Just as an explorer needs markers to find their way, so do organizations. If you have studied the Lewis and Clark expedition you will know that Clark was able to chart their course extremely accurately considering the instruments he had to work with. I want to share some markers with respect to organizations and how you can “translate” them into a better understanding of what they indicate about the organization.
We can’t hire you because you are overqualified—this statement has become ubiquitous in many organizations and industry groups. So what does this really mean? Possibilities include;
• We know that we are a “status quo” organization and you would become quickly bored or frustrated by the lack of organizational and personal growth potential.
• People want to be part of a winning team and this team is not one.
• An organization that espouses this “you are overqualified” statement is in a slow (or fast) decline in performance and competitiveness.
• If you are a high powered applicant, be thankful when they tell you that you are overqualified. That allows you to conclude that their leadership is weak and you wouldn’t want to work there anyway.
If only we could eliminate the unfair competition or lack of support from . . . –this tells you that they are more interested in confessing that their poor performance is someone else’s fault than in facing the reality of their own performance problems. You can only use that argument with a straight face after you are sure you have perfected your own performance to its fullest and have no room to improve without removing the impediment you want to complain about.
We’ve been in business for decades and see no need to change our process now—this is a sure indication that this organization is doomed. There is only one constant in the world and that is change. You either face it taking it as an opportunity or you are victimized by it.
We are the best so now we can relax—oops! - This reminds me of a story about Mack Trucks back in the first half of the twentieth century. They had designed a product line that was the current state of the art and considerably ahead of that of any competitor. They were so confident that they shut down their design function because they thought no one would ever be able to do better than they had done. They were wrong and squandered their lead causing much pain as they tried to restart development, something they should have kept all along.
We have a nice work environment because we do not allow arguments or disagreements—oh, my goodness, this is political correctness run amok. Bossidy and Charan in their best selling management book Execution, the discipline of getting things done discuss the need for “robust dialog” if you aspire to creating a “performance” organization. What they are saying is that you must allow and encourage people to disagree vigorously so that the “truth” needed for good decisions, is exposed. Organizations that suppress the truth through political correctness and its brother Group Think are doomed to poor performance because their “be nice” ethic suppresses the lifeblood (truth) they need to succeed.
As a successful manager of high performing teams I can say that the first one; we can’t hire you because you are overqualified is the most ridiculous to me. When I had an opening I looked for the best qualified person I could find, even someone who could compete with me and perhaps beat me out. You need strong people to perform well and hiring the best gives you the opportunity to grow the organization quickly to the point where even the “overqualified” need to grow with it. A good definition of the duty of a leader is, “A leader is responsible to provide a work climate in which everyone has a chance to grow and mature as individuals, as members of a group by satisfying their own needs, while working for the success of the organization.”
Too, the truth suppression of political correctness and Group Think guarantee an organization will not be able to perform well. Kill them both; RIP. Is the goal to be nice or to perform the mission at an excellent level? You can’t have both all of the time. You can be nice much of the time but there are times when you can’t if you want to perform. I remember stories of Jimmy David the defensive back for the Detroit Lions championship teams of the 1950s. His teammates told of hating him in practice because he was so hardnosed in his tackling. But they also said they loved him in the games when he made great plays regularly. If you don’t practice with passion you can’t perform with passion.
Keep these markers in mind when assessing an organization to work for, invest in or buy a product or service from.
Paul Richardson
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Execution—The Discipline of Getting Things Done
Larry Bossidy and Raum Charan wrote a best selling management book a few years ago with the above title. It was recommended to me by a superintendent friend of mine. I read it and found most of it to be very standard management fare. That is, the standard disciplines of Plan, Organize, Lead (Motivate) and Control. The need to employ feedback based on objective data relating the results obtained to the results desired.
I was impressed however by one section of the book realizing that it applied really well to the greatest impediment to improving our education performance. This was the assertion that if you wanted to create a “performance organization” you needed to create an environment that valued and indeed expected what the authors called “robust dialogue.” In education there is no robust dialogue worth mentioning. Political correctness and Group Think work exceedingly well to suppress the truth and also the synergy that truly robust dialogue could facilitate. Due to this “soft” environment opportunities to do better are regularly missed. This sort of environment is one where people wear their “feelings on their sleeves” and develop no mental toughness that an environment valuing intellectual honesty (being able to look objectively at our own shortcomings and resolve to do better) and robust dialogue.
If you honestly think about it you know that people often know the truth but have learned to suppress it and “be nice.” This creates far more stress than a good argument in the name of better understanding of different attitudes about problems. Synergy by definition requires constructive interaction in a group setting. This is especially true in continuous quality improvement (CQI) activities. The robust dialog that is required to make CQI really work is vital to the process. Since there is no robust dialogue in education worth noting, CQI cannot work. Yet, huge amounts of money are spent on “going through the motions” CQI programs so that school organizations can claim they are using CQI to improve their performance. Another area impacted by the be-nice ethic is the lack of constructive criticism in performance reviews. You may say, “What’s the use, with tenure it makes no difference.” But people will react to scrupulously objective feedback especially if it relates to activities that support the organization’s mission.
While examples of truth suppression are ubiquitous in education one of the worst examples is the case of the school board member who was told on visiting a high school in a large district that 150 9th graders were reading between the 1st and 6th grade levels. That amounted to about a third of the 9th grade class in that school. He expressed his concern about it at the next board meeting. There was no response from any of the administrators or other board members. The board president deftly moved on to the next agenda item. There was a response however, the next day the “assistant superintendent of instruction” sent an email to the entire staff and board with The Blueberry Story attached. This is a “story” whose moral is basically that improvement is required but until society and parents send better students to school the educators can’t do anything. The other action taken was to tell the principal who told the board member the truth that their contract would not be renewed (hence they were fired). So the message to the entire organization was that poor performance was OK but telling the truth was a hanging offense.
Oh, when I discussed the book with the superintendent who recommended it I highlighted the robust dialogue and intellectual honesty section. The superintendent said that there was nothing in the book on that topic. I had to fax copies of those pages as proof to make the point. This experience proved to me once again that educators have such a strong filter preventing any information that conflicts with their education school and on the job training that new beneficial insights and knowledge are not allowed into their consciousness. Thus, until education leaders are retrained by outsiders who are strong enough to break through that filter the massive improvement so desperately needed cannot happen.
I was impressed however by one section of the book realizing that it applied really well to the greatest impediment to improving our education performance. This was the assertion that if you wanted to create a “performance organization” you needed to create an environment that valued and indeed expected what the authors called “robust dialogue.” In education there is no robust dialogue worth mentioning. Political correctness and Group Think work exceedingly well to suppress the truth and also the synergy that truly robust dialogue could facilitate. Due to this “soft” environment opportunities to do better are regularly missed. This sort of environment is one where people wear their “feelings on their sleeves” and develop no mental toughness that an environment valuing intellectual honesty (being able to look objectively at our own shortcomings and resolve to do better) and robust dialogue.
If you honestly think about it you know that people often know the truth but have learned to suppress it and “be nice.” This creates far more stress than a good argument in the name of better understanding of different attitudes about problems. Synergy by definition requires constructive interaction in a group setting. This is especially true in continuous quality improvement (CQI) activities. The robust dialog that is required to make CQI really work is vital to the process. Since there is no robust dialogue in education worth noting, CQI cannot work. Yet, huge amounts of money are spent on “going through the motions” CQI programs so that school organizations can claim they are using CQI to improve their performance. Another area impacted by the be-nice ethic is the lack of constructive criticism in performance reviews. You may say, “What’s the use, with tenure it makes no difference.” But people will react to scrupulously objective feedback especially if it relates to activities that support the organization’s mission.
While examples of truth suppression are ubiquitous in education one of the worst examples is the case of the school board member who was told on visiting a high school in a large district that 150 9th graders were reading between the 1st and 6th grade levels. That amounted to about a third of the 9th grade class in that school. He expressed his concern about it at the next board meeting. There was no response from any of the administrators or other board members. The board president deftly moved on to the next agenda item. There was a response however, the next day the “assistant superintendent of instruction” sent an email to the entire staff and board with The Blueberry Story attached. This is a “story” whose moral is basically that improvement is required but until society and parents send better students to school the educators can’t do anything. The other action taken was to tell the principal who told the board member the truth that their contract would not be renewed (hence they were fired). So the message to the entire organization was that poor performance was OK but telling the truth was a hanging offense.
Oh, when I discussed the book with the superintendent who recommended it I highlighted the robust dialogue and intellectual honesty section. The superintendent said that there was nothing in the book on that topic. I had to fax copies of those pages as proof to make the point. This experience proved to me once again that educators have such a strong filter preventing any information that conflicts with their education school and on the job training that new beneficial insights and knowledge are not allowed into their consciousness. Thus, until education leaders are retrained by outsiders who are strong enough to break through that filter the massive improvement so desperately needed cannot happen.
