Again, that emerging system was more about personality development and social engineering than about “education” according to her dated interpretations and to a definition of education rooted in traditional biblical principles. The metrics were indeed, ludicrous.
We go through the eight chapters with all of the very well-presented facts and meticulously analyzed and accurate history, finding the same logic and the same (old) excuses. The devil was in the details and the devil made the schools fail. Social science only made things worse, she intimates, because not only were the so-called psychological experts not in agreement, adding confusing and conflicting theories to the mix, making for great instability and chaos; the brainiacs just hadn’t been down in the trenches. They didn’t understand what learning in the classroom to equip students for future capabilities in the real world is all about. They were purists, theorists, behaviorists, analysts, or ivy-tower ideologues who spent too much time with journals or books, rats, and unrepresentative kids, and who didn’t interact enough or well enough with teachers, principals, and the concerned and involved parents who care most about a useful program of knowledge-building classes and courses. Those bold conclusions are given as accepted truths without flinching or qualification.
A definitive bias on the author’s part can hardly be denied when one sees the chapter title; “Reformers, Radicals, and Romantics”. This covers the period roughly from the late 1950’s or early 1960’s to the late 1970’s. This was when there were various notable free schools and “experimental” schools in operation in certain areas; when the anti-poverty forces were still effective in giving a voice to those who believed in providing social services as an adjunct to schooling, and when the liberal philosophy of the hippies, anti-war activists, or sociologists and psychologists whom she seems to regard as “flaky” or out on the fringe was in full bloom. The subtext one feels is that romantics have no business teaching, since they can’t appreciate the serious nature and responsibilities of the job.
Ms. Ravitch doesn’t overtly advocate for a regression to a “Back to the Basics” drive herself, or denounce too strongly the lack of emphasis on a hard-driving push to restore the rigor and regimentation of the “good old days”, to knuckle-down-and-study-like-you-mean-it schooling, but one doesn’t have to read between too many lines to detect her core beliefs on these scores. She demonstrates little patience for anything but the nose-to-the-grindstone, sit-down-and-shut-up kind of schooling from her own school experience. She paints the picture with colors that make the schools look rather splendiferous, while the critics look amateurish or like new-age faddists and fanatics.
So, what is the verdict on the book? I remain convinced that those cringing critics of schools and of schooling itself are more correct in their scathing negative assessments than not. Those who believe that it is futile to keep working with the paradigm we have had for over a century-and-a-half have gotten it right. No matter how thoroughly one analyzes the incidental factors and failed attempts to fix this defective scheme for educating the masses, or for educating some and ignoring the plight of the many others out of expedience, the superficial problems encountered by the wanna-be reformers can never be used as justification for giving endless chances to the hapless crusaders of traditional schooling so that they can continue doing harm, just because they have always been there, through thick and thin.
This is not a purely academic exercise for me and for the many people who have cared enough about children and their rights to demand that schools adapt, finally. I have visited many of the schools of my own children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren as well as doing some student teaching and I have known personally far too many of the severely damaged victims over five or six decades. I am able to state with certainty that the classrooms of today are not unlike those from 1945 and before.
Ms Ravitch doesn’t articulate in so many words any clear opposition to the provision of social services or to a socialization function within schools, either. But one comes away with an unmistakable impression that she has no reservations about the absolute primacy of academic preparation; about the meticulous effort to match teaching and learning with the needs and demands of the national or world economy and professional landscapes; about building from a foundation of specified “basic” skills and knowledge transmitted and translated by, or transferred from, someone trained, tested, and knowledgeable in the particular field; about the inculcation of subject or discipline by immersion in literature or curricular materials and methods, as well as about traditional attention to behavioral control and attitude management. That is all ‘old school’ and old hat. Still, it is nowhere near enough and the focus is on making human nature a handicap.
In her view, as I read it, it is up to the politicians, families, communities, and parents to meet the basic maintenance and societal needs of children. Presumably, she wouldn’t argue with providing lunches or nutritional supplements to guarantee the ability of students to think and focus on their tedious studies, but I’m confident that she doesn’t want schooling to be diluted and distracted by ancillary public services unrelated to the concentrated instructional services.
The careful clinical precision that Ms. Ravitch applies to her telling of the history obscures the fact that she is highly opinionated. It belies the image that her conception of education is very old fashioned (anachronistic) and rooted in a stale and inflexible tradition that has little use for the revelations of modern psychology, sociology, neuroscience, etc. One can only discern her personal beliefs through implication and inference, since a historian is obliged to remain (or appear) neutral. She would assert I believe that teaching is an art, a skill, a labor of love, and a highly important part of an intimate personal relationship. On that, there is a fairly significant consensus (although seldom stated or conceptualized in those terms).
However, to intimate that social scientists are generally inept and unqualified to offer suggestions and criticisms because they failed to overcome the profound defects inherent to our arcane system of “education” universally imposed by law is brash and foolish. To treat as completely preposterous the mere suggestion that it is antithetical and inimical to education to group children together in spaces, to limit their mobility and communication, to process and program them uniformly and bureaucratically, and to do so under penalty of law, is what some of us find to be preposterous. Education is an art, but art can be informed and molded by good science and successful practice (if not sabotaged by unrelenting chiding, admonishment, punishment, browbeating, and paternalism,).
We who fully embrace all of the principles of progressive education for the critical thinking and freedom of thought they effectuate are thrilled to see students who are disciplined, who work hard, and who study with great diligence. We do not ever shy away from what children need according to social science in order to accommodate institutional mandates or traditional affectations, as Ms. Ravitch does. What we object to is any systemized program wherein societal values of any nature are imposed and incorporated as dogma that must be accepted to avoid exclusion or rejection.
Reasonable people will probably always disagree on certain key issues. Those who are categorized as educators, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, or other specialists may never share a single distinct definition for what education is or should be. I for one refuse to attempt to define education for anyone except myself. Education is ineffable; highly personal and individual; a lifelong and never-ceasing experiential process. Education is irreproducible and infinitely more involved, complex, holistic and intricate than any school could ever provide. It is a quality that is beyond measure or evaluation, which one has to prove through a lifetime of problem-solving and successful interaction and relationship with people and reality.
Nevertheless, we can say with some assurance what education generally is not. We can all agree that it should not entail serious psychological, physical, emotional, or intellectual harm to anyone as a sacrifice to the education or well-being of other more academically inclined or privileged individuals. We can all comprehend why many scholars along with ordinary citizens object to overall combined failure, drop-out, and semi-literacy rates that fall somewhere between 25 and 50% for schools nationally.
