Posted on 01/23/2005 10:23:53 AM PST by furball4paws
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. He who cannot teach, teaches teachers.
This original quote by George Bernard Shaw became modified by that American gadfly, H.L. Mencken in the early 20th century. He had a pretty low opinion of the "Professor Doctors" of our institutions of higher learning. H.L. Mencken was often ridiculed for his political views and his sometimes irascible attacks on the system and its status quo. But most scholars give Mencken high marks for his Treatise on the American Language. This work is both complex, complete for its time and highly readable considering its content, even today. Mencken had no pretensions to high academic scholarship. However, Mencken had very specific views on almost anything and he had good reasons for the way he felt about things. He could not stand incompetence, a thing which is probably as rampant today as it was in his own time and made no bones about uncovering it when he found it. I wish I had known him personally after spending many hours reading his works. I have long wished that someone would put together a collection of editorials he wrote for his beloved Sunpapers. Many of these are lost in the archives and seldom make it into collections of his works. Mencken was, for the most part, self made and self educated, a member of the bourgeoisie before the entrenchment of the Public School System. Perhaps that is why he had such definite views. He was not molded by mediocrity. Today's American educational experience is not designed to accommodate readily those who have definite views, backed by objective facts and logic and therefore it systematically attempts to expunge them - not the people - the views and the freemindedness required to think. From an early age children are told that there is no objective reality, only an amalgamation of views and thought, a mediocre mush of "Social Norms". Children are not taught to think critically, because teachers cannot think critically. A teacher cannot teach what he/she does not have. Everything in American Public Education is taught by formulas and in "Units", it saves the teachers the effort of having to define what they need and how to organize it and present the material. It saves the School Boards the same efforts, since they can point to the views of the experts in our colleges and universities. How many of the public are capable or prepared to tackle something as unmovable and huge as this 10 ton education establishment marshmallow? When was the last time your child was asked to critically evaluate some subject in school? This is not the same as asking if the subject is interesting or if he likes it. If it is easy most kids will like it; if it is hard most kids will not like it and will say it is "boring" - a euphemism for being difficult or a lack of understanding on the part of the teacher and/or student. In order to critically evaluate something one must understand it, and the evaluation must be based on objective examples and fact. Only when a child reaches college is he likely to be asked to perform such a task. How will he then know what to do when his High School teachers did not? They were college graduates. All parents should talk to their children's teachers. It is a very eye opening experience, and one that has given me sleepless nights and a cold, dead feeling in the pit of my stomach. It is a feeling of being trapped; a feeling of helplessness. I will speak up, but I doubt if any one man can do anything about it.
I have had a wide background and my experiences vary from very proletarian things to extremely sophisticated ones. I spent a number of years on the faculty at a midwestern university where I was a professor of Biological Sciences. I had colleagues in many Departments, including Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics. Without an exception, the more truly scientific disciplines all formed a single approach to education. Students who were going to be teachers (i.e. Education majors) were almost never found in the core classes for the Science majors. For example, in the Biological Sciences we offered a course, commonly dubbed "Baby Biology" which was the only Biology course an Education major, even one with ambitions of being a Science teacher, was ever found in. There was an equivalent course in Chemistry, Physics and several in other areas including Mathematics. Even these courses rarely were taken by education majors who were going to be science teachers, math teachers and those would ultimately mold young malleable minds into their attitudes toward Science and Mathematics. Everything in these courses was watered down and spoon fed. These students could not take our regular courses because they would not survive in them. They then became “experts” and the fountains of Science for our children. Does this not make you shudder uncontrollably? Yet I think we have done a greater disservice to those Education students by giving them the false sense that they know science, because since then I have had to deal with these people as teachers of my children. Can I complain that they do not know Science? I played a role in their formulation. They in turn pass it on to their students. Can we really wonder why the United States is so far behind the rest of the world in Mathematics and Science? Can we really wonder at why huge portions of our High School children "hate" Science. How can one teach something that one does not understand or know? How can a teacher make a subject interesting and come alive to students if it is not that to the teacher? These effects also spill over into most other areas of teaching, but Science is the area I know the best and the one which shows the effects of demanding mediocrity in the clearest examples.
