Our Epidemic Of Ignorance Fueled In Part By Therapeutic Curriculum
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON | Posted Thursday, August 23, 2007 4:30 PM PT
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=272758497961483
Last week I went shopping in our small rural hometown, where my family
has attended the same public schools since 1896. Without exception,
all six generations of us — whether farmers, housewives, day laborers,
business people, writers, lawyers or educators — were given a good,
competitive K-12 education.
But after a haircut, I noticed that the 20-something cashier could not
count out change.
The next day, at the electronic outlet store, another young clerk
could not read — much less explain — the basic English of the buyer's
warranty. At the food market, I listened as a young couple argued over
the price of a cut of tri-tip — unable to calculate the meat's real
value from its price per pound.
As another school year is set to get under way, it's worth pondering
where this epidemic of ignorance came from.
Our presidential candidates sense the danger of this dumbing-down of
American society and are arguing over the dismal status of
contemporary education: poor graduation rates, weak test scores and
suspect literacy among the general population. Politicians warn that
America's edge in global research and productivity will disappear, and
with it our high standard of living.
Yet the bleak statistics — whether a 70% high school graduation rate
as measured in a study a few years ago by the Manhattan Institute for
Policy Research, or poor math rankings in comparison with other
industrial nations — come at a time when our schools inflate grades
and often honor multiple valedictorians at high school graduation
ceremonies. Aggregate state and federal education budgets are high.
Too few A's, too few top awards and too little funding apparently
don't seem to be our real problems.
Of course, most critics agree that the root causes for our
undereducated youth are not all the schools' fault. Our present
ambition to make every American youth college material — in a way our
forefathers would have thought ludicrous — ensures that we will both
fail in that utopian goal and lack enough literate Americans with
critical vocational skills.
The disintegration of the American nuclear family also is at fault.
Too many students don't have two parents reminding them of the value
of both abstract and practical learning.
What then can our elementary and secondary schools do, when many of
their students' problems begin at home or arise from our warped
popular culture?
We should first scrap the popular therapeutic curriculum that in the
scarce hours of the school day crams in sermons on race, class,
gender, drugs, sex, self-esteem and environmentalism. These are
well-intentioned efforts to make a kinder and gentler generation more
sensitive to our nation's supposed sins. But they only squeeze out far
more important subjects.
The old approach to education saw things differently than we do.
Education ("to lead out" or "to bring up") was not defined as being
"sensitive" to or "correct" on particular issues. It was instead the
rational ability to make sense of the chaotic present through the
abstract wisdom of the past.
So literature, history, math and science gave students plenty of
facts, theorems, people and dates to draw on. Then training in logic,
language and philosophy provided the tools to use and express that
accumulated wisdom. Teachers usually did not care where all that
training led their students politically — only that their pupils'
ideas and views were supported with facts and argued rationally.
What else can we do to restore such traditional learning before the
U.S. loses it global primacy?
To encourage each of our best minds to become a teacher, we should
also change the qualifications for becoming one. Students should be
able to pursue careers in teaching either by getting a standard
teaching credential or by substituting a master's degree in an
academic subject. That way we will eventually end up with more
instructors with real academic knowledge rather than prepped with
theories about how to teach.
Once hired, K-12 teachers should accept that tenure has outlived its
usefulness. Near-guaranteed lifelong employment has become an archaic
institution that shields educators from answerability. Tenure has not
ensured ideological diversity and independence.
Almost the opposite — a herd mentality — presides within many school
faculties. Periodic and renewable contracts — with requirements, goals
and incentives — would far better ensure teacher credibility and
accountability.
Athletics, counseling and social activism may be desirable in schools.
But they are not crucial. Our pay scales should reflect that reality.
Our top classroom teachers should earn as much as — if not more than —
administrators, bureaucrats, coaches and advisers.
Liberal education of the type my farming grandfather got was the
reason the U.S. grew wealthy, free and stable. Without it, the nation
of his great-grandchildren will become poor, docile and insecure.
--
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to
escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. -- Marcus Aurelius
Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net
.
|
