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Must Schools in a Democracy be “Democratic”?

2012-01-26T15:30:00.000-05:00

Proverb: Too many cooks spoil the broth. Is this true?

During the 1975 - 76 school year I helped coordinate a parent-run private pre-school in Philadelphia. We shared a building with an experimental private K-12 school, call it Walden, whose fundamental premise -- the headmaster told me -- was that everyone, staff, administration, parent and student, got to participate in decision making: everyone had a voice. And they all had a single vote in the community.

In September, I would see large numbers (over 100) of adults and children going daily into a commons room to discuss what was to be taught, and how. During the year I noticed many, many students playing in the schoolyard at all times of the day.

By the next May I saw far fewer people assembling in that same commons room. I asked the headmaster how things were going. “We have made some progress toward a general idea of what the curriculum might turn out to be; but we have yet to have classes. The students can’t seem to agree with their parents and the kids can outvote the adults.”

Considering that the State of Pennsylvania recognized Walden as a replacement for public schooling, I often wondered what the parents thought they were paying for and whether they got their money’s worth.

To examine these issues further, see Democracy vs Efficiency in Public Schooling

Cordially,
-- EGR

Prosecuting Fraud in Education

2012-01-24T10:08:00.000-05:00

The Department of Justice and four states on Monday filed a multibillion-dollar fraud suit against the Education Management Corporation, the nation’s second-largest for-profit college company, charging that it was not eligible for the $11 billion in state and federal financial aid it had received from July 2003 through June 2011. -- New York Times August 8, 2011

A bitter though old lesson has had to be relearned by the complacent citizens of 21st century America: blind trust in our financial, religious and educational institutions, the sacred cows of our society, yields disappointment and scandal.

But when it comes to dealing with chicanery in higher education, there is a means for correction. For example, if a university receives federal funds because it is accredited, or has professional programs that are accredited, and if the conditions for accreditation are in fact not met, then those funds have been fraudulently obtained in violation of the Federal False Claims act.

The funds will have to be returned, fines are likely to be levied and the "whistle blowers" who provided information leading to successful prosecution under the act will receive a substantial percentage of funds recovered. This is not a rare occurrence.

Many law firms advertise their willingness to represent whistle-blowers in such cases, -- called qui tam cases, since the whistle-blower represents the interests of the government as well as himself or herself. But qui tam cases are far less frequent than those of us in higher education might expect: law firms seem to be hindered by their lack of knowledge as to how a university works.

Compounding all this is that accrediting organizations are often in cahoots with the programs they are supposed to examining, since accreditation brings in large fees or provides employment to the accreditors. (Law firm members, themselves, often are reluctant to take action against their alma mater or prospective university client.)

What might be done? First of all, law firms might adopt a more entrepreneurial attitude: it will take some upfront money and knowledgable consultancy to obtain evidence of fraud. But both the promise of substantial sharing in the fines leveled by the federal government, as well as the widespread fraud that takes place each year -- I would estimate that in the Philadelphia area alone a potential for several billion dollars in fines exists -- should make the risk worthwhile.

Secondly, …

------ For more on this, see "Combatting Educational Corruption"

-- EGR

Pursuing Common, Rigorous Curricular Standards: a perpetual cycle in American public schooling

2012-01-19T15:54:00.000-05:00

Researchers Urge E.D. Effort to Define “Common Core.” Bennett’s Advisory Group Reviews Research Agenda at First Session -- T. Mirga, Education Week, April 24, 1985, p. 9

In April of 1985 it was reported that a panel of nine prominent educators advised the National Institute of Education to devote a greater percentage of its dollars to “define” a common core of knowledge for American students. Members of the panel expressed displeasure with what they said was an overemphasis on research on the cognitive development of students. More emphasis, they said, should be placed on subject matter.

Michael W. Kirst of Stanford said that the focus should not be on process orientation, but rather “on what needs to be taught in these institutions.” His proposal presumes, it appears, that curricular interventions directly affect learning outcomes, bypassing, somehow teaching and other presentation difficulties.

Joseph Adelson of the University of Michigan concurred with Mr. Kirst, adding that he was “amazed at how little students know.” Perhaps he expected that if NIE research emphasized “defining” a common core, his own future encounters would be with more knowledgeable students.

Chester Finn -- at that time of Vanderbilt University -- among others, questioned the need for a proposed Center for the Study of Writing. “The thought that this is major terra incognita strikes me as blarney,” said Mr. Finn. “People know how to teach writing; they just don’t do it.”

It is somewhat amazing that in the world of 1985, where it was a commonplace that academics were barely competent teachers, such hidden riches, a plethora of writing and teaching talent, lay ignored or unexploited! On Mr. Finn’s account, the academic -- who averaged (and still averages) four published articles in his/her lifetime -- is merely withholding his/her gifts from students. Perhaps, secondary and elementary teachers, who suffer no pressure to publish, are endowed with a proportionally even greater ability to write and to teach writing!

Imagine a seed salesman who occasionally visited a grocery store and recommended to the grocer changes in the kinds and amounts of seeds farmers should be offered on the basis of the produce the salesman "saw missing"in the store. It's very much like how these curriculum interventionists, Kirst, Edelson, Finn, Bennett and the others at that meeting, relate to the actual classroom learning of elementary and secondary students.

Rigor, in curriculum, is an aesthetic criterion, a matter of taste. It is seldom a causal criterion, touching on effectiveness. Physicists, for example will do all sorts of things with mathematics that mathematicians find “unrigorous.” Who benefits, we should ask, when the call for rigor is heeded? The curriculum interventionist is not unlike the proverbial man with a hammer who tries to fix everything by hitting it, until it is formed (or deformed?) to suit his preferences.

For references and links to cited articles and to examine these issues further, see ON THE VIABILITY OF A CURRICULUM LEADERSHIP ROLE  Avoiding Confusion of Role and Function

Cordially
--- EGR

What is Cheating? By Whose Rules?

2012-01-17T07:42:00.000-05:00

All oppression creates a state of war. -- Simone de Beauvoir

Cheating is not playing by the rules. Whose rules?

In 1796 at age 22 Oney Judge, Martha Washington’s personal slave attendant, fled the President’s mansion and traveled to New Hampshire. The Washingtons were angry at her “ingratitude,” because Oney enjoyed privileges in the Washington household that many free whites could not. Oney offered to return on the condition she be granted freedom. Sending agents out to capture her and bring her back, her masters refused her terms. Escaping capture, Oney remained in New Hampshire swearing she would “suffer death rather than return to Slavery.”

Was Oney Judge a cheater? Cheating is not playing by the rules. Whose rules? Were they agreed to by all participants? Were they freely accepted? Or were they imposed on those lacking power to reject them? Clearly, sometimes not playing by the rules, “cheating,” is not merely excusable, but desirable.

But what about kids in schools who cheat on tests? Cheating is not playing by the rules. Whose rules? Were they agreed to by all participants? Were they freely accepted? Or were they imposed on those lacking power to reject them?

“But it’s for their own good!” you say? Who determines this?

In the United States basic schooling is compulsory. What makes it morally different from slavery? This is not meant to be a rhetorical question, but an invitation to reflection.

To examine these issues further, see Preventing Cheating: transforming educational values

-- EGR

Stupid Opinion, or Free Speech? Which Should Teachers Have a Right to?

2012-01-14T17:36:00.000-05:00

Should public school teachers have “the right to free speech” in their classrooms?

It is more likely nearer the truth to state flat out that no teacher at any level, whether in public or private education, is immune to reprisal for expressing to students (or colleagues) any opinion, however, well-founded or reasonable, that can be interpreted by his superiors as contrary to the “commonly accepted” beliefs of the institution he or she works in. Both so-called “liberals” and “conservatives” raise an easy cheer to “free speech” so long as it means “speech I don’t disagree with.”

Teachers have “free speech” so long as no one higher up objects. In public schools, “higher up” includes parents and general public to the extent that they can harass superintendents and school board members about it. In the name of good public relations “curriculum” becomes doctrine and “professionalism” becomes censorship.

This generates a stomach-churning reality, a deep hypocrisy, in the context of the concerns – often strongly expressed by the censors, themselves – for developing “critical thinking skills” in students. Critical thinking skills, by all means, but not any that subject my nearest and dearest to examination.

Public schools are in a peculiar position. Private and religious schools are assumed to come with a certain amount of ideological baggage: you can always go elsewhere. But, by some miracle of human nature, public schools are supposed to be free of it.

Too many communities define themselves in terms of events of questionable facticity, in terms of esteem rendered to persons of questionable repute, in terms of expectations of questionable justice. Critical thinking, and the freedom of speech that supposedly supports its development, awaits still, in this United States of America in the 21st Century, an educational forum that supports it.

To examine these issues further, see Trading-Off "Sacred" Values:  Why Public Schools Should Not Try to "Educate"

Cordially
--- EGR

The Achievement-Gap-GDP-Gap Myth: Selling Diet-Pills.

2012-01-13T06:35:00.000-05:00

(I)f ...(student)... achievement gaps were closed, the yearly gross domestic product of the United States would be trillions of dollars higher, or $3 billion to $5 billion more per day -- Javier C. Hernandez (2009)

Would it were so. But this wishful thinking, on which many reform proposals have been based and marketed, is highly misleading. Most people with a poorly performing automobile would take it to be a joke, for example, if someone said,

Buy just one new replacement tire, and your gas mileage will increase, your engine will stop missing and the accident rate in your city will go down 50%.

A much cited slide presentation report by McKinsey & Company (2009) that detailed findings on the economic impact of the achievement gap in America's school beats on this same drum. A crucial item buried in slide 88 of McKinsey's 119 slide presentation is this: the difference between the actual GDP and the hypothesized GDP is "determined by assumptions about the ability to make use of higher skilled people and the quality of economic institutions."

Although some economists believe that cognitive and economic development are linked, they recognize that public school classrooms are not the only, or even the most important influences that affect this relationship. For example, Hanushek and Woessmann (2008 ) write,

Overall economic institutions ... can be viewed as preconditions to economic development. And, without them, education and skills may not have the desired impact on economic outcomes.

For example, the so-called "overeducated" often find themselves misfit in their economy, so that even high levels of their particular cognitive skills fail to provide "human capital," i.e. skills that translate into economic payoffs.

But what has been dropped from reform propaganda is the critical condition that appropriate, healthy economic institutions must be available so higher skills acquired can be put to use. (Since the 2008 report that Hanushek co-authored, he has said little about this condition, preferring, it seems, to take the easy ride on the school reform bandwagon.)

The present school reform undertakings, like the many that have preceded them in the past 100 years, represent little more than the triumph of hope over experience.

For references and links to cited articles and to examine these issues further, see Moral Responsibility in the Education Industry:  how much can school reform enhance a student's occupational fitness?

Cordially
--- EGR

Too Many Broths Ruin the Cook

2012-01-08T08:09:00.000-05:00

Too many cooks spoil the broth -- Proverb

There is only so much time in a teaching day. There are only so many things a teacher can do. Adding to the already overstuffed schedule doesn’t get more things done, unless they are done less than well.

Teachers classroom activites fall into three main groups: instruction, organization and discipline. If one of the groups expands, one or two of the others must suffer. This is not nuclear physics.

If kids have not been sufficiently socialized at home to contribute, or at least, not to interfere with instructional or organizational activities, then the teacher must waste the instructional time of the cooperative students on disciplinary action. This is not nuclear physics.

If school districts insist on dumping more and more faddish items into the curriculum, then less and less gets done. The essentials suffer. The kids miss out or do not develop those skills needed for their later years. This is not nuclear physics.

If administrators interrupt classes with non-urgent public address messages, or with special un-preannounced assemblies, it wastes teacher time in helping along his or her charges. This, also, is not nuclear physics.

What is so hard about applying common sense in schools?

------To investigate this issue further see See "What Can a Teacher Do?"

Cordially,

-- EGR

Must Our Leaders Be Scoundrels, Too?

2012-01-07T15:00:00.000-05:00

To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult. -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Is moral leadership possible? Why not? Is there anything which makes it necessary for a leader to act immorally? Or, on the other hand, is there anything about being moral that prevents someone from being a leader?

By “moral leader” some people think of those who call others to some well-defined standard of morality — for example, influential ministers, rabbis, imams or popes: a “moral authority.” Such moral authorities may have no personal power to “get things done.”

Another sense of “moral leadership” is a notion that people can be “real leaders” of organizations, who get things done, as opposed to “mere” administrators, officials, authorities or managers. The hope is that, in addition, such leaders will conduct themselves in a “moral” manner.

To get things done, power is essential. The quest for “moral leadership” is very much the problem of reconciling power with moral authority. Many of those who offer seminars in ethics for organizational leaders seem to think that there are no deep issues to be faced.

To examine these issues further, see LEADERSHIP vs. MORALITY: AN UNAVOIDABLE CONFLICT?

Cordially,
-- EGR

Wishful Thinking: National Standards for 15,000 Independent School Boards!

2012-01-06T08:43:00.000-05:00

The more things change, the more they remain the same -- proverb

Our history shows that it is not difficult to seduce Americans into a crusade, even a difficult and bitter one, so long as the majority can hope to live to see the conquest of the Promised Land. But to be merely a bit player in a struggle that may last for generations? That is surely asking too much. We cannot see where we, as a nation, will be next year.

Take a paper and pencil, and, if you have been a teacher for ten years, you will be able to list a number of initiatives, reforms, and innovations that have gone the way of all flesh.
I started teaching when the New Math was about to save America from Sputnik and other devilish Communist contrivances. Ancient that I am, I saw teaching machines rise and fall, language labs degenerate into expensive toys.

SRA reading materials brought their own micro-millennium. Whole Language hangs on, but OBE has lost its vigor. 4-MAT has become 4-gotten. Special Education has become inclusion, which is practically what it was before it became Special Education.

Do you remember Needs Assessment? Has Site-Based Management or Quality Circles transformed the world? Who wanted these innovations? Apparently, not the public who supports the public schools.

Who bothered to convince people other than educators that the millennium was at hand? No one. Who made off with the vast sums of money spent on such programs? That is an interesting story, also.

To examine these issues further, see Establishing Nationally Recognized Educational Standards

Cordially,
-- EGR

Educational Innovation: stuck in the mud!

2012-01-05T15:00:00.000-05:00

Two quite opposite qualities equally bias our minds - habits and novelty. -- Jean de la Bruyere

Who was it that said, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door"? It doesn't matter who said it, because there is abundant evidence that it is not true.

Technical innovation presumably pursues efficiency. But efficiency is only one small aspect of total cost reduction. The strength of the competition, the availability of the product, its replaceability, compatibility, and familiarity will beat out novelty, even efficiency, any day.

This is not to deny that the educational potential of much technology is substantial. But whether or not the technology gets incorporated in the curriculum depends on circumstances normally overlooked by, if not beyond reach of, most educators. It is not merely a matter of whether it enhances learning.

To examine these issues further, see Beyond the Textbook?  Unlikely Changes in the Curriculum  

Cordially,
-- EGR

Practical Statistics Tend To Be Local: the Bayesian specifics.

2012-01-04T08:46:00.000-05:00

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again. -- Alexander Pope (1709)

There are all sorts of ways to waste time, money and other resources in the struggle to make a living. Consider these:

a. putting a new den into a house you want to sell;
b. betting on the “fastest” horse when the weather is uncertain;
c. getting a Ph.D. in French when your dad owns a plumbing business;
d. investing in stocks based on the size of the company.

There is a superstition that some people acquire from studying introductory probability theory. The problem is that they try to apply context-free, universal patterns (axioms) to day-to-day specifics. This superstition can be shown in a variety of examples: the beliefs that

a. members of a larger group are more likely encountered; or
b. the average person is easiest to find; or
c. more is better; or
d. specifics reduce frequency.

But why is it that real estate agents chant, “Location, location, location” and not “New den, new den, new den”?

And does it matter that the horse race is being run in the mud? (If you don’t know, find out what a “mudder” is.)

After twenty-five years, who will have the most money on hand: the French scholar or the plumber? (But don’t “the statistics” tell us that those with more education earn more money?)

If you’re going to study probability and statistics, don’t stop before you get through Bayesian statistics. Adjusting general probability theory to the specific conditions you will be dealing with is a skill that many professionals have difficulty with.

For references and to examine these issues further, see Is The Notion of Conjunctive Fallacy ("Conjunction Fallacy") Based on Fallacy?

Cordially --- EGR

Do Schools Really Need to Cost So Much?

2012-01-02T15:00:00.000-05:00

"As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled." - Victor Hugo

Many communities are wealthy enough not to concern themselves with duplication of services. Public schools, community centers, service organizations, and community colleges offer essentially the same activities - often competing with each other, jealously guarding their own prerogatives to stamp their brand name on offerings to an oversupplied market. High schools offer courses in calculus, astrophysics, or jewelry making, competing with the local community college or community center for the same "customers." The reality is that school systems are expected to do many more things than teaching students subject matter, and these things cost money.