We can all appreciate the fact that knowledge is not bound up in symbols or language in books or computer documents or in other tangible media to be absorbed intact or verbatim by children and extracted at test time to verify that one has adequately (if temporarily) possessed it. We can agree with contemporary science in various fields that knowledge is knowing, and knowing is NEVER static. It is alive in that one creates it within one’s active, living mind/body (inseparable) by integrating perception, observation, memory, experience, data, emotion (extremely important!) chemical and nervous synaptic connections in the brain and throughout the body, and by utilizing an unpredictable combination of both conscious and unconscious mental processes and “mental maps” that will be beyond any extensive analysis for the foreseeable future.
When put that way, it should become fairly evident that school is not only NOT synonymous with education, but that we shouldn’t be talking about school and education in a way that leads to the expectation that school will ultimately become the answer to our quest for universal education, awareness, or enlightenment. Education is in a different category and a different universe. Free public schooling is well worth celebrating and preserving, to be sure. Yet, that cause is not helped by pretending that schooling has formerly been the only, or even the principal, factor in the relatively high rates of literacy, intellectual growth, or education that so many of our more fortunate citizens have enjoyed in the past.
Compulsory attendance has created institutions that are typically autocratic, authoritarian, bureaucratic, alienating and hostile. They are immutable, politically toxic, excessively competitive, often abusive, and stress- and anxiety-producing factories. They are too commonly confusing, confounding, and frustrating for restless children. The “Stockholm Syndrome” and nostalgic remembering wherein many graduates glorify the struggle and identify strongly with their ‘captors’ or persecutors is hardly a repudiation of these sad realities. None of this is news to anyone who has been paying attention.
Those who have such a powerful need to blame myriad chronic problems on factors external to the school should either re-evaluate their position or contract with a shrink for long-term therapy. Those who imagine that some kind of reform or going backward in time is not a formula for exacerbating the problems are dreaming. Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum are carrying on a vicious fight over whether public or privatized schools do the most good or the most damage, while delirious separatists are reveling in the glory of their elitist libertarian academies for privileged or lucky students who don’t suffer under oppressive or high-stress conditions, but who only make up a tiny fraction of the total. Meanwhile, millions of other kids are mis-educated and indoctrinated into a sick and sickening culture.
A huge new study being labeled the “Index of Ignorance” just hit the news recently. The US ranks second behind only Italy in the level of ignorance about significant information that one needs to know to keep a democracy functioning. This is also old news, of course.
Although Holt said unequivocally that “School is bad for kids”, there is no reason why that must always be the case. If I had to guess, I would say that only about half of our schools are bad in terms of their atmosphere and corrosive effect on students, and half are bad in terms of overall quality and performance (using liberal standards and contemporary test data), about half of the time. Schools that rank best (according to those false arbitrary standards, usually in affluent areas) probably only harm about half their students about half the time, leaving a tiny fraction that are well served. Removing the coercion and dropping the ludicrous expectation that schools should work education miracles would still be no panacea, although it could radically change all that.
Rigid discipline and academic firmness through enforced concentration, versus policies of tolerance, maximum autonomy, and playful exuberance have been controversial topics for intense debate for longer than anyone can track. Testing, grading, evaluations, and other arbitrary measures or indices of learning, of progress, of knowledge, and of teaching have been equally hot topics for generations. Accountability for teachers has only been a painful issue for about a fifty years or so, but long enough to far exceed the scope of this book. But, until the dark cloud of authoritarianism goes away there won’t be anything new under the sun.
Pardon me for saying, but Ms. Ravitch could redeem herself a second time by getting out of the business of sweeping the chronic and severe problems of schools under the biggest rug in the world. She would do well to devote some of that intense energy to getting the laws off the books that impede learning and healthy development and by striving to clear the way for authentic educational opportunities both inside and outside of those conflict-ridden schools that she has been defending vociferously.
Her heart is certainly in the right place. But by fighting for the rotting status quo against serious people who are using historical and scientific reality and accurate statistical facts with the help of mass media to undermine her tenuous position, she gives them added ammunition, more time, and better reason to work for the destruction of her beloved schools. Let’s save schools for the good they can potentially do, without preserving their destructive features.
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Mr. Elliott, I can assure you that I do not defend the status quo, not zealously or in any other fashion. The status quo has been in place since 2002, when President Bush changed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act into No Child Left Behind. The status quo relies on testing for all judgments about students, teachers, principals, and schools. My own views about standardized testing were shaped during seven years on the National Assessment Governing Board, where I learned how easy it is for errors to slip past numerous review panels. The status quo is indeed rotten. I am happy to oppose it. Thank you for taking the time to read some of my early books. May I recommend “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” “Reign of Error,” Pasi Sahlberg’s “Finnish Lessons,” and Yong Zhao’s “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?”
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Ms. Ravitch,
It’s impossible to define each and every one of one’s terms when tackling convoluted and complex issues that are bigger than any of us have time for. I am aware of your opposition to the status quo as it is manifested by the efforts of the “reformers”, whom you so rightly fight and sacrifice to expose. However, I see a continuity and a “status quo” in the “system” or paradigm that has been in place since the middle of the 19th century. Like beauty, the status quo is to some extent in the eye of the beholder, I guess.
You mentioned a book in response to a comment I wrote many months ago and I read what I believe was that book in order to check for your ideas and analyses from that time, which you apparently considered still relevant as an argument against my position on Colin Greer’s thesis in his book, “The Great School Legend”. I couldn’t find the original reference, but I was sure you said it was your first book. Greer’s book was written as a debunking of the myth of the school as the great means to education for all who would come and partake of its generous offerings. I did extrapolate from the things in your book and from sporadic readings on your blog and I “psychoanalyzed” a little in trying to come up with an explanation for your zealotry and defense of a more traditional kind of schooling. (Attack here, readers who are riled). The nerve!
I have always made it quite clear that I strongly oppose the privatizers and the measurement freaks and even my mentor and long-time friend insists that you are the best thing we have to stop the descent into a hell for children. However, you have never taken seriously the belief that compulsory attendance is the worst fly in the ointment and the source of incredible poison. Despite my millions of words, you still have not argued either way, leaving one no alternative but to conclude that you believe that the authoritarian bureaucracy with the hierarchical structure and endless rules and impositions on students are either a necessary evil or the preferred paradigm.
You don’t have to take me seriously. I haven’t written any books and don’t have any impressive credentials. None of your blog members are likely to ask you to respond to the actual central issues I have raised or to get past their blind faith in the “status quo” that has been in place since long before they were born. Still, I haven’t wasted my time. Truth cannot be suppressed for too long after the right questions have been asked and the young people who are directly affected get a glimpse of its potential, especially in the age of social media. I won’t hold my breath for a less dismissive and insulting response.
