Education links
About the effect of the “Anything But Knowledge” doctrine in teacher education on teaching:
For over 80 years, teacher education in America has been in the grip of an immutable dogma, responsible for endless educational nonsense. That dogma may be summed up in the phrase: Anything But Knowledge. Schools are about many things, teacher educators say (depending on the decade)-self-actualization, following one’s joy, social adjustment, or multicultural sensitivity-but the one thing they are not about is knowledge. Oh sure, educators will occasionally allow the word to pass their lips, but it is always in a compromised position, as in "constructing one’s own knowledge," or "contextualized knowledge." Plain old knowledge, the kind passed down in books, the kind for which Faust sold his soul, that is out.
… The notion that one can teach "metacognitive" thinking in the abstract is senseless. Students need to learn something to learn how to learn at all. The claim that prior knowledge is superfluous because one can always look it up, preferably on the Internet, is equally senseless. Effective research depends on preexisting knowledge. Moreover, if you don't know in what century the atomic bomb was dropped without rushing to an encyclopedia, you cannot fully participate in society. Lastly, Kilpatrick's influential assertion that knowledge was changing too fast to be taught presupposes a blinkered definition of knowledge that excludes the great works and enterprises of the past. …
Once you dismiss real knowledge as the goal of education, you have to find something else to do.
… A former student of Tenney’s describes the difficulties of dissent from the party line on racism: "There’s nothing to be gained from challenging it. If you deny that the system inherently privileges whites, you’re ‘not taking responsibility for your position in racism.’ " Doubtless, it would never occur to Professor Tenney that the problem this student describes impedes community-building.
… It never occurs to these apostles of the Free Self that for many inner-city children, reaching a state of calm attention is a wonderful achievement.
… If any teachers in the state know anything about American history, English literature, or chemistry, it is a complete accident, for the state’s highest education authorities have not the slightest interest in finding out. …
In fact, the strict environment that Samantha plans is the best thing that could happen to her pupils. It is perhaps the only place they will meet order and civility. Samantha’s children are "surrounded by violence," she says. Many are not interested in learning, because at home, "everyone is dissing everybody, or staying up late to get high. My kids are so emotionally beat up, they don’t even know when they’re out of their seats." A structured classroom is their only hope to learn the rules that the rest of society lives by. To eliminate structure for kids who have none in their lives is to guarantee failure.
The point of government funding of schooling is to have literate and numerate citizens, from which we all benefit. The point of government provision of schooling-as with religious provision of schooling-is to inculcate beliefs (which cannot be ascertained directly) by controlling inputs (pdf). The “radical/progressive pedagogy” types are just following the logic of government provision. That it has the effect-along with teacher union interest in undermining accountability for outcomes (something which benefits bad teachers most)-of undermining the point of government funding, just shows how contradictory those genuinely concerned for schooling quality continuing to support government provision (with its inherent provider-as-regulator conflict of interest and notorious long-term falls in productivity [pdf]) is.
About what happens when you put the content back into education:
The “Massachusetts miracle,” in which Bay State students’ soaring test scores broke records, was the direct consequence of the state legislature’s passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, which established knowledge-based standards for all grades and a rigorous testing system linked to the new standards.
… Hirsch conducted an experiment on reading comprehension, using two groups of college students. Members of the first group possessed broad background knowledge in subjects like history, geography, civics, the arts, and basic science; members of the second, often from disadvantaged homes, lacked such knowledge. The knowledgeable students, it turned out, could far more easily comprehend and analyze difficult college-level texts (both fiction and nonfiction) than their poorly informed brethren could. Hirsch had discovered “a way to measure the variations in reading skill attributable to variations in the relevant background knowledge of audiences.”
This finding, first published in a psychology journal, was consistent with Hirsch’s past scholarship, in which he had argued that the author takes for granted that his readers have crucial background knowledge. Hirsch was also convinced that the problem of inadequate background knowledge began in the early grades. Elementary school teachers thus had to be more explicit about imparting such knowledge to students-indeed, this was even more important than teaching the “skills” of reading and writing, Hirsch believed. Hirsch’s insight contravened the conventional wisdom in the nation’s education schools: that teaching facts was unimportant, and that students instead should learn “how to” skills. …
In fact, Hirsch is and always has been a liberal Democrat. Far from being elitist, he insists, cultural literacy is the path to educational equality and full citizenship for the nation’s minority groups. “Cultural literacy constitutes the only sure avenue of opportunity for disadvantaged children,” Hirsch writes, and “the only reliable way of combating the social determinism that now condemns them to remain in the same social and educational condition as their parents. That children from poor and illiterate homes tend to remain poor and illiterate is an unacceptable failure of our schools, one which has occurred not because our teachers are inept but chiefly because they are compelled to teach a fragmented curriculum based on faulty educational theories.”
… “The Romantics were wonderful for poetry but wrong about life,” Hirsch tells me, “and they were particularly wrong about education.” European Romanticism, he argued in the book, “has been a post-Enlightenment aberration, a mistake we need to correct.”
… The scientific consensus showed that schools could not raise student achievement by letting students construct their own knowledge. The pedagogy that mainstream scientific research supported, Hirsch showed, was direct instruction by knowledgeable teachers who knew how to transmit their knowledge to students-the very opposite of what the progressives promoted.
… Last month, moreover, Klein unfurled the results of a study that compared ten city schools using the Core Knowledge reading program with schools using other curricula. The Core Knowledge kids achieved progress at a rate that was “more than five times greater,” Klein said, heaping praise on the program.
Naturally, of course, those who suffer most from “progressive” education are precisely those from the most marginal sections of society. But, if one has not worked out how much of modern progressivism is all about middle class folk arranging things for their own convenience, and asserting their superior status over working class folk, you have not worked out much about it.