Maybe it's time for someone to speak up and say, "If you want our system to run a farm system for the professional football leagues, then you're going to have to pay extra for it and not expect us to do it under the cover of 'physical education.'"

Perhaps it is time to tell parents that their tax dollars will be used to enhance classroom learning; that if they want to play status games with their neighbors by having their children compete for entrance into "prestige" universities, the local schools are not going to spend money on special AP courses for that purpose.

To examine these issues further, see Cutting Public School Costs . . . Intelligently. Can It Be Done?

Cordially,
-- EGR

What is a Fair Grade? Should Effort Count?

2011-12-27T09:42:00.000-05:00

What's sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander. -- Proverb

Instructors at even “top-rank” universities report that their students fuss and fume if they get anything less than an A on an assignment. They expect that just putting out the effort – or claiming to have done so – merits a B so that anything more should bring it up to an A. A professor’s insisting that there may be standards that should influence judgments of quality is dismissed as some kind of cranky, outmoded elitism.

The retorts are obvious. The easiest one is to ask students if they would want to go to a doctor who had “put in the effort” during his or her studies, but never really learned the material. The students see the point but somehow continue to believe that their work should be exempted from conclusions drawn from such examples.

So far as most students are concerned, grades are competitive prizes, to judge from their comparison and boasting about GPA’s. However, everyone’s entitled to the honor of a diploma. This is a benefit that must be fairly shared quite independently of its use as a marker of accomplishment

To examine these issues further, see Fair Share vs. Fair Play:  Two Competing Conceptions of Justice

-- GKC (EGR)

All Schools Are Little Wheels: the J. Fred Muggs Effect

2011-12-27T08:34:00.000-05:00

The little wheel run by Faith…
…(W. Guthrie, Ezekial Saw the Wheel}

Many of us were shocked, -- shocked, I tell you, -- to read (more likely, see on TV) that chimpanzees, affectionately known as "chimps," were not just the cute buffoons we had been seeing all our lives in the media. In the wild, they warred against other clans of their own kind and hunted and fed on the fresh kill of Bonobo monkeys; you know, those even smaller, cuter, gentler primates whose main pastimes merely mimicked those of a typical college undergraduate population.

Faith in the docility, the sociability, of “pets” has brought it about that Florida is overrun by snakes of foreign origin. You flush ‘em down the toilet down there and they end up in the Everglades. (In the North, it’s alligators; elsewhere, it’s boars and cats.)

Americans make a big deal about the distinction between religious and public schools. But both rest on some kind of Faith. The great myth is that the public schools – accused dim-wittedly of being “secularist” – put their faith in Science. Not so.

A group of psychological researchers have reviewed the literature and determined that the following beliefs – often fanatically held by many public school personnel and university trainers of teachers-- are false or lack verification:

--There are left-brained and right-brained people
--Intelligence tests are biased against certain groups of people
--Students have learning styles. Teachers can teach to them.
--Heritable traits cannot be changed.
--Low self-esteem causes psychological problems.

A recent book, 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology. Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior, by Lilienfeld, Lynn, Ruscio and Beyerstein explains the 50 myths and actually mentions 167 more.

How much so-called education, not to mention educational reform, is carried on assuming that these either downright false or unproven ideas are true? How many so-called Best Practices are based on these myths? Perhaps reform doesn’t take in schools because too many people would rather hold on to their chimps – pardon me, “faith” -- than be effective educators.

To examine these issues further, see The Pop-Psych Schoolhouse: Educational Reform Mired in (Inspired by?) Scientific Misconception

Cordially
EGR

Schooling Practice: ignoring power-nurture conflicts

2011-12-25T14:38:00.000-05:00

“Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing -- Thomas J. Peters

New teachers worry about professionalism. They worry whether their peers, their superiors and even their students and their students’ parents will take them seriously. It’s a worry about being accorded the respect they think they deserve.

Why do they worry about respect? Because it gives them the authority they need to bring their students into the paths specified by the school’s curriculum. So they bolster that authority by following and preaching policies, rules and methods. And, behold, it generally works. They are acknowledged to be “the teacher.” And the students do “school activities” as they are bidden.

But teachers face, every day, day-in-and-day out, young, needy, human beings. The teacher’s inclinations are to slip into the role of counselor, parent, older sibling, friend. But then they would have to loosen, to give up on emphasizing policies, rules and methods. This undermines their authority, little enough as they have, and distracts from the stern demands of curriculum.

There are just too many individuals in their classes. And they confront, perhaps for the first time clearly in their lives, that fact that the idea of an “average student” is less a reality than an abstraction. Abstractions don’t have needs. Real kids do. The amount of individual attention parents want for their individual children is just not a possibility given even a small group.

So, to avoid the appearance of favoritism, or neglect, teachers -- often with heavy heart -- learn to apportion their attentions among their many students, knowing that some will find the teacher’s help hardly -- if at all -- nurturing; and others, almost an imposition.

Complicating this basic tension are official importunities that professionalism requires that teachers concern themselves, simultaneously, for special needs, gender, bullying, ethnic, cultural and personal differences among students. Missing any of these issues might result, during a professional observation by administration, in a less than satisfactory evaluation.

And there is also, the inescapable, often deep, moral dilemma: How much of the individual student’s comfort, freedom and self-esteem should be sacrificed, when necessary, for the good of the group?

For references and to examine these issues further, see Power in Schooling Practice:  The Educational Dilemmas

Cordially
--- EGR

Name-Dropping Is Not Enough: faking it with buzzwords

2011-12-24T19:30:00.000-05:00

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. -- Matt. 7:21 KJ

A graduate student asked me to recommend him for admission when I was an advisor in a university doctoral program. He was in his regular life a businessman as well as a long-term elected official in a nearby township where he was expected to decide on such things as policies and contracts.

I asked him, “Considering you’re already fifty-seven, why do you want to go to the trouble of studying to get a doctorate?”

He said, “Because I want to speak with authority on how our school district should be run, and not always be suspected of just trying to feather my nest with contracts.”

I said, “Anyone can appear to have authority if the audience is ignorant enough. And if they use impressive buzzwords. You know, both academia and the business world are full of them. I’ll recommend you with the understanding that – as much as possible – you'll convert those buzzwords into meaningful ideas and use them in a well-reasoned way. Your authority should be based on knowledge; not, BS!” He accepted and eventually became my dissertation student.

Schools and businesses are remarkably similar in many ways. Both in education and management, whether it occurs in the classroom or office, in a school system or in an entire corporation, lack of understanding, of resources, or of consensus is masked with buzzwords.

Words expressing the most profound of concepts can be reduced to a buzzword when they are used unthinkingly or merely to impress the ignorant. (Or to pass licensing examinations!) Some big concepts typically misused as buzzwords in education or business are, among many others: synergy, constructivism, team-player, reinforcer, measurement, accountability, win-win, knowledge, reward, market, research, post-modern, Foucaultian, Lacanian.

If you don’t know what something is or isn’t; or, where it might work, or won’t; or, what difference knowing about it makes, you aren’t speaking with authority.

To examine these issues further, see Using, Rather Than Merely Alluding To, Theory

Cordially
--- EGR

Naive Reform Proposals: Suggesting Uncertain Means

2011-12-21T14:54:00.006-05:00

The little things you haven't got
Could be alot if you pretend
-- "Pretend" by D. Belloc, L. Douglas,
F. Lavere, C. Parman

We expect that almost every experienced adult can talk easily about means and ends, methods and goals. And so they do. We ask a friend,

“What big item do you want to buy this year?”
“A new car.” (end or goal)
“How are you going to get it?”
“Take out a loan.” (means, or method)

Sounds reasonable. Certainly a big enough loan ought to enable him to buy the car he wants. But we might have information that makes the means (the method) less than certain. For example, we reply,

“But you’re out of work, and you already have a lot of debt. Who’s going to lend you much more money?”

Let’s call the means or method in such a situation, “uncertain means” or “uncertain method.”
A new teacher might complain

“My students don’t seem to be finishing their homework. What can I do?”

“Consider the following three suggestions:

1. Keep them after school until 7 PM. That’ll give them time to complete homework.
2. Give them partial lunch detentions for homework purposes. (But let them eat lunch in your room.)
3. Stop giving them homework.

Now, any of these could work, but whether or not they are feasible may depend upon factors beyond your control. Maybe school bus service is not available beyond 4PM. Or maybe there are policies prohibiting eating in the classrooms. Or policies that require giving homework.

Proposed means are only as certain as the resources, the policies and the practices available to support them. Someone might offer to take you on a trip to Mars. If you ask how they’ll do it, they reply, “In a vehicle that will make the round trip.” It’s not likely you’ll take them seriously. (Logically, it makes sense, if there were such a vehicle, then it would be a certain means for going to Mars -- all other things being equal.)

Much of what is suggested quite seriously by presumed “experts” to reform public schools is if this type: uncertain means. For example in a column in USA Today, named “3 ways to improve the USA's teachers,” Wendy Kopp and Dennis Van Roekel (http://usat.ly/uu8mDG) suggest the following methods (means):

A. Use data to improve teacher preparation.
B. Bring new talent to the teaching profession.
C. Give teachers opportunities for continuous professional development.

“Data,” “new talent,” “professional development,” are all very popular phrases, slogans easily bandied about by the experientially challenged. But these are clearly uncertain methods.

What data are we supposed to get? At what cost? Over what period of time? Requiring whose permission? And is there any consensus on the possible answers to any of these questions?

New talent? Talent for what? How will it be identified? With what certainty? And how would such “new talent” be attracted to the profession? And is there any consensus on the possible answers to any of these questions?

Professional development? Actual informative, non-soporific activities? To be done when? In place of what present activities? Who will give it? How and by whom will they be identified and determined to be appropriate to the prospective audiences? And is there any consensus on the possible answers to any of these questions?

To examine these issues further, see Best Practices? Don’t Bet On It!

Cordially
EGR

Is School Still Educational?

2011-12-15T06:46:00.000-05:00

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. -- Plato

Legislation was proposed in 1995 in Colorado to do away with "compulsory education." I was interviewed by Colorado Public Radio regarding my position on the issue. I asked for clarification: What was the proposal? Was it to do away with state-mandated educational requirements, thus reopening the door to the child labor abuses that abounded in the last century? Or was it to do away with compulsory school attendance?

My interviewer wasn't sure. He said he thought the voters of Colorado were tired of seeing more and more of their educational tax dollars go to dealing with kids who make trouble because they don't want to be there in the first place.

I said that I thought that noncompulsory school attendance was probably a morally preferable situation to the present practice. But the Colorado proposal would be like scratching an itch with a scalpel.

Unless schools can reject students whose parents want them to attend, the problem of undermotivated, distracted students would not necessarily be addressed. In any case, it is not clear how student-on-student abuse will be affected by even a change to non-compulsory schooling so long as educators persist in avoiding moral commitment.

To examine these issues further, see Fear in the Classroom  Is Schooling Still Sufficiently Educational?

Cordially,
-- EGR

Is Your Child Really At Risk? Lessen Your Worries.

2011-12-14T19:14:00.000-05:00

The sky is falling, the sky is falling. -- Chicken Little

So your kid doesn’t do homework regularly, or cuts class, or doesn’t seem interested in school. Think of the kids from your own school days. How many did the same? Perhaps, you slacked off, too. And yet many of these same kids pulled it together later in life and are doing OK right now. Why I bet you could even name a former President of the United States (or two or more if you really know your history) who goofed his way through school, even through college!

There is a lot of money to be made by getting parents to worry that their children are “at risk.” Some parents are seduced into believing that poor grades predestine their adolescents to a life of crime or poverty. Others are more concerned with bragging rights in comparing their offspring with their neighbors’ brats: Mom or Dad really would like an Ivy League window sticker for a car.

Luckily, we live in a society where school success and life success are only tenuously related, despite the efforts of panting pedants to make a high school diploma the only door to human happiness. There are many more paths to adult success than might be considered by a middle school guidance counselor, or parent -- for that matter.

To examine these issues further, see Identifying the ‘At Risk’ Student

Cordially
--- EGR

Do Public School-Religious School Differences Matter?

2011-12-11T07:30:00.000-05:00

“Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil's propagation.” -- Hosea Ballou

It is the mission of religious and many secular organizations, e.g. the State, to convince, persuade, seduce, coerce or dupe us to concede authority to them over certain aspects of our lives: these are then called duties and obligations. As children, dependent and ignorant, we willy-nilly concede authority to those who importune us. However, as adults we ought to question -- as Thomas Aquinas reminds us -- whether the faith we concede as a child is appropriate as a free adult.

In a democratic country where custom and law maintain Church-State separation, it is more likely that secular institutions, especially the public schools and those that promote and administer them, will undermine freedom in pursuing the fads and fashions the flesh is heir to.

For example, non-sectarian university teacher-training programs routinely indoctrinate prospective public school teachers with questionable theory as though it were incontrovertible fact, e.g., All children can learn, Protect self-esteem, Consider learning style, Education for Democracy, International Competitiveness, etc.

Because such indoctrination is not based on religious sectarianism, public schools are not protected from, indeed, have become inundated with, dogmatic ideologies imposed with totalitarian rigor.

To examine these issues further, see PERSONAL LIBERATION THROUGH EDUCATION

Cordially,
-- EGR

A World Without Unpleasantness! Would You Want It?

2011-12-10T12:30:00.000-05:00

“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace. ” -- Publius Cornelius Tacitus

A Parable:

In the Republic of Foz a group of high-minded citizens undertook to remove the bitterness from every medicinal preparation. And with all but one potion they succeeded. But there was an elixir the curative power of which diminished with its bitterness. This elixir was the only antidote for the fatal sting of the Fozfly. Thus, there arose at first a murmuring, then public indignation at the efforts of this band of crusaders.

Fearful that their quest be frustrated, our noble champions regrouped and with the help of a government grant formed the Foz Foundation. The members of the Foz Foundation dedicated their research to demonstrating that the sting of the Fozfly, far from being an affliction, was merely an occasion that precipitated a "natural life crisis."

Now, in the Fozian language, nothing categorized as a "natural life crisis" is considered to be a disease. Nor is anything characterized with the term disease also conceived to be a natural life crisis. Since only diseases require medical treatment, the proper Fozian response to a natural life crisis is acceptance and resignation.

Thus as the influence of the Foz Foundation waxed, the need for the recalcitrantly bitter potion waned. In the final stages of enlightenment to which most of Fozian society was educated -- called Fozzy thinking -- there existed in all the land no medicinal preparation that had a bitter taste.

And death by Fozfly -- still rumored by certain barbarians to be avoidable -- came to be accepted as natural and necessary, if still a discontent of Fozian civilization.

To examine these issues further, see School Violence, Punishment, and Justice

Cordially
--- EGR

Are Students a Teacher’s Clients?

2011-12-09T07:26:00.000-05:00

“You are rewarding a teacher poorly if you remain always a pupil.”-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Our advertising-saturated culture invariably slops over into education. Houses are offered for sale as "homes"; amusement parks as "great adventures"; life insurance as "protection."

Some suggest that a student should be thought of as a "client." Perhaps what is at work here is the thought that people who deal with clients are more "professional," more worthy of respect, than those who deal merely with customers, wards, dependents, charges, inmates, or students.

Is reconceptualizing student as client just harmless ego bolstering for the practitioners of our traditionally underprized occupation? I think not. Students are not their teachers' clients. Nor should we aspire to our students' someday achieving such a relationship with us. Client is a term both too pompous and too shallow to characterize the special relationship that under the best of conditions exists between teacher and student.

No teacher gains an increment in prestige by referring to his or her students as clients. That deep commitment to (one might say, "obsession with") students' well-being found in many, many teachers -- a commitment that leads them to spend energy, time, and money far in excess of any compensation they could hope for -- is miserably served by the characterization of the student as "client."

To examine these issues further, see The Student as "Client"

-- EGR

Who Can We Trust to Raise Our Children?

2011-12-08T13:30:00.000-05:00

“A village is a hive of glass, where nothing unobserved can pass” -- Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892)

Does it take a village to raise a child. To be what? Village idiot? Village prostitute? Village drunk? Village ne'er do well? These are not failures of village education but roles integral to certain kinds of community life. Without the fallen, the at-risk, the tempted, those we celebrate as moral leaders would have little to do in a village. Comfortable educators purveying their wares to an increasingly comfortable clientele sentimentalize beyond historical recognition the outcomes of village life. These outcomes were usually not very good for the majority of village dwellers. The motto of village life is not "Thrive" but "Just survive."