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Ms. Ravitch,
Since you and I disagree on the total incompatibility of coercion or compulsion and education, and since I am shocked and appalled at the extent of your ignorance on the topic, I am going to lobby Congress for a law that allows me to force you to become educated on the whole matter. Does that seem absurd? It is absurd, of course and I am being facetious to make a very valid point. You would like to make a distinction between children who are ignorant supposedly because of their age and a lack of schooling or due to parents who don’t value education as much as you think appropriate, and someone like yourself who studied and worked hard to gain knowledge. However, that is an arbitrary distinction and one that is subject to various challenges. It would be wrong to impose your values on others, even if it were possible to effectively do so. It is not possible, as we see in innumerable indicators all around us.
I mentioned earlier that I had written a paper/article about zealotry in education. I speak from experience as a zealot. I specifically mentioned your efforts in that article later on toward the latter part. I have made quite a few revisions just today. You may wish to see those remarks before they reach other audiences. Or, you may not. But, if you were curious enough, you might accidentally become “educated” about some things that could be useful in the future, even though you believe I am ignorant or terribly twisted in my logic. Is learning still one of your interests, or are you done with that? I will post the piece here. I posted a brief reply last night btw, which I trust you have already seen. This will have to be my last post, for which I’m sure you will be grateful. Dead horses don’t need beating when their carcasses have already been picked clean by the vultures.
ZEALOTRY IS USUALLY PATHOLOGICAL AND DANGEROUS AND IS SELDOM BENEFICIAL, EVEN IN EDUCATION
By Robert B. Elliott
Zeal is by definition extreme. Those, such as this author, who are so preoccupied with a particular cause, creed, religion, or ideology that they are unable to extricate themselves from the constant pursuit of its advancement and acceptance in order to carry on a relatively normal existence very often do serious damage to their own cause. Obsession is generally unhealthy. We zealots burn out or self-destruct quite often.
Zealots do occasionally attach themselves to worthwhile causes and attract large numbers of followers, and they may in certain cases make the world a decidedly better place. However, it is unlikely that many will ever achieve their ambitious goals or anything worthwhile. More importantly, the damage done as a consequence of an extreme orientation and by sycophantic followers, as well as from an agitated and usually disturbed state of mind far outweighs any good accomplished, assuming that the typical motivation was originally admirable and aimed sincerely toward social amelioration in some way.
Obviously, MY zeal can be justified. MY cause is absolutely crucial to the future of mankind. Had I not been completely persuaded that the cause I feel passionately about was and is of huge importance and that my particular remedies are exclusively correct and appropriate, I would have found other ways to occupy thousands of precious hours and better places to spend thousands of dollars. We will get to the particulars in due time. My focus is on education of the authentic and organic variety, which many others clearly agree is of utmost significance. Most other tireless boosters of education are barking up the wrong tree, however.
I am for education, but against the sort of programming and conditioning that profoundly interfere with education. I am for schools, but against mandatory schooling that is by default dehumanizing, pathological, and destructive.
Since the topic revolves around education, not a lot of time will be spent arguing its gravity and relevance to survival for individuals and for our nation. That will be taken for granted. Probably no other topic, with the exception of religion, inspires such levels of zealotry, and quite appropriately one might presume. Unfortunately, the “education missionaries” in schools and elsewhere who hard sell schooling and conformity are badly misguided and often dangerous to the social order. They are many and diverse.
There are different types of zealotry with different kinds of consequences. Certain distinctions are in order, to be sure. One can hardly be too zealous about effective, meaningful, and personal learning and education. People who care fervently about children are to be admired if not revered. In contrast, in recent years much has been made of zealots who fight in wars and promote causes with suicide bombs or by committing other acts of terrorism. Advocating for the murder of doctors providing abortions is zeal gone wrong, for example.
Yet, education is too often confused with poor substitutes and training, indoctrination, socialization and behavioral conditioning. Adult-managed experiences that yield something other than bona fide education or useful, meaningful knowledge fall into a different category altogether. Demoralizing circumstances, behavior modifying methodologies, and abusive or traumatic experiences committed in the name of education can and do lead eventually to psychic conflict, social unrest, and even death on a significant scale.
The zealots who are die-hards and fanatical cheerleaders when it comes to the efficacy of schooling as a social panacea are legion. They equate mere school attendance with education and sing its praises eternally, despite the reality that school is not at all about expanding knowledge as a general rule. School, particularly when mandatory universally is instead primarily about flowing with the tide as prescribed, defined, and limited by designated authority. The presence of large groups of students whose instruction is not completely voluntary and individualized eliminates the practical application of true educational opportunities and experiences. Education, on the other hand is more about individual development, autonomous personal inquiry and exploration, creative expression and expansion, intellectual accretion through private contemplation and pursuits, and becoming a unique and independent actor emancipated from excess convention and “expert” evaluation by direct experience and self-assured activity.
One has to wonder if any of these gung-ho school enthusiasts has ever talked to a 16 year-old drop-out, or to a 21 year-old graduate who discovered her major inadequacies when applying for a job or for college admittance, or to a kid who has been rejected by the military due to illiteracy or social deficits. One wonders if they have ever once invited a group of students to speak openly and honestly about their true feelings about school. There is a reason why school is so commonly considered a prison of sorts by children, and not just jokingly much of the time..
The character of our people and the direction our country takes depend on attitudes, beliefs, and capabilities fostered within the institutions where children spend countless hours. The dangers are all too real. Also, some people care more about utopian fantasies in which children are mere abstractions and pawns to be moved around the chessboard than they care about the living and breathing children who seek an education.
Activity is Key –Overzealous Educators Are Dead Wrong About Knowledge
Neuroscientists and other researchers and practitioners working in diverse human behavioral and related disciplines have demonstrated in recent years what the best educators have known intuitively all along. Personal experience and observation coupled with knowledge and awareness are key. The following quote is from “Philosophy in the Flesh”, by Lakoff and Johnson (1999). “Education is not a thing; it is an activity. Knowledge is not literally transmitted from teacher to student, and education is not merely the acquisition of particular bits of knowledge. Through education, students who work at it become something different. It is what they become that is important.” I have to add here that what they become is not something to be systematically analyzed and evaluated and judged in any formalized manner.
The lesson here is that it is not the infectious enthusiasm of the teacher or the professional delivery of material and messaging that matters so much. Rather the innate zeal for learning, observation, and exploration that the student is permitted to retain at every step of the way as she or he progresses through the formative and growth years is the primary issue with which to be concerned. When people speak of a “student-centered” approach, most have no clue what student-centered actually entails. Few have the faintest awareness that schooling as we know it can NEVER effectively embrace that sensible and organic approach, for reasons to be explained below.
To their credit, many reform-minded educationists have become aware of the mistake in thinking that children are “blank slates” or empty vessels to be filled with their knowledge. However, changing daily practices and attitudes and altering the cultural milieu so that children are treated with the dignity and respect that is merited remains a quite rare phenomenon. Recognizing just how much of education is created by the child utilizing his or her pre-existing extensive and extraordinary experience and observation-based knowledge requires a frame of mind that is still unique and foreign to all but a few in the “field of education”. Everything is structured to proscribe that enlightened mind set as well as preventing the sort of autonomy and benevolent treatment that it prescribes from gaining a foothold.