For over 80 years, teacher education in America has been in the grip of an immutable dogma, responsible for endless educational nonsense. That dogma may be summed up in the phrase: Anything But Knowledge. Schools are about many things, teacher educators say (depending on the decade)-self-actualization, following one’s joy, social adjustment, or multicultural sensitivity-but the one thing they are not about is knowledge. Oh sure, educators will occasionally allow the word to pass their lips, but it is always in a compromised position, as in "constructing one’s own knowledge," or "contextualized knowledge." Plain old knowledge, the kind passed down in books, the kind for which Faust sold his soul, that is out.
… The notion that one can teach "metacognitive" thinking in the abstract is senseless. Students need to learn something to learn how to learn at all. The claim that prior knowledge is superfluous because one can always look it up, preferably on the Internet, is equally senseless. Effective research depends on preexisting knowledge. Moreover, if you don't know in what century the atomic bomb was dropped without rushing to an encyclopedia, you cannot fully participate in society. Lastly, Kilpatrick's influential assertion that knowledge was changing too fast to be taught presupposes a blinkered definition of knowledge that excludes the great works and enterprises of the past. …
Once you dismiss real knowledge as the goal of education, you have to find something else to do.
… A former student of Tenney’s describes the difficulties of dissent from the party line on racism: "There’s nothing to be gained from challenging it. If you deny that the system inherently privileges whites, you’re ‘not taking responsibility for your position in racism.’ " Doubtless, it would never occur to Professor Tenney that the problem this student describes impedes community-building.
… It never occurs to these apostles of the Free Self that for many inner-city children, reaching a state of calm attention is a wonderful achievement.
… If any teachers in the state know anything about American history, English literature, or chemistry, it is a complete accident, for the state’s highest education authorities have not the slightest interest in finding out. …
In fact, the strict environment that Samantha plans is the best thing that could happen to her pupils. It is perhaps the only place they will meet order and civility. Samantha’s children are "surrounded by violence," she says. Many are not interested in learning, because at home, "everyone is dissing everybody, or staying up late to get high. My kids are so emotionally beat up, they don’t even know when they’re out of their seats." A structured classroom is their only hope to learn the rules that the rest of society lives by. To eliminate structure for kids who have none in their lives is to guarantee failure.
The point of government funding of schooling is to have literate and numerate citizens, from which we all benefit. The point of government provision of schooling-as with religious provision of schooling-is to inculcate beliefs (which cannot be ascertained directly) by controlling inputs (pdf). The “radical/progressive pedagogy” types are just following the logic of government provision. That it has the effect-along with teacher union interest in undermining accountability for outcomes (something which benefits bad teachers most)-of undermining the point of government funding, just shows how contradictory those genuinely concerned for schooling quality continuing to support government provision (with its inherent provider-as-regulator conflict of interest and notorious long-term falls in productivity [pdf]) is.
About what happens when you put the content back into education:
The “Massachusetts miracle,” in which Bay State students’ soaring test scores broke records, was the direct consequence of the state legislature’s passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, which established knowledge-based standards for all grades and a rigorous testing system linked to the new standards.
… Hirsch conducted an experiment on reading comprehension, using two groups of college students. Members of the first group possessed broad background knowledge in subjects like history, geography, civics, the arts, and basic science; members of the second, often from disadvantaged homes, lacked such knowledge. The knowledgeable students, it turned out, could far more easily comprehend and analyze difficult college-level texts (both fiction and nonfiction) than their poorly informed brethren could. Hirsch had discovered “a way to measure the variations in reading skill attributable to variations in the relevant background knowledge of audiences.”
This finding, first published in a psychology journal, was consistent with Hirsch’s past scholarship, in which he had argued that the author takes for granted that his readers have crucial background knowledge. Hirsch was also convinced that the problem of inadequate background knowledge began in the early grades. Elementary school teachers thus had to be more explicit about imparting such knowledge to students-indeed, this was even more important than teaching the “skills” of reading and writing, Hirsch believed. Hirsch’s insight contravened the conventional wisdom in the nation’s education schools: that teaching facts was unimportant, and that students instead should learn “how to” skills. …
In fact, Hirsch is and always has been a liberal Democrat. Far from being elitist, he insists, cultural literacy is the path to educational equality and full citizenship for the nation’s minority groups. “Cultural literacy constitutes the only sure avenue of opportunity for disadvantaged children,” Hirsch writes, and “the only reliable way of combating the social determinism that now condemns them to remain in the same social and educational condition as their parents. That children from poor and illiterate homes tend to remain poor and illiterate is an unacceptable failure of our schools, one which has occurred not because our teachers are inept but chiefly because they are compelled to teach a fragmented curriculum based on faulty educational theories.”
… “The Romantics were wonderful for poetry but wrong about life,” Hirsch tells me, “and they were particularly wrong about education.” European Romanticism, he argued in the book, “has been a post-Enlightenment aberration, a mistake we need to correct.”
… The scientific consensus showed that schools could not raise student achievement by letting students construct their own knowledge. The pedagogy that mainstream scientific research supported, Hirsch showed, was direct instruction by knowledgeable teachers who knew how to transmit their knowledge to students-the very opposite of what the progressives promoted.
… Last month, moreover, Klein unfurled the results of a study that compared ten city schools using the Core Knowledge reading program with schools using other curricula. The Core Knowledge kids achieved progress at a rate that was “more than five times greater,” Klein said, heaping praise on the program.
Naturally, of course, those who suffer most from “progressive” education are precisely those from the most marginal sections of society. But, if one has not worked out how much of modern progressivism is all about middle class folk arranging things for their own convenience, and asserting their superior status over working class folk, you have not worked out much about it.