Monday, March 21, 2011
What Would George Do?
We have a huge and shameful problem in education. The achievement gap between “advantaged” students and “disadvantaged” students is unacceptable. Closing this gap has been allocated first place among education goals for decades. Yet, despite billions being thrown at the problem it has only gotten worse.
As an example the Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission Final Report of 11/2005 provides some important information on both the problem and the continuing misguided approaches to solving the problem. Since there is amazing consistency in education approaches and attitudes across the nation this is valid everywhere to a first order approximation.
"That a nation of unparalleled wealth, matchless military strength, undreamed of progress in science and medicine and home to history’s greatest democracy can tolerate this failure is shocking. Yes, individual schools sometimes defy the odds, but whole systems almost never do. Why? What are the reasons for this failure? It has to do with both will and skill and the reasons illuminate the fact that minority and poor youth are often seen as not worthy of our finest efforts. This needs to be said. The conditions of educational desolation that this Commission decries are to be largely found on streets that the movers and shakers of our society rarely walk; and in schools where their children cannot be found. However, perhaps the greater shame is that such conditions are also found in the schools that serve our society’s privileged children. Pouring billions of dollars into a search for solutions has eased the conscience of the fortunate but has not succeeded in saving those children who continue to be victimized by our abject failures.
Not surprisingly, we have found a fairly benign phrase to describe this catastrophe: “the achievement gap.” It is more comfortable than another phrase: 'the soft bigotry of low expectations.'”
The commission goes on to name its strategy for finally fixing the problem.
Data & Assessment
Closing the gap begins by understanding data and assessment. Colorado must develop a comprehensive, centralized, user-friendly and easily accessible data and assessment system that identifies gaps and deficiencies at the student, school and district level. This data and assessment system should gather available data and centralize it in a consistent and understandable format that can be applied with best practices to address gaps and deficiencies by informing instruction by classroom teachers. Data should be accessible to parents and the community to further understanding of achievement gaps. Data from the higher education system should be linked with K-12 to promote partnerships between the two systems as well as informing public policy makers, parents, teachers and the community at large about the efficacy of strategies that have been implemented to close the gap.
High Expectations
The achievement gap cannot be addressed without a commitment to high expectations. From the business community, students, parents, teachers, administrators and board members at the local level to the Department of Education, State Board of Education, General Assembly and Governor’s Office at the state level, must develop high expectations of success for all students and accept no excuses. The foundation of high expectations is by establishing and maintaining academic rigor in all grade levels from kindergarten through higher education and across school district boundaries. Cultural sensitivity and the impacts of cultural biases on expectations must also be addressed.
Higher Education
Higher Education is an essential participant in eliminating the gap. We must develop and infuse a strong connection between higher education and K-12 by emphasizing shared responsibilities, success indicators, rigorous and connected curriculum and a systemic, proactive support systems that encourages and enables all students to access and succeed in college. This would consist of establishing a rigorous and aligned P-16 curriculum that is the default for all students that begins with the destination in mind, preparing students for life and continuing education. P-16 must provide continuous support that enables all students (especially under-represented groups) to access and succeed in college by providing early counseling, “can-do” values and clear financial options. We must ensure that the P-16 system is seamless and includes elementary and middle schools as part of the solution. The committee recommends that access and affordability to higher education by under-represented groups be ensured.
Administrator/Teacher Qualifications and Professional-Development
The classroom teacher and the school administrator are the front line in ending the gap. We must develop administrator and teacher cultural competencies and sensitivity so that they can effectively embrace high expectations for all students. We must embed the same cultural competencies in local and state leadership. The state should require that administrator and teacher preparation programs are data-driven. As a state we should increase the number of minority teachers and administrators. Teachers should be involved in the choice of professional development opportunities. We must establish incentives that would place the most capable administrators and teachers to work in the most challenged and impacted schools.
Parent & Community Involvement
Schools alone cannot close the achievement gap without the involvement of parents and the broader community. We must build connections with parents, guardians, families, business and non-traditional leaders that will require more culturally sensitive behavior. We must make certain that we understand the strengths as well as the weaknesses of individual students and understand the circumstances that may affect their ability to learn. We must also effectively articulate why parents, guardians, families, business and non-traditional leaders are so important to creating an environment of high expectations.
Best Practices
Embracing and implementing strategies based upon research-based best practices at the classroom; school, district and state levels are the only means of effectively addressing the gap. We must collect, share and fund strategies that have demonstrated success in addressing the gap. This will involve not only the school districts, Colorado Department of Education and the State Board of Education, but must include the Colorado Education Association, Colorado Association of School Executives, Colorado Association of School Boards, the General Assembly and the Governor’s Office. The P-16 systems must reward best practices by linking them to funding and incentives.
Leadership
Leadership by superintendents at a district level, principals and teachers at the school level and other staff and administrators is critical to the effort to establish and maintain high expectations. Administrators and instructors have to both identify the problems and have good relationships with other faculty to implement solutions. Education specialists point to the importance of principal leadership that is passionate and competent in fulfilling the district mission and reaching achievement goals. Teachers also have opportunities to demonstrate leadership in the classroom on a daily basis. Achievement gap reduction efforts by both the Cherry Creek and Fountain/Fort Carson school districts included leadership success. Fountain/Fort Carson closed gaps in test scores, graduation rates and attendance rates by raising expectations for administrators. This effort entailed “principal academies” that include training, assessment and monitoring of principals. The district also emphasized an instructional leadership role of principals, in addition to their management role. Cherry Creek’s North Area achievement program required the addition of an executive director to ensure success.
How to summarize the above prescription. It is doomed from the beginning because it does not recognize that the current content-free approach does not work, especially for the “gap” kids. What does work for “ALL” kids is the content-rich approach used by our international competitors. We used that approach in the American Common School days but that was before Dewey and his henchmen took over education and began the damaging “dumbing down” process. THUS, THIS “DOING THE WRONG THING BETTER” APPROACH IS NOT GOING TO WORK BUT WILL CONTINUE TO ENRICH THE HUGE ARMY SUPPORTING THE STATUS QUO.
Since there is such a leadership vacuum in education, at least with the intestinal fortitude to call a spade a spade and force the system to face its reality, I wondered what George would do? That is, George Patton. Patton was famous for getting results. He was not famous for political correctness or being nice in the face of a challenge. I looked up some of his quotes to give a feel for what he might do to address this problem that our weak educators have been unable or unwilling to fix.
“If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.” This is particularly fitting to the education situation. The whole education fiefdom is very homogeneous in its core beliefs and approaches. This is reinforced by a strong wall and moat that keeps out corrupting outsider ideas and information. Hence, the kids continue to get bottom priority and the adults snooze in status quo, won’t work mode.
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't.” If our leaders both political and across all areas in and out of education really cared about our kids, especially the very abysmally served poor and minority (Gap) kids they would not continue using the “be nice” approach that allows the status quo to be perpetuated.
“Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men.” I would call this integrity, that is, a commitment to doing the right thing not the expedient or easy thing. There is very little integrity in education circles. This is coped with by fiefdom citizens with a delusional approach that embraces the “we confess it is their fault” attitude. It couldn’t be our fault, it must be the fault of the parents, the society, the voters who don’t approve our every request for more money to improve things.
“No good decision was ever made in a swivel chair.” William Oncken in his Performance Standards training would make the point, “Control—‘Only he who is where it is happening can control what is happening while it is happening.’ This is called “During-the-Fact” control and without it everything is OUT OF CONTROL.” The point is that sitting in your office does not work; you have to be out on the front lines to lead an organization to success.
“Say what you mean and mean what you say.” This problem is legion in education. Every year the administration gets their goals approved by the school board. Every year they fail to fulfill the goal achievement especially if it is any other than preserving the status quo. What is the consequence of failing to meet the goals they signed up for a year earlier? Nothing, in fact the board often hands out bonuses for good performance. This does not reinforce the need to perform, it reinforces sloth.
“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” This is particularly appropriate to the education fiefdom. Top down management is ubiquitous. Just do as you are told, initiative will be punished. This starts with the legislators who always specify process very tightly and the autocratic cascade continues down to all levels. Legislators should specify desired results with rewards for meeting them and penalties for not meeting them. But instead we continue along with the “one size fits all” prescriptions that ignore any uniqueness across school districts.
“Many soldiers are led to faulty ideas of war by knowing too much about too little.” Here is another massive problem in education. The vast majority of educators are trained by our education schools. This training inculcates the process catechism that was installed by Dewey et al in the early twentieth century. Subject knowledge is not taught with any rigor at all. Thus, our educators know too much about too little. E.D. Hirsch describes the problem in The Knowledge Deficit. “[P]rinciples that constitute a kind of theology that is drilled into prospective teachers like a catechism.
Conclusion
Our kids would be much better off if a “Patton” type approach would be used in education than they are with the “take care of the adults who work here, who cares about the kids” approach currently in use.
