Professor Plum hopes that Y'all had a cozy and spiritually fulfilling Christmas.
I made the best stuffing ever--not that anyone
asked. Let's just say: sausage particles, chopped red peppers,
mushrooms, cashews (added last), shredded roast pork [pretty disgusting
so far!], and five or six shots of scotch--the former went into the
aforementioned stuffing; the latter went into me.
Even the calico-colored feral cat who lives outside
(which pretty much goes along with the feral motif)--and whose trust
I'm trying to win [I borrow five bucks from him and then pay him back
immediately]--tucked into his ration of stuffing with significant
gusto. You know the weird sounds they make. Sort of moaning and
growling.
But enough of this homey stuff... So many billowy edubutts; so few steel-toed boots.
To take a Ph.D. in education in most American seminaries, is
an enterprise that requires no more real acumen or information than taking
a degree in window dressing....Most pedagogues...are simply dull persons
who have found it easy to get along by dancing to whatever tune happens
to be lined out. At this dancing they have trained themselves to swallow
any imaginable fad or folly, and always with enthusiasm. The schools reek
with this puerile nonsense. Their programs of study sound like the fantastic
inventions of comedians gone insane. The teaching of the elements is abandoned
for a dreadful mass of useless fol-de-rols... Or examine a dozen or so
of the dissertations...turned out by candidates for the doctorate at any
eminent penitentiary for pedagogues, say Teachers College, Columbia. What
you will find is a state of mind that will shock you. It is so feeble that
it is scarcely a state of mind at all. (From "The war on intelligence,"
December 31, 1928, published in A second Mencken chrestomathy. Vintage,
1994.)
Well, THAT being the case!
The cannons have their bowels full of wrath,
And ready mounted are they to spit forth
Their iron indignation 'gainst your walls:
All preparation for a bloody siege...
[King John, II:I]
[Great comments in the comments section--which is a clever spot to put them. See Pedant on math.]
Ed
schools are the main route to certification and teaching jobs. [If we
were guided by the rule, Honesty is the best pollyseed, we should say, Ed schools are a three year cruise on a Ship of Fools--a journey from Natural Ignorance to Trained Stupidity.] However, there is increasing evidence that teachers who avoided ed schools and took alternative routes to certification
(e.g., major in a serious field, receive several months training in
instructional communication and classroom management, get close
supervision and on-the-job training in a good school) teach just as
well, as judged by their students' achievement.
The expansion of effective, less expensive, faster,
and more accountable forms of teacher training is part of a strategy to
weaken the monopoly held by ed schools.
The other part is revealing--for all right-thinking
persons and groups to see--the arrogance, vanity, ineptitude, and
intransigence of most ed schools.
The War in Education
There is a war in public
education. The war is over
1. Beliefs
about how children learn
and what they need to learn.
2. The most
effective ways to teach
reading, math, science, history and other bodies of knowledge.
3. Accountability
and moral responsibility for educational outcomes.
4. What teachers
need to know how to do, and who should train and certify them.
There are two sides to this war. One is the education establishment.
The other is the education anti-establishment. (A sample of
resources will be in our next portion of rant.) Clearly, schools of education are
part of the war. The question many persons ask is whether they will
survive or even should survive it.
It's pretty clear--to Professor Plum--that the war over schooling is part of a larger war over western civilization--that is, over western
1. Social institutions--(a) macro institutions such as the political state, legal, economic, religous, medical, and military, and (b) local institutions and groups that stand between persons and the macro institutions (family, church, club, neighborhood, office).
2. Ways of thinking: reason, critique of dogma, calculation of costs and benefits.
3. Values: freedom, the person, the person's moral responsibilities.
4. Core ideas: social contract; there is a
reality independent of whether or what we believe; there are moral and
ethical "oughts" that are independent of whether or what we believe and
how we act; there is Divinity beneath which or within which we exist.
I'm willing to wager, or bet, that persons and groups
on each side of the education war (the progressive establishment vs.
the traditional anti-establishment) are also on opposite sides of the
civilization war. I would wager that in contrast to the
anti-establishment, the ed establishment is
1. More likely to denigrate western institutions
(e.g., to disparage capitalism, the military, the traditional family,
and religion), even to the point of radically changing or eliminating
some of them.
