Yestere'en I made the claim (in a delightfully sarcastic way) that many ed schools are organized as cults and as such resist change by the usual means--criticism, monetary incentive, begging.
Here are some cultish features of ed schools.
1. Organizational Autism
Schools of education are generally not connected to other (and serious) academic departments, such as economics or biology. This means that the ed school belief system (a shared delusion of flatulent offerings such as “There are no truths,” “Knowledge is a social construction,” “External authority inhibits personality development”) is unchallenged by disciplines whose members are obliged to support knowledge claims with data collected and interpreted according to rules of logic.
When ed schools have connections across the campus, it’s with departments and faculty who share the ed school delusion and the collective intellectual derangement that produces it; e.g., postmodern literary critics in English departments.
What a horrifying combination! English perfessers so flagrantly incompetent they can’t write a coherent sentence work with ed perfessers who consider themselves “stewards of America’s children.” This duet in bow ties and Birkenstocks turns out a manifesto that is at once paranoid in its grandiosity (“We will make all children life-long learners.” [How, exactly! You’ve already made them illiterate!”] AND utterly incomprehensible.
But this goes over big among the university administration.
“Wow, they must be really smart! I have NO idea what they’re talking about.”
And their “joint courses” (called “collaborations”) are as loony as “new pants day” at the local home for the semi-witted.
2. Cultivation of groupmind. “Baaaa” or “Moooo” as the case may be.
As with other cults, ed schools work towards unity of belief. How?
Ed schools have to have a shared mission—always something simultaneously inane and ironic.
“Hey, what’s our mission? We gotta have a mission.”
“A mission. A mission. A mission.” [The Chorus]
“I got it! ‘The mission of the School of Education at Testa de Merda University is to produce reflective practitioners who are really reflective.”
“That’s good! I like that.”
“A mission. A mission. A mission. [The Chorus again.]
Hiring faculty who already subscribe to the dominant beliefs—who will fit in.
Awarding tenure not on the basis of improving student achievement, but on the basis of conformity to the dogma.
Periodic ritual celebrations (e.g., conferences) where The Mission Statement (as a banner or poster) is displayed and/or read and/or discussed. These ritual affirmations bind members to the icon and to each other.
3. The typical ed school belief system is a shallow, nonlogical canon consisting of repeated empty phrases whose concepts have virtually no empirical referents. (In other words, gas.) Examples include
“Instruction should be developmentally appropriate.”
[The essence of daffy.]
“Correcting errors hurts children’s self-esteem.”
[But being illiterate doesn’t?]
“Teachers should be guides on the side, not sages on the stage.”
[No sane explanation is ever—or ever could be—given for this slab of egregious piffle. But note the function: If teachers can’t teach, they can’t be blamed, because they aren’t SUPPOSED to IMPART knowledge. They are supposed to be like camp counselors who make everyone feel accepted.]
These beliefs are easy to understand; they conjure up simple imagery. They are easy to recite and communicate. This adds the strength and security of infallibility to the collective credo and makes it possible for members to see themselves as “reflective scholars guided by rich theory.” When in fact they border on insanity.
4. The ed cult uses signs of recognition, loyalty tests, and curses—in the form of shibboleths, such as “Do you believe in best practices?” or “Do you use authentic assessments?” and “She advocates direct instruction! Can you believe it?!”
These enable members of the dominant progressivist belief system to share and affirm their common bias, and to place invidious social distance between themselves and persons whose beliefs and activities are threatening; e.g., persons (heretics) who believe that the job of teacher is to ensure that students master classical knowledge systems such as mathematics, history, and literature, and who know how to think.
5. The ed school cult is impervious to possibly threatening information and beliefs. This is accomplished in the following ways.
a. Selective disattention. “We see only what we believe.”
Constructivism dominates the ed school cult. This epistemology asserts that all truths are relative to situations and reflect the interests of believers. However, as with other cults, ed schools do not see their own as merely one belief system, but as THE correct belief system. All others are, for the ed school cult, fatally flawed—not developmentally appropriate, not child-centered, not democratic—and therefore not tolerated. However, by excluding its own constructivist doctrine from critical analysis, the ed school cult is able to disguise what is obviously rigid orthodoxy behind high sounding words and phrases—in a manner identical to other sorts of cults.
b. Not basing verification on the necessity of falsifying the null hypothesis.