Johnny cannot read. Johnny is not taught to read. Johnny is not shown that reading is fun and interesting and he therefore never discovers how powerful and exciting the written language can be. The SAT scores are going down. The students are not learning the basic skills they need to successfully tackle the SAT. So, recently they rewrote the SAT to make it more "current" and "understandable". If a math teacher does not understand mathematics, how can he teach students mathematics, except by staying in the ruts of the known? Teachers do not teach, they spoon feed. There are open book tests. There are open note tests. There are tests where the questions are supplied days in advance. There are papers that are graded only on "content" (whatever that is) and little attention is paid to mechanics. "Don't worry about spelling, it's the idea that counts", but when the spelling is so bad one cannot make out the meaning, what good is the idea? I am not making up any of these criticisms. They are not mine. They are merely those things I have encountered in dealing with the school systems of several communities and States. They appear to be universal across the United States in the Public School Systems. I am appalled. I always hope for more, but I have never been positively surprised since I discovered what these institutions are. In their effort to graduate all of the children, the schools have watered down their content so much that nothing is being taught. In their efforts to "improve" the basic skills of their students teachers are being accused of, and proven guilty of, giving students the questions to standardized tests so that their scores will increase. Teachers have to go at a pace that will accommodate the slowest kid in class or else his lack of ability may become obvious to him and it might hurt his delicate psyche. When asked, most American High School kids think they have a good understanding of mathematics. Their test scores say exactly the opposite. How does this happen? If a child is constantly told that his is good and that he is doing a "great" job, he will come to believe it. It is "harmful" and "negative" for a teacher to tell him otherwise. But what happens when he, for the first time and in the real world, discovers that, in reality, he does not know and that he never knew? Which blow is more lethal to his "delicate" psyche? I am not saying that students need to be told that they are stupid, etc., but a little realism may help them in their efforts to really master basic reading, writing and arithmetical concepts. He does not do that now. Much of this problem lies with the parents who are products of the same educational system. They never learned the material their kids are "learning". So they cannot help. I live in a community whose attitude is that everything, no matter how mediocre, is great. It is a good thing to emphasize the positive, but I feel very embarrassed for myself and these people when their mediocrity is visibly and publicly shown to be just that. The real tragedy of it all is when that often when the difference is made obvious, many of these people either do not see it, or will not see it. Now can you see why the United States is sliding into worldwide mediocrity?
The secret to good teaching is grabbing the student's interest. Once his interest is engaged most kids are capable of understanding and grasping very complex material. A teenage stepdaughter of mine has memorized the phone numbers of every one of her many friends, which she can rattle off in a moment's time. But she cannot remember the meanings or spellings of a 10 word vocabulary list from the class she had less that 5 hours ago. Why? She is not interested in the vocabulary list, she is interested in her friends and screwing the phone on her ear and talking for hours. There is no lack of ability, only a lack of will or interest. Now, you may say that every student needs to be "grabbed" in a different way, and that is somewhat true. It is also true that the public school system, because of its mandate to educate all of the kids has to deal with a small minority (I hope!) of impossible kids and this aggravates an already very difficult situation. States have fought back by mandating mandatory standards for school children - certain minimum standards that all kids must meet to graduate. There are two problems with this. First, the standards are set so low that the American slide into mediocrity is now irreversible and there is no administrative reason at the local level to try to reverse it. If the child's body is warm and in school they graduate. The second is that, as with most political and power organizations, the American Public School System and its political voice, The National Education Association, will eventually find even these standards impossible to meet. Then there will be a call for lower standards and more money to solve the problems, and the slide will continue. There is always the call for more money. My school taxes have gone up well past the rate of inflation for the last ten years, yet the American student's performance on tests including the SAT are still going down. Money will not turn a bad teacher into a good one. Money will not turn a bad school administration into a good one. Money will not teach students. Money cannot make an effete and crumbling educational system healthy and productive. Money cannot stop intellectual rot.
Take these as examples (I hope this poor kid does not read this, for the most part it is not her fault, it is just that these are the real examples of what I know, and are therefore keys to the American education system).
"Today we were reading Romeo and Juliet." "What's Romeo and Juliet about?" "Well there's these two kids who fall in love, only their families don't like it and they die". "What is the lesson from this play?" "I don't know".
"We are studying To Kill a Mockingbird" "Well, I won't waste my time asking you what it is about, but why 'To kill a mockingbird'?" "I don't know, the teacher hasn't told us".
"What did you learn from Lord of the Flies". "That two people don't like each other and one is killed".
"We are studying Macbeth. It is Shakespeare's greatest tragedy". "Why is it Shakespeare's greatest tragedy?" "Because I think it is" "Why do you think it is, why not Hamlet or King Lear or Othello or some other play?" "I don't know, I just think it is".
I could include a list of hundreds of such examples. What is the problem here? I sometimes suspect that the teacher may not know the answer to these questions, but it is difficult to believe that all teachers are that ignorant of their own subjects. I am sure that they are not, and I am sure that most teachers as individuals are not stupid, but the system is designed to reward mediocrity and yield mediocrity; and so it becomes just that: mediocrity. The impression I get is that teachers are glad just to get the students to pretend to read the material and behave in class. Understanding is beyond all rational hope.
Too bad for the students and too bad for us.
PH - I think you are chewing on the wrong end of the Crevo problem. So I give you 20+ year old essay to back that up. 20 years later, I don't see things as better, maybe worse. It's a bad thing for Conservatives, the United States and Science in general.
Comments?
The source of all these problems?
Our Colleges of Education, aided and helped by the NEA.
Thanks for the ping. I agree with the article, and it goes a long way to explain what we see every day in the science threads. But after saying that, what's left to be said?
This fits the "progessive" agenda like a glove.
The aware, the engaged, the competent the productive, get to work and pay taxes. The goodness that they do is its own reward.
The others? They get to be supported by the nanny government because that's their right.
What's the beef?
You can't solve the Crevo problem without attacking it at its root: education. Once they've reached Freeperhood, it's too late.
Yup. They can type, but they can't think. Nor do they even know that they can't. Nor do they want to know. That's how it is.
