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Mediocrity: do it for the children
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Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute explains that one of the central problems of K-12 education in America is the romanticizing of it. Which is to say, the fiction that all children are capable of at least being average, given the right circumstances. Unfortunately, this idea ignores what some scholars like to call “reality.”
Educational romanticism consists of the belief that just about all children who are not doing well in school have the potential to do much better. Correlatively, educational romantics believe that the academic achievement of children is determined mainly by the opportunities they receive; that innate intellectual limits (if they exist at all) play a minor role; and that the current K-12 schools have huge room for improvement.
This happens to those on the Left and Right, too.
Educational romantics of the Left focus on race, class, and gender. It is children of color, children of poor parents, and girls whose performance is artificially depressed, and their academic achievement will blossom as soon as they are liberated from the racism, classism, and sexism embedded in American education. Those of the Right see public education as an ineffectual monopoly, and think that educational achievement will blossom when school choice liberates children from politically correct curricula and obdurate teachers’ unions.
And then think about yourself, and your children, when you read his closing paragraph:
For the good of our children, educational romanticism needs to collapse, and quickly. Its effects play out in the lives of young people in devastating ways. The fourth-grader who has trouble sounding out simple words and his classmate who is reading A Tale of Two Cities for fun sit in the same classroom day after miserable day, the one so frustrated by tasks he cannot do and the other so bored that both are near tears. The eighth-grader who cannot make sense of algebra but has an almost mystical knack with machines is told to stick with the college prep track, because to be a success in life he must go to college and get a B.A. The senior with terrific SAT scores gets away with turning in rubbish on his term papers because to make special demands on the gifted would be elitist. They are all products of an educational system that cannot make itself talk openly about the implications of diverse educational limits.
Universal education may be a good thing, but not universal curriculum, and not universal expectations. Justice demands difference.
HT: Arts & Letters Daily
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Don’t blame racism
I firmly believe that not only do we all have different learning styles, and differing amounts of intelligence, more to the point, we have differing kinds of intelligence. I have a visual spatial artistic mechanical cerebral intelligence, while my wife has a cognizant logistical (time and money) pragmatic intelligence. This is not to say my wife is more or less creative though. It is to say that she is more intelligent in certain areas than I am, and vice versa. I am at pains to say that water usage in another area of the house has no effect on the water level in the washing machine as it fills up since there’s a water level switch in the machine. She, on the other hand, is extremely aware of the level of money in the bank account and the exact time no matter where we are, and is annoyed when I “just don’t get it”.
So I think it behooves any educator, whether teaching or administrating to take this information into account, and incorporate it into the the teaching procedure.
Why in the world would you want to frustrate the students with either one of the scenarios mentioned above? It makes absolutely no sense to me.
This isn’t to say that discipline isn’t a factor. If someone is interested in something, no matter their aptitude or intelligence, it seems to outweigh all other factors.
But I do suggest that society owes all its children a “fair” chance to make the best of their capabilities.
If one’s academic success and hence long term academic success is significantly impacted by educational opportunities brought about by one’s soci-economic position and the opportunities which this represents, then we can hardly say we have given each child a “fair” chance.
Being from the Right, I disagree with those who say that if we just get rid of teachers’ unions, Johnny will do well in school. I do agree that the romanticism of the Left about “All children can and will learn.” is a bunch of hooey. Some kids are smart and some are dull. And a lot have bad attitudes.
I would suggest that there is another thing that is impacting our educational system, the complete and total Leftism of colleges and universities. They teach and think in only one way. They throw out any thoughts that don’t fit in with their way of thinking. They don’t have to defend their conclusions. They have no one to draw them back from the brink.
There is a certain amount of healthy tension that having both Left and Right thought in a field that is needed for growth and discovery. Does today’s higher education have this tension?
And I continue to see this bias in WMB.
So why sould one get a Bachelor of Arts? Why the continued silence over the Bachelor of Science? Or perhaps even the Bachelor of Technology.
Bob Buckles post,
University of Chicago School of Economics?
The varous Christian colleges?
Bob Buckles post 4,
so I assume that Liberty University will invite Noam Chomsky as a guest professor.
MIT can invite say Prof. Behe.
This should be fun!
In defense of a B.A. :
To make kids into quality thinking people and not just quality workers. Incidentally, quality people who know how to think and reason are usually good workers too.
Milton: “Reason is but choosing,” and choosing and weighing is what the BA is all about.
Nice rhetoric from the crowd that always cuts education funding and thereby guarantees that the student teacher ratio will always be sky high and individual attention impossible!
So as a parent should I push on the things he is clearly good at the expense of his weakness or the other way round. For example; you’ve got a math whiz who hates History. DO you let him slide on the “D” in history as long as he’s two grades ahead in math or do you make him take time away from his math to catch up something he’s going to forget as soon as he can?
