The Sorrows of A Life-Long Teacher EducatorBy Gary K. Clabaugh

I retired recently after having worked at preparing teachers for forty-three years. I ultimately concluded that I had chosen the wrong line of work. Why? Because my colleagues and I were trying to do teacher education right when no one of influence really gave a damn.

I spent my career at a Catholic college run by a religious teaching order. I reasoned that a school run by such an order would take pride in its teacher education program. But I failed to adequately consider that this was a liberal arts college.

In that environment the education department was Thursday's child. First-class teacher education was a second-class concern. The administration’s focus was not on the skill of our graduates but how much tuition we generated. Even when we developed trend-setting programs, no one in power could be persuaded to come and take a look. Unlike the win-loss record of our varsity basketball team, no one important really gave a damn.

Decade after decade the resources we worked with remained embarrassingly meager. The vast bulk of the ample revenue we generated disappeared into the General Fund. Very little was reinvested in properly equipping our program.

When I retired I still was teaching in a classroom that was embarrassingly similar to the first grade classroom of my childhood — vintage1946. The only difference was that the desks were not bolted to the floor and lacked inkwells. The room did not even have a bulletin board much less modern electronics.

I really shouldn’t blame college management for their unconcern. In America, indifference to the quality of teacher preparation bubbles all the way to the top. Consider that President Obama and his political hack Secretary of Education reclassified teacher interns as "highly qualified teachers." Why would they do a crazy thing like that?

So that states like California could hire thousands of rank amateurs to staff classrooms in their educational Calcuttas but still “meet” the No Child Left Behind requirement that all teachers be "highly qualified." This may have been the first time in history that rank beginners were officially declared "highly qualified." It was Orwell’s 1984 all over again! War was Peace! Love was Hate! Ignorance was Strength! Novices were Highly Qualified."

If I could start my life’s work over I would choose a career the American people really care about. On-line porn might be good, or devising ways to make napalm stick more tenaciously. The nation seems eager to invest in these sorts of things. But absolutely no one of influence gives a damn if teacher preparation is done well or not. So best leave that task to those who enjoy futility.

For more on this topic, see Cannonfodder: Preparing Teachers for Public Schools )

-- GKC

Inverting Risk: misdescription for the sake of punditry.

The children involved with the Atlanta schools cheating scandal are “the victims of … massive fraud, the helpless pawns of adults who callously overlooked the needs of their charges and focused on preserving their careers.” -- C. Tucker, 4/10/13 Phila Inquirer, A18

Punditry tempts one to great (see) moral hazard. Once you have a newspaper column that guarantees an audience, you can, if you wish, sacrifice fact and logic for the sake of seducing sympathy for your latest enthusiasm. (Besides, getting to ride the high horse of moral superiority is so delightful!)

First, let’s give but short shrift to the likely false assumptions in Tucker’s diatribe:

a. Did any students or their parents, relatives etc. protest against the high scores announced before the “scandal” broke? (Not likely.)

b. Did the adults involved, i.e. school staff, “callously overlook the needs of their charges? (More likely they did so with trepidation and feelings of guilt. Educators are, to my taste, entirely too sensitive to what kids and their parents claim to want or need.)

c. Which “needs” is Tucker talking about? Is there much agreement as to what they are and which among them takes priority? (Disregarding slogans for the consumption of the ill-informed, the answer is NO. See The Need for and Possibilities of Educational Reform)

d. And, horrors! What kind of adults might overlook the “needs” of others (children included) and focus on preserving their careers? Not just teachers and principals and school superintendents; but, also, presidents, popes, preachers, corporate CEO’s, as well as you, me, members of Congress, definitely, and even pundits! (But see The Mea Culpa Culture in Public Education.)

Now that we are fatigued from wagging our fingers, let’s consider a deeper issue: the degradation of our natural sense of logic and experience by the persistent hammering in of emotional confusions.

By the time a normal child is ten years old, he or she has learned through experience the following three rules for survival:

Rule 1: A sure bet is definitely not the same as a distant possibility;

Rule 2: Sure bets are lower, much lower, risks than distant possibilities; from which follows

Rule 3: Avoid betting things you value on distant possibilities, unless the payoffs are proportionately (inversely) unequal, i.e. massive payoffs may be worth an increased risk, even though small or equal ones are not.

As the headmaster of a private, academic school, grades seven through twelve, I attempted to solicit financial support for our programs from corporations around the Philadelphia area. I was never successful in the face of the reasons given by almost every one of those who refused: “High school kids are too distant a prospect for us to bet on. Too much can happen before they get to us. We only contribute to programs for upper-class students in college, because we’ll see them presently.”

No dummies, they! They have retained their childhood knowledge of Rules 1-3 given above. They put their money on the surer bet.

But, in this cruel world we live in, who in their right mind -- unless well-endowed (or a hopelessly optimistic educator) -- makes a bet on the future prospects of a school kid at the much surer risk of destroying their career? That is, discarding a career they have poured much time, sweat and money into, along with the pension they cannot recover through new employment? Tucker seems to think this would have been the reasonable option for the educators involved.

“Reasonable” for educators, but not a newspaper columnist, I am sure.

For references and to examine these issues further, see Illogic and Dissimulation in School Reform


Cordially
--- EGR

The “Democratic” Process: an illusion?

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