Did my village raise its children? Yes, in some sense. Any adult felt free to tell a child what to do. Children were expected to obey. When an adult told me to hand over my mother's grocery money to him for safe-keeping, I, at seven years old, was not considered at fault for obeying. The presence of the thief was the neighborhood scandal. He was an outsider; he had to be. Only outsiders did really bad things in our neighborhood. What our neighbors did, e.g., bloodying their wives' noses, breaking their child's arm, wasn't really bad. For “our own kind,” the quality of mercy could not be strained.

To examine these issues further, see School and Family: A Partnership for Educational Success?

Cordially
-- EGR

Mentors for New Teachers: just another fad?

2011-12-07T21:17:00.000-05:00

Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction. -- John Crosby

Mentoring -- one might think -- is just the most wonderful thing to come along in education for ... centuries, almost. Everybody seems to be talking about it; why, you can tell how successful it's going to be because just about every other educational conference you see advertised has loads and loads of presentations on mentoring. Or used to. Who knows? Perhaps it will even achieve the stunning success enjoyed by such innovations as open classrooms, or programmed learning!

Student teaching, we know, has long attempted to provide mentors for the fledgling educator by pairing him or her up with an experienced teacher. But the reality is often that each school principal picks the sponsoring teacher for reasons other than any concern to help the student teacher.

The colleges, generally competing with each other for scarce placements, have little control over how their students are placed or what is done with them should they be lucky enough to secure a placement.

To examine these issues further, see Mentoring: Are We Serious?

-- EGR

Providing Services for Children in Special Education: what should they be?

2011-12-06T10:29:00.000-05:00

Handicapped kids and those who care for them have pretty consistently ended up losers in the public schools. Neglect didn’t work. Special education didn’t work, either. Will our efforts to fully include special children in regular classes do any better, given our insatiable desire to raise achievement and measure it by test scores?

Working with less-fortunate kids in academic classes might help the “included” kids a bit, and it will undoubtedly make the “including” kids better people. But let’s also admit that it will take time away from kids’ test preparation, and we all know damn well what really counts.

Teachers all know what suffering we create when we neglect the needy. But we should also consider the grief that follows when overzealous service is provided. Maybe it’s time to explore alternatives when public providers are not satisfactory, for example, private, even religion-based experts, more aggressively ...but with more care than enthusiasm.

To examine these issues further, see Special Education: misgivings and reconsiderations

-- WAC

Schooling: from the trifling to the trivial

2011-12-05T10:24:00.000-05:00

It is one of the maladies of our age to profess a frenzied allegiance to truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where graver issues are at stake. -- Janos Arany

C'mon, let's be honest. How many taxpayers really care whether no child is left behind in the quest for the intersection of east- and westbound trains? How many administrators really care what percentage of your students understand the deep significance of Brother Lawrence's character in Romeo and Juliet? How many presidential candidates really care whether the kids from the hood or the barrio or the trailer park can list the steps in meiosis?

Education, alas, is of interest only to the educated, and in Georgia, that limits our constituency (and in your state too, in case you hadn't noticed) — but everybody is interested in success, and the first step in achieving success is avoiding failure. And since NCLB, all schools are obsessed with avoiding failure.

For many years I've told my teacher education students that the primary letters in teaching are not A, B, and C, but C,Y, and A. That has never been more true. Avoiding unfavorable publicity and unpleasant litigation is the principal worry of every principal, and a smart principal will make sure you are correspondingly principled.

We all want our statistics and portfolios and accreditation reports to be flattering, or at least not shameful. That in itself is human, but nowadays, I hear about little else, and that is anything but humane.

To examine these issues further, see The Public School's Sorest Need: ToTransfigure the Trivial

-- WAC

Curriculum for the Soul

2011-12-04T15:12:00.000-05:00

A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society. -- Joseph Ratzinger

There are areas in which public schools cannot do well but public school teachers succeed, and dealing wisely with the soul of a child is probably one of them. Be patient here, please: I am aware of and endorse the constitutional restraints on religion in public schools. I share with my separationist friends a distrust of religious activity by the state and many doubts about government’s ability to deal adequately with issues of faith and morals.

But we should remember that not only do the courts forbid any action by government schools not prompted by a “secular primary purpose” or which would “principally and primarily” aid religion; they also forbid any that would inhibit it, and they further require that these conundrums be resolved without creating “excessive entanglement” of government and religion. Much of religious parents’ dissatisfaction with public education undoubtedly arises from concern about the possible negative impact of public schooling on their children’s faith and morals.

Teachers may want to reconsider practices that could inhibit the development of faith in their children, and consider practices of general application that would accommodate grace without overstepping the bounds of law.

To examine these issues further, see Jacob’s Children and Ours: Richard of St. Victor’s Curriculum for the Soul

-- WAC

Should Schools be Clone Factories?

2011-12-03T10:30:00.000-05:00

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. -- James Madison

Many of us seem to long for the deep excitement, the sense of mission, the pervasive invigoration that was provided by the Cold War. Lacking the imminent threat of "mass participation in that Grand Incineration" that gave such cogency to our duck-and-cover drills, we miss the struggle against a world Communism that gave so much meaning to life and so much federal funding to U. S. industry and education.

So we dig up Frankenstein, Body Snatchers, and the Manchurian Candidate! We worry about WMD’s, terrorists, polygamists, militias, and other harbingers of the apocalypse. And we fuss and fret about cloning. We express apprehension, vexation, or reservation about the possibility of creating genetic duplicates of humans.

In reality, we have been cloning, or at least, trying to clone, educated minds for millennia. What do religious leaders want? Doctrinal clones. What do political leaders want? Political clones. What do ethnic leaders want? Ethnic clones. What do parents want? Clones of themselves.

To examine these issues further, see Cloning Student Voice

Cordially,
-- EGR

The Liberal Arts: House of Intellect or of Questionable-Repute?

2011-11-28T16:44:00.000-05:00

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.-- Socrates

It’s been some 2500 years since Socrates persuaded the denizens of the Academy to accept one of the world’s grandest absurdities: the belief that successful practitioners, in general, do not “really know” what they are doing. This cooks down today to the common academic prejudices that

a. practice, hands on experience, or apprenticeship, is an inferior approach to learning; and
b. seat time in a lecture hall provides a superior education; and
c. the glibbest person on a topic is likely the most knowledgeable, and consequently, the most authoritative.

To “know something” – according to Socrates -- is to be able to articulate it or demonstrate it in the manner of a geometrical proof. Contrary to popular belief, Socrates was not engaged so much – if at all -- in reflective critical thinking as in cultural warfare. Most important for us today, Socrates and followers provided a criterion of membership in what in modern times would be called the Intelligentsia.

A second tragedy was Socrates’ influence on religion, via Plato and then Aristotle. “Rational” theology was invented. Statements of belief were formulated and could now become became a matter of life and death. “Creeds” had to be memorized and recited for admission to one or another competing congregation of true believers. Acquaintance with theology defined a religious Intelligentsia as opposed to the merely pious plebians.

How many millions of people have been sacrificed on the altars of the Intelligentsia, both religious and secular? Lenin, for example, considered himself, as well as Marx and Engels, members of the bourgeois intelligentsia, destined to lead a generally "falsely conscious" working class into revolution. Like Stalin, Hitler suffered through a fairly standard religious education as a child, but each man pursued his own phantasm of doctrinal purity: economic vs racial.

ACTA, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, has resolved in 2011 to ensure that college graduates

“… have the skills and knowledge they need in math, science, American history, and economics.”

Why these subject areas? Behold the Non Sequitur!

“Students can’t think critically, and succeed professionally, if they don’t have anything to think about.”

Is there a logical connection here? Is this really a concern for critical thought; or, a sales pitch for a particular type of education?

Ought we to believe that if people can’t get a college cafeteria meal, they’ll likely starve to death? If they don’t work out in a college gym, their muscles will likely atrophy? If they don’t learn to sing Gaudeamus Igitur they, growling, will likely devolve into feral animals?

To examine these issues further, (See more at Moral Education: Indoctrination vs. Cognitive Development?

Cordially
--- EGR

Switching Sides -- and taking others along

2011-11-26T18:19:00.000-05:00

You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
-- Johnny Mercer & Harold Arlen (1944)

You’ve been pushing a proposal, but now you’ve reconsidered.

Your priorities have changed. What you thought were benefits turned out to have unacceptable, previously hidden or underestimated costs.

What you thought were unacceptable costs, now seem to be not too bad, after all.

Time to reverse yourself, but not look scatterbrained or hypocritical in the process.

How to do this? Just consider: what someone may call “tact,” another will call “lying.” Same thing, just two ways of looking at it. It's a matter of value priorities. Characterizing an action "tact," prioritizes concern for other peoples' feelings over truth-telling. Calling it "lying," gives higher priority to truth-telling than to concern for peoples' feelings.

Consider another example: what some people may say is “plain truth” or “forthrightness,” others will call “insensitivity” or even “cruelty.” Again, it's a matter of value priorities: openness vs. not upsetting people.

To promote a change of course, you will have to reorder value priorities. You’ll need to know how to commend the values you now avoid even if previously you disparaged them. You’ll need to know how to disparage the things you now want to avoid even if previously you commended them. If you can handle these inversions skillfully, switching sides should be no problem.

But think it through first. Reversing yourself too frequently undercuts your credibility.

For references and to learn how this reversal process works, see see Mechanisms for Policy Reversal

Cordially
--- EGR

Getting Clear on Outcomes : a preliminary to project planning

2011-11-24T16:55:00.000-05:00

There are many examples ... of situations in which disparate groups of politicians and the constituents they represent have joined together in common cause but consensus has represented nothing more than a superficial commitment to a simple slogan. -- Susskind & Cruikshank, Breaking the Impasse, 1987, p.63-64

Suppose we were considering funding a project to improve student scores in mathematics. Suppose it is shown that Johnny Jones has failed a math test. Is Mr. Smith his teacher to blame because he is a bad teacher? Or is Johnny a lackadaisical student? Or was Johnny sick when he took the test? Or something else?

From the meager information that Johnny failed a test, we cannot make a fair judgment. Johnny’s failure might be accounted for by any of the suggested explanations. How could we add information to the skeletal description, "Johnny Jones failed a math test," to make a decision as to what really happened? What information would be critical? What would be non-informative? What our project aims at will depend upon it.

People often jump into planning a project without carefully specifying what outcomes they are looking for. This avoidance is done sometimes because they feel that the commitment to the project is weak and they don’t want to provoke objections. A risky choice! They may finesse agreement in the initial stages of the project only to have crucial support pulled out after vast expenditures of resources. Such has happened, for example, throughout the history of school reform movements in the United States.

Another reason they may avoid careful specification of outcomes is that they think such procedures are a “mere matter of semantics,” a dispensible impediment to “action-oriented” people like themselves to getting things accomplished. This is delusion. It treats superficial consent to vague terms as though it were deep commitment.

If you consider how many things incite calls to action which are later abandoned because hidden disagreements arise to sap them of support, you will likely agree that some kind of process is in order that will help avoid misunderstandings at a basic level. The alternative is to go ahead blindly and hope for the best. From experience we know that the likely result is a vast waste of time, money and effort.

The process we suggest is called case comparison and analysis. In using it we bring up realistic examples for consideration. We note differences and similarities. We decide which cases we, individually, can agree on most clearly represent the critical terms contained in our goal statement. Then we try to spell out what the defining characteristics are for those terms.

Examples of cases for analysis can be found via the following links:

Model Cases: Effective, Moral or Worthy Teaching
Model Cases: Justice, Expedience, Favoritism
Model Cases: Punishment, Cruelty, Infliction

Take a look at the cases involved. You will see that they are very similar. Yet a minor difference in description may involve a major change in how we classify them.

For references and to examine these issues further, see Defeating or Supporting a Case Characterization

Cordially
--- EGR

Critical Thinking: weapon, or tool for self-development?

2011-11-23T17:03:00.001-05:00

"He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever." - Chinese Proverb

One of the most persistent suggestions for curing what ails American education at all levels is to help students develop "critical thinking." Everywhere, you find people complaining that college graduates don't know how to think critically. Neither do younger students.

But why is critical thinking often praised but seldom implemented in the schools? There are four important reasons. This first is that, in casual conversation, “critical” implies nasty, often disrespectful, mocking evaluation and complaint. Parents don't want to have their kids coming home even better equipped to do what many are already too inclined to. And they certainly don’t want it applied to what they, as adults, esteem.

Secondly, critical thinking is conceived of, by many people, as little more than a weapon. Parents only want weapons pointed at the things and people they disapprove of. Many would sooner trust their kids with firearms. You can’t destroy Faith with a bullet; but you can sure weaken it with critical reflection. So it is that critical thinking is shunned if it focusses back on one’s families’ own beliefs and values.

The third reason why it is not taught is that it is not sufficiently emphasized that, in order to avoid indoctrination, all reasoning in critical thinking classes, is hypothetical. It examines what connections among thoughts might exist. It need not take the additional step of advocating action. People outside of schools tend to be, or pretend to be, action oriented. To think something is to act on it. Teachers -- indeed instructors at all levels of education -- often overstep the boundary here and try to surreptitiously press students to act, rather than let those students reflect on whether they have good, personal grounds for action.

But messages here are mixed. Parents, and social leaders, want teachers to get their students to act in ways those higher-ups approve of. The incessant worry about values education reflects this. But teachers who get kids to act, no matter how morally and rationally, in ways their superiors find discomforting, are liable to criticism, even dismissal.

The forth and final reason is that critical thinking instruction is seldom thought of by non-educators as teaching how to "get down to facts" or "uncover basic values.” Assuring that indoctrination will be avoided, critical thinking skills could be seen as even more important when applied to things we value. For example, most people when they want to sell their house, overprice it and try to show it to prospective buyers full of the memorabilia that makes it a home for them, the present owners. They don’t see the faults and don’t consider that piles of books, souvenirs and pillows they personally find comforting and homey, are likely to be just junk in the eyes of a prospective buyer.

Suppose you, the seller, were buying a house. What would you be concerned about? The age of the roof? A wet basement? Termite or mold damage? Make a list of questions. Now ask yourself what the answers might be for this beloved domicile, this home you are putting up for … sacrifice, er… sale? Don’t make excuses or cover-ups. An astute buyer wouldn’t. Use critical thinking methods to guide your actions. If you won’t, a good real estate agent will.

The practice of systemizing and standardizing questioning has long been followed in many occupations, especially, the law. Sets of broad, standardized questions are called “Interrogatories.” Many kinds of legal activity, for example, require that interrogatories be completed, before time is spent by specialists in judicial proceedings.

Here is a hypothetical example for educators: suppose we were considering whether to incorporate computer literacy into a class on printmaking. Important questions in developing an interrogatory might be:

1. Is there a consensus among specialists in both printmaking (and computer literacy) as to what pertinent knowledge computer literacy offers?
2. Do the students already have that knowledge?
3. If they already "know" computer literacy, in some sense, is it in a form they can use?
4. Will computer literacy enhance their skills as practitioners in printmaking ?
5. Will computer literacy enhance their performance in those many activities that support printmaking as an enterprise, e.g. academically or vocationally?

Notice that merely to answer these questions does not automatically commit you to the change, or even, to resisting the change.
(For more on this see Evaluating Proposed Program Expansion)

A useful, non-formal approach to critical thinking is to get familiar with formulating and using interrogatories. For example of interrogatories and their applications, see Developing Interrogatories to Aid Analysis,  Problem-Solving and Conflict Resolution

Cordially
--- EGR

Lecture: an overused pedagogical tool?

2011-11-18T18:55:00.000-05:00

Any subject can be made interesting, and therefore any subject can be made boring. -- Hilaire Belloc

Why do teachers at all levels lecture so much? First of all, lecture is a cheap "delivery method." Class size can be maximized once lecturer-student interaction is dispensed with. Lecture is not, however, an effective means of developing and tracking knowledge or skills in a great many people.

Second, lecture is the easiest technique for the teacher to develop a modicum of skill at. It requires minimal preparation. (A fast talker can "wing it" from time to time apparently undetected by his audience.)

Third, and not the least important, the emphasis on lecture obscures the common perception that pedagogical skill is inversely related to level taught; that is, elementary and middle school teachers tend to be better at pedagogy than high school teachers and college professors. (Many universities go through an elaborate ritual of denial by bestowing MacArthur awards for teaching on – usually, assistant -- professors whom they later reject for tenure.)