Preface: I am a public secondary school teacher.
A major problem has been Washington, DC deciding what is best for Washington state. State control needs to be brought back, with Des Moines, Iowa setting the agenda for Washington, Iowa. Set some national standards that are achievable for 80% to 90% of the students, but don’t mandate without financial support.
Getting rid of unions is not the answer, but telling the unions to stick with education and not social issues that have no bearing on children’s knowledge, is an answer.
Going back to tracking certain students into the trades would make it so the university bound students can do the academics without the “troublemakers”, while the hands-on students can learn something that interests them and not feel like dirt because they cannot do calculus or read Shakespeare.
I would suggest that there is another thing that is impacting our educational system, the complete and total Leftism of colleges and universities.
Could you clarify what you mean? According to the article, politicians on both the left and right are to blame for our broken education policy. They both ignore the findings of university researchers, which seem to be somewhat right-leaning, if anything.
Kimberly post 8,
and then WMB shows what appears to be a bias against BAs.
I suggest that Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Tehcnology degrees are also fine educations.
We should not just categorize college with a BA, but look at the full spectrum of educational options which are available to undergrads in college.
Taking pot shots at the BA is both too easy AND misleading.
Part of the reason I decided on private education for my son in the fall is this problem. At his K-round-up, we were told that the 6 K classrooms would be “balanced” with an equal number of girls and boys, and all different ages and abilities (based on tests they did at the round-up). Why do this? Why not put the younger ones all in one classroom, or those who can already read in a classroom? Why not let them excel together? Why not let those who need extra help all learn at a slower pace? As they progress, classrooms could be rearranged, or they could be rearranged each year. We need to push even kids who aren’t good in school, but they will never achieve to the level of a gifted child. And why hold back a gifter learner just to keep the classroom all on the same track? Doesn’t make sense to me.
I think the idea of Montessori education is supposed to do this - let kids learn at their own pace. I don’t know that I agree fully with Montessori, but some ideas seem to make sense. My son, when bored, causes trouble. Maybe if kids were challenged we would have less trouble in schools.
MUSING: “I suggest that Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Tehcnology degrees are also fine educations.” I agree (and rather misunderstood the last post).
“Pot shots” at a BA ARE misleading: I got my BA in English and am continually frustrated by people who respond to this information with, “So I guess you want to teach?” as if a desire to teach is the ONLY reason for a B.A. I loved literature and didn’t particularly care what I did with it (although I will be teaching) and didn’t feel I needed to justify my major with a job.
Study what you love–technology, science, literature, or a trade. Whatever, but make sure you love it.
kimberly post 15,
I agree most wholeheartedly with your statement:
“Study what you love–technology, science, literature, or a trade. Whatever, but make sure you love it.”
Thanks for your post!
Rather by definition, half of all kids will be below average. OK, in actual pracitce one has a bell curve such that the majority are clumped a fairly insignificant ways from the midpoint and exponentially dereasing numbers lie at distance from the midpoint.
Not all kids can learn everything. Some kids can learn a lot more than the mass of the rest.
The schools have too much of an egalitarian mindset that all kids can be made to be essentially the same. The left end of the curve is doomed to frustration at their inability. The right end is doomed to the frustration of boredom.
It would be possible to educate the entie mass to a greater degree than they are now if the schools would get back to placing the kids in tiers geared to their abilities and educating each tier. But tiering will not fly (because it is anti-egalitarian, and would give unequal results across racial/demographic lines).
#9 Spinoza - You seem to believe that the $$ spent on Education is a direct correlation to performance in the classroom. I would suggest that is a false connection. Too much $$ is spent on bloated educrats and their bureaucracy not on quality teachers and texts.
When more time is spent on making students feel good about themselves and piddly projects of political correctness and less time on content then we will have reform.
By the way, when was the last time anyone here had a recent high school graduate make change without resorting to the cash register prompt and even then when did they count it out in your hand properly? I commended the last fellow to do that!
krm post 17,
and how would you suggest adopting tiering in a “fair” way.
I confess that I was bored stiff in math class in elementary school.
But how many studets with trouble in math are due to bad teaching (may elementary and high schol math teachers are rather weak in the material, plus we for example teach Calculus relatively badly in general) or failure to correct what are in many cases early relatively minor misunderstandings?
What Murray leaves out is his strong belief that most of the kids who lack the potential for high academic achievement are black and brown. This was the basis of his extremely controversial best seller back in the 1990’s, The Bell Curve.
Actually, I guess it would be more accurate to say that Murray believes most black and brown kids lack the potential for high academic achievement.