2. Less likely to question its beliefs and submit them to the test of data. Instead, validation is a matter of the strength of beliefs (the believer salivates) and the extent to which beliefs are shared (everyone else--except a few heretics-- sees things the same way).
3. Less likely to believe there is or could be
anything like immutable laws of ethics and morality (oughts and ought
nots). Instead, facts and truth are relative and are
social constructions.
4. Less cautious about imposing its beliefs on other
persons and groups. Instead, they are certain they are right.
Therefore, they feel both compelled and justified in imposing their
beliefs, and not seeing it as such.
I may be wrong, but that's how I see it.
Here, for me, is the test. [Caution!! Skip this if
violence against women makes you sick and/or makes you reach for a
firearm. 
I mean it.]
This woman is being prepared to get her brains bashed
out with rocks. Apparently, she has done something to offend the
"men" in her community. Perhaps she was uppity. The point is, I've
shown this and similar pictures to ed colleagues. Except for a few
colleagues who see education the way I do, the rest say that, while it's
horrible,
1. "You can't judge other cultures." [I say, "Why not, idiot?"]
2. "It's not OUR business to interfere." [I say, "Then whose business IS it, dummy?!"]
3. "What's so great about US? After all, WE (had
slavery, have hanged black persons, massacred civilians in Viet Nam)."
[I say, "Do you have ANY capacity to reason, imbecile?!"]
I see these reactions as clear evidence of a defect that's
beyond any words I know. Yes, you can point out the illogic, the
ignorance of history, the incompetence at analysis, the adolescent pride in thinking that moral and cultural relativism are signs of high intelligence and deep insight (when in fact they are signs of stupidity and cowardice), and the use of trivial
statements to dismiss moral responsibility. But the disease is way
beyond that. What, I don't know.
I just love it when people dismiss what's GOING to happen to that poor woman as irrelevant to THEM, and in the next breath yammer about "humanistic" teaching. Surprisingly, you can get sent to jail for punching these people in the teeth.
"Hey, what's all this? What's all this!"
"I punched him in the teeth, Officer O'Riley."
"Punched him in the teeth, did you? He's bleedin' pretty freely."
"Yeah. Heh Heh."
"And what might the reason be, if you'll be so kind?"
"He's an eel skin, Officer. A dried bull's pizzle. A churlish, toad-spotted puttock. A notable coward, and an infinite and endless liar. A gleeking lout. A soul so filthy it would demean spit."
"Is he then? All that, you say? Then you hold him and let ME punch him in the teeth a few times."
Love those Boston coppers!
Who's The Education Establishment?
The education establishment has controlled public schooling for at least
100 years. The establishment defines itself with terms such as progressive,
child-centered, holistic, constructivist, and developmentally appropriate.
These words are said to describe a coherent and research-validated philosophy
of education, or pedagogy.
The education establishment also promotes
curricula and instructional methods consistent with its dominant philosophy.
Examples include constructivist math and reading curricula (e.g., whole
language and Reading
Recovery); so-called discovery or inquiry learning;
an emphasis on process (e.g., children's so-called struggle to construct
knowledge); and a strong rejection of what the establishment labels traditional,
conservative, and developmentally inappropriate methods of instruction—in
particular rejection of an approach (supported by the preponderance of
scientific research cited in the next rant) that stresses teaching
subjects (drawn from traditional bodies of knowledge) to the level of mastery
in a logically progressive sequence of increasingly complex skills, with
the teacher at first assuming a strong directive role providing extensive
practice, systematic correction of errors, and regular assessment to monitor
the effects of instruction.
One branch of the education
establishment—calling itself critical pedagogy, critical ethnography, and
postmodernist (found in the work of Michael Apple, Peter McLaren, Henry
Giroux, and Paulo Friere) is based on a marxian view of society, and has
as its alleged aim the liberation of children from the oppression of schooling
and other western social institutions and values.