The unions fight merit pay and impose senority because it protects their membership. So the union must be broken and schools must be forced to compete for good teachers the way industry competes for good workers.
I mentioned it above and I think it may be even a greater key to this problem - our Colleges of Education. Teacher's curricula are determined by those who fall into Mencken's addition and have no earthly idea what it actually takes to teach a kid. The union fosters and supports this. We have been had by our Colleges of Education.
Patrick, I am beginning to fear for your sanity. You have been much more depressed lately in your posts. Maybe you need a vacation. The Crevo world will not disintegrate if you take one 8-)
As to what to do? I don't know. I have to "unteach" my kids almost daily in Math and Science. I am educated enough to do it, but people are not. They trust the education system. I feel sorry for them all.
"What's the beef?"
Senor Publius I get a nagging "feeling" from this comment that you are also depressed with the state of things. I hope that's not true. Perhaps you also see no way to fight the 10 ton marshmallow.
Is giving up all there is?
My main squawk is with Math/Science since that is my area, but I am sure this problem is endemic in all areas. In fact I once took my son's English paper to school for parent/teacher conferences. I said to the teacher "This is bad English. Why didn't you correct it?". She looked at me like I had an arm growing out of my forehead.
The good thing about losing my sanity is that I'll be the last to know, if I ever know. So I'm not worried. As for my posts revealing depression ... nah. I'm resigned to the situtation, at least as it exists for the hard-core creationists. They are what they are, and they're not going to change. That's reality.
So why persist? I do it just to put the information out there. Lots of people are interested. They don't post all that much, but they're out there. I know it because they ask to join the ping list. Also, I think it's good to do what we can to keep the conservative movement from descending into the pit of the Dark Ages. It's worth the effort.
Where do you live? I ask that because we live in Indianapolis, and our kids are taught to read phonetically (except for non-phonetically spelled "sight" words), they are learning their basic math facts; and my 11 year old has been diagramming sentences for 3 years now. I think what occurs in our public schools varies dramatically from locale to locale.
The reason these colleges work and turn out teachers who get hired is that the good people who may make good teachers go elsewhere, (like the quote at the beginning of the article).
I went through teacher's classes, but after going through EE and MSEE programs. I was way overqualified to teach math and science. But I still had to start on the bottom rung of the teacher pay scale and when layoffs came, I was one of those laid off.
If teacher colleges could somehow be induced to increase the level of their requirements, it would just mean that they would fail all the teacher candidates. Hiring and firing is controlled by teacher's unions. And there is no incentive for teacher's unions to raise teacher's standards.
Great essay, it certainly illustrates the problem.
I agree with other posters who have pointed out that we need to teach children the basic skills (reading, math, scientific reasoning, and I would add writing). All other skills follow from those.
Rather than try to impose those specific goals, however, I believe what is needed is a structural change.
Parents should be able to decide where their own kids go to school. Each child should be allocated a "voucher", and that voucher could be used for ANY school. The parents should be responsible for getting their own kid to school.
If we had a truely free market in schools, it is a safe bet that we would have many more (and much smaller schools than we do today). A small group of people would be able to create a school, and if they were good teachers, would have no problem getting enough business to make a good living.
Government could help out by facilitating honest, objective testing of the students, teachers, and schools, and providing that data to the public.
Most of us are aware that state and local governments spend large amounts of money (per student). Few are aware that these large numbers are generally underreported. Government budgets have many line items, and there are large education related expenses that tend to get lumped into other (non-education) line items.
There is more than enough money already being spent, in every state in the US, to provide a quality education for every school age child (including those now going to private schools).
Private organizations and competition are the way to operate efficiently enough to do this. Anyone with a little commen sense and math skills can determine that the vast majority of education money can go to teachers' salaries. Currently a large portion goes to "overhead".
Higher salaries, less arbitrary restrictions on who can become a teacher, and freedom to teach effectively, will interest many more capable people in entering into the teaching profession.
I would expect that we whould also get a much larger variety of schools. For example, we would no doubt have some schools that would put an emphasis on music. School districts would no longer be able to blackmail parents by threatening to cut band. There would simply be one or more schools in your area that would make band a priority.
My personal favorite is "smart kid" schools. Of course, there is always a small percentage of children who are really bright, but any community of significant size should be able to support at least one school for kids with IQs of 140 and above.
"...schools must be forced to compete..."
These are rather difficult words for a conservative forum.
As far as the unions and the Colleges of Education are concerned, is this one of those "dog chasing his tail" things. How do we break the cycle?
If Colleges insisted that its teachers were superior and well trained and knew their subject matter beyond the smattering they now get, wouldn't the word get out that that College's graduates were highly desirable? Schools would then seek out those graduates and pay them commensurately. I realize that this would begin with private schools that can afford to pay appropriately, but wouldn't this eventually drive a wedge between the unions and school boards?
There's got to be an answer somewhere.
You are probably right. I live in MA, but my when my son was in school I lived in CT.
MA is worse, all they care about is tolerance education, and weaving homosexual agendas into every subject. The MCAS is the state testing. That is all they do for the entire semester, learning the questions on the test. And the scores are still down
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