Yes, most educators I have talked to are well meaning but they are also ineffective in serving their mission. They need our help to face reality. They are doing an unacceptable job and we must not tolerate it because it harms kids.
As an example the Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission Final Report of 11/2005 provides some important information on both the problem and the continuing misguided approaches to solving the problem. Since there is amazing consistency in education approaches and attitudes across the nation this is valid everywhere to a first order approximation.
"That a nation of unparalleled wealth, matchless military strength, undreamed of progress in science and medicine and home to history’s greatest democracy can tolerate this failure is shocking. Yes, individual schools sometimes defy the odds, but whole systems almost never do. Why? What are the reasons for this failure? It has to do with both will and skill and the reasons illuminate the fact that minority and poor youth are often seen as not worthy of our finest efforts. This needs to be said. The conditions of educational desolation that this Commission decries are to be largely found on streets that the movers and shakers of our society rarely walk; and in schools where their children cannot be found. However, perhaps the greater shame is that such conditions are also found in the schools that serve our society’s privileged children. Pouring billions of dollars into a search for solutions has eased the conscience of the fortunate but has not succeeded in saving those children who continue to be victimized by our abject failures.
Not surprisingly, we have found a fairly benign phrase to describe this catastrophe: “the achievement gap.” It is more comfortable than another phrase: 'the soft bigotry of low expectations.'”
The commission goes on to name its strategy for finally fixing the problem.
Data & Assessment
Closing the gap begins by understanding data and assessment. Colorado must develop a comprehensive, centralized, user-friendly and easily accessible data and assessment system that identifies gaps and deficiencies at the student, school and district level. This data and assessment system should gather available data and centralize it in a consistent and understandable format that can be applied with best practices to address gaps and deficiencies by informing instruction by classroom teachers. Data should be accessible to parents and the community to further understanding of achievement gaps. Data from the higher education system should be linked with K-12 to promote partnerships between the two systems as well as informing public policy makers, parents, teachers and the community at large about the efficacy of strategies that have been implemented to close the gap.
High Expectations
The achievement gap cannot be addressed without a commitment to high expectations. From the business community, students, parents, teachers, administrators and board members at the local level to the Department of Education, State Board of Education, General Assembly and Governor’s Office at the state level, must develop high expectations of success for all students and accept no excuses. The foundation of high expectations is by establishing and maintaining academic rigor in all grade levels from kindergarten through higher education and across school district boundaries. Cultural sensitivity and the impacts of cultural biases on expectations must also be addressed.
Higher Education
Higher Education is an essential participant in eliminating the gap. We must develop and infuse a strong connection between higher education and K-12 by emphasizing shared responsibilities, success indicators, rigorous and connected curriculum and a systemic, proactive support systems that encourages and enables all students to access and succeed in college. This would consist of establishing a rigorous and aligned P-16 curriculum that is the default for all students that begins with the destination in mind, preparing students for life and continuing education. P-16 must provide continuous support that enables all students (especially under-represented groups) to access and succeed in college by providing early counseling, “can-do” values and clear financial options. We must ensure that the P-16 system is seamless and includes elementary and middle schools as part of the solution. The committee recommends that access and affordability to higher education by under-represented groups be ensured.
Administrator/Teacher Qualifications and Professional-Development
The classroom teacher and the school administrator are the front line in ending the gap. We must develop administrator and teacher cultural competencies and sensitivity so that they can effectively embrace high expectations for all students. We must embed the same cultural competencies in local and state leadership. The state should require that administrator and teacher preparation programs are data-driven. As a state we should increase the number of minority teachers and administrators. Teachers should be involved in the choice of professional development opportunities. We must establish incentives that would place the most capable administrators and teachers to work in the most challenged and impacted schools.
Parent & Community Involvement
Schools alone cannot close the achievement gap without the involvement of parents and the broader community. We must build connections with parents, guardians, families, business and non-traditional leaders that will require more culturally sensitive behavior. We must make certain that we understand the strengths as well as the weaknesses of individual students and understand the circumstances that may affect their ability to learn. We must also effectively articulate why parents, guardians, families, business and non-traditional leaders are so important to creating an environment of high expectations.
Best Practices
Embracing and implementing strategies based upon research-based best practices at the classroom; school, district and state levels are the only means of effectively addressing the gap. We must collect, share and fund strategies that have demonstrated success in addressing the gap. This will involve not only the school districts, Colorado Department of Education and the State Board of Education, but must include the Colorado Education Association, Colorado Association of School Executives, Colorado Association of School Boards, the General Assembly and the Governor’s Office. The P-16 systems must reward best practices by linking them to funding and incentives.
Leadership
Leadership by superintendents at a district level, principals and teachers at the school level and other staff and administrators is critical to the effort to establish and maintain high expectations. Administrators and instructors have to both identify the problems and have good relationships with other faculty to implement solutions. Education specialists point to the importance of principal leadership that is passionate and competent in fulfilling the district mission and reaching achievement goals. Teachers also have opportunities to demonstrate leadership in the classroom on a daily basis. Achievement gap reduction efforts by both the Cherry Creek and Fountain/Fort Carson school districts included leadership success. Fountain/Fort Carson closed gaps in test scores, graduation rates and attendance rates by raising expectations for administrators. This effort entailed “principal academies” that include training, assessment and monitoring of principals. The district also emphasized an instructional leadership role of principals, in addition to their management role. Cherry Creek’s North Area achievement program required the addition of an executive director to ensure success.
How to summarize the above prescription. It is doomed from the beginning because it does not recognize that the current content-free approach does not work, especially for the “gap” kids. What does work for “ALL” kids is the content-rich approach used by our international competitors. We used that approach in the American Common School days but that was before Dewey and his henchmen took over education and began the damaging “dumbing down” process. THUS, THIS “DOING THE WRONG THING BETTER” APPROACH IS NOT GOING TO WORK BUT WILL CONTINUE TO ENRICH THE HUGE ARMY SUPPORTING THE STATUS QUO.
Since there is such a leadership vacuum in education, at least with the intestinal fortitude to call a spade a spade and force the system to face its reality, I wondered what George would do? That is, George Patton. Patton was famous for getting results. He was not famous for political correctness or being nice in the face of a challenge. I looked up some of his quotes to give a feel for what he might do to address this problem that our weak educators have been unable or unwilling to fix.
“If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.” This is particularly fitting to the education situation. The whole education fiefdom is very homogeneous in its core beliefs and approaches. This is reinforced by a strong wall and moat that keeps out corrupting outsider ideas and information. Hence, the kids continue to get bottom priority and the adults snooze in status quo, won’t work mode.
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't.” If our leaders both political and across all areas in and out of education really cared about our kids, especially the very abysmally served poor and minority (Gap) kids they would not continue using the “be nice” approach that allows the status quo to be perpetuated.
“Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men.” I would call this integrity, that is, a commitment to doing the right thing not the expedient or easy thing. There is very little integrity in education circles. This is coped with by fiefdom citizens with a delusional approach that embraces the “we confess it is their fault” attitude. It couldn’t be our fault, it must be the fault of the parents, the society, the voters who don’t approve our every request for more money to improve things.
“No good decision was ever made in a swivel chair.” William Oncken in his Performance Standards training would make the point, “Control—‘Only he who is where it is happening can control what is happening while it is happening.’ This is called “During-the-Fact” control and without it everything is OUT OF CONTROL.” The point is that sitting in your office does not work; you have to be out on the front lines to lead an organization to success.
“Say what you mean and mean what you say.” This problem is legion in education. Every year the administration gets their goals approved by the school board. Every year they fail to fulfill the goal achievement especially if it is any other than preserving the status quo. What is the consequence of failing to meet the goals they signed up for a year earlier? Nothing, in fact the board often hands out bonuses for good performance. This does not reinforce the need to perform, it reinforces sloth.
“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” This is particularly appropriate to the education fiefdom. Top down management is ubiquitous. Just do as you are told, initiative will be punished. This starts with the legislators who always specify process very tightly and the autocratic cascade continues down to all levels. Legislators should specify desired results with rewards for meeting them and penalties for not meeting them. But instead we continue along with the “one size fits all” prescriptions that ignore any uniqueness across school districts.
“Many soldiers are led to faulty ideas of war by knowing too much about too little.” Here is another massive problem in education. The vast majority of educators are trained by our education schools. This training inculcates the process catechism that was installed by Dewey et al in the early twentieth century. Subject knowledge is not taught with any rigor at all. Thus, our educators know too much about too little. E.D. Hirsch describes the problem in The Knowledge Deficit. “[P]rinciples that constitute a kind of theology that is drilled into prospective teachers like a catechism.
Conclusion
Our kids would be much better off if a “Patton” type approach would be used in education than they are with the “take care of the adults who work here, who cares about the kids” approach currently in use.