It turns out that we haven’t just been slow to learn about what the processes of education entail or that we have just been inefficient or ineffective in our practices and policies in schools. The educational wheel has been reinvented many times, but there is something potent preventing even minor change. The multi-faceted science that has been building for generations has been leading us inexorably to the final realization that popular conceptions of education continue to be wildly distorted and misanthropic.
Too Much Adult is Not Good for Kids
It is not at all unreasonable to speculate that no less than half of all the people working in schools see themselves in a role similar to missionaries, saving children from ignorance and meaningless lives of drudgery. Most are idealistic to say the least, and some seem to be obsessed with some imagined tremendous potential of the institution and of their own ability to transform children into brilliant scholars. Oddly enough, drudgery is nonetheless a central aspect of that experience for many of those children in our future-oriented and adult-focused schools.
The “experts” take what could be of great interest out of any coherent context, turning it into inane gibberish and then use ludicrous attempts to remake it into something fun or attractive somehow, creating irrelevant and stuptifying exercises in futility. The anachronistic paternalism endemic to our institutions is among the influences that militate against intrinsic motivation, auto-didactic learning, identity formation, self-confidence, critical thinking, and engagement with the wider world. This has been the case for many decades.
Unquestionably, the best educators have always been highly enthusiastic, dedicated, committed, and intense. Students whose teachers have been evangelical about a discipline are generally exceptional as they pursue their own specific interests and goals. The teachers who have had the most influence and whom we have remembered for the remainder of our lives were those who lit up and animated the classroom. Those who captured the imagination of students with their excitement inspired independent activity. Passion for learning and teaching is generally contagious. Charisma, even when intentionally understated or low-key, is stimulating. Nevertheless, the crucial point in all of this is that the student has to be the principle actor and initiator in his or her education. As hard as it is for most teachers to accept, they are bit players.
It is necessary to point out too, that in systems like ours, there will always be those few teachers who become over-zealous; who are too anxious about exerting influence; about controlling behavior or performance, and who take their power or ability to mold character and to instruct just a wee bit too seriously. There will be those who are abusive or too demanding. Too much adult is bad for kids. Learning, study, and academic work that are outer-directed, rather than intrinsic and inner-directed are invariably compromised.
The Earth is Still Flat for Those Lacking the Proper Tools, Perspectives, and Knowledge
We took a wrong turn a very long time ago with major consequences. We set ourselves up for certain failure because science had yet to evolve. Our thinking about education and school has been constricted and confined by the landscape and by the undeveloped mental perspectives available to most of us along that dark path. However, the tools, the perspectives, and the knowledge needed are now easily accessible. We are in desperate need of a radically different paradigm that has nothing to do with schooling and that has no precursor in our broader social structure. “School reform”, whatever that means, has never cut it and never will. Revolution with respect to education is probably much too mild a term.
In the book Chaos, by James Gleick, which introduces the world to Chaos theory, the author says, “Scientists saw what their intuitions allowed them to see.” He is referring at that point to the predominant “gestalt” within the culture that limited the ability of even skilled and relatively objective scientists to see patterns or phenomena in a light that had been previously unknown and unstudied by science. The mind filters and processes ideas according to the concepts that have been made familiar to it over time within a culture. Educators must get caught up with the new gestalt that denial and self-delusion have blocked for them to date.
Thinking follows mental habit patterns within social groups which are just as strong as many of the less cognitive habit patterns involving the body that have become automatic through repetition, familiarity, and reinforcement. This is in part the problem in education. Few who are involved in the field have been able or willing to explore beyond the conditioning and culture to which nearly everyone is exposed and in which all are immersed from pre-K to post-grad.
Most of us are familiar with the expression, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. That is no more true anywhere else than in education. Education is nothing if not a creative and re-creative process. Yet, creativity and school are not compatible for the most part. The most crucial factor in education is the student, not the teacher or the school or the methods. The student takes what he or she finds from every facet of experience both before and after school and in and out of school to construct a new and frequently significantly different knowledge; a new world view; a new individual and identity; a new feeling for the environment and the future (good or bad); a new sense of awareness (or, in our schools, a trepidation and close-mindedness), and a new list of capabilities and skills, many of which were never imagined by the busy curriculum designers.
Education is not for the passive. Education doesn’t stand still for those fearful of change or those concerned only with protecting the status quo (as are those in institutions).
Irony of Ironies – Where We Went Wrong
If the words and actions of those people who were most zealous about making schooling a requirement for all children of certain ages in the mid-nineteenth century are scrutinized and understood, their zeal was never derived from a desire to spread enlightenment or education as traditionally defined. A close look at the history of schooling reveals that those people were not ever at any juncture terribly concerned with making intellectual scholars of the masses. Many ordinary and insightful people who foresaw the risks of that ambitious campaign to school all children vigorously opposed the aggressive efforts of the business tycoons and of the movers and shakers of the time who pushed for compulsory attendance. Those Machiavellians forcing a cynical philosophy on the masses spoke of changes and moralistic training, but if they used the word education at all, they weren’t thinking in terms of the sort of knowledge and edification that are touted as the goals of schooling today.
The proponents of mass schooling were much more focused on teaching lessons from the Bible, preparing students for a particular kind of disciplined life, and on obedience to authority than on developing independent critical thinkers who would revel in great literature and aspire to be ‘philosopher kings’ or cultured and well-rounded citizens of a complex and fantastic world. They purposefully adopted the Prussian model of a military school based on creating a rigidly strict and Spartan-like atmosphere due to their disparaging view of human nature and their especially unkindly beliefs about rowdy and uncouth peasant children.
As the Industrial Age unfolded, schooling was the prescription for preparing children to work in factories and other industrial capacities, as opposed to farm work or craftsmanship. The wealthy classes wanted future generations who would be willing and able to promote their economic interests and to protect their property and wealth as loyal and patriotic soldiers and sailors, when inducted into service. They had no illusions about a society that would be well-educated in the way that their own privileged children would be tutored privately or in special schools with top level intellectuals as academicians. They knew full well that if the children of the lower and middle classes became truly educated and autonomous, they would pose a direct threat to their pre-eminence.
The history of public schooling was entirely predictable, and given the circumstances extant, it could not have led to a less disastrous conclusion. Tolstoy did indeed predict the series of conundrums and fiascos we face today as early as 1862 in a series of essays. He knew that if an authoritarian system were to be set up with competition and grading as fundamentals, some students would be winners and some would have to be losers. Those are foregone conclusions. He recognized that some people will never find academics appealing or useful at any age. Universal education that meets reasonable standards without the expenditures of exorbitant sums is a wild fantasy under any circumstances. However, under these hostile and misanthropic circumstances, discouragement, disillusionment, alienation, rebellion, bewilderment, and resentment are unavoidable for large fractions of students.
