The Band-Aid Curtain: To renovate or demolish and start over.

Makeovers run out of gas eventually. In this post I want to cover some education history as a basis for considering whether we should continue efforts to “remodel” or whether it would be best to “demolish and rebuild” our education system. The first question to ask is, will a remodel suffice in the future? To answer that we must look carefully at the roots of our current education system and judge whether “tweaks” to the edifice built in the early twentieth century will “fix” the problems adequately.

The most succinct discussion of our education history I have found is in David Klein’s, A Brief History of American K-12 Mathematics Education in the 20th Century. (2003) If interested the same information is discussed in many other places. I am using the Klein work as it is most comprehensive in the shortest form. While Klein’s focus is on math, the same problems are there for other subjects as well.

“With roots going back to Jean Jacques Rousseau and with the guidance of John Dewey, progressive education has dominated American schools since the early years of the 20th century. That is not to say that progressive education has gone unchallenged. Challenges increased in intensity starting in the 1950s, waxed and waned, and in the 1990s gained unprecedented strength. A consequence of the domination of progressivism during the first half of the 20th century was a predictable and remarkably steady decrease of academic content in public schools. “

“Reflecting mainstream views of progressive education, Kilpatrick [Dewey protégé and Columbia Teacher’s College professor] rejected the notion that the study of mathematics contributed to mental discipline. His view was that subjects should be taught to students based on their direct practical value, or if students independently wanted to learn those subjects. This point of view toward education comported well with the pedagogical methods endorsed by progressive education. Limiting education primarily to utilitarian skills sharply limited academic content, and this helped to justify the slow pace of student centered, discovery learning, the centerpiece of progressivism. Kilpatrick proposed that the study of algebra and geometry in high school be discontinued ‘except as an intellectual luxury.’ According to Kilpatrick, mathematics is ‘harmful rather than helpful to the kind of thinking necessary for ordinary living.’"

“In the 1930s the education journals, textbooks, and courses for administrators and teachers advocated the major themes of progressivism. The school curriculum would be determined by the needs and interests of children, as determined by professional educators, and not by academic subjects. It became a cliché in the 1930s, just as in the 1990s, for educators to say, "We teach children, not subject matter." The Activity Movement of the 1930s promoted the integration of subjects in elementary school, and argued against separate instruction in mathematics and other subjects.

“’...those who make up the staffs of the schools and colleges of education, and the administrators and teachers whom they train to run the system, have a truly amazing uniformity of opinion regarding the aims, the content, and the methods of education. They constitute a cohesive body of believers with a clearly formulated set of dogmas and doctrines, and they are perpetuating the faith by seeing to it through state laws and the rules of state departments of education, that only those teachers and administrators are certified who have been trained in the correct dogma.’ From Madly They Teach, Mortimer Smith.”

“One of the signal events of 1999 was the release of Liping Ma's book, Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics. Ma compared answers to elementary school math questions by 23 U.S. elementary school teachers to those by 72 Chinese elementary school math teachers. Of the U.S. teachers, 12 were participating in an NSF sponsored program whose "goal was to prepare excellent classroom mathematics teachers to be in-service leaders in their own school districts or regions." The remaining U.S. teachers were interns, each with one year experience teaching. The interns were to receive Masters Degrees at the end of the summer during which interviews took place. By contrast, most Chinese teachers had only 11 or 12 years of formal education, completing only the ninth grade in high school followed by two or three years of normal school. In spite of their fewer years of formal education, the Chinese teachers demonstrated much greater understanding of fundamental mathematics than did their U.S. counterparts. Ma masterfully explained the interrelationships of pedagogy and content at the elementary school level and drew important lessons from her investigations.”

While Klein’s article is (47) 8.5X11 pages long I think the quotes above give you the picture. The progressive principles were put in place and are still strongly defended by educators. They have built the defensive walls strongly and that is what has led to a “fiefdom” mentality; defensive, delusional, insular and inbred. I call it the Band-Aid curtain because so many Band-Aids have been applied over the decades to try to improve education performance that you can’t see the unyielding fortifications underneath. The conclusion is clear, until the fiefdom walls are breached so that truth and reality can enter, no positive change can happen. The educators have been kept in the dark for over a century and protected by the fiefdom walls (and the dogma mentioned in the Madly They Teach quote) from having to face the truth of their performance. The fiefdom is an immovable entity with the only motivation for strong action being “is our place at the public trough safe or not.”

Thus, the important question to consider is “will the current progressive design of our education system prepare our children for the intensifying global meritocracy they face in futures where content knowledge is vital?” Many commentators have observed that the motivation of the progressives in their education design was to “socialize” children not to really teach them subject matter. My conclusion is that the lack of content taught by the current system puts our kids far behind their best global competition. The fact that Liping Ma found the Chinese elementary math teachers much more competent in math foundational knowledge even though they had much less “education” than the American participants in her study is telling. The American teachers were selected from the best to be in a program to prepare to become in service leaders for their schools in math education and from masters candidates who would receive their degrees at the end of the summer when the interviews took place. This reinforces the conclusion that the discovery learning principles put in place by the progressives prevent in-depth understanding of subjects. This lack of ability to train effective content teachers inevitably results in students who will not learn the foundational concepts they need to succeed at higher and higher levels of education.

The answer to the question of renovate (more Band-Aids) or demolish and rebuild is to rebuild. The renovate approach has been tried without success for many decades now and has not been successful. Any improvements have come at a glacial pace while our competitors are moving swiftly to improve their educational performance. Thus we are falling farther and farther behind.