Yes, most educators I have talked to are well meaning but they are also ineffective in serving their mission. They need our help to face reality. They are doing an unacceptable job and we must not tolerate it because it harms kids.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Team USA
The Most Important Race—We’re Losing
Imagine that many of the world’s developed and emerging nations agreed to compete in a yearlong auto race. The race will cover all sorts of terrain and climates in widely separated global venues. Our team would be selected by political leaders in the nation’s capital from people nominated by every state. Imagine that Team USA would be the first team to settle on an all purpose vehicle for the race.
All of the competitors but Team USA chose all purpose and reliable late-model SUVs for their vehicle based on the varying course conditions where normal over-the-road cars could not be as successful. Team USA chose a modified version of the Ford Model T. While their choice was scorned by their competition, Team USA said that they were the real experts and they would win the race easily.
They decided on the Model T based on its reputation for being easy to work on and repair. They added a bunch of features which they deemed necessary for the race. These included an air-conditioned cockpit, a complete set of the latest instruments to measure every aspect of vehicle performance, a state of the art GPS system plus additional crew members to monitor the gauges and computer readouts. Team USA was very positive about having the best vehicle in the race and couldn’t wait for the competition to begin.
The race is to cover 25,000 miles over one year. Only the first 5 teams would be awarded prizes. At the end of the first week the leading teams were Finland, Singapore, China, India and Russia. Team USA was far back because their 50,000 pound modified Model T experienced 100 tire blowouts and the top speed on level ground was 10 miles an hour due to the immense weight dragging on the relatively tiny Ford engine.
Day after day Team USA fell further and further behind. They took to announcing progress against lower and lower targets to make their failing performance look better than it was. This was successful in fooling most of the people. The race ended when the first five teams had finished. Team USA was about 200 days behind the leaders based on their average speed to date.
The Point
The race story is an analog to the performance of American K-12 education versus our global competition. The modified Model T was chosen because it is a hundred year old design just as the progressive philosophy of our education system is a century old. While there have been lots of added changes in curricula; program names, advanced education degrees, best practices, response to intervention, etc. they all are consistent with the constructivist, discovery beliefs of the progressive ideology. As in the race story, the performance of the constructivist/discovery methods is such that the education of students is much slower and never reaches the robust levels of the competition that are using higher performance methods and curricula (faster, better performing cars).
Also, as in the race story, educators set lower and lower standards to make their performance look much better than it really is (short yardstick). Our schools are simply not close to being competitive with those of our most capable competitors. Their children, not ours, are being prepared to seize the best job opportunities of the future. This has massive import to our future standard of living and our very survival as a nation.
How long will we grant huge amounts of money to the failed education process? The waste in the current system is akin to the thousands of pounds of modifications the race team made to the basic model. Attaching fancy gadgets to a failed underlying “vehicle” or education philosophy is a fool's approach. Yet it is we who are fools to allow it to continue when it is wasting huge amounts of money AND harming our kids. It shouldn’t be hard to demand changes once we face reality. That is difficult because we feel foolish for not realizing the truth sooner. But the truth must be faced if our kids are to be saved from hobbled futures. Results don’t lie. The educators have proven they can’t improve no matter how much money we give them. They can’t be trusted with something so important as the futures of our kids. Clemenceau famously said, “War is too important to be left to the generals.” Similarly, “Education is too important to be left to politicians and professional educators.”
Imagine that many of the world’s developed and emerging nations agreed to compete in a yearlong auto race. The race will cover all sorts of terrain and climates in widely separated global venues. Our team would be selected by political leaders in the nation’s capital from people nominated by every state. Imagine that Team USA would be the first team to settle on an all purpose vehicle for the race.
All of the competitors but Team USA chose all purpose and reliable late-model SUVs for their vehicle based on the varying course conditions where normal over-the-road cars could not be as successful. Team USA chose a modified version of the Ford Model T. While their choice was scorned by their competition, Team USA said that they were the real experts and they would win the race easily.
They decided on the Model T based on its reputation for being easy to work on and repair. They added a bunch of features which they deemed necessary for the race. These included an air-conditioned cockpit, a complete set of the latest instruments to measure every aspect of vehicle performance, a state of the art GPS system plus additional crew members to monitor the gauges and computer readouts. Team USA was very positive about having the best vehicle in the race and couldn’t wait for the competition to begin.
The race is to cover 25,000 miles over one year. Only the first 5 teams would be awarded prizes. At the end of the first week the leading teams were Finland, Singapore, China, India and Russia. Team USA was far back because their 50,000 pound modified Model T experienced 100 tire blowouts and the top speed on level ground was 10 miles an hour due to the immense weight dragging on the relatively tiny Ford engine.
Day after day Team USA fell further and further behind. They took to announcing progress against lower and lower targets to make their failing performance look better than it was. This was successful in fooling most of the people. The race ended when the first five teams had finished. Team USA was about 200 days behind the leaders based on their average speed to date.
The Point
The race story is an analog to the performance of American K-12 education versus our global competition. The modified Model T was chosen because it is a hundred year old design just as the progressive philosophy of our education system is a century old. While there have been lots of added changes in curricula; program names, advanced education degrees, best practices, response to intervention, etc. they all are consistent with the constructivist, discovery beliefs of the progressive ideology. As in the race story, the performance of the constructivist/discovery methods is such that the education of students is much slower and never reaches the robust levels of the competition that are using higher performance methods and curricula (faster, better performing cars).
Also, as in the race story, educators set lower and lower standards to make their performance look much better than it really is (short yardstick). Our schools are simply not close to being competitive with those of our most capable competitors. Their children, not ours, are being prepared to seize the best job opportunities of the future. This has massive import to our future standard of living and our very survival as a nation.
How long will we grant huge amounts of money to the failed education process? The waste in the current system is akin to the thousands of pounds of modifications the race team made to the basic model. Attaching fancy gadgets to a failed underlying “vehicle” or education philosophy is a fool's approach. Yet it is we who are fools to allow it to continue when it is wasting huge amounts of money AND harming our kids. It shouldn’t be hard to demand changes once we face reality. That is difficult because we feel foolish for not realizing the truth sooner. But the truth must be faced if our kids are to be saved from hobbled futures. Results don’t lie. The educators have proven they can’t improve no matter how much money we give them. They can’t be trusted with something so important as the futures of our kids. Clemenceau famously said, “War is too important to be left to the generals.” Similarly, “Education is too important to be left to politicians and professional educators.”
Monday, February 14, 2011
Sirens' Song; There be danger here Will Robinson
You probably remember the Sirens of Greek mythology. Homer’s Odyssey is one of the more famous versions of the tale, but there were many others. The basic kernel of the story was that the creatures (Homer said 2, but other sources vary from 2 to 5) would sing their song to lure mariners to shipwreck on the rocky shore of their island. Odysseus in Homer’s version knows the legend and has himself lashed to the mast tightly and tells his crew to plug their ears with beeswax and not to free his bonds no matter how much he demands or pleads for them to do so. As they travel within range of the songs Odysseus demands and pleads for them to release him from his bonds and is not at peace until they pass far enough away to be out of earshot of the Sirens’ songs. Because the myths said that the Sirens would die if anyone escaped their trap, the Sirens were no more.
In education the Sirens’ part is played by the schools of education. There are a very few exceptions but their graduates do not make a dent in the message carried in the Sirens’ songs of “process is all that matters, learning is natural it doesn’t need to be taught, just make the kids feel good about themselves and that is enough.” This romantic view of learning is de rigueur in our society because the vast majority of educators have been trained in education schools which were designed in the 1930s to teach the Progressive principles of education. This anti-content approach results in teachers (especially elementary level) who don’t understand the subject matter well at all. This is in direct contrast to the philosophy of nations where their children are getting a much better education than ours as their achievement results prove year after year and decade after decade.
So let’s consider a couple of examples:
• Music education—this field has escaped the “they will learn it on their own naturally” approach. Why? Because you can’t teach students to play a school band concert in front of the parents each year without them understanding the notes, how to play them and so forth. And the teachers have to know music reasonably well or their students would give an embarrassing performance that would surely leave the school and its music program subject to severe criticism. The romantic approach is akin to that of Professor Hill in The Music Man. Oh, it worked for him because it made a nice story but his “think” system doesn’t work in the real world no matter how strong the wishes that it would or should.
• Sports—this is another area where physical education teachers and coaches know the skills required in the sports and how to teach them to the kids. That dreaded “drill and kill” so criticized in “normal, mainstream” subjects, you know the most important stuff, works and is used widely by sports coaches. Why are they granted a “waiver” from the Progressive party line? Dewey likened the education system that really works as fascist because it was structured to really teach subject knowledge. You could ask yourself why the Progressives didn’t want kids to learn to their potential. Perhaps because if they were well educated they would see through the Progressives’ desire to have government experts make the important decisions for us.
In sports as in music the obvious proof of whether the students learned the skills and knowledge required to really perform is in the games with their competitors and the public music performances. The question for us then is how much longer will we see our students shipwrecked on the future-reducing rocks because their educators couldn’t resist the Siren Song of the technically wrong and “abysmal failure to work” education school training.