Time doesn’t allow a thorough examination of all the history of schooling. However, any honest and unbiased student of that history has to know that education in any meaningful sense has eluded so many of the students who have attended the public schools in the last century, that to speak of education and school in the same sentence truthfully requires a long list of disclaimers or denials. The essential problem is that education is not as much about skills and abilities and intellectual rigor as it is about living one’s life and exploring one’s environment, although those other things can clearly be of huge significance. Education cannot be measured or even strategized to any great extent.
The word “stultifying” was almost certainly invented to describe the experience of sitting motionless in a classroom with other conscripts wasting precious time being schooled. The moribund sentimentality of “Our children are our future” repeated ad nauseam in 98 million graduation ceremonies is the ultimate silliness.
The Cult of School
What kind of mental Ju Jitsu does one have to perform to maintain the sacred cow status of schooling in our culture? What sort of self-delusion and Polly-Anna imagining does it require for anyone in the real world to continue defending and praising to the high heavens our schooling history and the present educational conundrums in the face of blistering criticism, overwhelming empirical evidence, and appalling statistics that eliminate all doubt?
What kind of pretzel-bending mind games does one have to engage in to disavow the thousands and thousands of articulate attacks over several decades on the methods, practices, and results of our dysfunctional non-educational systems crafted by high level professionals in many fields? Accomplished and respected authors with demonstrated knowledge and wisdom about knowledge acquisition, human experience and psychology, child-rearing techniques, democratic process and maintenance, and the history of bureaucratic and authoritarian institutions have all consistently lambasted the schools mercilessly. Whether for their stifling atmosphere; for their inability to improvise or innovate; for their bureaucratic structure; for their political underpinnings; for their coercive and corrosive nature, or for their tendency to blame everyone outside the institution for their own failures, the criticisms have been harsh, unabated, and acute.
Schooling has gotten far too much credit for education, when it has been in fact as much a barrier to education as a facilitator throughout history. Listening to a lecture and doing pointless exercises has about as much to do with an education as watching a movie on television about skiing in the Alps has to do with being an accomplished skier. School, by its very nature and practical limitations, and especially due to the presence of clusters of anxious or disengaged students and myriad false conceptions about its actual functions, works at cross purposes to the acquisition of what qualifies as an education for a majority of students.
Sadly, children who have not progressed as expected in school are easy to blame for the failures. The onus is placed on them from the beginning and they are treated as indolent or uncooperative if they lack the requisite enthusiasm or tolerance for pressures and demands to conform and produce. When that tactic fails, as it always will, the parents are then targeted. Teachers come next as scapegoats. This leads to constant finger pointing, media attention, faux reform, demands for more money, and more, and more, of the same, ad infinitum.
By believing too strongly in the capacity of schools to educate and in the significance of teachers and teaching, one is led down a hazardous pathway. Fortunately, adults cannot educate children. Fortunately, education is not mass produced in schools and it is not measurable or subject to arbitrary evaluation, regardless of the sophistication of the tools and tests utilized for assessment. Neither education nor knowledge is passed down in the way that the typical “educator” imagines. Education is something that one does for one’s self and in large part without too much interaction with others except as collaborators or one-on-one “teaching”.
Indeed, while the prevailing ideas about knowledge for the last five hundred years or so have been useful given a world that was evolving from a state of general ignorance and pre-industrial technology and awareness, those ideas are anachronistic in the extreme at this late date. We know now (we who follow the latest science and have no fearful reluctance to embrace a new paradigm) that knowledge is embodied. There is no thought, no learning, no knowledge, no language, and no communication that is not directly derived from and interconnected with the body’s sensorimotor system, which includes the nerves, muscles, synaptic connections, bodily chemicals and fluids, brain grey matter, and memory circuits.
Knowledge is not data stored in a brain computer memory bank or mere language extracted whole from great literature and from teachers or experts without significant alteration, integration, or connection to emotional and personal processing and interpretation. This truth negates most of what passes for teaching and curricular design in schools.
Traditional academics have no hint of the crucial importance of the invisible emotional nuances involved in knowledge formation. Again, there is NO knowledge without feeling and personal relevance on many levels (most of which, by the way, is below the level of awareness or consciousness!). Yet, the hyper-rationalization of the number-crunchers, nerd types, and Bill Gates protégés that Common Core opponents within traditional schooling networks disdain is descended directly from the same sort of popular approaches of the last century in academic circles and is nothing more than their logical progression.
Nothing that has been said thus far should be misconstrued to indicate that education usually happens without the input and assistance of good teachers, or that great teachers have not made an incredible difference in the lives of millions of young people both in and out of schools. Indeed, it is only through the amazing efforts, sacrifices, and dedication of teachers willing to circumvent the endless restrictions and limitations within these generally (and typically, inescapably) bureaucratic and authoritarian schools that vulnerable children have often flourished. Yet, the schools are invariably given the credit for what the teachers and children, with the support of families and other individuals and institutions, have accomplished, normally by going surreptitiously against the tide.
We may have coincidentally made great strides in many areas as a country since the institutionalization of schooling and the passage of laws requiring attendance. Progress and education are connected, but not by schooling. Attributing any of our national progress to schools is some combination of wishful thinking and a failure to weigh the non-educational contributions of schools against the injuries and gross impediments to education they present. Schools have provided needed services, but education has only been incidental and accidental where conformity and political correctness rule.
The Nascent Education Revolution
“Revolution” is the title of a chapter in Gleick’s book, Chaos, mentioned earlier. He speaks about how the new science of chaos theory will turn much of conventional scientific thinking on its head. This has implications for education and for the educational revolution that is long overdue. Chaos theory recognizes for the first time that regularity in dynamic systems always appears to include periods of significant chaotic or randomized behavior. Physicists, mathematicians, biologists, and others long believed that linear fluctuation patterns seemed to dampen out to predictable states during cycles with reliable regularity and had no expectation of the chaos eventually discovered.
Now however, the evidence points clearly to an overlooked monkey wrench of sorts that involves periods of chaos or disorder, which serve a critical function over the long term or on the grand scale and which complicates analyses of relatively simple linearity, while keeping the universal laws of physics from stagnation (if I have understood the theory on some extremely basic level). Chaos is needed to contribute to the establishment of order, to the surprise of many theoreticians.
First, as he says in referring to revolution, “…to accept the future one must renounce much of the past.” Earlier he also says, “Shallow ideas can be assimilated; ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility (my emphasis).” To even remotely suggest that compulsory attendance laws must be eliminated is to invite incredible hostility and to be regarded a heretic. Nothing says shallow ideas like school reform of the type we’ve witnessed for generations.