To examine these issues further, see “ ‘The Mind's Eye’ and Pedagogical Practice”

-- EGR

Tolerate Everything, Stand For Nothing: the practical limits of tolerance

2011-11-15T22:18:00.000-05:00

In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.-- Dalai Lama

The biggest difference was that I found between the native-born and immigrant (or refugee) children I taught for almost twenty years was the fact that the native-born kids could talk up a storm about tolerance and the "right" of people to be different. The immigrant children tended not to express such views. Not that anyone practiced them with any regularity

That Americans profess both to celebrate their own individual ethnicity and tolerate others at the same time strikes many foreigners as schizophrenic, but uniquely American. "But then," one Greek visitor remarked to me, "you are all really Americans, even if you kid yourselves that you are different." He suggested that the truest celebration of ethnic difference was to be found among the Bosnians and the Serbs, at the time busily trying to ethnically cleanse each other from the map.

The pursuit in our public schools of "multiculturalism" not only perplexes immigrants who have come here with the full intent of becoming "Americans", it conflicts with the traditional mission of the schools to promote a democratic society!

To examine these issues further, see Immigrants in the New America:  Is it time to heat up the melting pot?

-- EGR

Schools Can Be Just Too Big

2011-11-14T08:21:00.000-05:00

The dinosaur's eloquent lesson is that if some bigness is good, an overabundance of bigness is not necessarily better. -- Eric Johnston

In the 1930's there were about 127,000 school districts. By the late 1980's they had been consolidated into slightly over 15,000 much larger units. Bigger pots, is seems, were thought to make better soup. Do we still think this is true? Is it time for a change?

No doubt some can point to many benefits gained by such consolidation. But who exactly gained those benefits? And who paid the costs?

University students who are prospective teachers want to be told there is no connection between what goes on in a classroom and the organization of the school. After all, why not close their classroom door and shut out the world? Can't they just "raise their expectations"?

Prospective teachers also want to know how to be "effective." That is all. They do not want to hear that important factors are not under their control, unless, with equal though contrary confusion, they give up the struggle, citing them as insurmountable.

Would-be teachers tend not to believe that school consolidation can have much effect on what they do. Much more important, they imagine, is their personal verve and dedication. This "Man of La Mancha-complex" often persists well into their careers. Being true to their glorious quest, their hearts, perhaps, will lie peaceful and calm when they're laid to their rest. Fine for them, but what about their students?

To examine these issues further, see Really Want Change? Deconsolidate the Schools!

-- EGR

Free Market Incentives to Educational Monopoly

2011-11-12T15:20:00.000-05:00

All professions are conspiracies against the laity. -- George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906)

Let's consider a metaphor, "Organizations strive for Immortality." Rome’s highly paid and indulged Praetorian Guard, formed in 27 BCE to protect a market of relatively few individuals, e.g. August Caesar, his retinue and family, eventually came to the point of choosing and disposing of emperors. It lasted until the 4th century when it was dissolved by Constantine.

However, in our reality of rocks and humans and clouds, organizations are not the kinds of entitites that can be said, literally, to strive. They are, in law, merely fictional individuals. It is their their leaders, members and supporters who are the real, flesh and blood, coveting, striving, needful and prideful persons.

Because most organizations are rank-based rather than goal-based, they don’t plan for their own demise once their goal is accomplished or no longer viable. The Praetorians did not say on August 19, AD 14, “Too bad. Augustus has died. Let’s hike out to the boonies and go back to being regular, underpaid and overdisciplined soldiers.”

Leaders, particularly, want permanence, continuance of the substantial and psychological rewards of leadership. What the organization was set up to produce, becomes less and less important as leaders participate less and less, operationally, and serve mostly political purposes -- the most important being organizational continuity.

So it is we have corporate-form organizations that outlast their members in the form of churches, industries, armed forces, universities and unions. In the United States we also have systems of public education which mimic corporate form, even though there is no legal recognition of that status. Along with such corporate organizations we have, over a span of time, successions of so-called “leaders,” less expected to be producers than figureheads, whose often dispensible prerogatives of office are paid for at the cost of those who are compelled to support them.

Some people worry that charter schools will eventually do away with public education. This is like worrying that flea markets will wreck Microsoft. Public schools live on because they create markets and pay for its purchases with public funds. So called-reform-leaders who push charter schools are usually those who only want a place at the public funding trough.

Other educational Chickens Little worry that our university system, opening itself up more and more to all comers, is bound for shipwreck. Unlikely, so long as universities control professional credentials that secure high-earning jobs. The credentials market can persist for a long time whether or not anyone believes that a diploma is an indicator of knowledge so long as that diploma is an admission ticket to a well-paying occupation.

For references and to examine these issues further, see LEADERSHIP AS USURPATION:  the Grand Inquisitor Syndrome and Morality in Rank-Based Organizations

Cordially
--- EGR

Is Special Education Fair?

2011-11-08T16:00:00.000-05:00

The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people's children. -- Marian Wright Edelman

Most people try to do what they are aiming for at the minimal cost to their own energies and resources. To expend time and energy pointlessly is thought to be inefficient, certainly no virtue.
Teachers -- though they dislike the simile -- are like battlefield surgeons. They have limited supplies, time, and energy, and demands greater than they can handle. Thus, if they want to be efficient, they divide their potential patients into three groups:

1) the Gifted: those they can neglect because they will get well (learn) anyway -- they don't need it, whereas others do;

2) the Subnormal: those they should neglect because all (or an unfair proportion) of their resources will not help anyway, the resources available are insufficient to help them and would be wasted;

3) the Normal: the group that will show maximum improvement (learning) for the resources used. Allotting resources to this group optimizes their effect.    

This is called triage in medicine. In education it is called teaching to the middle. A common Principle of Equity, Fair Share, requires that no one receive more of a scarce resource than any other -- all things being equal.

Special education identifies both the Gifted and the Subnormal as Special Students, exempting them not only from the particular rules that support triage, but also from the Fair Share principle. This invariably shortchanges the normal student.

Should we give up on efficiency? When resources are scarce, which kids should we deprive?

To examine these issues further, see, The Ethics of Educational Triage

Cordially

--- EGR

Selling Off Your Freedom: what would be your price?

2011-11-06T07:25:00.000-05:00

Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
And nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free
-- K. Kristofferson, F.L. Foster

Do you want to have a say in what happens to you and yours? Do you want to be able to protect and promote the things you value? What’s it worth to you?

Would you be willing to join the 1/7 of mankind that goes to bed hungry every night, that watches their children’s bellies swell up with Kwashiorkor, and their limbs wither away with their hopes? Or join the even greater number who lack medical services, a roof over their heads and reliable water and electricity?

Would you be willing to worry about pollution, tsunamis, recession, immigration, food and water scarcity and so on; or, would you be willing to have someone else worry about it if you can be left in peace?

How about if I offered you a steady income large enough to afford some minor luxury, health services for you and your children, and a comfortable pension? Suppose I told you that you might be asked to render a service at some point, but its likelihood would be of low probability. In addition, only a small number of those called would be exposed to any kind of risk. Would you be willing to leave governance to people who made you such an offer? How many people like you, would you estimate, would be ready to accept the deal?

But there’s always a catch. Here it is: Who can you trust to make such an offer and keep their part of the bargain? The world is filled with would-be tyrants, false prophets and charlatans. How would you know what they were? How could tell them apart from the many well-meaning but merely less than competent people you meet or see in the media?

It is worth your bother even to think of all this? How did your education prepare you, and how does the education your children are now receiving prepare them to be involved and act intelligently in dealing with the real problems of living in a vast, multicultural society?

For references and to examine these issues further, see Personal Liberation Through Education

Cordially
--- EGR

Will That Dog Bite? Will That Applicant Be an Effective Teacher?

2011-11-04T11:00:00.000-04:00

The proof is in the pudding. -- Proverb

A recent (2009) article asks, in its title, an intriguing question: Can You Recognize an Effective Teacher When You Recruit One?. The authors propose testing potential teacher recruits for two factors: “cognitive skills” and “non-cognitive skills.” On the basis of their tests they claim they can predict likely future student academic achievement, thereby reducing or sparing school districts the costs of probationary appointments.

When I applied for the Peace Corps in 1964, I and the other applicants were subjected to two kinds of tests: one for cognitive skills; another, for non-cognitive skills. Those of us who “passed” them nonetheless participated in programs with various outcomes: some successful and some not. I have never run across any indication that program successes or failures showed any correlation with Peace Corp Volunteer scores on either test.

What seems to be going on here with this “predictive testing” is an example of what some psychologists call the Fundamental Attribution Error -- ignoring contextual and environmental factors by locating all causality, all responsibility, in the individual person.

The tests mentioned in the article will likely be very popular with school boards and parents because they basically wipe the slate clean when it comes to asking what influence, and what responsibility, these groups have for student achievement.

For references and to examine these issues further, see Increasing Teaching Efficiency:  the evaluation of method

Cordially
--- EGR

Can Science Improve Moral Education, Too?

2011-10-29T09:00:00.000-04:00

When religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic."  -- Thomas Szasz

Science has helped us improve many aspects of life: agriculture, medicine, travel, construction, manufacture, longevity and health. Generally, where scientific method has been brought to bear successfully in these arenas, there is little controversy as to the desirability of the results.

So why doesn’t Science step in and find out how best to morally educate people? Traditional moralists and promoters of religion don’t seem to agree very much on what should be done. And even when they agree they don’t seem to succeed very much with the people they work on.

Some scientists propose that what enhances natural human capacities also enhances their morality; and, apparently, their happiness, too. People who run, dance, play, reason, love, sing, read, consider, paint, cook, swim and compare better are happier than those who can’t. They also tend to be more ethical, or so it is believed. Science can investigate what produces these enhancements and help produce them more reliably.

What but what else makes people happy? Sex & Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll. If you judge what makes people happy, not so much by what they say, but by what motivates them to pursue it, then happiness is, for many, sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

Some stodgy old moralists -- I suppose I am one – would point out that what makes people happy may not be good, for them or for others, or just not good, period. Certainly we can enhance an individual’s indifference to the suffering of others, his ability to inflict pain without remorse, his hatred for folks different from himself both by methods that have been known for eons and have also been enhanced by the scientific study of torture and propaganda. This individual might be happier for being crueler, more sadistic and prejudiced. Has his morality improved?

Perhaps educators, fixating on either Religion or Science for answers to moral education's conundrums have been looking too hard, but not very well, in all the wrong places.

To examine these issues further, see Moral Education: Indoctrination vs. Cognitive Development?

Cordially
--- EGR

Higher Academic Education: a Road to Servitude?

2011-10-28T14:18:00.000-04:00

The Labourer and Artisan, notwithstanding they are Servants to their Masters, are quit by doing what they are bid.

But the Tyrant sees those that are about him, begging ... for his Favour; and they must not only do what he commands, but they must think as he would have them [think] … It is not sufficient to obey him, they must also please him, they must harass, [and] torment themselves in his Service.

Is this to live happily? Does it indeed deserve the Name of Life?

– E. De La Boetie, A Discourse on Voluntary Servitude

Technical and Skills Education, known also as Vocational Education, has long been a dumping ground for students whose benighted teachers and school counselors have thought them to be “not suited” for higher “academic” studies, when, in many cases, what they lacked was maturity, docility, or refined manners.

They great irony of this 21st Century is that along with an ever increasing ardor for college life, high school graduates do not, in increasing numbers, come to the university with what many consider the requisite level of preparation to succeed at their studies.

Parents and students have been oversold on the idea that finishing college with a high G.P.A. is automatically the road to a good life, a future in the Seat of Command and Respect. But unless students acquire needed economic skills along the way, the likelihood is that they will end up, at best, in a large organizational environment, perhaps, even with a comfortable salary. And they will spend their lives “playing office politics,” catering to the whims of higher-ups, rather than producing desired goods or services. (Think of the cartoon, Dilbert -- it is not, by any means, based on pure imagination!)

This is what has happened in public education where politicians, courts and other distantly situated Masters endeavor to remove the last vestiges of professional decision-making from those most closely connected to schoolkids.

To examine these issues further, see "Tracking" in Public Education: preparation for the world of work?

Cordially
--- EGR

Can Teachers Be Educational Leaders?

2011-10-27T18:30:00.000-04:00

“Leadership is an opportunity to serve. It is not a trumpet call to self-importance.” -- J. Donald Walters

There are no people more obligated and less likely to lead school improvement efforts than teachers. Teachers have to look the kids in the eyes every day — not kids in the abstract, not kids in the third person, not kids in the future tense, but real, live, honest-to-God kids, and that obligates them in ways that theorists, politicians, and innovators may not even understand.

Teacher leadership can happen, and I believe it should happen, but it may require major changes in the way educators do business, and I’m not sure anybody’s really ready for it.

Teaching is a great calling. But somehow, we have managed to turn a first-rate calling into a third-rate job that hundreds of thousands of bright-eyed young people will find unacceptable.

Maybe Socrates and St. Paul were right to begin with: teaching for a living is really a very bad idea. After all, as a vocation — a calling — teaching is incomparable. But as a profession, teaching is marginal, and as a job, in many places it is the pits. Just think of all the ingenious and adventurous things we could do to educate our students if we weren’t dependent on our teaching jobs to feed our own children.

To examine these issues further, see Teacher Leadership: a likelihood?

Cordially

-- WAC

What is Truth? Does It Matter to You?

2011-10-26T09:30:00.000-04:00

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves. -- Buddha

You may have come across this somewhere: the truth shall set you free. How free are you? How free do you want to be?

A history professor once told me that she forbids her students from talking about “truth.” “It’s a pointless chase, a matter of opinion!” she exclaimed.

“Do you have your students do research in order to write a paper?” I asked. “Of course,” she replied. I continued, “If what you say about truth is true (!), then what does it matter? Why can’t they just make it up out of their heads?”

The professor asked that we continue our conversation at another time because she had just remembered an important meeting she had to attend. We never got to discuss it again. That was fifteen years ago. In the time since then, I have talked with many people in the Liberal Arts and Humanities who expressed similar disregard for what they called "a hegemonic conception of truth", invoking a condition called post-modernism, in which our society is putatively now existing.

Recently, much concern has been expressed about the withering of the Liberal Arts and Humanities at many universities, and warnings abound about the "corporatization" of the Academy. But what attraction does a discipline have if it holds out no hope for truth, even in approximation? Very few people treat their studies as some kind of game with which to while away their life and fortunes.

To examine these issues further, see Personal Liberation Through Education

Cordially,
-- EGR

Does Schooling Actually Harm Students?

2011-10-25T14:30:00.000-04:00

Readin' 'n' writin' 'n' 'rithmetick
Taught to the tune of a hick'ry stick
-- Cobbs & Edwards (1907)

We’ve each been told a thousand times: “School is good for you!” Everywhere and always? Have you lost your memory?

Let’s ask a more general question. What disadvantages does the student suffer, when he or she is subject to one kind of curriculum rather than another? For example, one product of emphasizing math (or pick your own most hated subject) is that a large number, if not the majority, of students leave school believing:

a. they don’t like math;
b. they can’t do math well;
c. math is incomprehensible.

This situation is not improved, contrary to current misconception, when schools are pressured with faddish “high stakes” testing.

In the best case, where all curricular "targets" have been hit, we may still wonder what the collateral damage has been. It is not uncommon for academic students to get their diplomas although they are physically feeble or obese; and, for Jocks, especially “stars,” even if they are near illiterates.

The Hippocratic Oath, (partially rendered)

“I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone”

guides, somewhat, the practice of physicians and other medical personnel. But, educators have no Hippocratic oath. In education, blessing one's efforts to change schools with the incantation, "reform," seems to ward off collateral damage. Certainly, "reform" can never hurt.

To examine this issue further, see Pursuing Educational Targets:  What is the Collateral Damage?

Cordially,

-- EGR

Mistyping People: placement test error and worse

2011-10-24T08:30:00.000-04:00

No placement test -- a test which places subjects in a category -- is 100% accurate. It will generate a number of "false positives," persons who don’t meet the specs, but nonetheless test positive. False positives will be practically indistinguishable from true positives.

Can we trust such tests? For example, suppose a student has been test-identified as a drug user, how likely is it that that student is truly a user? Or, if a placement test indicates that a student is ready for instruction at a third grade, is that student really ready to begin at that starting point? Do tests purporting to show that students have learned beginning calculus actually let some through who really need to learn more?

Our normal admission processes to public school are haphazard, usually nothing more than checking the child’s age. This process will allow in quite a few "false positives;" that is, students who at the point of admission appear no less capable -- they walk, they talk, they can fog a mirror -- than the students who possess the skills to succeed at that level. And a flood of incompetence commences.

Progressing upward from grade to grade in this manner generates the flood of inept "false positives" which now fills our colleges -- as suggested by the epidemic dimensions of cheating and plagiarism throughout high school and well beyond.

To examine these issues further, see Classification Error in Evaluation Practice:  the impact of the "false positive" on educational practice and policy

Cordially,
-- EGR

Celebrate Diversity! How do we do that?