In education the Sirens’ part is played by the schools of education. There are a very few exceptions but their graduates do not make a dent in the message carried in the Sirens’ songs of “process is all that matters, learning is natural it doesn’t need to be taught, just make the kids feel good about themselves and that is enough.” This romantic view of learning is de rigueur in our society because the vast majority of educators have been trained in education schools which were designed in the 1930s to teach the Progressive principles of education. This anti-content approach results in teachers (especially elementary level) who don’t understand the subject matter well at all. This is in direct contrast to the philosophy of nations where their children are getting a much better education than ours as their achievement results prove year after year and decade after decade.
So let’s consider a couple of examples:
• Music education—this field has escaped the “they will learn it on their own naturally” approach. Why? Because you can’t teach students to play a school band concert in front of the parents each year without them understanding the notes, how to play them and so forth. And the teachers have to know music reasonably well or their students would give an embarrassing performance that would surely leave the school and its music program subject to severe criticism. The romantic approach is akin to that of Professor Hill in The Music Man. Oh, it worked for him because it made a nice story but his “think” system doesn’t work in the real world no matter how strong the wishes that it would or should.
• Sports—this is another area where physical education teachers and coaches know the skills required in the sports and how to teach them to the kids. That dreaded “drill and kill” so criticized in “normal, mainstream” subjects, you know the most important stuff, works and is used widely by sports coaches. Why are they granted a “waiver” from the Progressive party line? Dewey likened the education system that really works as fascist because it was structured to really teach subject knowledge. You could ask yourself why the Progressives didn’t want kids to learn to their potential. Perhaps because if they were well educated they would see through the Progressives’ desire to have government experts make the important decisions for us.
In sports as in music the obvious proof of whether the students learned the skills and knowledge required to really perform is in the games with their competitors and the public music performances. The question for us then is how much longer will we see our students shipwrecked on the future-reducing rocks because their educators couldn’t resist the Siren Song of the technically wrong and “abysmal failure to work” education school training.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Could You Pass?
Following is the British Columbia high school exit exam: literary section. There is an equally rigorous section for history. This information is taken from the Common Core report, Why We’re Behind, What Top Nations Teach Their Students That We Don’t (2009).
A real example helps to illuminate the difference between our educational approach and that of the competitor nations whose students consistently score better, much better, than ours on international tests. This provides more information on the topic started in A Sick Patient and Human Nature.
Please take a look at the exam and ponder the question, “Can we continue to ignore our dumbed down approach in K-12 education?”
British Columbia High School Exit Exam
Literary Selections
1. In Beowulf, which Anglo-Saxon value is represented by Herot?
A. power
B. heroism
C. boasting
D. community
2. In “The Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales, how is the Parson described?
A. “a very festive fellow”
B. “a fat and personable priest”
C. “rich in holy thought and work”
D. “an easy man in penance-giving”
3. In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”), why does the speaker state that his mistress “treads on the ground”?
A. She is a sensible woman.
B. She is beautiful and attainable.
C. He is praising her as a real woman.
D. He is disappointed by her plainness.
4. Which quotation contains personification?
A. “Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am”
B. “No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move”
C. “Nor what the potent Victor in his rage / Can else inflict”
D. “and wanton fields / To wayward Winter reckoning yields”
5. In “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” on what does “dull sublunary" love depend?
A. spiritual union
B. physical presence
C. common attitudes
D. shared experience
6. In “On His Blindness,” which metaphor does Milton use to represent his literary powers?
A. a talent
B. a yoke
C. a kingly state
D. the dark world
7. In The Rape of the Lock, when Pope writes “So ladies in romance assist their knight, / Present the spear, and arm him for the fight,” what has just happened?
A. Belinda has just pulled out a “deadly bodkin.”
B. Chloe and Sir Plume have just confronted each other.
C. Clarissa has just offered a “two-edged weapon” to the Baron.
D. The Baron’s queen of spades defeats Belinda’s king of clubs.
8. Which characteristic of “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” can be seen as Romantic?
A. It celebrates the supernatural.
B. It is written in iambic pentameter.
C. It emphasizes reason over emotion.
D. It deals with the lives of common people.
9. “The guests are met, the feast is set”
Which literary technique is used in the above quotation?
A. aside
B. caesura
C. apostrophe
D. cacophony
10. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” how do the sailors feel when the albatross first appears?
A. joyful
B. fearful
C. enraged
D. indifferent
11. According to the speaker in “Apostrophe to the Ocean,” with what attitude does the ocean
treat humanity?
A. anger
B. respect
C. disdain
D. generosity
12. In Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43 (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”), what does the speaker reveal about herself?
A. her desire to be loved
B. her love for her beloved
C. her love for her dying father
D. her need to be with her beloved
13. “And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star” In “Ulysses,” to whom does “this gray spirit” refer?
A. Achilles
B. Ulysses
C. Tennyson
D. Telemachus
14. What does Arnold lament in “Dover Beach”?
A. the loss of religious faith
B. the loss of romantic love
C. the loss of military strength
D. the loss of respect for nature
15. In “The Hollow Men,” how does the speaker suggest that the world will end?
A. violently
B. gloriously
C. ominously
D. anticlimactically
16. In “Disembarking at Quebec,” which article suggests the speaker’s alienation from her surroundings?
A. her pink shawl
B. her fine bonnet
C. her coral brooch
D. her red stockings
Recognition of Authors and Titles
INSTRUCTIONS: Select the author of the quotation or the title of the selection from which the quotation is taken.
17. “For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings”
A. Wyatt
B. Donne
C. Chaucer
D. Shakespeare
18. “And through the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken —The ice was all between”
A. “Ulysses”
B. “The Hollow Men”
C. “Disembarking at Quebec”
D. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
19. “Dim, through the misty green panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning”
A. “Dover Beach”
B. “Ode to the West Wind”
C. “Dulce et Decorum Est”
D. “Apostrophe to the Ocean”
20. “So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die!”
A. Keats
B. Shelley
C. Browning
D. Wordsworth
21. “Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men”
A. Pope
B. Donne
C. Milton
D. Raleigh
22. “The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant”
A. “The Hollow Men”
B. “The Darkling Thrush”
C. “The Second Coming”
D. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”
23. “He wore a fustian tunic stained and dark
With smudges where his armor had left mark”
A. Beowulf
B. The Rape of the Lock
C. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
D. “The Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales
PART C: SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA
1 written-response question
Value: 20% Suggested Time: 25 minutes
INSTRUCTIONS: Choose one of the three passages on pages 14 to 17 in the Examination Booklet.
With specific reference to the drama, respond to one of the following statements in at least 200 words in paragraph form. Write your answer in ink in the Response Booklet. Place a checkmark in Instruction 4 on the front cover of the Response Booklet.
Hamlet (See passage on page 14.)
2. Show the significance of this exchange between Hamlet and Gertrude.
Refer both to this passage and to elsewhere in the play.
OR
The Tempest (See passage on page 15.)
3. With reference both to this passage and to elsewhere in the play, show that this passage contributes to theme.
OR
King Lear (See passage on page 17.)
4. Discuss the parallels between the father–child relationship found both in these passages and elsewhere in the play.
2. Hamlet (1600 –1601)
Hamlet: Now, Mother, what’s the matter?
Queen: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended.
Queen: Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
Hamlet: Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
Queen: Why, how now, Hamlet?
Hamlet: What’s the matter now?
Queen: Have you forgot me?
Hamlet: No, by the rood,1 not so!
You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,
And, would it were not so, you are my mother.
Queen: Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.
Hamlet: Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge.
You go not till I set you up a glass2
Where you may see the inmost part of you!
1 rood: cross
2 glass: mirror
OR
3. The Tempest (1611)
Gonzalo: I have inly wept,
Or should have spoke ere this. Look down, you gods,
And on this couple drop a blessèd crown!
For it is you that have chalked forth the way
Which brought us hither.
Alonso: I say amen, Gonzalo.
Gonzalo: Was Milan thrust from Milan that his issue
Should become kings of Naples? O, rejoice
Beyond a common joy, and set it down
With gold on lasting pillars. In one voyage
Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis,
And Ferdinand her brother found a wife
Where he himself was lost; Prospero his dukedom
In a poor isle; and all of us ourselves
When no man was his own.
Alonso: [To Ferdinand and Miranda] Give me your hands.
Let grief and sorrow still embrace his heart
That doth not wish you joy.
Gonzalo: Be it so! Amen!
OR
4. King Lear (1603)
In her response to Lear’s question as to how much she loves him,
Cordelia answers truthfully.
Lear: But goes thy heart with this?
Cordelia: Ay, my good lord.
Lear: So young, and so untender?
Cordelia: So young, my lord, and true.
Lear: Let it be so, thy truth then be thy dower!
For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate and the night,
By all the operation of the orbs
From whom we do exist and cease to be,
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbored, pitied, and relieved,
As thou my sometime daughter.