Who are the actors in the education establishment? What
are their roles? The education establishment is a large
assemblage of like-minded persons and organizations. There are education
leaders
and spokespersons, such as Alfie Kohn, Richard Allington, Linda Darling-Hammond,
and David Berliner.
There are organizations that promulgate
the dominant philosophy of progressivism, certify the proper
socialization
of teachers and administrators, and work to legitimize establishment
ideas
and establishment-approved curricula and methods. These organizations
include NCATE (National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher
Education), NCTE (National Council for Teachers of English), NAEYC
(National Association for the Education of Young Children), NCTM
(National Council for Teachers of Mathematics), IRA (International
Reading Association), and the NEA (National Education Association).
There are publishers,
such as Heinemann, who transform establishment ideas into sellable form
for wider distribution.
And there are hundreds of schools of education.
Judging from their websites and publications of faculty, ed schools with
rare exceptions train new teachers within the boundaries of establishment
doctrine. In this way, education schools disseminate and sustain establishment ideas,
values, and social agendas, and pass these on to the next generation of
teachers. And this helps to sustain the establishment's control over
public schooling.
Who's The Education Anti-establishment
The opposition, or anti-establishment, consists of scholars (such
as E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Diane Ravitch, Chester Finn., Thomas Sowell, John
Stone, Lynne Cheney, Sandra Stotsky, Lisa Delpit, Kieran Egan, Richard
Mitchell, and the National Association of Scholars) who critically examine
the foundational so-called progressive, Romantic modernist beliefs at the
core of establishment doctrine.
There are researchers,
such as Mike Podgursky (on whether NCATE approval and National Board certification
signify a difference in teacher quality), Eric Hanushek (on whether advanced teacher training
makes a difference), Lance Izumi and the Pacific Research Institute (who
reveal ed schools' resistance to altering the constructivist core of their
curricula despite major shifts in research and education policy), and Barak
Rosenshine, Edwin Ellis, Robert Dixon, Edward Kameenui, Deborah Simmons,
Jerry Brophy, Barbara Foorman, and many others on designing effective instruction.
There are foundations
and unions (such as Heartland, Council for Basic Education, No Excuses,
National Right to Read, Heritage, Fordham, and the American Federation
of Teachers) that advocate research-based curricula, greater consumer control,
and argue for either radical reform of schools of education or their replacement
by more effective and less expensive alternatives.
There are consumer organizations
and movements, such as Education Consumers,
Oregon Education Consumers, http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com, homeschooling,
and vouchers.
There are national organizations
(such as the National Council on Teacher Quality) that are critical of
progressivist ideologies and social agendas, and are creating alternative
forms of teacher preparation and certification that could be adopted by
states.
Finally, there is the federal
government (specifically, the Department of Education) that has criticized
ed school curricula; presented an alternative description of what effective
instruction looks like; developed an alternative, research-validated description
of effective reading and early language instruction; identified the minimum
set of skills new teachers need; and, through the incentive of grant money,
is encouraging states to reform everything from their conception of reading
acquisition down to how ed schools train new teachers to teach reading.
The education anti-establishment
is larger than it has ever been. Its criticisms of dominant,
progressive/constructivist philosophy and curricula are highly focused
and widely shared within the anti-establishment (in other words, the
anti-establishment is cohesive and has a focused mission).
It is vocal. And some of its members and organizations have
control over money, law, regulations, and certification.
Here, in
brief, is a 10-point summary of the anti-establishment critique of ed schools.
The Anti-establishment Critique of Ed Schools
First, ed schools offer little
convincing evidence that new graduates know how to teach. Few
education schools (with notable exceptions in Louisiana, Oregon, Kansas,
Texas, and Florida) evaluate students during and at the end of their curriculum
in light of an objective, performance-based inventory of knowledge
and practical skills derived from the preponderance of scientific research
on effective instruction. Nor are more than a few ed schools able
to show that interns and new graduates
foster substantial change
in the children they teach.
This absence of direct evidence that
ed schools serve their manifest function helps to explain why ed schools seek certification from organizations such as
NCATE. Most ed schools must rely on external
organizations
to provide a legitimizing seal of approval. This sustains
a symbiotic relationship between ed schools and certifiers.
