Do Our Schools Prepare Kids for Factory Work or Knowledge Work?

While there is much posturing and TALK about preparing kids for knowledge jobs (21st Century Skills, etc.), there has been virtually no change in the substance of what is taught and how it is taught since the system was designed a century ago to prepare the masses for production line work in factories. Change is required, not talk if our kids are to be prepared to compete in a very different world than existed in the early twentieth century. Experts like Diane Ravitch have pointed out that the 21st Century Skills movement is an excuse to bring back failed old ideas with new and improved labels. This is not progress. It is criminal fraud and it hurts our kids.

During my education research over the last 7 years I have run into one comment more than any other from teachers about subjects they are tasked to teach. It could be paraphrased as, “I didn’t do well in math. I don’t like math, but I have to try to teach it to my kids.” Let me ask you, do you think the kids will learn well from someone who has a poor understanding of math and such a strong distaste for it?

Why worry about it, you might say. We must concern ourselves because math skill and knowledge are becoming increasingly more important now with the intensified trend toward knowledge work and the high level of global competition to get those good, well-paying jobs. Why is math important? Because--

• Math is the language we use to understand and model the world we live in. Rigorous math is used in most fields of endeavor. We all know that it is vital for scientists, engineers and applied mathematicians. However, math is used in research in many fields as they attempt to better understand their area of interest. It is used in medicine, psychology, education, and businesses of all types.

• Studying and working with math is good exercise for our reasoning powers. It is the best area of study to teach problem formulation and definition. In the real world problems are not presented as in dumbed down math texts where the data in the problem is the only data you need to solve it. In the real world there is an abundance of data that is meaningless to solving most problems. The key is to formulate the problem so that the important data is captured giving understanding to the causes and solutions for the problem at hand.

• Math is fun. Math is beautiful in its elegant structure.

Now the question to ask is do we keep preparing K-12 students for “do as you are told, factory work” as the whole process was designed to do or do we change to a system that facilitates and encourages all students to learn to their full potential. Factory work is continuing to decline as a career opportunity in today’s age of outsourcing and automation. To change for the better we will need to break some stereotypes. The first one and most hateful of all is. “Girls aren’t good at math and if they are there is something wrong with them.” This belief held by too many teachers, parents and others is a harmful self-fulfilling prophecy that dooms too many girls to poor performance in math. Perhaps its mirror image for boys is that they can’t do as well as girls in literacy areas. Both boys and girls have the ability to excel in both areas, especially with the low expectation curricula being used in our K-12 mainline schools.

For girls in elementary classes where most teachers are women, seeing their teachers distaste for math that always shows through, no matter how positive they try to be creates poor role models. “Gee, if Miss MacGuilicudy can’t do math, how could I ever do it?” As in any psychologically corrupt environment, students who violate the expected norms are subtly punished to get them into line with the expectation.

To change will require teaching teachers to learn to love math instead of fear it. The education schools can’t do this as they are populated with pseudo math staff who also fear and dislike math. The exception is when the government gives them a multimillion dollar grant to “invent” a math curriculum that will work to conceal the teachers’ lack of math skill. Even though they don’t understand math well at all they come up with a discovery curriculum that transforms the teacher into a facilitator of group discussions as kids “discover” how to solve problems. The problems “solved” are trivial. They have to be because the kids can’t solve them with the discovery method unless they are. This curriculum has spread across the nation like wildfire because educators want to be freed from the responsibility to really teach math as a hierarchy that builds on foundations learned in the previous year. The whole premise is like preparing to cross a great wilderness with a guide or without one. Wandering in the wilderness is not what we should be after in education. We need guides (teachers) who know the way through the wilderness. You only need to look at the discovery process and how it might apply to say, The Calculus, to realize the approach is ridiculous. While Newton developed The Calculus at age 19 to help him analyze physical phenomena, I defy you to assert that the discovery method would be an efficient way to train future scientists, engineers and mathematicians in The Calculus. You see that is the real problem. The constructivist/discovery methods take much longer than direct instruction to teach the material. That is why kids early in their K-12 careers do better than they do in the middle and high school grades. In the discovery process it is too easy for students to “discover the wrong principle” which undermines the foundation they need in the future.

The result? Kids who are exposed to this fraud reach middle and high school totally unprepared for algebra and beyond. Then the middle and high school teachers have to try to make up years of lost time and teach the new material too. No wonder the math performance of high school students is so poor. Oh, there are exceptions who do get it because their parents taught them or provided tutors to fill the void. Most students however, don’t have that advantage and end up turned off and incompetent in math. This limits their future possibilities greatly and since it affects so many students it affects the whole nation’s competitiveness.

The first thing you must realize is that the vast majority of educators do not understand subject matter. You pick the subject and they haven’t been exposed to it in more than a highly diffuse and superficial way. Yet, they have no problem posturing as experts to enable them to ignore the truth that is offered by those who do understand subject matter. Rita Kramer described the problem well in her bestselling book, Ed School Follies. “The people who become ‘educators’ and who run our school systems usually have degrees in education, psychology, social sciences, public administration; they are not people who have studied, know, and love literature, history, science, or philosophy. Our ‘educators’ are not educated. They do not love learning. Naturally enough, they think of the past as dead because it has never been alive to them. And they will not bring it alive for their pupils.”

In math this has led to “holding the fort” against all appeals for objective review of the harm being done by the ridiculous approach to teaching math. The same argument can apply to literacy and other curriculum areas. The way the educators have been able to turn away the constructive criticism is to employ “outside” experts to approve their approach. Thus, they hire outside, education school educated consultants to review their program and offer ideas on making it better.

Of course, the public who hears of what sounds a reasonable approach do not understand that the “outside experts” come from the same weak, diffuse and superficial training as the school officials who hire them for the review. Do not be fooled, if a person has a doctorate or masters in education they are not educated. Arthur Levine in his research into education schools concluded that they “confer masters on those who display anything but mastery and doctorates in name only.” While some educators have learned subjects in other studies or on their own, most have not. In general, while well meaning, these people have nothing of value to add to improving our kids’ education and it is time that the public became aware of it. We must demand positive action to face the reality of the poor educator performance and poor understanding of what works that is hurting our kids.