The Woodcutter

Joe was a hardworking woodcutter. His father had taught him his trade. He knew the importance of keeping his tools, axe and crosscut saw sharp so that his productivity would be high. Joe would go to periodic workshops with other woodcutters to keep his knowledge of axe and crosscut saw up to date. His prices had gone up steadily over the years. He claimed it was only to keep up with the inflation rate but in fact his prices had gone up at more than twice the rate of inflation. So, his was a record of steady and dramatic decline in productivity.

While Joe worked as hard as ever he found his prices couldn’t compete with woodcutters who were employing better methods to cause improved productivity. Thus, with time his business began to decline as only those customers that he had locked in to long term contracts would buy his wood. As those multi-year contracts expired he knew his business would decline even more.

Joe formed a trade group of other woodcutters using axe and crosscut saw to lobby politicians and support those politicians for election who agreed to work to fix the price of wood products so that they didn’t have to compete. Because they were so frustrated, they even engaged in the occasional act of intimidation to make their point. They launched an advertising campaign extolling the virtue of their product and how their methods didn’t pollute the earth with chainsaw exhaust. They were careful to compare their productivity to others who used the same unproductive methods they favored. In this way they put the best face on their low performance. Their advertising theme was, “Would Paul Bunyan stoop to using a chainsaw?” They had some success over time but as more and more states enacted laws permitting free choice in the buying of wood products, the economic prospects for Joe and his fellow trade group members declined steadily.

Now to Education

Is education different than Joe and his axe and crosscut saw friends? Not at all. The educator ranks are working as hard as Joe and his fellow woodcutters to preserve unproductive processes. They fear anything that doesn’t conform to the scientifically incorrect content they learned in education school which is continually reinforced by professional development classes and faulty research.

The situation in education is worse than Joe’s though. Joe’s actions are impacting his own long term viability as a woodcutter. The educators’ actions are harming their own credibility and long term prospects but they also are harming generations of kids who are ill prepared to compete in the increasingly competitive global environment. The experienced educators are making the bet that they can outlast criticism long enough to retire before they have to change, prioritizing their own comfort over the welfare of the kids. Thus, there is a strong “preserve the status quo at all costs” ethic at work in our school districts.

E.D. Hirsch whom I consider to be the person with the most complete understanding of our education problems stated in his appearance at the Manhattan Institute last fall (available on booktv.org by searching on E.D. Hirsch and selecting view video):

• Educators will never change on their own. They will have to be forced by outside forces [the public].
• Our education performance is characterized by low student achievement, ethnic inequality of results, low levels of civic commitment by graduates.
• Since the progressives gained control of the education schools and deployed graduates trained (brainwashed) in their technically incorrect methods, Sat verbal scores have declined from a level of about 543 in the late 60s to a steady level of about 505 from 1980 to now. He points out the excuses of the educators that this change is due to an increase in minorities taking the test. Hirsch asserts that this increase cannot explain the decline in white middle class student scores. He relates research by Harvard researcher, Christopher Jencks which showed that Iowa with 98% white, middle class students saw a large decrease in SAT verbal scores as well. The researcher concluded it was due to curricula less oriented to content, i.e. watered down and weak vocabulary. Hirsch looked at the College Board stats and found a constant pool of about 1 million test takers each year where those scoring over 600 on the verbal SAT had declined 56% and the students scoring over 650 had declined by 73% since the progressive content-free approach had been implemented.
• Achievement gaps have not closed for many decades and Hirsch states they cannot decrease until a content-rich curriculum replaces the current content-free, watered down approach. He points out that the current curricula and methods harm the minority kids the most.
• Hirsch decries the “monolithic intellectual monopoly of faulty ideas” as the biggest problem in education. Trying to convince educators of the need to change is impossible. They simply have been too well brainwashed in the faulty ideas to change from within. Change can only happen if they are forced to abandon their technically incorrect ideas.
• Richard Hofstadter, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book, Anti-intellectualism in American Life, called for more content and less process in the education of our kids. He concluded the fragmented courses and watered down texts had to go if our education performance was to be improved.

What must the public do to end the harm our education system is doing to our kids?

• Educate yourselves to understand the reality of our poor education performance. For example, in Colorado where achievement standards are low, the comparison to other districts and schools based on the Colorado testing only tells you how a school or district compares to other weak performing districts or schools. Also, national standards are weak compared to our global competitors.
• Realize that the 5 decade progressive-approach detour into the education wilderness has been a disaster for our kids and nation. See my previous blog about the Borg Education system to refresh your memory on the aims of the progressive education initiative. They are basically trying to produce a credulous (gullible) populace that will be ready to believe in “expert” leadership and “made up” crises used to motivate more expert control.
• Realize that productivity is a null word in education where costs per student have soared at about twice the rate of inflation for many decades while results have stayed mired in “unacceptable” territory.
• Realize that educators are not the experts in what works in educating kids. They are the “anti-experts.”
• Realize that education degrees and certifications only provide evidence that the person has learned the “party line,” not that they should be valued as educators.
• Expect elected representatives at all levels to put service to kids as the top priority, not protecting the jobs, pay or benefits of educators. This will be difficult because ed power groups support malleable candidates who will vote the way they want them to if they make large contributions to campaigns. That is, if educators are performing poorly and they are in results where it counts, they must show greatly improved performance to justify hanging on to their positions.
• Realize that improvement can’t be made without hardnosed and sustained battle with the education power groups. These include the education schools, the federal and state education bureaucracies, the teachers unions, the administrator state and national groups, the school board associations, in other words everyone involved in the current mainline education system. The public must take responsibility to force the needed changes. Only the public has enough clout to overcome the entrenched and harmful treatment of our kids.
• Inoculate yourself against the constant drumbeat that more money is needed to “fix” things in education and that any cut will harm the kids. This couldn’t be further from the truth. More money only continues to feed the unacceptable status quo. It doesn’t go toward helping kids at all. In fact, if a freeze of school based administration and a reduction of 10% a year in central administration salary budgets were put in place until results improved by, say 50%, the message would finally be received by the educators. We must stop feeding this monster that destroys and attenuates kids’ future prospects.

While I support charter schools and vouchers, they simply don’t have the leverage to fix the problem for enough kids. A lot of charters are started by mainline educators who want to put the em Fah sis on a different sil Ah bul. Many charters aren’t putting in content-rich curricula which are needed to fix our education problem. Some charters are doing a great job and more power to them but they alone cannot be the answer. They impact too few kids.

Thus, if you care about our kids or the future of our nation, it is urgent that you become involved. Expecting educators to do their job and begin to serve the kids at the required level is a fool’s errand without “our help” which demands they get on with it NOW.