Secondly, education is not to be formulated and pre-defined as if there is such profound predictability, regularity, and linearity in the universe or in the acquisition of knowledge that some formula can be applied. The rather simplistic picture had by those who think that schools can be built, children can be dumped on their doorsteps, and experts in educational theory and experts in separate fields can be contracted to design and deliver miraculous curriculum is an actual formula for chaos of a less useful kind. The order must reside in the mind of the child, not in the classroom. All elements of chaos should NOT be eradicated systematically.
The Door is Blocked by the Elephant in the Classroom & Zealotry Keeps it There
No individual alive today better exemplifies zealotry with respect to the perceived need to preserve public schooling and the status of dedicated school teachers than one famous educational historian whose blog floods the screens of members with a dizzying pace, with an average of approximately eight animated messages daily. This one icon has been amazingly indefatigueable in her public speeches and advocacy of public schooling around the country, even despite various health crises and advancing age. Her name is Diane Ravitch. She is quite literally at war with the profiteers and would-be experts who are hell-bent on privatizing and destroying the failing public systems.
My friends and I have called Diane Ravitch a hero. We agree with her struggle to defeat the free market fools and naïve billionaires who aspire to turning schools into test-passing factories and profitable businesses. Sadly however, her efforts and those of her faithful followers will ultimately be counterproductive, since the anachronistic models they favor are also inimical to education on a grand scale and continue to undermine our civil society and democracy itself in innumerable ways.
Our first clue as to the zealotry of Ms. Ravitch is an astounding blindness and lack of memory with regard to the well documented failures of the public schools. One can say what one will about the positive aspects of schooling for some small percentage of students. However, it is disingenuous in the extreme and rank self-delusion to completely ignore the fact that there has been a continuous stream of severe problems, conflicts, controversies, abuses, abjectly failed reforms, and scandals for generations in our monolithic and immutable schools.
It is not necessarily unreasonable to wage out-and-out war against narrow-minded or hateful people who are aggressively making scapegoats out of teachers and their unions. Nor is it wrong to marshal all the resources possible to vigorously oppose socially irresponsible corporations that unscrupulously exploit the perceived public need to incessantly evaluate and test students and to create a useless curriculum that is all things to all people for profit and at the expense of students.
What is unreasonable however, is to casually discount the work of great scholars, researchers, and talented educators who have presented airtight arguments against a pathological herding of children into classrooms and confining them against their will and even against the wishes of their parents for six or more hours daily, calling that education, merely because that’s what is conventional or popularly accepted. What is wrong and irresponsible is discounting the reports and experiences of millions of young people who have suffered great discomfort, angst, confusion, abuse, or failure. Likewise, assuming that they or their parents must have been at fault for failures, when in fact misguided policies, laws, and institutional practices have done the real harm is a huge cop-out.
The persistence of the problem of bullying is a shining example of the intractability of such problems within these hallowed institutions. The phenomenon cannot be eradicated regardless of the desperate attempts to find the causes and eliminate them. In a hierarchy, where some of those on the bottom rung of what is a badly broken ladder feel put upon, coerced and powerless by the authorities and their surrogates, will always find ways to institute a pecking order in which they can maintain the illusion of power and strength. The root cause remains untouched.
In her book, “The Troubled Crusade: American Education – 1945 -1980”, Ms. Ravitch excoriates the most prominent critics of the schools numbering in the thousands, attacking their methods, motives, and evidence. She is and was then a staunch defender of the public schools, past, present, and future. She is sincere and she sincerely cares about children and education. Unfortunately, however, she has allowed herself to become so thoroughly enamored of the positive aspects of schooling for at least a small lucky majority, and she has been so affected by the feelings and nostalgia she has experienced having been among the most privileged few, that she has lost all objectivity and all credibility. She is out of touch with the reality for students.
Casual observers unfamiliar with the ways in which schools, schooling, teachers, and teaching have methodically become mythologized, idealized, and idolized throughout our entire social order might be quite baffled about how an educational historian with a healthy respect for science could simply neutralize and negate the reams of historical records and factual information that expose massive failures in what has erroneously been called the field of education. The field of schooling is anything but the field of education by any reasonable definition. The conflation of schooling and education is an error of epic proportions. It takes a real fanatical devotion to these dysfunctional institutions to systematically wipe out the significance of chronic issues that have made screaming headlines with great frequency.
Ms. Ravitch has dismissed as insignificant or merely forgotten in her analyses the one-quarter to one-third of school students who fail to graduate or who graduate lacking fundamental thinking and other basic skills. The millions who are essentially illiterate or semi-literate at best are omitted from her reporting as if their deficiencies don’t count. In her mind’s eye, the school is exonerated from not having done what it has promised to do because of the mismanagement of administrators, bad curriculum choices, funding shortages, or other external factors. She has challenged the criticisms of innumerable observers of all stripes who have complained, often bitterly and eloquently about “soul crushing” boredom or sameness and factory-like processes and practices.
It doesn’t feel right to pick on Ms. Ravitch, the hero and defender of the traditional schools. Most of us that have graduated and reached adulthood have fond nostalgic memories of our schools, despite many whose memories include frequent moments of frustration, humiliation, confusion, anger, disillusionment, and chronic apprehension and anxiety, and despite the friends who didn’t graduate. We tend to prefer to recall the positive feelings and experiences and to forget or even obliterate the negative. We cannot afford that psychological luxury, however.
Can anyone claim with a straight face that the general population of this country is well educated or educated at all when one reviews the campaign ads that are targeted to voters every election cycle or the programming and advertising that are the daily fare on television? The level of ignorance among the citizenry with respect to anything except sports, cars, sports cars, celebrities, or guns is astounding.
Ms. Ravitch has been less than responsible and mature in trying to pretend that all would be well if only the new reformers would just leave the professional educators to work their magic. Her blog consistently contains unseemly character assassinations and the demonization of people who may well be way off base or who are poking their heads in where they shouldn’t be, but who don’t merit such foul personal condemnation. Casting aspersions and attacking the jugular is hardly the way to impress or win converts. Bill Gates has got it all wrong about education so far and he may even have ulterior motives in steering schools toward methods that will add to his bottom line, but someone who donates billions to charity and to education oriented research and programs is not the Great Satan.
SUMMARY
I am not just a zealot. I am an unapologetic apostate and a heretic. I confess. This explains why no one has paid any attention to me for four or five decades. Still, I have not been quite alone and there are glimpses of increasing awareness all around. The new sciences can lead in only one direction with respect to education. That direction is away from schooling or toward an acknowledgement that school has useful purposes which neither include nor necessarily exclude education.