AND
4. King Lear (1603)
Gloucester has just read a letter forged by Edmund.
Gloucester: You know the character to be your brother’s?
Edmund: If the matter were good, my lord, I durst
swear it were his; but in respect of that, I would
fain think it were not.
Gloucester: It is his.
Edmund: It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is
not in the contents.
Gloucester: Has he never before sounded you in this
business?
Edmund: Never, my lord. But I have heard him
oft maintain it to be fit that, sons at perfect age,
and fathers declined, the father should be as ward
to the son, and the son manage his revenue.
Gloucester: O villain, villain! His very opinion in the
letter. Abhorred villain, unnatural, detested,
brutish villain; worse than brutish! Go, sirrah, seek
him. I’ll apprehend him. Abominable villain!
Where is he?
1 written-response question
Value: 30% Suggested Time: 40 minutes
INSTRUCTIONS: Choose one of the following topics. Write a multi-paragraph essay (at least three paragraphs) of approximately 400 words. Develop a concise, focused answer to show your knowledge and understanding of the topic. Include specific references to the works you discuss. You may not need all the space provided for your answer. You must refer to at least one work from the Specified Readings List (see page 20 in the Examination Booklet). The only translated works you may use are those from Anglo-Saxon and Medieval English. Write your answer in ink in the Response Booklet. Place a checkmark in Instruction 4 on the front cover of the Response Booklet.
Topic 5 The presence or absence of loyalty is often a theme in literature.
Support this statement with reference to at least three literary works.
OR
Topic 6 A journey of some kind is important to many works of literature.
Support this statement with reference to at least three literary works.
OR
Topic 7 The meaning of a literary work may be enhanced by its reference to another work of art or literature. Support this statement with reference to at least three literary works.
Note: On the following page is the reading list from which students must select one work to reference.
Specified Readings List
Anglo-Saxon and Medieval
• from Beowulf
• Geoffrey Chaucer, from The Canterbury Tales, “The Prologue”
• “Bonny Barbara Allan”
• from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Renaissance and 17th Century
• Sir Thomas Wyatt, “Whoso List to Hunt”
• Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
• Sir Walter Raleigh, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”
• William Shakespeare,
Sonnet 29 (“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”)
Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”)
Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”)
Hamlet, King Lear or The Tempest
• John Donne,
“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”;
“Death, Be Not Proud”
• Robert Herrick, “To the Virgins”
• John Milton, “On His Blindness”; from Paradise Lost
• from The Diary of Samuel Pepys
18th Century and Romantic
• Lady Mary Chudleigh, “To the Ladies”
• Alexander Pope, from The Rape of the Lock
• Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”
• Robert Burns, “To a Mouse”
• William Blake, “The Tiger”; “The Lamb”
• Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
• William Wordsworth, “My Heart Leaps Up”; “The World Is
Too Much with Us”
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
• George Gordon, Lord Byron, “Apostrophe to the Ocean”
• Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”
• John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”; “When I Have Fears That I May
Cease to Be”
Victorian and 20th Century
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43
(“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”)
• Robert Browning,
“My Last Duchess”
• Emily Brontë, “Song”
• Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”
• Thomas Hardy, “The Darkling Thrush”
• Emily Dickinson, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”
• Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est ”
• William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”
• T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”
• Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
• Stevie Smith, “Pretty”
• Margaret Atwood, “Disembarking at Quebec”
A real example helps to illuminate the difference between our educational approach and that of the competitor nations whose students consistently score better, much better, than ours on international tests. This provides more information on the topic started in A Sick Patient and Human Nature.
Please take a look at the exam and ponder the question, “Can we continue to ignore our dumbed down approach in K-12 education?”
British Columbia High School Exit Exam
Literary Selections
1. In Beowulf, which Anglo-Saxon value is represented by Herot?
A. power
B. heroism
C. boasting
D. community
2. In “The Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales, how is the Parson described?
A. “a very festive fellow”
B. “a fat and personable priest”
C. “rich in holy thought and work”
D. “an easy man in penance-giving”
3. In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”), why does the speaker state that his mistress “treads on the ground”?
A. She is a sensible woman.
B. She is beautiful and attainable.
C. He is praising her as a real woman.
D. He is disappointed by her plainness.
4. Which quotation contains personification?
A. “Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am”
B. “No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move”
C. “Nor what the potent Victor in his rage / Can else inflict”
D. “and wanton fields / To wayward Winter reckoning yields”
5. In “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” on what does “dull sublunary" love depend?
A. spiritual union
B. physical presence
C. common attitudes
D. shared experience
6. In “On His Blindness,” which metaphor does Milton use to represent his literary powers?
A. a talent
B. a yoke
C. a kingly state
D. the dark world
7. In The Rape of the Lock, when Pope writes “So ladies in romance assist their knight, / Present the spear, and arm him for the fight,” what has just happened?
A. Belinda has just pulled out a “deadly bodkin.”
B. Chloe and Sir Plume have just confronted each other.
C. Clarissa has just offered a “two-edged weapon” to the Baron.
D. The Baron’s queen of spades defeats Belinda’s king of clubs.
8. Which characteristic of “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” can be seen as Romantic?
A. It celebrates the supernatural.
B. It is written in iambic pentameter.
C. It emphasizes reason over emotion.
D. It deals with the lives of common people.
9. “The guests are met, the feast is set”
Which literary technique is used in the above quotation?
A. aside
B. caesura
C. apostrophe
D. cacophony
10. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” how do the sailors feel when the albatross first appears?
A. joyful
B. fearful
C. enraged
D. indifferent
11. According to the speaker in “Apostrophe to the Ocean,” with what attitude does the ocean
treat humanity?
A. anger
B. respect
C. disdain
D. generosity
12. In Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43 (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”), what does the speaker reveal about herself?
A. her desire to be loved
B. her love for her beloved
C. her love for her dying father
D. her need to be with her beloved
13. “And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star” In “Ulysses,” to whom does “this gray spirit” refer?
A. Achilles
B. Ulysses
C. Tennyson
D. Telemachus
14. What does Arnold lament in “Dover Beach”?
A. the loss of religious faith
B. the loss of romantic love
C. the loss of military strength
D. the loss of respect for nature
15. In “The Hollow Men,” how does the speaker suggest that the world will end?
A. violently
B. gloriously
C. ominously
D. anticlimactically
16. In “Disembarking at Quebec,” which article suggests the speaker’s alienation from her surroundings?
A. her pink shawl
B. her fine bonnet
C. her coral brooch
D. her red stockings
Recognition of Authors and Titles
INSTRUCTIONS: Select the author of the quotation or the title of the selection from which the quotation is taken.
17. “For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings”
A. Wyatt
B. Donne
C. Chaucer
D. Shakespeare
18. “And through the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken —The ice was all between”
A. “Ulysses”
B. “The Hollow Men”
C. “Disembarking at Quebec”
D. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
19. “Dim, through the misty green panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning”
A. “Dover Beach”
B. “Ode to the West Wind”
C. “Dulce et Decorum Est”
D. “Apostrophe to the Ocean”
20. “So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die!”
A. Keats
B. Shelley
C. Browning
D. Wordsworth
21. “Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men”
A. Pope
B. Donne
C. Milton
D. Raleigh
22. “The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant”
A. “The Hollow Men”
B. “The Darkling Thrush”
C. “The Second Coming”
D. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”
23. “He wore a fustian tunic stained and dark
With smudges where his armor had left mark”
A. Beowulf
B. The Rape of the Lock
C. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
D. “The Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales
PART C: SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA
1 written-response question
Value: 20% Suggested Time: 25 minutes
INSTRUCTIONS: Choose one of the three passages on pages 14 to 17 in the Examination Booklet.
With specific reference to the drama, respond to one of the following statements in at least 200 words in paragraph form. Write your answer in ink in the Response Booklet. Place a checkmark in Instruction 4 on the front cover of the Response Booklet.
Hamlet (See passage on page 14.)
2. Show the significance of this exchange between Hamlet and Gertrude.
Refer both to this passage and to elsewhere in the play.
OR
The Tempest (See passage on page 15.)
3. With reference both to this passage and to elsewhere in the play, show that this passage contributes to theme.
OR
King Lear (See passage on page 17.)
4. Discuss the parallels between the father–child relationship found both in these passages and elsewhere in the play.
2. Hamlet (1600 –1601)
Hamlet: Now, Mother, what’s the matter?
Queen: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended.
Queen: Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
Hamlet: Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
Queen: Why, how now, Hamlet?
Hamlet: What’s the matter now?
Queen: Have you forgot me?
Hamlet: No, by the rood,1 not so!
You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,
And, would it were not so, you are my mother.
Queen: Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.
Hamlet: Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge.
You go not till I set you up a glass2
Where you may see the inmost part of you!
1 rood: cross
2 glass: mirror
OR
3. The Tempest (1611)
Gonzalo: I have inly wept,
Or should have spoke ere this. Look down, you gods,
And on this couple drop a blessèd crown!