Indeed, the more ed schools come under criticism from the anti-establishment,
the more new certifying organizations are created—each with a predictable
set of progressivist standards.
Second, new graduates are not taught exactly how to teach and
are ill-prepared when they have their own classrooms. Ed
schools teach students to construct superficial lesson plans, write reflective
journals, create literacy philosophies, and assemble these into portfolios,
but new graduates do not know exactly how to teach concepts, rules, and
cognitive strategies; do not know exactly how to teach school children
to synthesize elementary skills into larger wholes; do not know exactly
what sorts of errors school students will make in each subject and how
to correct errors; do not know exactly how to design instruction so that
it fosters the different phases of learning (acquisition, fluency, generalization,
retention, and independence); and do not know exactly how to teach language,
reading, math, and other subjects.
Third, the dominant majority of professors in typical ed schools
(i.e., progressive and constructivist) arrogate to themselves and to their
schools a mission and social agenda contrary to what is wanted by the public.
Many education professors portray themselves, and claim that teachers should
see themselves, as stewards of America's children, as social revolutionaries
(or at least social reformers) positioned to redress alleged failings of
our society, as advocates of the socially disadvantaged, seeking to foster
equality and social justice.
This as
a stunning example of hubris. No one asked, elected, or appointed
education professors and ed schools to be social reformers. Nor is
there reason to believe that education professors possess the humility
and wisdom needed to do this. And the social agenda surely distracts
education students from the one thing that is mandated and paid
for by the public—namely, to learn exactly how to use research tested routines
to teach most subjects.
Fourth, ed school teacher training curricula rest on and are misguided
by empirically weak and logically flawed constructivist speculations on
how children learn, and therefore how children should and should not be
taught. Here, here, here, and here are examples of some of the false and/or psychotic ideas in establishment writings
that have a powerful influence on what is taught in ed schools, and
therefore a strong influence on how new teachers misteach.
Summarizing the demented ed school canon...
1. Learning is not hard.
2. Knowledge is acquired incidentally,
without explicit instruction.
3. Children do not acquire knowledge from
a teacher; they discover it. Teachers therefore should not teach;
they should merely facilitate.
Fifth, when teachers use so-called progressive curricula and teaching
methods taught in ed schools (such as a whole language approach to
beginning reading, constructivist math, and inquiry approaches to literature
and science), a substantial proportion of school children don't learn—as
reflected in low school achievement overall and by enormous discrepancies
between students of different social classes and ethnic groups. Indeed,
students most likely to be ill-served (namely, the disadvantaged and minorities)
are the very students whom progressive education professors claim to champion.
The ed establishment, for obvious reasons of
self-protection, attributes failure to learn to other factors (family,
social class, teacher insensitivity to cultural differences, too much
teacher directedness). In fact, failure to learn is in most cases
simply the result of technically inept instruction. We know how to teach; ed schools, districts, and schools refuse to do it.
Sixth, ed schools do not adequately teach students the logic of scientific reasoning;
specifically, how to define concepts and judge the adequacy of definitions;
how to identify the propositions and arguments in a text; how to assess
the logical validity of an education professor's or writer's argument and
the credibility of conclusions.
Nor do ed schools
have students read original works (to see if in fact Piaget said what is
claimed for him), to read original research articles, meta-analyses, and
other literature reviews—so that ed school students themselves discover
the most trustworthy principles of instruction and the most effective curricula,
rather than merely trust what education professors tell them to believe.
Instead of research articles,
data, and logic, education students are induced into the establishment
thought world with a set of emotionally appealing but empirically empty
shibboleths taught in every course, that are presented as knowledge
and not the intellect-numbing mantra they really are. Following
are examples of common terms and prescriptions in ed schools that either
don't mean anything or that are invalidated by elementary logic and serious
research. In other words, most of the following terms and prescriptions
are best understood not as a summary of wisdom in the field but as advertising
claims for constructivist, "child centered" methods and publications.
1. “Best Practices.”
[This is the term by which so-called progressive, "child-centered"
education professors and book writers valorize what they preach.
No honest or even logical person could ever claim to know what is best.]