2011-10-21T13:47:00.000-04:00

Education, particularly public education, is such an exhausting undertaking that often we find educators distracting themselves from substantial problems, such as low grades, student absence, funding programs, maintaining buildings, or replacing classroom equipment, by an obsessive focus on vaguely formulated questions:

Should schools celebrate diversity? (Never mind what this question boils down to in practical terms: we need entertainment.)

Should schools prepare children for the mainstream? (Again, don't bother us with critical analyses - we need simplicity.)

Formulated as a controversy, the question makes the distraction from bottom-line hard issues even more “recreational”: should the schools celebrate diversity or prepare students for the mainstream? Instead of evaluating costs and benefits, assessing risks and dealing with a reality of shades of gray in which today's allies may be tomorrow's adversaries, we want black-and-white - or at least starkly multicolored - choices.

To examine this issue further, see Celebrating Diversity vs. Preparing for the Mainstream: a Pseudo-Controversy?

Cordially
EGR

The Ideal School: What should it be like?

2011-10-20T21:08:00.000-04:00

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
-- Abraham Lincoln

In the United States people have been disagreeing for over 150 years what public schools should be, what they should teach, and how they should teach it. These controversies have persisted in the face of concerted effort by intelligent people to address them. People disagree as to what public schools should be because they have different expectations of them.

These expectations can be understood in terms of people's having three different images of the school, the Temple, the Factory and the Town Meeting. Conflicting images generate conflicting expectations. They imply different costs and benefits. These conflicting expectations maintain school controversies.

-- EGR
For more on this and a link to a survey with which you can evaluate your own expectations, see School Image: Expectations & Controversies.

Want Effective Teachers? Serving Whose Purposes?

2011-10-19T17:40:00.000-04:00

That’s the secret to politics: trying to control a segment of people without those people recognizing that you’re trying to control them. -- Scott Reed, Republican Strategist and Lobbyist (NYT mag. 10-16-11, 47)

In the United States of America, a country where, repeatedly in public ceremonies, much is made of its being a democracy, the idea of “controlling” people is taboo, not to be spoken of, an elephant in the room.

Rather, we are taught to think that educated, informed citizens, consulting their consciences, freely and rationally choose to vote for the leadership of those people who, in fact, support the values of the voters. This is the professed political ideal.

This ideal helps us understand why a lot of concern is expressed over what is taught in schools, particularly in public schools. But is that concern because people fear that teaching is not up to producing ideal citizens? Or is it, rather, because many people, “important” opinion influencers, feel that the ideal rational citizen of a democracy would be a threat to their interests, political, social and economic?

For references and to examine these issues further, see The Classroom Teacher: Who Wants Experts?

Cordially
--- EGR

Interventionism: helping, interfering or just being useless?

2011-10-18T10:53:00.000-04:00

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. -- Thomas Jefferson

A little power, like a little knowledge, can be a dangerous thing. Some people think of power as though it were a muscle: Use it or lose it. So they easily give into the temptation to “intervene” into other’s affairs.

But intervention can easily be seen as “interference” by those who gain nothing from it. Those who welcome the intervention and the advantages it brings will call it “help.” Easily overlooked is the likelihood that the intervention will not have any effect besides producing headlines in newspapers, or hours of comment by media pundits.

The fact that an intervention may be well intended does not prevent it from turning out to be a long-term disaster. The wars in Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan were all initiated though interventions based on presumably honorable intentions. Notably, the costs of these interventions were not borne, in the largest measure, by their initiators.

Educational reform in the United States has been a continuing focus for delusional intervention through more than a century of U.S. history. Why delusional? Because the basic logic of intelligent intervention was ignored or replaced by wishful thinking.

What is this basic logic? It consists of three things. Do not intervene unless…

1. (cue) … you have accurately determined whether the situation that prompts you is, in fact, what you think it is. (Misperceptions and false starts abound.)

2. (concern) … the situation prompting your intervention will, in your best judgment, negatively affect your (whose?) interests. (Is it your “business”; is it worthwhile?)

3. (control) … your actions (or strategic inactions) will generate effects that influence sufficiently lasting changes in the situation. (Will things revert back to the way they were before intervention?)

I worked for many years in a school system with a “zero-tolerance policy” on fighting: students, otherwise peaceable, who offered resistance against the physical assault of bullies were suspended along with their attackers. One particular student, a quiet sort, was admonished by the principal, “Johnny, you’re such a good student; but, you keep on getting suspended for fighting back. I’ve told you time and time again that whenever someone assaults you, to are to come tell me about it.”

Johnny replied, “What’d you do before that has ever stopped ‘em botherin’ me? You gonna walk me home or to school? How’m I supposed ta live in my neighborhood, if I get a rep(utation) for running to a teacher every time I’m in trouble?”

The principal responded with a not untypical intervention: Johnny was sent away to a disciplinary school for being “highly insubordinate.”

“They .. make a desert, and they call it peace” -- Tacitus (AD 56 – AD 117)

For references and to examine these issues in detail, see Rationales for Intervention: From Test to Treatment to Policy

Cordially
--- EGR

Grades: an Illusion of Value?

2011-10-17T09:25:00.000-04:00

Princeton University students are upset. Their alma mater has decided to fight back against grade inflation by putting a cap on the number of A’s students can be given. But students feel they are being deprived of what they are entitled to. (New York Times Metropolitan Section, Sunday, January 31, 2010)

In many disciplines academic grades have little significance because professors in those fields cannot themselves agree on what standards should be. How much knowledge a student has acquired may play only a small part in the process of chasing a grade. No small factor is how the student capitulates in the face of faculty demands for deference. In many institutions of “higher learning” it is not reasoned argument and factual knowledge that wins the grade, but rather, -- to bypass more obvious, vulgar expressions – obsequiousness.

Students have learned to expect a certain quid pro quo: they will give rambling, incoherent college teachers good reviews on the grounds they are “nice people.” In return the students expect to be rewarded with A’s and B’s despite their ignorance and low levels of production, for having been “enthusiastic.”

If they care at all, prospective employers may use an applicant’s academic grades as an inexpensive selection method. Using grades to screen new employees helps those making hiring decisions cover their "assets." No one gets criticized for hiring a bad employee if that employee came in with a sterling transcript! And transcript review is a lot cheaper than an apprenticeship.

To examine these issues further, see The Teacher as Technician: Will Technology Improve Schooling?

Cordially
EGR

Forget Vision, Forget Mission: the Devil is in the Details!

2011-10-16T10:25:00.000-04:00

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. -- Thomas Jefferson

A basic tendency of organizations is to fulfill the rule: “The Organization Comes First! Long Live the Organization!”

A second basic tendency within organizations is to fulfill the rule: “The Leadership Comes First! Long Live the Leadership!”

There is no organization so dedicated to benevolent goals, so committed to sacred purposes that it cannot be corrupted from within by the very persons trusted to keep it, day-to-day, on the paths of righteousness.

The leaders of the great institutions that strongly influence our lives, School, State and Church, instead of pursuing Nurturance, Openness and Truth, can hide behind their organizations’ noble façade to pursue Hugger-Mugger, Skull-Duggery, and Buggery.

There are those dedicated people within the organization who recognize these bitter truths and struggle against them. The great remainder of others, the naïve, wishful faithful, if not cannoneers, are just cannon-fodder.

To find out how these tendencies work in public education, see The Evils of Public Schools

Cordially
--- EGR

Blocking School Reform: “scientific” metaphors

2011-10-15T04:15:00.000-04:00

...a faith in our capacity for limitless self-improvement (is) just as much a wide-eyed superstition as a faith in leprechauns.”
― Terry Eagleton

In the American public school tradition, teaching is primarily a performance art that depends on the teacher’s skill at imparting information, skills and attitudes. But, often overlooked, it also depends on the realities of the classroom's group dynamics as well as by many other factors outside the classroom and even, the school.

The misconception among many educators, of course, is that their professional training is mainly scientific. Teacher preparation is chock full of references to treatments, learner characteristics, outcomes and the like. What, in fact, there is of science that informs pedagogy, is more likely than not to be washed out by the fads and political agendas of those who directly control our schools.

Educators are seldom taught to think carefully and analytically about the foundations of their practice and the pressures and rewards of the workplace dissuade them from criticism of the status quo.

To examine these issues further, see Public School Reform: Mired in Metaphor

-Cordially,
- EGR

Destroying Schools to Improve Them: should the NCLB revolution continue?

2011-10-14T17:11:00.000-04:00

"It became necessary to destroy the school to save it." -- updating a quote originally from the war in Vietnam

Suppose someone advocated overthrowing the government solely because poverty, even at a low level, continued to exist over the span of a generation. We might point out to that person that poverty exists at some level almost universally. We might argue that weighed against the progress we have made over the centuries, there was no need to throw the baby out with the bath water. If that person persisted in his advocacy of overthrow we would, at least, disregard him as someone who lacked the wisdom to render intelligent judgment on such matters.

In accord with guidelines set out under No Child Left Behind, Sam Houston High School in Houston Texas was closed down because 110 students out of 2500 persisted in getting low scores on math exams. (See Erika Mellon Houston Chronicle Friday June 6, 2008  "Math scores of a few were the death of Sam Houston" http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5824088.html).

It is not that anyone knows exactly what the problem here is. This is just a knee-jerk response involving the superstition that by firing principals and teachers, students can be made to learn; and, by interrupting the education of the majority, a minority can be brought to succeed. This confuses reprisal with accountability.

See Moral Responsibility in the Education Industry:
how much can school reform enhance a student's occupational fitness?

Cordially,

-- EGR

Teachers Needed: Only Mature, Experienced People Need Apply

2011-10-13T13:58:00.000-04:00

Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.
-- Sidney Hook

Many would-be educational reformers suffer the delusion that they will be able to “turn around” troubled schools by hiring newly post-adolescent, recent college graduates. They will likely be cheaper, but unlikely to be effective.

Change-of-career entrants into teaching are perhaps the best prospect for reform in education. Mature people in their thirties, forties and even fifties, generally with a great deal of organizational experience under their belt are leaving the corporate world, leaving industry, and, having raised children, leaving the household, looking for something "new and different," something "more human," some undertaking that has concerns other than "the almighty dollar."

Undergraduate teacher candidates are commonly unself-possessed, befuddled by pedagogical catchwords, and often all-too-ready to abandon what few ethical precepts they have for the sake of a job. In contrast, these change-of-career entrants come into education with a sharpened critical sensitivity that often leaves them dismayed upon first exposure to the ethical and political morasses not infrequently encountered in education today. That there is a ethical dimension to education need hardly be argued to this experienced group. Inexperienced undergraduates, on the contrary, generally only want to talk about technique.

To examine this issue further, see The Ethical Miseducation of Educators

Cordially,
-- EGR

Multicultural Education: a solution to problems of immigration?

2011-10-12T10:38:00.000-04:00

“This Melting Pot of ours absorbs the second generation over a flame so high that the first is left encrusted on the rim.” -- John Tarkov, American writer

Previously, when American school systems absorbed millions of immigrant children at the early part of the last century, there were only minimal adjustments made to help them along. The result? A vast underclass of non-millionaires, who had to manage day-to-day working at some non-intellectual pursuit, who proudly called themselves Americans, although they could hardly tell a Mayflower from a daisy, or a pate from a fois or a gras. Happily times have changed. Now, we have multicultural education.

Those early immigrants appeared, on the surface, to get along with each other, even intermarrying, but underneath it all, there was dislike, even hatred, as words such a hunkie, polak, spic, etc., demonstrated.

Now we have educators who have been trained to believe that they are capable of various and extensive depth therapies: textbooks tell teachers -- whether or not programs provide training -- they must be prepared to diagnose and handle sexual abuse, Tourette's syndrome, student depression, suicidal impulses, and substantial variations in intelligence, competence and motivation.

Now we have multicultural education. We educators can now expunge those deep hatreds, and make each individual self-actualizing and independent, while at the same time, strengthening ethnic and cultural practices and beliefs.

With our new, revised concept of culture which means ... uh, whatever it means, we will analyze and understand the behavior of students, who even if they look and act normal we know to be different but that's ok 'cause we're all in the salad together. All struggling with each other for the occasional crouton.

To examine this issue further, see Multiculturalism & the Problems of immigration

Cordially,
-- EGR

What Works in Schooling: the “Newfanglers” versus the “Oldfashioned.”

2011-10-11T07:38:00.000-04:00

Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless contraptions and in constructing the useful combinations which are in infinite minority. -- Henri Poincare

After a century or more of fiddling with schools and the kids in them, it should be apparent to anyone who can fog a mirror that there is not even a will-o’-the-wisp of a new method for teaching everyone, everything, everytime, everywhere, as is often “mandated” by federal, state and local school authorities. The “newfanglers” who populate our educational research institutes are much more adept at promoting their careers than student learning.

This is not to say that there is some "good old fashioned" method that works best, either. Time magazine recently featured the dicta of yet another befuddled educator: “what works best is a good teacher with a chalkboard and a class of willing students.”

This is mere rhetoric: it is like saying that health will be achieved by eradicating sickness; or, strength, by overcoming weakness. Such buffoonery is not uncommon in many areas of our public discourse.

Since our Home of the Free and Land of the Brave purports to be democratic, equal “respect” is accorded all opinions, from the least informed, most prejudiced to those most carefully considered. So it is that, to avoid a suspiciously “elitist” complexity, our public discourse, even among the technically skilled, tends towards vacuous hyperbole.

Thus, we Sons and Daughters of Liberty, lacking the means to even identify, much less achieve, ill-advised or unclear school goals, persist in trying to fix schools that either aren't broken, or which can't be fixed.

To follow this train of thought further, see What Works? Under What Conditions? And Who Really Cares?
-- EGR

What Can You Believe? Whom Can You Trust?

2011-10-10T09:23:00.000-04:00

"There's a sucker born every minute" -- a phrase often credited to P. T. Barnum (1810–1891), American showman

Should you believe a person who tells you that the moon landings were faked on a Hollywood production lot? Why or why not?

Can you trust anyone who tells you he talks with the dead? Why or why not?

Honesty and truth are not necessarily connected. Honest people may promote falsehoods, believing them to be true. Dishonest people may, on many an occasion, tell truths -- for various reasons, usually because they have no stake in it. Involved are two different dimensions of judgment, intention vs. facticity.

These are not particularly deep issues; but some careful thought may be needed to sort out those people we can trust or not, from the reliability of the information we get from them.

To continue the discussion, see Can John Edward Talk to the Dead?.

Cordially
-- EGR

Technician, or Magician: Can You Tell the Difference?

2011-10-09T11:03:00.000-04:00

… he used to say, Hocus pocus, tontus talontus, vade celeriter jubeo, a dark composure of words, to blinde the eyes of the beholders, to make his Trick pass the more currently without discovery ... — Thomas Ady, A Candle in the Dark, 1656

If baldness treatments really work then why does a wealthy man like Donald Trump still have problems? If Hollywood spas and diets really work, then why are they visited again and again by pretty much the same movie stars? If prisons help to reduce crime, why is the American prison population the largest in the world and still growing?

If pious declarations of Faith mean anything then

a. why is the Bible Belt plagued by “acts of God” so very much more than the Sin Cities of this country; and
b. why are many of the previously unsuccessful “prophets” of the End Time still pushing their wares?

Why do even “the best” hospitals and universities closely guard data as to their successes and failures? Why does the popularity of our political, economic and psychological pundits contribute directly to the failure of their predictions? (See Philip E. Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment)

What is the difference between a magician (an illusionist) and a technician? It is not, merely, that one wears stage clothes and the other, "scientific" garb, e.g. a stethoscope, a loupe or a sheepskin. The important difference is whether the causes and effects they believe to be at work are, in fact, at work.

People everywhere show a desperate willingness to believe in some kind of causal connection, a hope that somebody, somewhere knows what and how to do something. Many sincere people, possessed by one or another blinding Faith, stumble about in search for answers. But their very Faith often makes it impossible even to carefully examine the “answers” they encounter.

If private and parochial schools are so much better than public schools, why don’t the better students of the former consistently beat out those of the latter? Why are schools, already crammed full of gimcracks and geegaws from a thousand different manufacturers and universities, nonetheless perpetually in “need” of reform?

How many school "reformers" turn out to be little more than illusionists? How much talent, hope and money has been wasted pursuing their illusions?

For references and to examine these issues further, see The Teacher as Technician

Cordially
--- EGR

Why Accreditation Doesn't Work: a policy analysis

2011-10-08T13:00:00.000-04:00

“Without cultural sanction, most or all our ... beliefs and rituals would fall into the domain of mental disturbance.” -- John Schumaker

This Policy Paper from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni gives insight into the all-too-typically wasteful rituals and philosophical orthodoxies imposed on those who blunder into seeking the imprimatur of many an accrediting organization.

You can download it from https://www.goacta.org/publications/downloads/Accreditation2007Final.pdf

-- EGR

Success in College: what might influence it?