Now, as to the design of the new education edifice, what should it look like? I don’t have all of the answers there but do have definite opinions on some of the elements. I would like to solicit input from readers via the blog comment facility to get ideas you have regarding an optimum design for the 21st century and beyond. This is what is called a "clean sheet of paper" exercise. If we had no education system now but needed one, how would we design a new one. An example might be technology use. Would it differ from our usage in the current system? These could take both positive and negative form. That is, it should or should not include ___________. I am looking forward to your ideas.

One Plant Says to Another Plant. . .

One plant says to another plant, “The nerve of that botanist know it all. He isn’t a plant, how can he know anything about what we really are or the difficulties we face?” This is the problem isn’t it? The insiders (plants) have no respect for the opinion of the outsiders (botanists). Yet, the botanist has a much more complete picture of the plant world than any plant can ever have. This is because the botanist has studied the plant kingdom in its full breadth and depth providing a context that the individual plants or even families of plants cannot match. Each plant has a narrow experience of its own environment and has adapted itself to that reality without willingly considering if changing its position with respect to the environment might improve its lot or the yield of its fruits.

You knew since this is an education blog that I would relate this little example to education. You are right. I often hear that I would have more credibility with educators if I were one. And I will concede readily that it should be true. However, I want to discuss whether it would be true and with an example that shows that even if I were an insider it wouldn’t be true. My assertion is that I have a much more accurate view of what is going on in education than educators do. They work in an environment that suppresses the truth through ubiquitous use of political correctness and Group Think. I have studied the education empire intensely for over 5 years across multiple states. Because my motive has been to understand where the opportunities to improve the service our kids and society get from the education empire I have a much more objective view of the problems and possible solutions than any educator I have met or read.

Now to the example I promised about “insider” input being ignored, criticized or both; consider Arthur Levine. Dr. Levine could have been considered the ultimate insider as the President of Columbia Teachers College. Teachers College is what E.D. Hirsch Jr. called the “parent organism” of education schools. He asserts that the other education schools are basically clones of Teachers College. Arthur worked for a group of foundations to report on education school efforts in three key areas; Educating Leaders, Teachers, and Researchers. The first report came out in March 2005, Educating School Leaders. It was very critical based on his several year study of every education school degree granting institution in the country. His conclusions were many and they were not positive. He used such terms as “they are in a race to the bottom” and “they confer masters on those who display anything but mastery and doctorates in name only” and “engage superintendents and principals in studies irrelevant to their jobs.” The report is over a hundred pages in letter size format. It is well worth reading. Did it have the kind of impact that criticism from an insider should have had? NO! It has been totally ignored except perhaps causing the education schools to dig their ruts a little deeper. The conclusion to draw is that it isn’t whether you are an insider or outsider but whether you are criticizing or praising the education system. There is no interest at all among education school deans and faculties to reform to provide a quality product. They are raking in huge sums of money with the diploma mill approach they have taken. Because the larger universities they are part of use this excess money from the education schools for other “more worthy” projects they would be in trouble if they did anything that might reduce that flow of money. Thus, the low and falling admission and graduation standards, the reduction in time to degree, etc. all are an effort to stay ahead of the competition in Levine’s observed race to the bottom.

It is not whether criticism comes from an insider or outsider, educators will not listen and especially will not admit to themselves that they are doing anything less than a great job. While many educators are well-meaning and some even know the truth and are frustrated by its suppression, they work in an environment where political correctness disallows saying anything critical out loud. Those exceptions who do speak out usually find they are informed that their contract will not be renewed for the coming year. New educators are indoctrinated from the beginning of their careers, starting in the education schools.

E.D. Hirsch Jr. in The Knowledge Deficit defines the problem well. “The reason for this state of affairs – tragic for millions of students as well as for the nation – is that an army of American educators and reading experts are fundamentally wrong in their ideas about education. . . At the beginning of the twentieth century, the parent organism, Teachers College at Columbia University, exported professors and the romantic principles…resulting in an intellectual sameness across the nation’s education schools. Naturalism and Formalism are the two principles that constitute a kind of theology that is drilled into prospective teachers like a catechism. American education expertise (which is not the same as educational expertise in nations that perform better than we do) has a monolithic character in which dissent is stifled.”

So what can be done to break through the walls of insularity and delusion that keep the truth from penetrating the consciousness of educators?

• Competition is perhaps the best way. And that is why the education power groups fight the idea of vouchers and charter schools with a passion because they don’t want the competition which might force them to face reality and change.

• Demand that a rigorous program of retooling education leadership skill for current leaders is implemented immediately. It is the key to better performance and without it the future performance will mirror that of the past. This must not be something done by the education schools. They have proven they don’t know how to do it.

• Voting against every request for more money for educators to spend is another. They are clever at couching the argument that a vote against the money is voting against the kids but in reality it is the opposite. Voting against added money is a vote FOR the kids because it increases the pressure for better performance and reduced waste by the schools in serving our kids. Giving them more money allows them to continue ignoring the problems that must be addressed if performance is to improve.

• Voting out “rubber stamp” school boards and voting in board members who see the truth and are dedicated to making positive change in spite of the resistance.

• Using our votes to demand that the legislators specify results not process, putting in place rewards for positive results and penalties for poor results. As long as the practitioners are ethical and within the law, who cares what process they use to get improved results.

• Decouple certification from education school degrees and training, forcing the ed schools to reform or wither away.

• Of course, merit pay for educators would be great too but it can only happen well if the leaders are trained to lead more effectively. If implemented now it would be done poorly and add to the arguments against it.

Copyright © Paul Richardson 2009