2. “Developmentally appropriate practices."
[This phrase is used to produce a false binary opposition between
(a) the so-called child-centered, progressive instruction advocated by
establishment education professors (e.g., pre-school children move around
the classroom from one to another "experience center"—blocks, books, paints--to
"inquire") and (b) more teacher-directed, structured instruction for some
subjects as advocated by the anti-establishment. The binary opposition
allows progressivist professors to demonize (as "developmentally inappropriate")
whatever they do not--at the moment—sell or publish.]
3. “The teacher is a facilitator rather than a transmitter
of knowledge. Students must discover and construct knowledge on their
own.
[This is another false binary opposition. Moreover, the preponderance
of scientific research supports the teacher actually teaching—showing students
how to solve problems, leading them through solutions, testing or checking
to see if students have gotten it, correcting all errors, giving more examples,
and providing more practice and opportunities for independent application
in the future.]
4. “Homogeneous grouping for a short time each day for
certain subjects based on students’ current skills is bad. It lowers
self-esteem and creates tracks. It is discrimination.”
[This is an example of constructing a politically correct dream world
and expecting other persons to live in it. In fact, teachers learn
very quickly that children in the same class are not equal--that is,
are not identical. Some need more learning opportunities, assistance,
individual attention, and practice than other students. Some students
in a class are ready for harder material than other students. Teaching
to a heterogeneous
group (that is, everyone gets the same instruction
despite their differences) means that virtually no children receive
the kind of instruction from which they would most benefit. The call
for heterogeneous grouping (and the rejection of homogeneous grouping for
a short time each day in, for example, reading and math) means that students'
initial differences really do become tracks because the neediest
students fall even farther behind.]
5. “Teachers should not correct errors immediately and
consistently. Error correction makes students dependent on the teacher
and threatens self-esteem."
[This prescription flows from the constructivist notion that students
should construct knowledge and not be taught directly. The problem,
of course, is that if the teacher does not teach students what errors are
and how to correct them, many students will not figure it out on
their own. Therefore, errors will be repeated and in time students
will have huge knowledge gaps that are impossible to fill without an enormous
expenditure of time and effort; e.g., reteaching basic math skills to students
who have no idea what is going on in algebra class. Predictably,
these students end up both unskilled and with low self-esteem.]
6. "Frequent practice is not an effective way to foster mastery
and high self-expectations. Practice is boring and inhibits creativity.
Drill and kill."
[This statement is simply false, but it is consistent with the anti-authority
thread in educational progressivism that sees practice as some form of
regimentation,
rather than the only sure route to mastery—an idea taken for granted in
every field (dance, music, martial arts, sports) outside of education schools.]
7. “Teachers should create their own curricula and lesson plans,
rather than follow field tested programs. Programs disempower
teachers and hinder self expression.”
[This statement calls for teachers—with virtually no training in how
to design instruction—to prepare not merely a few lessons but whole year-long
curricula in reading, math, spelling, writing, science, and so on.
The task is of course impossible and means that at best students receive
ill-designed instruction. Moreover it means that teachers are implicitly
field testing each lesson on their own students. It is doubtful
that many families want their children to be part of such experiments.
Instead of empowering teachers, this statement, in the end, leads to the
disempowerment of teachers as they are denied the tools (field tested programs)
that would make them master teachers.
Doubtless the underlying reason
why education professors and ed schools abhor effective field tested programs
in math, reading, spelling, writing, and other subjects is that these programs
make education courses and education professors' endless innovations
irrelevant to new and veteran teachers alike. Teachers would
not need to take four courses that superficially cover eight approaches
to teaching reading; they would simply use one of the few programs that
work the best.]
Without a background in
logic, and ignorant of independent bodies of research literature, education
students are unable to engage in the reflection so often spoken of in schools
of education, to see if there is anything credible in the mantra of progressivism
they are taught.
Seventh, education professors typically read little that challenges
what they already believe; ignore research that invalidates their child-centered,
constructivist thought world; and mount disingenuous arguments against
the preponderance of scientific research that challenges what they teach.