Instead, verification of a proposition or speculation or “innovative practice” generally consists merely of gathering information or “expert” testimonials that support it. Since supporting information can always be found, no proposition, speculation, or “innovative practice” ever needs to be rejected.
For example, instead of testing the null hypothesis that a Professional Development System has no significant beneficial effect on public schools, PDS administrators merely collect information that supports their PDS; e.g., anecdotes on how PDS teachers have become more “reflective.”
c. Claiming that quantitative data and experimental methods are contrary to humanistic values (“Persons are more than numbers.”) or are essentially invalid (“You can do anything with numbers.” “Experiments are not natural.”)-- and therefore should be rejected out of hand. In this way, a century of experimental research on learning and instruction, and large longitudinal studies (e.g., Project Follow Through) can be ignored entirely, without producing a sense of irony when the word “scholarship” is used to describe ed school activities.
This imperviousness helps to sustain the essential ed school belief system—constructivism/progressivism—that is at least 80 years old.
6. Socialization of new members (ed students) is easily understood as indoctrination.
Undergraduates seldom take courses in logic and research methods, and rarely examine literature reviews on what they are taught. For, skill at identifying logical fallacies (overgeneralization, equivocation, ad hominem) and access to scientific research would make it easy for ed students to challenge the ed school belief system.
Courses and overall curricula present one point of view. When Direct Instruction or more traditional (research based) instruction is presented, it is generally for purposes of demonization—drawing and affirming the lines between the in-group and out-groups.
“Direct Instruction is only for disadvantaged children.” [The word “racism” is used too often, but this is one time that it fits.]
As in other cult groups, the natives in ed school are obliged to examine their beliefs, reveal deviance, and expiate wrong thinking (heresies). In some cults, this takes the form of public confession. In some ed schools, it takes the form of “reflective journals.” This also operates outside of ed schools, when state departments of public instruction require initially licensed teachers to include “reflective pieces” graded according to educationally correct “rubrics.”
7. Messianism. As with other cults, ed schools have messianic visions that include the hysterical assertions that they champion children’s rights and welfare (at the same time pushing destructive fads), are adversaries of social injustice (which their destructive pedagogies foster), and seek to deliver public school children and ed students from the “oppressive authority” or tyranny of “external forms of authority” (except of course ed school doctrine).
This analysis offers no hope for changing ed schools. Indeed, it suggests that it may be wiser to find alternatives. See www.abcte.org
Just found this blog (thanks Joanne Jacobs!). In the year or so that I've been reading blogs
I've felt over and over that I was hearing the distant echo of Richard Mitchel, who, with his
printing press, was perhaps the original (if analog) edublogger. I'm glad to see that someone
has finally placed his name and a snippet of his writing out here.
Posted by: Doug Bullock | Thursday, October 28, 2004 at 04:58 PM
Glad Joanne Jacobs pointed me to the old perfesser... I think he would approve of my cumudgeonly ways, even though I wear lace-up Birkenstocks in the classroom (Weejuns to conferences and meetings) and bowties. On the former, they enable me to stay on my feet on a terazzo floor all day, and on the latter, cute girls walk right up and adjust them, plus Winston Churchill wore 'em.
I even use a term I pirated from a Mizzou professor, "perky teacher stuff." (Stuff is my G-rated noun...) He was describing the national certification procedures--now there's a program that's making a difference in the education of kids, but I digress. Thanks for keeping "Kindredspiritville" on line, MEN
Posted by: Ed Nelson | Sunday, October 31, 2004 at 04:30 PM
Glad Joanne Jacobs pointed me to the old perfesser... I think he would approve of my cumudgeonly ways, even though I wear lace-up Birkenstocks in the classroom (Weejuns to conferences and meetings) and bowties. On the former, they enable me to stay on my feet on a terazzo floor all day, and on the latter, cute girls walk right up and adjust them, plus Winston Churchill wore 'em.
I even use a term I pirated from a Mizzou professor, "perky teacher stuff." (Stuff is my G-rated noun...) He was describing the national certification procedures--now there's a program that's making a difference in the education of kids, but I digress. Thanks for keeping "Kindredspiritville" on line, MEN
Posted by: Ed Nelson | Sunday, October 31, 2004 at 04:32 PM