2011-10-06T15:52:00.000-04:00

A lot of effort and money has recently been poured into bringing high school students up to some kind of par, “reducing the achievement gap,” as it is called. The point of this undertaking is to get kids into college. But what happens once they’re there? Except at the schools with the highest acceptance standards, the drop-out rate is astounding. What’s to be done about it?

Perhaps the more sensible question might be “Why should we expect anything else, when we consider the non-academic factors that influence college success?"

A 2007 publication by ACT, The Role of Nonacademic Factors in College Readiness and Success* lists three important kinds of non-academic factors:

1. Individual psychosocial factors, such as academic self-discipline, or commitment to school, and self-regulation, for example, emotional control, and academic self-confidence.

2. Family factors, such as attitude toward education, involvement in students’ school activities, and geographic stability

3. Career planning that identifies a good fit between students’ interests and their postsecondary work

Let’s get real here! Only the third item, career planning identifying a “good fit” – if such planning existed and were financially feasible for schools to utilize -- is something schooling could address with any hope of effectiveness.

Shooting at closing the high school achievement gap seems to be really off-target aiming, if eventually producing college graduates is the goal.

To examine these issues further, see The First-Year College Experience: Strategies for Improvement

Cordially
--- EGR

* available at http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/nonacademic_factors.pdf

Preaching Against Violence: Band-Aids on a Dirty Wound?

2011-09-29T09:33:00.000-04:00

We are apt to forget that children watch examples better than they listen to preaching. -- Roy L. Smith, American clergyman

The sincerity and urgency with which a proposal is promoted is no indicator that it will be useful and lasting. Indeed, one may suspect the contrary to be true.

If you’re an educator who has worked for some years, you might remember some items on the following list: teaching machines, 4-MAT, mastery curriculum, Writing Across the Curriculum, Transcesence, Chisenbop, Values Education, Behavioral Objectives, Life Adjustment, Great Books, Competency-Based Learning, Teacher-Proof Curriculum, the Junior High School, Performance Contracting, Industrial Education, Suggestopedia, the Project Method, Computer Literacy, The New Math, The Paideia Proposal, America 2000, or the Open Classroom.

They came and they went, leaving little trace but crippled or wasted school budgets. These items were, in their day, promoted with a zeal and a printed output that required the sacrifice of vast forests to support that literature.

Educational reform has, like a 20-year locust, crawled once again to the surface of the public consciousness. Americans have been “reforming” the public schools cyclically for over a century. The list of “fads” given above is some indicator of the past successes enjoyed.

There is a scene in an Agatha Christie mystery where Hercule Poirot ponders the meaning of the various clues he has gathered when his client thunders impatiently, “Don’t just stand there thinking, do something!”

There’s the rub! Americans, (and Brits, apparently, too) especially those considered to be “leaders,” are so imbued with being “proactive” that they and their supporters imagine that quick action, any random flailing out, will make up for shoddy thinking, misapprehension of the problem, and sloppy communication. Dealing with “violence,” in the schools, in the streets, or among nations, provides more than ample example of these faults.

Ancient wisdom cautions us against charging ahead armed only with good intentions. It also counsels us to moderation, because all actions produce costs as well as benefits.

For references and to examine these issues further, see Doing Violence to "Violence"

Cordially -- EGR

Perplexing Educational Decisions: what you'd like vs what you must

2011-09-24T15:00:00.000-04:00

You can do anything, but not everything. — David Allen

Why aren't the best teachers assigned to teach the worst students?
Why do many schools spend more money on landscaping than on salary increases?
When school budgets are cut, why is it more likely that a music teacher rather than a football coach will lose his job?

The answers to these questions are all cut from the same cloth: it depends on the distinction between what a community can agree that:

a. it would be nice to do; and,

b. what needs to be done.

Like many organizations, schools are run by decision-makers who are very concerned with who pays the costs, and who gets the benefits. And what keeps them, the decision-makers, employed.

For more on this see Mission vs. Function: Limits to Schooling Aspiration
-- EGR

Top School Leadership: fooled or fools?

2011-09-23T15:30:00.000-04:00

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with the important matters.
-- Albert Einstein

Is there any more telling evidence of the failure of American education than the blather promulgated by Harold O. Levy, New York City school chancellor from 2000 to 2002 and trustee of several colleges (New York Times, 6/8/09)?

Every child should attend school until age 19 because, Levy says,

The benefits of an extra year of schooling are beyond question: high school graduates can earn more than dropouts, have better health, more stable lives and a longer life expectancy.

This is a clear confusion, at best, of correlation with cause. Besides, Levy compares kids who might take an extra year of school with dropouts, when the much more important comparison should be between those who graduate with the present limit of 18 years and those who might take an extra year. Why incur the costs of an extra year of school if it makes little difference as to who graduates?

Is this so deep that even a chancellor can’t understand it? Or is another agenda at work here?

To examine these issues further, see Illogic and Dissimulation in School Reform

Cordially
EGR

Must Conflict Be a Negative Process? Sometimes, it’s all for the better.

2011-09-22T16:00:00.000-04:00

Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war. -- William S. Burroughs

Reflective people are often dismayed that the leaders of opposing factions profess the desire for peace, even as they wage war. Union and school board leaders express severe misgivings about closing down the schools as they wrangle themselves, inevitably, it seems, into a strike. To the uninformed eye, this looks like blatant hypocrisy. It is not.

Public expressions of desire are not merely a method of disseminating information. "I sincerely wish to put an end to this conflict" is not meant to inform the public about some leader's state of mind. Rather, it is a move in a negotiation process that may well result in peace. But there is a hidden proviso.

What "I sincerely wish to put an end to this conflict" has to be understood as saying is "I sincerely wish to put an end to this conflict provided that the costs of ending it do not outweigh the benefits of prolonging it." (And all parties generally want to avoid examining who it is that benefits, or who it is that pays the costs for either alternative.)

Wars could be avoided if one side would agree to accept the aggression of the other. School strikes could be avoided if teachers would accept lowered salaries, staff cut-backs, increased class sizes and arbitrary administrative decisions. But wise negotiators understand that every unresisted encroachment on the prerogatives of a group invites additional ones. Conflict cannot long be avoided by capitulation expediently rebaptized as “cooperation.”

To examine this issue further, see The Functions of Conflict in the Context of Schooling

Cordially,

--EGR

Sacrificing the Kids. For What?

2011-09-20T08:30:00.000-04:00

Do not permit any of your children to be offered as a sacrifice to Molech, for you must not bring shame on the name of your God. -- Leviticus 18:21 (New Living Translation ©2007)

There are public elementary school principals who have cut recess out of the schedule so their pupils can spend more time on the things that really give them joy: test preparation and eating kale.

Actually, kids hate both testing and kale. But the adults in their lives, whose convenience governs all, push the kids to it. Why? To enhance National Competitiveness! Or to meet those all important program goals: “Every Child a Scientist!” or “Every Child a Candidate for a Harvard medical degree!” Elementary schoolkids lose recess and high-schoolers are tracked, so that the Children who are Not being Left Behind don’t infect the rest with whatever it is that prevents the NCLB-ers, too, from being a Left Behind. Ambitious parents could hardly be more supportive.

The New York Times of February 24 2009 (D5) reported research supporting the notion that recess is as important for a child’s learning as are test-taking drills. To quote an ancient maxim, “Ipso est, du-uh!” (See also School: It's way more boring than when you were there)

No adult would put up with the boredom and pointlessness – especially if they received no pay for it -- of much of what adults inflict on school kids. When it comes to thinking things through many, many people, adults as well as kids, find themselves in dire straits. In that case, how can you tell the adults from the kids? A simple rule or thumb: inflictor → adult; sufferer →kid; good sense →none.

To examine these issues further, see "Tracking" in Public Education: preparation for the world of work?

Cordially
-- EGR

The Really Important Things That Schools Teach

2011-09-19T11:30:00.000-04:00

After you have been out of school -- say, 20 to 40 years -- when you have pretty much gotten a handle on who and what you are, think back to your early school days and ask what it is that you remember. Unless you are a specialist, it probably won’t be what a tessellation is; or, whose wigwam sat on the shores of Gitcheegoomee; or, how to do synthetic division; or how to fold a crane out of a square of paper.

None of the things so heavily emphasized in standard tests, things used – with panting solemnity to rationalize the random tortures of schooling -- will matter much, if at all.

Other, at the time only superficially appreciated things will turn out to be – in the long run -- of far greater moment.

To examine these issues further, see What We Don't Assess

Cordially

-- GKC (EGR)

Speak English or Else! Keeping the dice loaded.

2011-09-18T17:45:00.000-04:00

Don't know nothin’ ‘bout history.
Forget about biology!
Hardly opened up a science book.
French, I never gave a second look.

You may be a doctor with a fine degree
But If you can’t speak English
Just like me,
You’re nobody I need to see.

Native speakers of English have a huge, unearned social and business advantage over those who come to it later in life. Many do not want to give up that advantage. You may have gone through school learning little, yet have a communication skill, a tone of voice, merely, learned as a child, that gives you an edge in the US over the most educated person who learned English as a second language. To a similarly uneducated American ear, you sound "natural."

No wonder you’re afraid to recognize another language besides American English as official: you’ll lose your undeserved competitive edge in many arenas of life.

To continue this train of thought see Cultural Domination and the Teaching of ESOL

Cordially,
-- EGR

Hey, Teacher! Become an Education Guru!

2011-09-17T07:07:00.000-04:00

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision. -- Robertson Davies

Tired of being blamed for what distracted, lazy, illiterate or undersocialized kids can’t do? Tired of being told you’ve got an easy job with too much time off? Close to being one of the 13% of teachers that quit the field every year? Tired of sitting through pointless “staff development” sessions where some here-today-gone-tomorrow guru shovels it deep and hard with a half-baked panacea for all that ails education?

Take control of your destiny! Fight back! You can’t lick ‘em, so join ‘em! (No, I don’t mean work on becoming an administrator or board member -- that only gets you in deeper.) Write a best seller and become an education guru in your own time!

To avail yourself of this opportunity see Lurpofactsomosis: Reinvigorating American Education

Cordially
--- EGR

Education for a Democratic Society: where does this happen?

2011-09-13T09:00:00.000-04:00

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. -- Winston Churchill

Those things that individuals in a democratic society need to know are just not taught in the public schools; for example, the basics of law, techniques of organizing groups, or basic modern economics. History, which used to be selectively and biasedly taught, is now a multicultural mishmash that emphasizes victimization rather than the overcoming of difficulties. And what negotiation skills kids get are picked up under duress as "conflict resolution."

What about the results? The general public demonstrates its satisfaction with the status quo by resisting change in the content and form of public education. And what are they satisfied with? Check their reading matter: tabloid newspapers that tell us that gorillas have mated with humans, that Presidents have met with extraterrestrials and that space aliens control higher education (on that last point I am tempted to concede some credibility).

We have communities with a concept of public morality which brings them to pass laws increasing punishments for prostitutes -- no doubt, a major social threat -- while licensing gambling establishments in which they can fritter away their own and their children's sustenance. (A typical casino in Atlantic City takes in more money per week than the yearly budget of all but the biggest school districts.)

To examine these issues further, see Education for Democracy:
Is this more than rhetoric?

Cordially
--- EGR

What is School For? Honors or Knowledge?

2011-09-10T20:30:00.000-04:00

Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them. -- Aristotle

Kindergartners “graduating” in caps and gowns to first grade are just so cute! High-schoolers in caps and gowns, too, are “cute” even though they may still be reading on pretty much the same level as the little tykes.

Too many people see the point of schooling to be the collecting of gold stars, trophies, diplomas and the like, irrespective of whether these are indicators of practically useful or self-transforming knowledge acquired and retained.

Parents want their kids to get high grades no matter what; cheating and plagiarism are frequently thought of as just techniques for “getting through.”

A billion-dollar industry exists to help parents place their darlings in the “highest-ranked” colleges; little does it matter what the students will do once they get there.

What does all this cost? What is all this worth?

To examine this issue further, see Educational Assessment:  confusing status with achievement

Cordially,

---EGR

Why are Public Schools Test Crazy?

2011-09-09T09:08:00.000-04:00

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. -- Aristotle

Over the last seventy years, increasing numbers of public school people in the United States have come to tell a story in which they express deeply felt concerns. That story goes something like this:

For some children and not others to have their needs met by the schools is unfair. It is only just that we meet the needs of all children. How do we determine those needs? By comparing what children can do with what they can learn to do. Any discrepancy between achievement and potential is an indicator of need. How do we determine such things as achievement and potential? By adequate testing.

This rationale supports many well-intentioned attempts at upgrading American schools. But it is chock-full of questionable assumptions seldom examined even when repeated tries at improving schooling practice have failed. -- EGR

To see the full story go to Justice Through Testing

Cordially
EGR

Violence, even in school, is not necessarily wrong.

2011-09-07T19:31:00.000-04:00

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. -- George Orwell

There is no firmer evidence that people are morally befuddled than when you have to argue for what should be painfully obvious. To condemn violence as immoral, is like condemning spicy food as inedible.

Most educators will readily and strongly assent to the follow statements:

a. Schools are no place for violence.
b. Violence causes violence
c. Violent acts are morally wrong

.
They react generally as strongly, but negatively to the following:

d. Some violence is acceptable.
e. Schools may permit a certain level of violence.

Despite these initial reactions, it takes not very much discussion to bring them around to understanding that statements a, b and c are generally false; and, that d and e are true.
To get down to the reasons, see Permissible School Violence

Cordially,
-- EGR

New Teacher’s Troubles? Old Teacher’s Memories

2011-09-06T06:38:00.000-04:00

This too shall pass -- Abū Hamīd bin Abū Bakr Ibrāhīm (1145-1146 - c. 1221; Persian: ابو حمید ابن ابوبکر ابراهیم)

So, you’ve been on the job less than a year or two and it’s not as entertaining as you thought it would be. You may be seldom happy; or worse, you dread going into school everyday; but, a paycheck is hard to throw away.
On top of it all, you hear some older teachers and almost everyone who doesn’t work in a school tell you how much better it used to be twenty, thirty even forty years ago when

a. kids did what their teachers told them;
b. parents invariably supported teacher decision, even to the point of corporal punishment;
c. administrators backed up the teachers; and
d. there was general agreement among educators, school boards, politicians and public as to what the schools were about and what could be done in them.

These conditions made teaching a fulfilling profession – heaven, almost – unlike the vale of dissapointments it has become. Cheer up, or, at least, don’t feel singled out by fate to languish in a doomed profession.

To begin with, nothing was ever as good as anyone says it was;
Secondly, statements a to d above are generally false owing to either selective memory or ignorance of school history. There was a time in American history when male schoolteachers had to beat the school bullies, as well as their fathers and brothers, into submission in order to keep their jobs.

To read about a new teacher’s experience in 1964, see My First Classroom Teaching Experience

Cordially
-- EGR

Cultural Difference? What Should Multicultural Educators Try to Deal With?

2011-09-05T07:00:00.000-04:00

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stifled. I want all the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. -- Mohandas K. Gandhi

There is no scarcity of proposals for what should be added to an already overloaded public school curriculum. It is easy to get carried away with enthusiasm for a favorite item. But is it possible to evaluate a proposal with minimal bias?

Also, it is important to distinguish what might be ideal as opposed to feasible in the circumstances you find yourself it. There are many cultural practices around the world that would be considered “too strange” to be acceptable in some American communities.

For example, eating cats, dogs or horses or insects. Should public schools adjust their lunch menus to reflect such practices? What about killing animals for religious sacrifice, or entertainment? What attitude should school boards adapt toward these practices?

But more than attitude adjustment may be at issue. Don’t forget that anything put into a public school curriculum is using taxpayer money to support it.
To examine these issues further, see Evaluating Cultural Practices for Inclusion in the Public School Multicultural Curriculum

Cordially
-- EGR

The “Democratic” Process: an illusion?

2011-09-04T11:16:00.000-04:00

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. -- Winston Churchill

Talk is just that: talk. When we try to get past it, to get down to “getting things done,” it is our American custom to vote on alternatives. Being “democratic” -- what we have been taught since childhood -- is to “give everyone a voice,” to lay out the alternatives and to vote to award our commitment to the majority choice.

Here we run into the first illusion: we think we agree because we have picked a common word or phrase to identify our goal. But words are notoriously ambiguous and vague. In a situation where we can’t take the vote over again when we change our minds, this becomes a real problem. Majority vote may settle nothing.

Even when we achieve an overwhelming consensus, a landslide vote, we may proceed into butting up against the second illusion: that a common goal has only one path to realization. In fact, the hardest part in achieving anything is, often, to get some kind of agreement on how to work together to reach it. Majority vote on a goal may still mean disagreement on means.