For example, education professors do not read the Report
of the National Reading Panel (one of many huge literature reviews), and
do not have their students read this and other reviews. Or, they
dismiss these reviews, and teach their students to dismiss these reviews,
with off-handed comments such as, "All research is flawed" or "This document
is politically motivated." This self-imposed and self-defensive
ignorance helps to ensure that what education professors believe and
teach remains, to them, unchallenged.
This ignorance also gives any right-thinking person good reason to dismiss the scholarly pretensions of
education professors and, instead, to see ed schools as ideology-driven,
nonrational, disconnected from external bodies of scientific research,
unaccountable for what they teach, and therefore vulnerable to the charge
that ed schools have many of the features of a closed society, or cult.
In addition, ed schools
sustain a progressivist-constructivist thought world by hiring persons
who are educationally correct—i.e., who espouse the same doctrine as
the committee that hires them, and therefore won't upset existing relations
of power and won't (by drawing on different bodies of research) challenge
anyone to think very hard.
An eighth criticism is that education professors and ed schools generally
occupy a safe distance
from the public that: (a) pays them and (b)
is harmed by the pernicious and worthless fads (whole language,
brain-based learning, multiple intelligence, learning styles,
constructivist math) that come from education professors and that
continually
infest schools. Education professors and ed schools have no
contract with children, families, teachers, and schools; have little
direct contact with children, families, teachers, and schools; and
receive no corrective consequences for sending ill-trained new teachers
and destructive fads into the schools.
This insularity enables ed professors and ed schools to regard their
activities as a form of play. They adopt a philosophy
(say, constructivism or postmodernism); they think of interesting ways
it could be used in schools; they have exciting conversations with like-minded
colleagues; they get a grant (or at least get a school) that will enable
them to implement their new idea; they take some kind of data, usually
field notes that support what they already believe; and then publish a
series of articles that bring tenure and prestige.
This a perversion of the idea of scholarship and
of the mandate that ed schools turn out teachers who know exactly how to
teach, and not turn out fanciful and fashionable projects that waste children's
irreplaceable time and in essence constitute exploitation of public schools.
A ninth criticism is
that ed schools attempt to maintain the appearance of being self-reflective,
in touch with scientific research in the field, and responsive to the needs
of schools by conjuring up one after another innovation or initiative.
But these innovations and initiatives do nothing to change the core progressivist
thought world and teacher training curricula, and often do little or nothing
to assist public schools. Recent examples are the so-called infusion of technology into public
schools (e.g., computerized reading programs) and extraordinarily expensive remedial reading
programs of questionable merit (Reading Recovery).
A final criticism is that unlike medicine, structural engineering,
and food science, ed schools do not have a knowledge base shared within
and across schools, and that rests on scientific research--i.e., experimental,
longitudinal, quantitative, replicated research whose findings are turned
into conclusions and instructional implications only after they are examined
in the light of the rules of right reasoning.
In other words, ed
schools are anomic (lawless, normless) cultures. Neither old nor allegedly innovative
curricula and methods are generated by a solid body of empirical propositions
that say, If you do X, Y will happen. Nor are so-called innovative
curricula and methods rejected because they are found to be logically absurd
and empirically pernicious to children. For, there are no empirical
research generalizations and no rules for reasoning that are accepted as
being independent of and as having an authority greater than what the education
professor or school may think of them, and that therefore oblige an
intellectually honest professor or school to reject groundless beliefs
and fanciful innovations.
Indeed, the tenets of constructivism and
postmodernism attack the very
possibility that there can be any
truths and rules for reasoning external to the individual—for these independent
truths and rules (given the egoism bred by the Romantic modernist thought
world) are said to stifle the academic freedom and creativity of the individual.
Unfortunately, this anomie has left unchallenged fatally flawed curricula
that damage the life chances of many children who depend on the honesty,
humility, and rationality of educators.
I
suspect that ed schools will not notice
the criticisms against them, will not examine themselves, and will not
improve themselves. Nor are universities likely to dump ed schools,
widely known as cash cows. Perhaps the most feasible course is simply
to make ed schools irrelevant by promoting alternative certification
and training.
Consider [the pedagogue] in his highest incarnation: the
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