In college, two or three classes were taught based on ability. Music was one; it had two levels, and I was encouraged to “flunk” the entry test (which I did), because the upper-level course was only for those with serious interest in music, and went too fast for anyone else. (Even in the lower class, we had to set a hymn to new music, lead a class in singing, and so forth.)
The other class that was subdivided was English composition, which had four levels (based on ACT English scores). The bottom level was filled with people for whom English was a second language or who struggled; the top was for the top 15% (that was my class, since English is my strong point), and the two in the middle were for those who were OK to good at English, but it wasn’t necessarily what they wanted to do for a living. Those of us in the top class didn’t have a section on grammar (it was assumed we’d already mastered it), and thus we got to write more. For most of us, it was far and away our favorite class, though we had to write many papers. We even asked our prof to grade us more strictly, mark our errors in a more nitpicky way, so that we could learn more.
It was an excellent way to subdivide classes. People who loved English got to stretch; people who didn’t had an opportunity to go more slowly and focus on other classes they liked more. Some native-English speakers might have been embarrassed to be in the class with the bottom 15%, I don’t know, but probably just as many were happy to be in a class that was willing to take things a little slower, where they might actually learn something.
night train post 20,
but a simple review of “The Bell Curve” material shows that the analysis appears to be statistically flawed.
Two statistical test would have seemed to be necessary to prove the thesis of “The Bell Curve”: T tests to show a statistically significant difference in the mean and F test to show statistically significant differences in the standard deviations.
When I reviewed his material I did not find these tests discussed as being performed. Further, it appeared that the information presented was insufficient as provided to independently perform these tests.
Without these test, I suggest that “The Bell Curve” failed to demonstrate its core thesis. An equally plausible argument could be made that the observed variations were simply the result of statistical anomolies in the samples.
And of course we have not even begun to address:
1) the validity of the samples
2) the validity of the metrics employed such as IQ tests etc.
In short, it appears that “The Bell Curve” had major failures in the presentation of its statistical methodology and results.
“One of the reasons why the education given by our schools is so frothy and vapid is that the American people generally - the parent even more than the teacher - wish childhood to be unspoiled by pain. Childhood must be a period of delight, of gay indulgence in impulses. It must be given every avenue for unimpeded expression, which of course is pleasant; and it must not be made to suffer the impositions of discipline or the exactions of duty, which of course are painful. Childhood must be filled with as much play and as little work as possible. What cannot be accomplished educationally through elaborate schemes devised to make learning an exciting game must, of necessity, be forgone. Heaven forbid that learning should ever take on the character of a serious occupation - just as serious as earning money, and perhaps, much more laborious and painful. . . .
“What lies behind my remark is a distinction between two views of education. In one view, education is something externally added to a person, as his clothing and other accoutrements. We cajole him into standing there willingly while we fit him; and in doing this we must be guided by his likes and dislikes, by his own notion of what enhances his appearance. In the other view, education is an interior transformation of a person’s mind and character. He is plastic material to be improved not according to his inclinations, but according to what is good for him. But because he is a living thing, and not dead clay, the transformation can be effected only through his own activity. Teachers of every sort can help, but they can only help in the process of learning that must be dominated at every moment by the activity of the learner. And the fundamental activity that is involved in every kind of genuine learning is intellectual activity, the activity generally known as thinking. Any learning which takes place without thinking is necessarily of the sort I have called external and additive - learning passively acquired, for which the common name is ‘information.’ Without thinking, the kind of learning which transforms a mind, gives it new insights, enlightens it, deepens understanding, elevates the spirit simply cannot occur.
“Anyone who has done any thinking, even a little bit, knows that it is painful. It is hard work - in fact the very hardest that human beings are ever called upon to do. It is fatiguing, not refreshing. If allowed to follow the path of least resistance, no one would ever think. To make boys and girls, or men and women, think - and through thinking really undergo the transformation of learning - educational agencies of every sort must work against the grain, not with it. Far from trying to make the whole process painless from beginning to end, we must promise them the pleasure of achievement as a reward to be reached only through travail. I am not here concerned with the oratory that may have to be employed to persuade Americans that wisdom is a greater good than wealth, and hence worthy of greater effort. I am only insisting that there is no royal road, and that our present educational policies . . . are fraudulent. We are pretending to give them something which is described in the advertising as very valuable, but which we promise they can get at almost no expense to them.” (From “Invitation to the Pain of Learning” by Mortimer J. Adler)
Blame PL 492
Musing - A fair way might be with some sort of standard testing (with some factoring in of student desire, so as to allow a marginal but motivated student to go for a tougher tier in a given subject and a qualified but unmotivated one to avoid it).
#6 Musing
“University of Chicago School of Economics?