Finally, even if we agree on goals and means, we may yet delude ourselves that obstacles are minor. People have different priorities. There may be a landslide majority vote on a goal, say, higher employment, and even on the means to achieving it. But higher employment many not rank the same for everyone when they consider national defense, clean environment, or education.

It is difficult to put democracy into action with real results. This leads some who tire or distract easily to wish for dictatorship or something similar, for example, a “ruling class.”

But dictatorship or aristocracy does not avoid these dilemmas. It just restricts the power to act to a smaller group. And “power to act” should not be confused with “successful results.”

To examine these issues further, see The Indeterminacy of Consensus:  masking ambiguity and vagueness in decision

Cordially
--- EGR

Best Practices? Don’t Bet On It!

2011-09-03T08:23:00.000-04:00

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding. -- Albert Camus

In a profession pressured to looking for Answers, Now! to age-old human problems, nothing raises the hopes of the terminally optimistic than the prospect of a list -- short though it be -- of items baptized with the name “Best Practices.” But can we trust that so-called “best practices” have been tested adequately?

Real research in education is difficult, expensive, time-consuming, and consequently often near impossible since any involvement with human subjects requires restraints that school districts and, particularly parents are not interested or willing to meet.

Nonetheless, public school students -- one of modern America’s answers to the problem of getting experimental guinea-pigs -- are subjected to any of a number of “best practices” depending upon the inclination of their teachers and the ambitions of their school administrators. This is not necessarily anywhere near inhumane considering the boring curricula many students face in the name of academic achievement or international competition. But do the gains meet expectations?

To continue this discussion see Are "Best Practices" Good Enough?

-- EGR

Will Technology Make Schooling More Efficient? Or Just Waste Time and Money?

2011-09-02T20:24:00.000-04:00

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. -- Stephen Covey

The day-to-day activities in American public schools are particularly open to criticism from both parents and politicians. Curriculum “innovations” come and go as public fervor changes on topics of interest. The computers bought in a burst of school board enthusiasm one year sit underutilized the next because no budget has been provided to keep them apace of changes in technology.

However, to the extent that schools perform what are widely recognized as needed technical functions they can hope to resist political pressures. The promise of educational technology has been the promise of educational decision-making based solely on consideration of pedagogical efficiency: the development of a true Factory of Learning.

But are public schools in their essential character very much like factories? And can teaching be focused only, or even mostly, on widely recognized “productive” outcomes?

To get a perspective on these questions see The Teacher as Technician: Will Technology Improve Schooling? -- EGR

-- EGR

Giving Students an Education That Meets Their Needs. Who’s to say what they Need?

2011-09-01T06:21:00.000-04:00

A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants. -- Plato

What do students need? Do they all need the same thing? Who determines who needs what? What if what some students need costs very much more than what others need? Is fairness an issue here?

Surely some students need what they don’t want; others want what they don’t need. Who decides this?

Such questions seldom get intelligent, honest answers. Instead schools and the adults involved with them give the same monotonous response -- but not in so many words:

“The kids 'need' what we are ready and willing to give them. Period. Do not waste our time with wishful thinking!”

Some educational planners claim to have a scientific approach, called “needs assessment” which tries to answer the questions above. Is this just more wishful thinking?

To continue this discussion see Needs Assessment: a fraud?
-- EGR

Formal Education as Stultification

2011-08-30T23:55:00.001-04:00

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. -- Albert Einstein

Einstein much disliked school regimen and rote learning. His interest in physics was initially extracurricular. He was working as a clerk in a patent office when in 1905 he wrote the papers that would lead to his winning a Nobel Prize in physics in 1921.

Benoit Mandelbrot, although an established mathematician, was ridiculed for “wasting time” on “useless, non-traditional mathematical monsters,” which Mandelbrot called “fractals.” Like Einstein, he lived to see his insights come to be accepted as major contributions to his field.

Formal education can be stodgy and stultifying, both in process and product. I suspect, from my own experience, that that is true for most people a good portion of the time.

Have you ever thought about why the “Books for Dummies” is such a well-selling series? The answer is obvious, if you’ve ever used them. They get to the point. They give you reasons for the theory by showing applications. They don’t go into detail for its own sake. They even use humor to illustrate a point. They are written for the customer, most likely the student!

In contrast, junior and senior high school texts are written to pass review by school system book reviewers on the lookout for anything local politicians might consider offensive to their constituencies. Neither student interest, nor even usefulness to the teacher, is of high, if any, priority. The texts may be filled with factual errors, for which the publishers will pay a fine, if caught. But the errors needn’t be corrected afterward. School boards treat the fines as a discount. (See Beyond the Textbook.)

College texts are written for professors, who will have their students buy them, even if they are scarcely used in the course. For this reason, the writers of college texts worry more about the response of their professional colleagues, than about what the students might think.

In general, school texts are careful to avoid controversy, to seldom, if ever, offer criticisms about the disciplines or about those who practice them. Publishers tend to dissuade authors from leading learners to think “outside the box”: it may put off prospective buyers. (See Reason and Authority in Education)

University life is filled with quaint traditions and cultural practices. Knowing your place and acting accordingly is are two of the more difficult ones to acculturate oneself to. But it is most dismaying to realize that conformity in the pursuit of knowledge is a major desideratum.

For references and to examine these issues further, see Evaluating Learner Strengths and Weaknesses:  the Impediments of Formalism

Cordially
--- EGR

Pathologies of Enthusiasm: cheerleading is not engineering

2011-08-24T09:04:00.000-04:00

Throughout their history, American schools have been expected to take on responsibilities for which they were often unsuited. Public schools have been enthusiastically, though not too wisely, promoted as a cure for most of society's ills. When they have failed, it was usually because their leaders and their public alike had forgotten their real limitations as well as their real strengths.

There is an enthusiasm for “raising expectations” which has captured a generation of would-be school reformers. For example, Paul Krouse, publisher of Who's Who Among American High School Students, finds those students "undermotivated." His assessment? "I think everyone needs to raise his expectations and standards for these students to perform better."

Unlike teachers, doctors are not advised that raising their expectations will decrease morbidity rates among their patients. Nor is raising their expectations a technique by which lawyers plan to win more trials; or soldiers, more battles. Yet schoolteachers are importuned, with a straight face, to “raise their expectations” so as to cause greater learning in their students.

To continue this train of thought see “Fat-Free” Foods and Schooling Options

Cordially,

-- EGR

Faking Know-How With Sloganeering

2011-08-23T09:30:00.002-04:00

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made. — Julian Henry Marx

People often find it hard to admit they don’t know how to deal with a problem; especially, when a question about it is put to them publicly by a subordinate. After all, admitting ignorance might provoke disdain or insubordination. Or the situation might be seen to threaten humiliation, particularly by people who lack experience in cooperative dialogue.

What often happens in such situations is that the person being posed the problem produces an ambiguous response, full of sloganistic buzzwords that, practically, indicate no testable approach to solving it. Skill with such responses can be both a face-saver and an obstruction.

For example,

A teacher complains to her principal, “My students seldom come to class with homework done. How should I handle it?”

The principal replies, “You’ve got to lay down the law and make them understand the consequences of their failures to complete their assignments!”

Blah, blah, blah! Can this advice be followed to get the homework done? Not likely; what specific things is the teacher to do? However, this sloganeering does make the principal sound like the he is in charge and that he knows something.

What he might do instead is to turn the question back to the teacher; for example, by asking, "What do you think interferes with the kids getting their homework done? Have you asked them? Which impediments am I, as principal, in better position to deal with than you? Have you asked any of your more experienced colleagues how they would handle the situation?", and so on. If these questions were brought up in a non-threatening way, they might stimulate both a productive conversation and better principal-teacher relations.

For references, examples and to investigate this mode of response further, see Pseudo-Solutions: Three Disciplinary Slogans

Cordially
--- EGR

Why Are Some Schools Worse Than Others? Answers Carefully Disregarded by Reformers.

2011-08-22T10:11:00.000-04:00

Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility. -- Thomas Szasz

Why are some schools social hell-holes? Why do some schools have low academic achievement?

The obvious answer -- to anyone who has tried to teach in such schools -- is this: the students’ behavior is so bad that it interferes with their learning.

The “disruptive” children, before they are old enough to become self-trainers in sociopathy, lack help in developing self-regulation . Bad parenting as well as neighborhood poverty may be the reason. Heaven knows that violent public schools have little recourse to any effective punishment for children inured to violence.

Such considerations are uncomfortable for those whose making a living requires ingratiating themselves to people who are too self-important, ignorant, or incompetent to admit their contribution to the dysfunctions in society. If you serve a master, you can’t afford to serve truth.

And so it is that school people worry more about the self-esteem of bullies, than about their victims. The courts and the politicians push for equality of treatment despite special focussed treatment being needed. Or, they push for special supportive treatment, even if it handicaps those who are considered too “normal” to require it.

School board candidates, by and large, always discover the budget to be too big, teachers to be uncooperative and parents irresponsible. Businessmen wash their hands of the whole situation complaining that the have done their duty by overpaying their taxes and criticizing the the schools. Education professors dismiss complaints about their disengagement with the mention that they have contributed order and insight to the educational process by concocting profound metaphors.

For references and to examine these issues further, see Public School Reform: Mired in Metaphor

Cordially
--- EGR

Should Kids Be Taught to Think Like Computers?

2011-08-19T04:34:00.000-04:00

The armchair is thinking to itself... Where? In one of its parts? Or outside of its body in the air around it? Perhaps not anywhere? But what is then the difference between the internal speech of this armchair and that of another standing by it? -- Wittgenstein

Might children just as well be taught to think like armchairs? Or cuckoo clocks? Or tigers?

These might be interesting questions to try to answer provided we knew better what it is kids do when they think. We pretty well know what happens when computers process information. But is this thinking? Or just wishful thinking by Artificial Intelligence buffs?

What is it to “think”? Does the attempt to explain Mind as Machine inform or enlighten us?

To examine these issues further, see "Thinking" Like Computers Do

Cordially --- EGR

Choosing a School for your Kids: Public? Parochial? Private?

2011-08-17T12:36:00.001-04:00

The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

There are all kinds of good schools. And there are all kinds of bad ones. The educational mission of the wealthiest, most religious, private school can be corrupted by a student, parent or staff culture of special privilege, bullying, or worse.

But aside from the sloganistic blather found on “mission statements” -- public schools lack a practicable consensus on what they are about, and provide unique opportunities for corruption for five reasons:

a. they are schools of last resort in a compulsory system;
b. this makes them susceptible to constraint by underinformed courts to institute procedures often contrary to good educational practice; for example, housing students awaiting trial for even felonious offenses;
c. special interest groups can gain control over school practices by combining vociferousness with legal ingenuity;
d. not only naive idealists, but the weak-minded and pathologically sentimental are seduced into assuming teaching positions which they -- often with good reason -- abandon at the national rate of 13% per year; consequently
e. most surviving educators do not possess sufficient sense of profession to take risks. They shy away from speaking out against parents, administrators, board members or politicians whose efforts distort the school’s educational mission.

Choosing a good school can be hard, even if you have the money to afford options.
For more on this topic see “The Evils of Public Schools.”
-- EGR

For Better and For Worse: Public Education in a Democratic Society is Political

2011-08-13T15:21:00.004-04:00

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. -- Plato

It is quite common to hear educators and other would-be school reformers express the desire to "rid education of politics." But politics should not be seen as a contamination. Rather, we should understand any decision as political if it is based on something other than considerations of efficiency within a framework of a consensus on goals.

Thus, most public decisions in a pluralistic democracy -- where consensus on any issue is normally narrow or more apparent than real -- will be political. (See G.K. Clabaugh & E. G. Rozycki, "Getting It Together (the nature of consensus)" Politics is the art of reconciling disparate ends to common means. It is not an excrescence on education; but, in a democracy, its very soul and substance. However, politicizing of educational method is likely to produce the following:

a. the most politically viable methods will tend to low efficiency; this may lead, in times of scarcity, to a rejection of the goals they are instrumental to;

b. "excellence" will tend to be perceived either as an empty slogan, or as an elitist, undemocratic pursuit;

c. teaching will tend to "deprofessionalization" in any politically sensitive arena;

d. expertise will be seen as antipathetic to an increasingly popular concern for "sensitivity to human differences."

Given highest priority to a goal of maximizing social harmony, the following student characteristics may be pursued as efficient means: ignorance, incompetence, impotence and irrationality. (This provides a structural explanation for public school failure.)

Such trends may, in the long run, enable non-democratic elites to gain or to maintain disproportional influence. Schools in a democracy, may not -- contra Dewey -- best serve that democracy by being run democratically. --EGR

To examine these issues further, see Pluralism and Rationality: the Limits of Tolerance. Why public schools fail.

Cordially
EGR

What Benefits Should Schools Promote? For Whom?

2011-08-12T16:49:00.002-04:00

People learn something every day, and a lot of times it’s that what they learned the day before was wrong. -- Bill Vaughn

School reformers point to the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on basic education and complain that we are not getting our money's worth. They may be right. But we will never know for sure if we continue our habit of vague, contradictory and hopelessly optimistic expectations regarding what schooling can accomplish.

Some of this cockeyed optimism is understandable. When it comes to children, our hopes for a better tomorrow encourage a particularly nutty breed of optimism. Even life's most grizzled veterans find their hopes triumphing over their experience.

But schooling has become far too important and expensive to be totally given over to wishful thinking. At least some realism is required. To that end we would like to clarify what schools can and cannot reasonably be expected to do.

To continue the discussion see Dissecting School Benefits: a typology of conflicting goals

Cordially,

-- EGR

High School Diploma or Doomed to Poverty? Is that the only choice?

2011-08-11T08:00:00.003-04:00

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. -- Robert Frost

In 2008 Lansing, Michigan school officials instituted new, tougher graduation standards and predicted that would increase the number of kids dropping out of school.

Rebecca Rocho, an assistant superintendent with the Calhoun County Intermediate School District, no doubt hired for her clairvoyance into the even more distant future opined, “By having them leave high school without a diploma you doom them to a life of poverty, and doom their children to a life of poverty."

In education, nonsense begets even more nonsense. On the one hand, clearly, you don’t make students who are failing less likely to fail by raising graduation requirements. On the other hand, dropping out of high school is not like dropping off a high cliff.

Fact: many top rate colleges do not require a high school diploma. If the student "shows promise" ($$$?), they may be accepted.

Fact: There is no consistent way used to determine the number of dropouts in any given year. Students drop out, come back, switch schools, get GED's etc.

Fact: There are many opportunities for people to pursue further education when and if they want it; for example, through community colleges or on the job training.

For more on this see Identifying the "At Risk" Student: What is the Concern? -- EGR

Motivating Kids? Not to Worry!

2011-08-10T09:31:00.000-04:00

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-distrust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple. -Amos Bronson Alcott

I know how important motivation is, and I know exactly how unmotivated N percent of the population is. I'm not arguing against motivation, but that perhaps we shouldn't worry so much about motivating the kids.

First of all, there may not be too much teachers can do about motivating some kids. There are some kids who have perfectly good reasons not to like school -- those who've been savaged by previous classroom experiences; those who have been told in X ways that they're stupid Y times per day for Z years of schooling; and finally, those who correctly see school as irrelevant to their problems. Let's get real: school is not the solution for all of life's inadequacies (and the way many legislatures, administrators, and professors operate, it soon may not be the solution for any of them).

Another reality check: in trying to get and hold little Johnny's attention, no matter how interesting, entertaining, and motivating I am as a teacher, I still will have trouble competing successfully with little Britney's chest. Sometimes, in fact, motivation just boils down to making it more unpleasant for the kid not to learn than it is for the kid to learn. Certainly we must be careful here: this sort of reasoning has been used far too often to excuse cruel teaching practices by lazy incompetents.

To examine this issue further, see Motivation: why is this a worry?
-- WAC

Should Public Schools Be “Student-Centered”?

2011-08-07T08:19:00.001-04:00

Self praise is ridiculous. If you flatter yourself for some inconsequential thing, you are foolish; if for some wicked thing, you are mad. And if you praise yourself for a good thing, you are ungrateful. -- Erasmus

Student-centered schooling can be profoundly undemocratic, if it puts the interests of the kid first to the neglect of the interests of the people -- the 250 million or so voters, taxpayers, parents, et cetera, who are also legitimate stakeholders in education. Public schools are just that -- public -- owned by the people, not just by pupils and professionals.

On the other hand, student-centered learning can be terribly unkind, if it means silencing the teacher's voice. Why on earth would we want to? "Teacher-talk" is not a dirty word. On the contrary, there is a much-needed beauty in the elder sharing knowledge and skills with the younger. Any version of "humanistic education" that devalues the teacher can hardly be humane at all. Most teachers are living worthwhile lives and gaining worthwhile learning. For the teacher not to share that learning whenever it is curriculum-appropriate is misguided, and a misguided guide on the side is not likely to be going on the right road!