Schools by their organization and structure must always be first about training, socialization, indoctrination (not always a bad thing), babysitting, physical activities and exercise, along with cultural awareness. To the extent that a particular child successfully incorporates that experience and exposure, and to the degree that a particular teacher provides useful information, guidance, and modeling, certain aspects of education may be observable as a valuable by-product or a plus. However, by setting education as a distant goal for groups of students in that sort of uniform institutional environment and requiring attendance, one inadvertently and automatically defeats those very purposes.
There is a distinct difference between my brand of zeal and that of many teachers, would-be educators or administrators and officials, and persons such as Ms. Ravitch. First, I can’t see myself sacrificing nearly as much of my time, life, and health for any cause, although the toll to date has been far higher than ever anticipated. More importantly, I don’t believe my time is being wasted with futile efforts directed at superficial or repetitive change-making that goes nowhere.
The sad news and the bad news is that all of the people who have tried for generations to “work within the system” and to implement reform have been butting their heads against a brick wall that is buttressed by a concrete barrier, with steel reinforcement and armed guards (a father in Utah who pulled his kids out of school was shot dead by authorities). Compulsory attendance laws cannot exist without myriad structures in place to assure nearly universal enforcement.
Until many more people can begin to think about education in a dramatically new way, things will not improve for children. Those who are successful in school and elsewhere may be educated. Still, their education will typically not be complete in any meaningful sense. They will not OWN an education. They, their parents, siblings or peers, renegade teachers, and others will deserve most of the credit, while schools will usually have stood in the way of that education.
It isn’t polite to say that people who have strong religious faith and who believe certain dogma or doctrine with great certainty are naïve or childish. Yet, for example, many in the faith community expect scientists who stand by the theory of evolution to provide absolute and incontrovertible proof beyond all doubt and reason that evolution is more than just a theory. They want everyone to accept their own bizarre standards of subjective “evidence”, such as creationism, taken from collections of ancient stories, parables, and poems, and they insist that their beliefs are as plausible as the beliefs of professional scientists who have a preponderance of empirical and material evidence, including the observation of evolution in real time.
Therefore, we shouldn’t be so shocked that those people who are locked in the “prison of belief” (from the subtitle of a book by Lawrence Wright) and whose sermons preach that schooling is the best possible avenue to education for the masses will defend to the death their faith in schools. Their concern for children whose homes are without books and whose parents are unable or unwilling to encourage the intellect is genuine. They are true believers. Like children, they need urgently to somehow confirm in their own minds that the things they have believed for so long and with such conviction really are verified by a legitimate authority, even if magical thinking and denial of reality or empirical science are required to do so.
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Mr.Elliott, there is a certain virtue to succinctness, clarity, and coherence. You will one day learn that virtue, I hope. People tend to turn off and not listen when you go on and on. One of the rules of the blog is that readers are not permitted to insult me. Do it again and you will be permanently banned from the blog.
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“This explains why no one has paid any attention to me for four or five decades.”
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Ms. Ravitch,
I have written lengthy papers or articles that were never intended for a blog or that I would post on my own blog. I requested an address where I might send them, not because I expect any special treatment but simply for the reasons you state. I am surprised that anyone reads them in this context. Both of the most recent articles had specific mentions of your positions and work and I hoped you would at least treat them as worthy of some comment on the merits of the arguments. One short paragraph in response to 18 pages of text is clearly meant to signal that I am nothing more than a crackpot. I’m not at all sure of what you have taken as an insult and without knowing what to apologize for, I cannot do so at this point.
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Barry, (hope I am not being to presumptuous)
“We can all comprehend why many scholars along with ordinary citizens object to overall combined failure, drop-out, and semi-literacy rates that fall somewhere between 25 and 50% for schools nationally.”
Is that “between 25 and 50%” figure one of the “accurate statistical facts”?
One could assume that those figures might represent citizens who refuse to abide by the “status quo” (whatever that currently is) of “schooling” and who are “charting their own paths. Might that stat not by in your favor Barry?
“But by fighting for the rotting status quo against serious people who are using historical and scientific reality and accurate statistical facts. . . ”
For you, Barry, what are “historical and scientific reality” and “accurate statistical facts”? Please explain and expound.
Gracias,
Duane
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Barry,
Please describe, set forth/out, present, outline, sketch and/or depict what you believe society’s duty, effort, responsibility, obligation and/or commitment to educate, school, bring up, raise and/or instill in the young, growing and/or maturing members of society.
Thanks,
Duane
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Anyone who can write that a well known figure in the movement for a ‘better education for all’ is “fighting for the rotting status quo against serious people who are using historical and scientific reality and accurate statistical facts with the help of mass media”—
Deserves a round of applause.
Yes, a round of applause.
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.” [Charlie Chaplin]
This day was not wasted.
Of that I have a 98% “satisfactory” [thank you, Bill Gates!] chance of certainty. And we didn’t have to wait before 10 years had passed [thanks again, Bill!] to take our level of certainty from the 13th to the 90th percentile [thank you, Michelle Rhee!].
For those interested in how the “serious people” referenced above handle facts and stats, I refer y’all to the resumé of “Dr.” Ted Morris, “education reformer” extraordinaire.
Be prepared, one and all, to not waste another day.
😎
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The Education Justice Center needs to take a hard look at the status of education funding in New Hampshire. The largest school district in the state is next to last of all school districts for funding. WHY???
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This is a long rant with one main point–as near as I can tell from several posts by Mr. Elliot on this blog.
Mr. Elliot wants to wipe compulsory school attendance laws off the books of every state.
He also seems to think he is the only person in the world that understands the difference between schooling and becoming well-educated.
He has persuaded himself that schooling is, by definition, wrong. The institution is inherently authoritarian, bureaucratic, and dangerous. He accuses Dr. Ravitch of hiding a lot of the misery that has been caused by this institution. He has not read her most recent books.
It is not clear to me why, after a long and convoluted rant, filled with unwarranted conclusions about Dr. Ravitch’s beliefs and “agenda’ for schools, Mr. Elliot thinks he has the wisdom and authority to call for Dr. Ravitch to “redeem herself.”
Mr. Elliot implies Dr. Ravitch has a “good heart” but is incapable of being “a serious” person who knows anything about “historical and scientific reality and accurate statistical facts.” I find no evidence that Mr. Elliot has superior knowledge.
In addition to insulting the intelligence and scholarship of Dr. Ravitch, Mr. Elliot he stops just short of telling her to just shut up because she is no more than a magnet for controversy and gives the “mass media ammunition, more time, and better reason to work for the destruction of HER beloved schools.”
Mr. Elliot has been given a generous platform on this blog to espouse his views about schooling, education, and the credibility of Dr. Ravitch as a scholar and advocate for public education. She has recommended a course of study for him. Read her most recent books. She is generous to a fault. I cannot say the same about Mr. Elliot.
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Notice that there is no response to my questions/concerns so far.
