America 2000: A Notable Educational Charade

To those who want to see real improvement in American education, I say: There will be no renaissance without revolution. ...
We've made a good beginning by setting the nation's sights on six ambitious National Education Goals.
...George H. W. Bush, (April 18,1991)

What were those goals?

By the year 2000

1. All children in America will start school ready to learn.

2. The high school graduation rate will increase to at least 90 percent.

3. American students will leave grades four, eight, and twelve having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter including English, mathematics, science, history, and geography; and every school in America will ensure that all students learn to use their minds well, so that they may be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in our modern economy.

4. U.S. students will be first in the world in science and mathematics achievement.

5. Every adult American will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

6. Every school in America will be free of drugs and violence and will offer a disciplined environment conducive to learning.

-- America 2000: an educational strategy (DOE, 1991) p.3,

Seventy-six trombones lead the big parade… to nowhere. Were these targets met by 2000? No. Have they been met by 2013? No.

What were these “educational revolutionaries” thinking? How were decades-, even centuries-old impediments to be identified and addressed? Where was the money for this revolution to come from? Who had which responsibilities? Who would hold their feet to the fire to make sure they came through?

Think of the all planning costs of this debacle: the per-hour payments to discussion participants for attendance, room and travel; the trees sacrificed to recording what was best bound for recycle; the tons of sitzfleisch constrained to aching fallow; and, worst of all, the ultimate disappointment and cynicism provoked in reaction to its failure.

Did anyone in 1991 stand up and rage against the presumption, the hubris, the wishful thinking underlying these “visions?” If they did they were ignored, invisible to our media, our bulwarks of democracy. Not one trombonist, not even one piccolo player wanted to know of anyone trying to piss on their parade.

Does anyone today hang their head in shame, or even offer a vague apology, for having participated in this scam? Why should they? There is an escape clause written right into the document that relieved these planners and prognosticators of their responsibility for failure:

Without a strong commitment and concerted effort on the part of every sector and every citizen to improve dramatically the performance of the nation’s educational system and each and every student, these goals will remain nothing more than a distant, unattainable vision. -- America 2000, p.41

See, folks? It wasn't our marching band or our paraders at fault! The critical word in the previous paragraph is "every." America 2000 failed likely because some kid, somewhere, bugged out of his responsibilities -- probably didn't do his homework -- that brought our parade, our crusade, to a halt. (And wasted all that time, effort and money.)

For references and to examine these issues further, see America 2000: an educational strategy


Cordially
--- EGR

Higher Academic Education: a Road to Servitude?

The farm laborer and the artisan are in a state of servitude, and have to do what they are told, but that is where it ends.

But the courtiers of a tyrant ingratiate themselves with him and beg favors of him, and the tyrant, seeing this, requires them not just to do what he says but to think the way he wants them to and, often, to anticipate his desires.

It is not enough that these people obey him, they must also please him in every way, they must endure hardship, torment themselves and drive themselves to the grave in carrying out his business; his pleasure must be their pleasure, his taste must be theirs, they must distort and cast off their natural disposition, they must hang on his every word, his tone of voice, his gestures, his expression; their every faculty must be alert to catch his wishes and to discern his thoughts.

Is that a happy existence? Can that be called living? Is there anything in the world less tolerable than that? And I do not mean less tolerable to a man of valor, a man of natural goodness, but simply endowed to a man with common sense, or just someone who has the appearance of a man? What way of life is more abject than one bereft of possessions, in which one's comfort, liberty, body and life depend on someone else?

– E. De La Boetie (circa1548) 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.

The 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 "tyrants" 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

A Good Education: substance or symbol?

... people can engage in trade-off reasoning. They do in all the time -- every time they stroll down the aisle of a supermarket or cast a vote ...We expect competent, self-supporting citizens of free market societies to know that they can't always get what they want and to make appropriate adjustments. -- Philip E. Tetlock (1999) "Coping with trade-offs: Psychological constraints and political implications."

Public schools face conflicts that both private and parochial schools, so long as they have sufficient budgets, can avoid. These conflicts are based in religious and other value differences.

Religion is always a controversial item in the public school context. Although religious indoctrination is officially not permissible in a public school, what constitutes religious indoctrination is often vague. Consequently, school practices are not uniform from one district to another.