Student-centered learning can also be unwise if it devalues the parents. True, there are plenty of dysfunctional families out there. But to assume that parents and guardians are ignorant or brutal is simply arrogant. As politically exploited as the concept is, a cavalier dismissal of "family values" in favor of educational bandwagons is the mistake of either a new teacher or of an old professor! There is very little evidence that the parents or the public want the children to be running things.

Student-centered learning can be unwise if the promotion of “critical thinking” undermines respectful living. Respect for parents, for other adults, and for one another all go hand in hand. Of course we should teach the kid to think well, and not to follow every pronouncement of authority nor every appeal to sentiment. But reason and venom have very little in common. An ultracritical theory that assumes sordid motives of "the other guy" isn't critical at all; it is just prejudice in a new disguise

For references and to examine these issues further, see STUDENT CENTEREDNESS: reconsiderations

Cordially
--- WAC

Raising Test Averages: is this good?

2011-08-06T09:28:00.001-04:00

Put down six and carry two. ... Gee, but this is hard to do.
You can think and think and think, till your brains are numb.
I don't care what teacher says,I can't do that sum.
-- Victor Herbert & Kenny Baker

Suppose we find that over time more and more kids in a school have test scores above average. Is this good? Not necessarily, even though most people would jump to the conclusion that achievement was going up.

Suppose we find find that over time more and more kids in a school have test scores below average. Is this bad? Not necessarily, even though most people would jump to the conclusion that achievement was going down.

Find out how a common misunderstanding (even by so-called “authorities”) makes schools look bad. -- EGR

To see the details go to Every Child Above Average
Cordially,
-- EGR

Indulging Power, Denying Nurture

2011-08-05T11:01:00.003-04:00

Power never takes a back step
-- Only in the face of more power.
---- Malcolm X
(See How New York City Beat Crime in Scientific American, Aug 2011)

My nephew, a psychiatric nurse, once worked for several years in an institution that housed child murderers; that is, children who had intentionally brought about the death of another human being. I asked him how the job was and how he got along with the kids. He answered that they were mostly OK but very occasionally one would try to stab him. I asked my nephew what he thought those kids needed most. He replied, “They need a father.”

One of the most pernicious confusions ever to infect thought and theory in education, psychology and psychiatry is the idea that hurt and harm are inextricable. The current dogma is that to hurt is to harm and to harm is to hurt. (See Hurt, Harm & Safety)

Commonsense examples from the real world disestablish this doctrine: an inoculation, dental surgery, hard exercise and criticism may hurt; they needn’t, indeed, often do not, harm. Radiation, pollution, inattention and gluttony often do not hurt; yet they may, and, not infrequently, do harm.

Recently in Philadelphia gangs of teenagers have been running through Center City streets and attacking uninvolved bystanders, apparently for the excitement and fun of it. They are likely learning -- or know already -- that to the extent no one will or can control you, to that same extent do you have the free exercise of power.

There is a lot of excited babble among the governing classes and pundits as to what to do about it. Because of the hurt-harm dogma, some possible solutions will not even be brought up for discussion.

For references and to examine this issue further, see The Singapore Solution

Cordially
--- EGR

Student Debt and Graduation Rates: mislinked indicators of value?

2011-08-03T12:01:00.004-04:00

If forecasts were certain and wants, precious stones
We’d eat beef and chicken and never see bones.-- N. Fulano de Tal

In 1975 I interviewed for a position with a major private “educational research corporation.” My task would be to develop a description of a vocational-education project so that it could be replicated across the country. The already-in-place federally funded ($3 million) pilot project had a 100 percent job placement rate for its graduates. The corporation hoped that with an adequate description, a substantially larger grant ($41 milion) could be obtained.

I asked how it was possible to get 100 percent placement. My interviewer told me that this was done by offering prospective employers a stipend to offset future wages to be paid. No student was accepted into the program unless an employer had been found who had accepted the agreement.

When I asked how such arrangements could be replicated across the country, given that we did not control our economy the way the Soviets did, I received the reply, "Ed, that is the one question around here that we never ask."

I did not accept the job. Someone else did. The description was written up. The large government grant was secured. That late 1970’s project left has no traces. Its perpetrators have advanced in reputation and position.

Which is the better school?

a. Grumbling U which graduates 20% of its original freshman classes who then regularly find good jobs that enable them to pay off their student loans; or
b. Pensyl U which graduates 98% who afterward cannot find a job that enables the grads to pay off their tuition debts.?

Barring fraud in the recruitment process, wouldn’t you pick Grumbling?

Open admissions policies have long been promoted as providing opportunity to more people for higher education. But the graduation rates tend to be lower because many more are unprepared for college demands. Should colleges, or other schools be expected to do something about this? Do schools and colleges control the market for their graduates?

Reported in Education Sector’s Biweekly Digest of Aug 2, 2011, some are suggesting using a borrowing-to-credential ratio as an indicator of college value: the student-loan debt they have to repay after graduation divided by the percentage of students graduating. But this is like defining wealth (value) as currency on hand (diplomas) rather than asking what that currency might buy (access to high paying jobs -- or, maybe, something else). This overlooks systemic effects on the costs and benefits of credential attainment.

On the borrowing-to-credential ratio measure, if we assume their tuitions are pretty much the same, it seems that Grumbling is ahead of Pensyl. However, don’t a lot of other factors have to be evaluated? ? Would it matter if it turned out that with another year or two, the great majority of all students graduated?

How should any schools prepare for something, especially when it is not clear what they are preparing for? Our society changes quickly and there is little consensus on both specific ends and means in education. Why are schools to be held responsible for market outcomes they do not control?

For references and to examine these issues further, see

How much can school reform enhance a student's occupational fitness?

Cordially
--- EGR

Destroying “Middle Class” Education

2011-08-02T23:17:00.003-04:00

… how many times can a man turn his head
pretending he just doesn’t see?...
… how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
-- Bob Dylan

It’s all too easy to make kids hate school. Cutting back on music, art and recess, and drilling incessantly for special examinations will more than suffice. Inflicting boredom on the naturally curious and open minds of children is cruelty, and worse.

But which children have been singled out for this treatment? Public school children. The children of those who aspire to upward social mobility but who lack the money for private schooling. Perhaps they expect too much from the schools, but they support them nonetheless. Getting their kids to hate school will definitely undermine their expectations and support.

Our legislators and political leaders have long pushed the idea that public schools can provide a “thorough and efficient education” for every child. This is a pipe-dream. This is a damned, blatant lie. Public schools do a passable job in neighborhoods where parents have the wherewithal to prepare their tots for kindergarten, to clothe and feed them adequately, to socialize them out of random aggression, to engage them in group activities, to support their older kids in their studies and to give them the love they need.

Public schools can’t do much with the severely disabled, the abandoned, the underfed, the abused and the perpetually impoverished. This is not to say that these kids should be thrown away. But pretending that public schools are the institutions that can address social, psychological and growth impediments is to throw those children away. And it is to inculcate in “normal” kids a blindness to suffering right under their noses and an easy hypocrisy in believing that mere declarations of sympathy and concern count as real help.

Do public schools cost too much? Pare them back to doing what they can do reasonably well. Get rid of the sham of a universally applicable, “thorough and efficient” education. Public schools, for social purposes, could continue to admit all kinds of children. But it is to everyone's disadvantage to hold them accountable for universal academic achievement.

For references and to examine these issues further, see Cutting Public School Costs . . . Intelligently. Can It Be Done?

Cordially
--- EGR

Educational Choice: why not?

2011-08-01T14:56:00.000-04:00

Most of us who are parents would pay an attorney a lot of money to prevent the unjust incarceration of one of our children in a confined space with psychopaths, wouldn't we? So just why are we paying the government a lot of money to unjustly incarcerate nearly all of our children in confined spaces with psychopaths?

Most of us try hard to stay well clear of thieves, dope addicts, gangbangers, maniacs,and fools, don't we? So why then are we forcing our children to associate with them in institutions run by politicians?

While most of us don't mind voluntarily helping a stranger injured on the highway, or mediating between friends who are arguing over a misunderstanding, or cleaning up after our dog has messed on our carpet, most of us resent being forced to contribute our fair share, or to take a pay cut when management is giving itself raises, or to clean up when someone else's dog has messed on our carpet. So why do we think it's a right to be schooled, and a kindness to require it?

To examine these issues further, see School Choice: reconsiderations

-- WAC

Sharia? Not to Worry. It’s Evangelical.

2011-07-31T10:02:00.002-04:00

Dictionary definition eu- good + angelos messenger -- American Heritage Dictionary, College Edition (1981) p. 453

You can’t tell from the standardly capitalized title above, nor from the centuries-old Christian practice of appropriation, that “evangelical” can be understood to mean “good messenger” or “good message” without requiring a commitment to the content of that message. Indeed, most practicing American Christians of various sects recognize this possible neutrality when they forego challenge of their competitors who use the term “evangelical” to describe their own competing, likely specious, possibly heretical, efforts at proselytizing.

What every zealot worries most about is another zealot -- who is not a member of his own camp. This holds for religionists, their apostates -- e.g. Hitler and Stalin, who were brought up in religion -- and secularists, examples of which are available at any and many a TV talk show, think tank, corporation, laboratory or university.

Just as other businessmen are wary of new competitors, so have competing Peoples of the Book begun a very likely futile campaign to have sharia “outlawed” in legal practice (NYT, 7-31-11). They appear to be worried that Muslim American jurists, trained and sanctionable by the American Bar Association and higher courts, would somehow be able to permanently upset American traditions of Law. One need only note that even Christian jurists and legislators, despite many an attempt, have not managed to do that for very long:

a. Jim Crow lasted about 100 years.
b. Prohibition, 14 years;
c. exclusive heterosexual marriage rights are dissolving; and
d. removing tax exemptions from churches can now be discussed without camp followers threatening violence.

Even the public schools have been dragged into these conflicts via the path of curriculum controversy. The “intelligent design debate” has brought both zealots and their camp followers to the public stage trying to foist off the argument that their particular position is the unique and correct depiction of the role of Science in Education. As the public schools go, so -- they seem to think -- will go the culture.

For references and to examine these issues further, see Religion, Intelligent Design and the Public Schools: serving God to Mammon?

Cordially
--- EGR

Looking for a Teaching Job? Think hard (and twice) about it!

2011-07-29T20:17:00.000-04:00

“Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.” -- Albert Einstein

I have enjoyed -- most of the time -- being a teacher of some kind or another for 45 years. But I have met many, many people who have not enjoyed being a teacher. Some have hated it but struggled on for no reason that was beneficial to their students.

Teaching as a profession has one of the highest drop-out rates in the United States: 12-13 percent per year. If you are a new to the profession, the probability is that you will not be a teacher after three years. The main reason given by public school teacher drop-outs for leaving is not salary. It is for lack of administrative or parental support.

If you consider that there are three main types of school in the US, private, parochial and public, each type has its own unique blend of problems. Money tends to be tight almost everywhere. Private and parochial schools can maintain social barriers in a way that is illegal for public schools. Academics, which receive mostly lip service, are maintained -- even in public schools -- by carefully selecting students who are subjected to difficult curriculum.

If you’re going into teaching only because you love children, forget it! You’ll end up in twenty years or so being a monster out of frustration that real kids are not what you -- or your professors -- imagined them to be. Or out of frustration that your job depends upon your keeping happy people who care little for kids and know even less what makes them really tick. Or out of frustration at the wide gap that exists between what is preached and what is practiced in schools.

If you are interested in pursuing this further, see
“Cannonfodder: Preparing Teachers for Public Schools”

Cordially
-- EGR

What’s Culture? Bias and Discrimination.

2011-07-28T12:06:00.004-04:00

“Fortunately for serious minds, a bias recognized is a bias sterilized” -- Benjamin Haydon (1786-1846)

Educators, businessmen and politicians worry about cultural conflict -- it fouls up their agendas: it interferes with schooling, commerce and government. The primary cause of cultural conflict they have fallen into the bad habit of characterizing as “bias and discrimination.” They have taken two good words and transformed them into muddled slogans.

Their real concerns are with “unjust bias” or “unjust discrimination.” By trying to dodge a discussion on what constitutes such injustices, they undermine real solutions to the problems they face. Or perhaps the real issue is that they want to ram their particular, self-serving “solutions” down our throats.

In general, a bias involves a deviation from an expectation, a standard or a point of reference. It need not be an injustice or even undesirable. For example, a dress designer may want a certain cloth cut “on the bias.” Or, the aim of Special Education is to get us to accept certain biases in favor of persons with disabilities.

Discrimination involves, most generally, making a distinction. Again, it need not be an injustice or even undesirable. Driving safely requires us to discriminate between red and green lights.

Different cultures exist because the histories of various peoples are different: they are brought up with different expectations, standards and reference points. These may, in practice, lead to conflicts. They needn’t always do so, if approached with a serious mind.

For references and to examine these issues further, see The Limits and Possibilities of Multiculturalism

Cordially
--- EGR

Is Reform Really Needed At Your School?

2011-07-27T16:31:00.005-04:00

A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.
-- Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983), The Passionate State of Mind, 1954

Almost anything can be changed into what someone thinks is “better.” But at what cost? And to whom? A lot of school reform has created more problems than it has solved. Workable programs have been sacrificed to the pursuit of something “better.” Usually, those who were enthusiastic about the “better” program are no longer around to help pick up the pieces of school programs they destroyed.

There are some questions you might consider before jumping into school reform. Don’t just do it because someone says it needs to be done. Consider the following questions:

a. Is the so-called reform's goal something nebulous and subject to different interpretations, e.g. "getting an education that will enable a student to compete in the 21st Century?" Whose crystal ball should we consult? Unless this "goal" can be tied down to specific testable goals, forget it. It's political puffery! (Or a sales pitch!)

b. Do you need something new to reach a particular goal? (Or will a modification in a present program likely serve as well?)

c. Someone says a dire situation threatens: you have to do something! But, is the threat imminent? Is it probable? Is it real?

d. Is there agreement among the powerholders in your community that the proposed reform should be implemented?

Unless you can get a substantial number of yes-es to the questions above, you might as well relax. Read a good book. Or go fishing.

To pursue this line of thought see The Need for and Possibilities of Educational Reform

Cordially
-- EGR

Does Prohibiting Corporal Punishment Prevent Abuse?

2011-07-26T22:29:00.003-04:00

Where there's a will, there's a way. -- Proverb

In the public schools, people seem to be rabid partisans on the issue of corporal punishment: the Pro’s salivate contemplating the wonders they imagine spanking will wreak; the Con’s worry, worry, worry that any physical contact initiates a very short walk to the torture chamber.

The Pro’s seem to see punishment, of all sorts, to offer a convincing argument for conformity. The Con’s are indisposed to entertain the possibility that non-physical punishment may easily reach the level of torture, even though every grade school bully knows this in his (her?) bones.

And cyberbullying opens a new dimension in which the infliction of anguish has little to do with physical contact. So long as adults delude themselves that merely forbidding a mode of infliction will suffice, cruelty will out.

To pursue related considerations, see School Violence, Punishment, and Justice  
-- EGR

Multicultural Education: enlightenment or degradation?

2011-07-25T15:01:00.002-04:00

I say tomato (to-may-to) and you say tomato (to-mah-to) -- George and Ira Gershwin (1937) Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

Would you eat horse steak or dog? How about jellyfish? Would you let your kids swim naked at the beach? Would you let your teenager and his or her friend of the opposite sex sleep over? Would you want people to move into your neighborhood who worshipped a goddess of death or practiced animal sacrifice as part of a religious ceremony? What about eating peyote as a religious practice?

These are all practices tolerated, encouraged even, by literate people of highly developed cultures from around the world. You personally might be willing to tolerate them. But would your neighbors?

It’s easy to go on enthusiastically about multiculturalism as they do in public schools and elsewhere as if it were a case of just trying a taste of a new kind of food like kielbasa, or pepperoni, or knishes or jambalaya or anything else not too different from “the norm.” But deviant stuff? Not likely!

But how different is deviant? How very deviant is deviant? When should “deviance” be discouraged? Schools tend to stifle deviance a lot sooner than many a household. Where can you talk loudly and whenever you please, where can you go around in your bathing suit, and when can you slap your little brother for misbehaving? In lots of homes, in many, if not most, public places, but, not in a public school.

What kind of reception would some of the “out of the ordinary” behavior described above likely receive if it were suggested as part of your child’s multicultural education? Would it be welcomed and practiced? Or merely discussed as an example? Or disregarded. Or even condemned as disgusting, immoral or UnAmerican?

For a chart and examples and to examine these issues further, see Evaluating Cultural Practices for Inclusion in the Public School Multicultural Curriculum

Cordially
--- EGR