For it is you that have chalked forth the way
Which brought us hither.
Alonso: I say amen, Gonzalo.
Gonzalo: Was Milan thrust from Milan that his issue
Should become kings of Naples? O, rejoice
Beyond a common joy, and set it down
With gold on lasting pillars. In one voyage
Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis,
And Ferdinand her brother found a wife
Where he himself was lost; Prospero his dukedom
In a poor isle; and all of us ourselves
When no man was his own.
Alonso: [To Ferdinand and Miranda] Give me your hands.
Let grief and sorrow still embrace his heart
That doth not wish you joy.
Gonzalo: Be it so! Amen!
OR
4. King Lear (1603)
In her response to Lear’s question as to how much she loves him,
Cordelia answers truthfully.
Lear: But goes thy heart with this?
Cordelia: Ay, my good lord.
Lear: So young, and so untender?
Cordelia: So young, my lord, and true.
Lear: Let it be so, thy truth then be thy dower!
For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate and the night,
By all the operation of the orbs
From whom we do exist and cease to be,
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbored, pitied, and relieved,
As thou my sometime daughter.
AND
4. King Lear (1603)
Gloucester has just read a letter forged by Edmund.
Gloucester: You know the character to be your brother’s?
Edmund: If the matter were good, my lord, I durst
swear it were his; but in respect of that, I would
fain think it were not.
Gloucester: It is his.
Edmund: It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is
not in the contents.
Gloucester: Has he never before sounded you in this
business?
Edmund: Never, my lord. But I have heard him
oft maintain it to be fit that, sons at perfect age,
and fathers declined, the father should be as ward
to the son, and the son manage his revenue.
Gloucester: O villain, villain! His very opinion in the
letter. Abhorred villain, unnatural, detested,
brutish villain; worse than brutish! Go, sirrah, seek
him. I’ll apprehend him. Abominable villain!
Where is he?
1 written-response question
Value: 30% Suggested Time: 40 minutes
INSTRUCTIONS: Choose one of the following topics. Write a multi-paragraph essay (at least three paragraphs) of approximately 400 words. Develop a concise, focused answer to show your knowledge and understanding of the topic. Include specific references to the works you discuss. You may not need all the space provided for your answer. You must refer to at least one work from the Specified Readings List (see page 20 in the Examination Booklet). The only translated works you may use are those from Anglo-Saxon and Medieval English. Write your answer in ink in the Response Booklet. Place a checkmark in Instruction 4 on the front cover of the Response Booklet.
Topic 5 The presence or absence of loyalty is often a theme in literature.
Support this statement with reference to at least three literary works.
OR
Topic 6 A journey of some kind is important to many works of literature.
Support this statement with reference to at least three literary works.
OR
Topic 7 The meaning of a literary work may be enhanced by its reference to another work of art or literature. Support this statement with reference to at least three literary works.
Note: On the following page is the reading list from which students must select one work to reference.
Specified Readings List
Anglo-Saxon and Medieval
• from Beowulf
• Geoffrey Chaucer, from The Canterbury Tales, “The Prologue”
• “Bonny Barbara Allan”
• from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Renaissance and 17th Century
• Sir Thomas Wyatt, “Whoso List to Hunt”
• Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
• Sir Walter Raleigh, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”
• William Shakespeare,
Sonnet 29 (“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”)
Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”)
Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”)
Hamlet, King Lear or The Tempest
• John Donne,
“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”;
“Death, Be Not Proud”
• Robert Herrick, “To the Virgins”
• John Milton, “On His Blindness”; from Paradise Lost
• from The Diary of Samuel Pepys
18th Century and Romantic
• Lady Mary Chudleigh, “To the Ladies”
• Alexander Pope, from The Rape of the Lock
• Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”
• Robert Burns, “To a Mouse”
• William Blake, “The Tiger”; “The Lamb”
• Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
• William Wordsworth, “My Heart Leaps Up”; “The World Is
Too Much with Us”
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
• George Gordon, Lord Byron, “Apostrophe to the Ocean”
• Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”
• John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”; “When I Have Fears That I May
Cease to Be”
Victorian and 20th Century
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43
(“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”)
• Robert Browning,
“My Last Duchess”
• Emily Brontë, “Song”
• Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”
• Thomas Hardy, “The Darkling Thrush”
• Emily Dickinson, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”
• Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est ”
• William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”
• T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”
• Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
• Stevie Smith, “Pretty”
• Margaret Atwood, “Disembarking at Quebec”
Friday, January 14, 2011
A Sick Patient and Human Nature
How many of us react with positive energy to face problems with an obvious solution if it requires changes of long standing habits of our foundational lifestyle. Too few, whether it is to lose weight or quit smoking because the doctor tells us we are risking a significant reduction in our lifespan as examples.
Perhaps this is why it is so difficult to bring about positive changes in how we educate our kids. We have known for many decades that we are on the wrong course. When Russia launched Sputnik there was a knee-jerk raising of standards but in only a few years we went back to the old “easy does it, higher standards are hard work” attitudes. Then in the mid-sixties we became concerned with plummeting SAT scores which took a step-function down at that time and have not recovered after decades of throwing money and words at the problem. Robert Kennedy said over a third of a century ago that the achievement gap was a stain our nation’s honor. The 1983 “A Nation at Risk” report decried the rising tide of mediocrity in our education system. There is a whole industry in place to highlight the problems of our education system. Lots of people even read their reports but positive action to break the disastrously bad habits of a system built on a faulty foundation of false underlying beliefs is not taken. The attitude seems to be, “who cares about the future, changing our beliefs is just too hard. The kids can change it if they want to when they take over.”
Have all of these warnings resulted in the patient taking the actions required to change our education system for the better? NO!! Big, expensive and misdirected efforts have wasted decades to no benefit for our kids or our competitiveness as a nation. Because of that our economic competitive situation has been weakened to the point where it will take a herculean effort to restore the margin of safety we have thrown away in our high activity, no benefit response to the challenges of the last five-plus decades.
For this report I will use two reports found on the Common Core website. The first is Why We’re Behind, What Top Nations Teach Their Students That We Don’t, the second is, Still at Risk, What Students Don’t Know, Even Now. First some direct quotes to provide background.
Why We’re Behind—Nations; Finland, Hong Kong, S. Korea, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands, Switzerland
• Each of the nations that consistently outranks the United States on the PISA exam provides their students with a comprehensive, content-rich education in the liberal arts and sciences.
• We must join our desire to compete with other nations with a willingness to learn from them.
• While American students are spending endless hours preparing to take tests of their basic reading and math skills, their peers in high-performing nations are reading poetry and novels, conducting experiments in chemistry and physics, making music, and studying important historical issues. We are the only leading industrialized nation that considers the mastery of basic skills to be the goal of K-12 education. [emphasis added]
• We at Common Core believe that national standards will not improve education unless they acknowledge that content matters.
• . . .[T]he amount of time actually devoted to reading instruction in U.S. elementary schools is more than four times that devoted to science and social studies.
• Our students lagged behind their peers in top-scoring Finland by roughly two full grade levels in both [math and science].
• These very diverse nations ensure that their students receive a deep education in a broad range of subjects. Why is this important? Because America is on the opposite track. [emphasis added]
• High-performing countries have very specific content standards in a wide range of liberal arts subjects.
• . . . [T]he countries reviewed here also appear to share a belief that requiring students to master basic literacy and math skill is not sufficient for defining a well-rounded curriculum.
• The most recent comprehensive review of state standards from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (2006) finds that states “still produce vague platitudes instead of clear expectations. Knowledge is still subordinated to skills.” [emphasis added]
Still at Risk
This report offers a good definition of the primary mission of public schools. “The first mission of public schooling in a democratic nation is to equip every young person for the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship.” How are we doing on that mission? Not well!
The basis for this report is a 1200 person survey of randomly selected 17-year olds. The questions concentrated on history and literature knowledge of the respondents. Their assessment was:
It is easy to make light of such ignorance. In reality, however, a deep lack of knowledge is neither humorous nor trivial. What we know helps to determine how successful we are likely to be in life, and how many career paths we can choose from. It also affects our contribution as democratic citizens. Unfortunately, too many young Americans do not possess the kind of basic knowledge they need. When asked fundamental questions about U.S. history and culture, they score a D and exhibit stunning knowledge gaps:
• Nearly a quarter of those surveyed could not identify Adolf Hitler; 10 percent think he was a munitions manufacturer
• Fewer than half can place the Civil War in the correct half-century
• Only 45 percent can identify Oedipus
• A third do not know that the Bill of Rights guarantees the freedom of speech and religion
• 44 percent think that The Scarlet Letter was either about a witch trial or a piece of correspondence
Our education system is like a computer programmed with “how to” skills. The problem is that no one thinks it is important to upload the data (background knowledge) to process with that computer. Also, far too much time is wasted by the “discovery/constructivist” methods for writing each student’s interface software. This method results in agonizingly slow, simplistic, start-from-scratch approaches to each new problem while our competitors provide robust background information across a wide spectrum of subjects to provide important foundational context to any intellectual study. Thus, our graduates don’t have the background knowledge or the higher level thinking processes they need to be effective in the world against their foreign peers.