Public schools give lip-service to pluralisms of various kinds, preaching equality of treatment across ethnic, religious, racial, sexual, gender and, even age boundaries. This often bumps up against local, and even broader, traditions. (See Trading-Off "Sacred" Values: 
Why Public Schools Should Not Try to "Educate")

In spite of these problems, public schools are expected to provide each child in them a good education. What this consists of is often highly controversial. So it is, in our pluralistic society, that perceived employability and status become the common yardsticks of judgment.

What counts, in public education, as a school benefit, or cost, is a matter for debate. This debate is dampened to a great extent by informal agreements to understand every school undertaking as being “preparation for the world of work.” Even the honorifics of academic achievement are lead back to some notion of “developing intellect in order to enhance economic productivity.”

Not that it has been working! Grade inflation, wide-scale academic dishonesty, graduate unemployment and an “over-qualified” workforce are four indicators that something is amiss.

To find further references for exploring these issues, see Dissecting School Benefits: a typology of conflicting goals

Cordially
--- EGR

Family and School: an underlying conflict?

I was born during WWII into a highly ethnic, religious, working class, immigrant family. That speaks for my father’s side. My mother was from a bourgeoise, -- as they saw it – temporarily dispossessed, small business family, waiting—vainly through two wars – to return to the homeland to begin again the enterprise misfortune had taken from them.

Here was the first conflict: my paternal homeland was not my maternal homeland. My father’s people were entertained with church-sponsored movies promising that their homeland would rise again. (So it has, some fifty years later.) My mother’s family was interested in having their kids become “American.” They insisted that English be used even in the home.

For my parents, individually, Cupid won out, over the strong objections of both sets of in-laws.

This personal preface is just to set up the generalizations I will suggest about the relationships of social class to schooling. I grew up in working class neighborhoods. I attended public schools run by middle and upper class women. And I rubbed elbows with the scions of the “elite” – not “elite” merely by recently acquired wealth, but by long social pedigree – as I went through higher education.

Here is the scoop: caricatures, somewhat, no doubt, but generalizations which capture certain persistent norms.

Working Class Perceptions: school, like church, is all right for girls. But real men stick to their own kind and don’t get much involved. Those who do are are unmanly (“faggots,” “fruits”) or weak and obsequious (“brown-nosers,” “apple-polishers). Even if' ey’re geniuses 'n' ya gotta respect ‘em ‘cuz 'ey know all'e sports stats, they’re still nerds. Maybe they’ll “grow a pair” later. You grow up into the family business or trade – legal or not – or you make your bones in the military, if not elsewhere.

Middle Class Perceptions: School is a wonderful opportunity for everyone. Educators, like church people and parents, only want what’s best for the child. You have to avoid hanging out with the wrong kind of kids. You learn to do as you’re told. You learn to work with all kinds of people, even women. You study and your success, financial or professional, is (all but) guaranteed if you get good grades. (It does help to know the “right people.” School – especially college -- is where you meet them.)

Upper Class Perceptions: You get along and ahead (if you are that close to poverty to worry about achievements) by knowing the right people. School is a place your parents put you to get you away from overly interesting individuals and into the company of those who are “right-thinking,” that is, not inclined to worry about so-called broader problems. (There is enough in the family garden to be cultivated.) So called “higher education” is for fun and having sex with people you wouldn’t dream of marrying. Don’t get seduced into involvement with academics. (You were born on third base. No harm in telling people you hit a triple even if you don’t give a damn about making a home run.)

Perhaps such family ties have become outmoded. Perhaps schools have so, too.

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


Cordially
--- EGR

Staff Development: Bibbidee, bobbidee, boo!

A Soviet-era Russian joke: The workers’ paradise -- we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.

A related hypothesis: any occupation where it is not clear what is being produced, or how what is produced is to be evaluated, will have someone whose job it is to provide “staff development.”

If you release me from my job responsibilities to sit and jawbone about peripheralities and, especially, to “open up” and “confess” how I “feel” about them; then, I might well join in and pretend that you, too, are earning your keep.

To examine these issues further, see How Not to Develop Staff

Cordially,
-- EGR