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Sorry, I’ve been very busy and I didn’t get the impression you want to have an honest conversation. The answers to your questions are easily available and I believe I have provided the necessary references and info in several posts which I believe you have seen.
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Just one brief point. I have not “convinced myself” without fifty years of voracious reading and study and more classes in a variety of fields than I care to remember. I have offered a three page bibliography before, but found no interest here. Also, I have not said that schooling is “wrong”. I have said that schooling is inevitably and irrevocably perverted when made compulsory by law and that schooling is not synonymous with or generally conducive to education. Schooling is an essential part of a society for any number of purposes. Education may happen there, although it isn’t how education typically happens. You don’t have to agree or believe anything I say. If I forced you to learn from me somehow, that would be profoundly wrong and that wouldn’t be an education. But, you don’t see the connection, do you? If you get over your anger and revulsion, think about it sometime.
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I still don’t know exactly what you’re proposing.
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How does Mr. Wheeler feel that they have been “throwing money” at education, if Nevada is doing such a poor job of funding their schools? I don’t get it. Also, how does involving parents fix the problem? Parental involvement is always a plus, but to this extent?
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The voters of Nevada elected their governor and legislature, so now they’re getting what they deserve. It really is as simple as that. Yes, the schools and children will suffer, but that apparently does not matter to the majority of Nevadans.
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You are absolutely right. The comments in the Las Vegas press from the public is fully in support of abolishing public education, privatizing it all, and doing away with all credential requirements to open a school. The dominant thought is to lower taxes on everyone by making parents pay for all education. The libertarian social Darwin set dominates here. Ayn Rand has nothing on these folks.
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Yep. User fees. That’s libertarian, anti-American whack job idea. Never mind the kids are the future taxpayers of tomorrow when these selfish idiots can no longer work.
If these people abolished collective bargaining for principals. I’d be all in favor of it. Right now they are virtually impossible to fire down there. These “reforms” do nothing to address the real problems in Nevada schools. Nevada has a high percentage of transients, and therefore those all.mighty test scores are low. Schools can’t do anything about it.
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Mr. Elliot’s comment reads like a libertarian screed.
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I am surrounded by libertarians and I think that most of them are simpleminded dolts. I’ve never had any connection to the political groups calling themselves libertarians. However, I believe that liberty for children is essential for them to develop the skills and attitudes necessary to participate in a representative democracy. I like and trust children. I don’t like control freaks and paternalistic or authoritarian institutions and organizations.
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A few of those schools are very rural or serve students on Native American Indian Reservations.
That is going to be devastating to communities that revolve around there neighborhood school.
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My school is in Sandy Valley, the district thinks nothing is too good for us, so that is what we will get. The oligarchs and libertarians, (dare I say useful fools) are in charge. The libertarians just do not realize the crocodiles and sharks of the oligarch set will eat them after they are done with us.
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Funding has never been the problem with our schools. The attitude of our schools is, it’s curriculum and the performance expectations of students both need complete overhauls from the ground up. We need to fire administrators and unions. Anything less will result in worsening schools and decreasing graduation rates. Test scores – a reflection of over all teaching is fair, but we need drastic improvements in stead of using kids as guinea pigs for educational theories that do not work. The costumed Commom Core that is now settling on our schools guarantee less that mediocre results at inflated prices. The kids would learn more by NOT going to school and staying home and reading books on their own.
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Unfortunately it is painfully obvious what the libertarian point of view has already accomplished. I give you the woefully written comments of longun45 complete with not only grammatical errors but with also with the backward directional leaning of keeping education from those that truly need it the most: the children. Call me a conspiracy nut if you will but does it not appear that the ‘have’s are making damned good and sure that the ‘have nots’ will become increasingly less educated and therefore more easily controlled.
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Ms. Ravitch,
Bear with me for one final and brief (I promise!) retort. My good friend has frequently badgered me about my verbose, rambling, and incoherent drafts ten, twenty, or thirty pages in length, which I ask him to critique because we are in agreement about most issues and as a former teacher, he is a far superior writer (who refuses to write his own articles due to cynicism). Other reviewers have lodged complaints similar to yours relative to my style and habits. However, when I wrote a brief comment to send in response to an article on Huffington Post that you had authored about a month ago, my friend couldn’t stop gushing about how concise and well-put my statements were. He was baffled about why I don’t write that way all of the time. It took some digging to find them, but I will copy those short paragraphs here for your perusal. Maybe you will be more affected by a brief statement than you have been by thousands of words directed to the same points.
My answer to my friend is that a condensed version may impress those who have the background and language to appreciate my words, but for the average reader who has been conditioned, (with him I would use the word, “brainwashed”) or who has a belief system and world-view in which these concepts are totally foreign, such concise ideas quickly disappear like water off a duck’s back. To build a structure where there is none one has to lay a foundation. In many cases, scaffolding is also necessary, as well as special devices, equipment, or materials to accomplish the mission.
I feel the urgent need to first set a stage and to try to illuminate for readers the unarticulated and unconscious questions or objections to my arguments that I know they often harbor. Only after knocking down myths and false conceptions is it possible to make progress with naysayers and doubters. In some cases, it is an impossible task and one can only move on to audiences more inclined to respond in a positive manner. That’s what I will be doing now. Here is that brief response:
“Diane Ravitch is to be commended for her tireless work and devotion to public schooling. Her ideas for a new accountability “system” sound wonderful and I couldn’t agree more with the sentiments behind them. However, these are not new by any stretch as she has documented in her on book, The Troubled Crusade”, published in 1983, over three decades ago. The Progressives she identifies in the book from as early as the second decade of the last century and the free school advocates of the late 1960’s through the early 1980’s, with some even surviving today have very similar objectives, although seldom spelled out in the same detail. She is repackaging some extremely old ideas to illustrate the barrenness of NCLB, Race to the Top, and the strategies of the privatization pushers, charter school proponents, and others who believe in testing non-stop, cutting out anything that isn’t strictly academic in nature.
Regrettably, I have to report that schools are not going to become “halls of joy and inspiration”, no matter how many people write such articles and fight for creativity, autonomy, inspiration, etc., etc., as long as people delude themselves, as Ms. Ravitch does, about the gap between schooling and education and the factors inherent in compulsory attendance. The sky is not the limit, unfortunately. When children are in school because state law allows no other realistic option and when schools MUST be authoritarian, bureaucratic, and politically lethal enclaves due solely to those intrusive laws, and when the mythology about schooling remains a powerful underlying force in society, schools will be immune to the kind of changes that we would all like to see.
Our systems are immutable because they are systems. False accountability schemes and competition between winners and losers will always be endemic to those systems under the current paradigm. Ms. Ravitch doesn’t want a wholly new paradigm because she is too enamored of and trusting in the old paradigm. That is very sad. She could be a great advocate for education instead of schooling that presumes to be education.”
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Barry, you are still too verbose
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