The varous Christian colleges?”
#7 Musing
“so I assume that Liberty University will invite Noam Chomsky as a guest professor.
MIT can invite say Prof. Behe.”
Wikipedia says the Chicago School of Economics
#1 put forward free-market economics.
#2 70% free marketers, 30% Keynesian(?)
I am not really talking about the free market aspect but the 70%-30% in the height of Keynsian popularity sounds reasonable.
I am suggesting that when anything gets too lopsided you will get some strange things. What happens to your washing machine when all of the clothes get stuck on one side during the spin cycle?
Higher learning needs both Liberal and Conservative points of view. When it is one sided, as it is now, foolishness like “all children can go to college” are accepted as true.
“Educational romanticism consists of the belief that just about all children who are not doing well in school have the potential to do much better.”
Marital romanticism consists of the belief that if the abused, neglected, or put away spouse is long-suffering, the abuser will improve.
Classroom romanticism consits of the belief that if the one being bullied turns the other cheek, the bully will get saved.
Modern day church romanticism consits of the belief that if I go to give (whatever the church wants) and not get, then God is pleased.
Spinoza, money is not the problem. Many small Christian schools operate on shoestring budgets–based on what parents can afford to pay. The teachers are paid less than public school teachers. Corners are cut, such as replacing textbooks less often or having second-hand science equipment.
Despite spending less, kids in those schools outperform public school kids on standardized achievement tests.
(I’m speaking in terms of generalities and averages, of course.)
A fourth-grader who who is reading A Tale of Two Cities? Really?
I read A Tale of Two Cities twenty years out of college and I thought it was one of the toughest books I ever read, topped only by Chaucer, Milton and Jonathan Edwards.
Should such literary ineptitude have put me on track to be a taxi driver instead of an engineer?
My 8-year-old son complained one day about there being a 9-year-old girl in his class. He didn’t think it was fair that an older girl got to be in his class, it should just be for kids his age. I didn’t bother explaining to him that the 9-year-old probably had been held back (whether by her parents or the school), and it was hardly considered a privilege to be the oldest kid in the class. I did explain that we had waited until he was six to start kindergarten, because when he was five he was still in a special class, getting used to being with other kids. (He can’t remember any more how he used to hate to even be physically near other kids.)
I also told him that I would prefer that age played little role in assigning kids to class, that they went to a reading class based on their reading level, a math class based on their math level, etc.
That’s normal in high school (I don’t know how common it is but I still would consider it normal), but I don’t know how well it would work in the youngest grades (due to the logistics issues of getting little kids to the right class at the right time). They do have ELP (extended learning program?) programs at the elementary and middle schools here, and both my sons have participated. Reading and math are not divided by tracks (as they were in my old elementary school) but the kids do a lot of self-paced work. My younger son is years ahead in reading, but struggles more in math. Seeing other kids doing multiplication while he was still doing subtraction motivated him, though, to master subtraction well enough to move on.
My older son is in “enriched” or “intensive” sections of math and English, where he is with other sophomores, but takes a chemistry class with mostly juniors. And of course there’s AP classes for additional challenges. (His AP U.S. History exam is this Friday - he’s afraid he won’t do well on it, though I suspect he’ll do better than he thinks he will.) The high school also has a special study hall for students struggling with one class or another, with a specially trained teacher who helps them with developing study skills or works with a particular subject or whatever they need help with, and apparently some students have improved a lot due to that.
29-
my experience as a mom, home schooler, private and public school parent, leads me to guess that the smaller classroom in the private school is a HUGE advantage.
krm post 26,
but a single standardized test would suggesting risking testing only a single modality of learneing and thought at a singel point in time.
Are we sure all students are molded in a single dimension and that they do not change over time?
What happens when a student is sick during the test?
What happens if a student has major home stress during the test?
Single dimensional categorization of children does seem a bit problematic.
Xion–I hope the difficulty of Milton didn’t keep you from liking him.
LONG LIVE MILTON!!
Musing - I didn’t say a “single standardized test”. When I was tracked into tiers in school, it was done with a combination of multiple standardized tests, teacher recommendations (based upon observation and interaction) and consultation with the parents. That seemed to work fairly well.
O Kimberly, let it suffice
that thou hast put this mere mortal to shame
and challenged him to suppress the memory, the tortured membrane,
joint and limb of past experience with that bard
and to rethink anew the quest for the eternal flame
of majesty divine.
Translation: You’ve shamed me into trying again! Thanks!
krm post 35,
that makes more sense.
Your model sounds potentially reasonable, but we still need a check to make sure we do not have overt favoritism.
Musing - indeed we do need to wory about favoritism (or dis-favoritism). The standardized testing was a part of that facet.