Our educators faced with high-stakes tests that concentrate most on reading and math have carved out ever larger parts of the total school day to have time for teaching to the test. They use ineffective “how to” approaches that are void of content knowledge. This creates students who at best can only regurgitate the examples they have studied in their classes.
Missing is the breadth and depth of knowledge (and practice in reading and literacy and grammar) that traditionally was provided by studying an increasingly challenging group of great writings by some of the best authors of our cultural background. Missing too, is the in-depth study of history which also provides the chance to practice literacy and thinking skills.
The same things are true of math and the related study of science. So much time is spent teaching to the test that the foundational facts and optimized over centuries computational algorithms are not taught with any rigor. The party line is that you don’t need to know how to compute anymore because we have calculators. That is as wrong-headed as it can be because, for example, those algorithms like long division provide the tool needed to divide polynomials in algebra. With the current dumbed down approach in elementary schools, students “hit the wall” in middle and high school math studies and most do not attain a competent basis of algebra and higher math limiting their future college and career choices.
We focus on methods of teaching reading and math that are much slower than the methods of our competitor nations (at least the ones teaching their kids much more than we teach ours) which are based on a direct instruction technique taught by subject-competent teachers who build the foundation over the grades. Our slower process is ironic considering that our competitor nations tend to have significantly more days in their school years as well.
Therefore, no amount of money can fix this problem until we are willing to throw out the current content-free approach and replace it with a content-rich curriculum. That is why in spite of wasting billions of dollars trying to improve our education performance it doesn’t happen because the foundational approaches we take are contrary to every other country that is successful in beating us.
Sadly, the method our competitors are using is exactly that used by our American Common School movement starting in the 19th century and replaced slowly by the progressive methods starting at the turn of the Twentieth century, first in the education schools and then in full implementation across the land by the mid 1960s. By then students graduating from high school had been taught by the acolytes of the new system for their whole school career.
The question is, “Can we break this unhealthy education habit which harms our kids and our nation, or do we react like most do when the doctor tells them to lose weight or quit smoking, etc to be able to live a higher quality and longer life?”
Perhaps this is why it is so difficult to bring about positive changes in how we educate our kids. We have known for many decades that we are on the wrong course. When Russia launched Sputnik there was a knee-jerk raising of standards but in only a few years we went back to the old “easy does it, higher standards are hard work” attitudes. Then in the mid-sixties we became concerned with plummeting SAT scores which took a step-function down at that time and have not recovered after decades of throwing money and words at the problem. Robert Kennedy said over a third of a century ago that the achievement gap was a stain our nation’s honor. The 1983 “A Nation at Risk” report decried the rising tide of mediocrity in our education system. There is a whole industry in place to highlight the problems of our education system. Lots of people even read their reports but positive action to break the disastrously bad habits of a system built on a faulty foundation of false underlying beliefs is not taken. The attitude seems to be, “who cares about the future, changing our beliefs is just too hard. The kids can change it if they want to when they take over.”
Have all of these warnings resulted in the patient taking the actions required to change our education system for the better? NO!! Big, expensive and misdirected efforts have wasted decades to no benefit for our kids or our competitiveness as a nation. Because of that our economic competitive situation has been weakened to the point where it will take a herculean effort to restore the margin of safety we have thrown away in our high activity, no benefit response to the challenges of the last five-plus decades.
For this report I will use two reports found on the Common Core website. The first is Why We’re Behind, What Top Nations Teach Their Students That We Don’t, the second is, Still at Risk, What Students Don’t Know, Even Now. First some direct quotes to provide background.
Why We’re Behind—Nations; Finland, Hong Kong, S. Korea, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands, Switzerland
• Each of the nations that consistently outranks the United States on the PISA exam provides their students with a comprehensive, content-rich education in the liberal arts and sciences.
• We must join our desire to compete with other nations with a willingness to learn from them.
• While American students are spending endless hours preparing to take tests of their basic reading and math skills, their peers in high-performing nations are reading poetry and novels, conducting experiments in chemistry and physics, making music, and studying important historical issues. We are the only leading industrialized nation that considers the mastery of basic skills to be the goal of K-12 education. [emphasis added]
• We at Common Core believe that national standards will not improve education unless they acknowledge that content matters.
• . . .[T]he amount of time actually devoted to reading instruction in U.S. elementary schools is more than four times that devoted to science and social studies.
• Our students lagged behind their peers in top-scoring Finland by roughly two full grade levels in both [math and science].
• These very diverse nations ensure that their students receive a deep education in a broad range of subjects. Why is this important? Because America is on the opposite track. [emphasis added]
• High-performing countries have very specific content standards in a wide range of liberal arts subjects.
• . . . [T]he countries reviewed here also appear to share a belief that requiring students to master basic literacy and math skill is not sufficient for defining a well-rounded curriculum.
• The most recent comprehensive review of state standards from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (2006) finds that states “still produce vague platitudes instead of clear expectations. Knowledge is still subordinated to skills.” [emphasis added]
Still at Risk
This report offers a good definition of the primary mission of public schools. “The first mission of public schooling in a democratic nation is to equip every young person for the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship.” How are we doing on that mission? Not well!
The basis for this report is a 1200 person survey of randomly selected 17-year olds. The questions concentrated on history and literature knowledge of the respondents. Their assessment was:
It is easy to make light of such ignorance. In reality, however, a deep lack of knowledge is neither humorous nor trivial. What we know helps to determine how successful we are likely to be in life, and how many career paths we can choose from. It also affects our contribution as democratic citizens. Unfortunately, too many young Americans do not possess the kind of basic knowledge they need. When asked fundamental questions about U.S. history and culture, they score a D and exhibit stunning knowledge gaps:
• Nearly a quarter of those surveyed could not identify Adolf Hitler; 10 percent think he was a munitions manufacturer
• Fewer than half can place the Civil War in the correct half-century
• Only 45 percent can identify Oedipus
• A third do not know that the Bill of Rights guarantees the freedom of speech and religion
• 44 percent think that The Scarlet Letter was either about a witch trial or a piece of correspondence
Our education system is like a computer programmed with “how to” skills. The problem is that no one thinks it is important to upload the data (background knowledge) to process with that computer. Also, far too much time is wasted by the “discovery/constructivist” methods for writing each student’s interface software. This method results in agonizingly slow, simplistic, start-from-scratch approaches to each new problem while our competitors provide robust background information across a wide spectrum of subjects to provide important foundational context to any intellectual study. Thus, our graduates don’t have the background knowledge or the higher level thinking processes they need to be effective in the world against their foreign peers.
Our educators faced with high-stakes tests that concentrate most on reading and math have carved out ever larger parts of the total school day to have time for teaching to the test. They use ineffective “how to” approaches that are void of content knowledge. This creates students who at best can only regurgitate the examples they have studied in their classes.
Missing is the breadth and depth of knowledge (and practice in reading and literacy and grammar) that traditionally was provided by studying an increasingly challenging group of great writings by some of the best authors of our cultural background. Missing too, is the in-depth study of history which also provides the chance to practice literacy and thinking skills.
The same things are true of math and the related study of science. So much time is spent teaching to the test that the foundational facts and optimized over centuries computational algorithms are not taught with any rigor. The party line is that you don’t need to know how to compute anymore because we have calculators. That is as wrong-headed as it can be because, for example, those algorithms like long division provide the tool needed to divide polynomials in algebra. With the current dumbed down approach in elementary schools, students “hit the wall” in middle and high school math studies and most do not attain a competent basis of algebra and higher math limiting their future college and career choices.
We focus on methods of teaching reading and math that are much slower than the methods of our competitor nations (at least the ones teaching their kids much more than we teach ours) which are based on a direct instruction technique taught by subject-competent teachers who build the foundation over the grades. Our slower process is ironic considering that our competitor nations tend to have significantly more days in their school years as well.
Therefore, no amount of money can fix this problem until we are willing to throw out the current content-free approach and replace it with a content-rich curriculum. That is why in spite of wasting billions of dollars trying to improve our education performance it doesn’t happen because the foundational approaches we take are contrary to every other country that is successful in beating us.
Sadly, the method our competitors are using is exactly that used by our American Common School movement starting in the 19th century and replaced slowly by the progressive methods starting at the turn of the Twentieth century, first in the education schools and then in full implementation across the land by the mid 1960s. By then students graduating from high school had been taught by the acolytes of the new system for their whole school career.
The question is, “Can we break this unhealthy education habit which harms our kids and our nation, or do we react like most do when the doctor tells them to lose weight or quit smoking, etc to be able to live a higher quality and longer life?”
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