WHAT WILL LIMIT SCHOOLS OF THE FUTURE?

 

Sixteen years ago an editorial in the New York Times promised that in the schools of the future:

• "students will use free internet applications to complete their classroom assignments on school-issued laptops that also substitute for text books"
• "educators will track students' academic growth with sophisticated software that allows them to better tailor lessons and assignments to each youngster's achievement level"
• "parents will use instant messaging to chat with teachers about their child's progress"

In a few schools all of this has been realized and more besides. But in many others a fundamental limitation is nullifying it all. It's the kids, their parents, and the world they're growing up in. Youngsters still have to buy into schooling before technology can even begin to transform their education. And kids with all sorts of education-stultifying problems weren't buying into schooling before the advent of digital technology, they aren't buying into it now despite the promise, and they won't buy into it in the future. Similarly their parents have to be capable. Many aren't. And, lastly, the neighborhood surrounding each school seeps in and inevitably transforms the educational process for good or ill . 

This is particularly true of schools that most urgently require transformation. Schools in our inner cities. Technology hasn't transformed these schools. They haven't become more successful delivering instruction. They aren't doing better communicating with parents or fostering their interest. With rare exceptions, these schools remain the same educational wastelands they were before the advent of the digital age.

Here is a brief tale that illustrates the point. A teacher I know very well was trying to teach in a Philadelphia inner city middle school that was technologically impoverished. Through some miracle one solitary classroom had been equipped with brand new computers at every desk. One morning while classes were changing, two adolescent boys began chasing one another around the computer rich classroom. Soon they were leaping from one desktop to another, trampling keyboards and kicking over computers. Perhaps the boys had that intent before they even started. We'll never know. In any event they wrecked utter havoc. There was no money to replace or repair the damaged equipment. The computerized classroom was defunct before its promise was even beginning to be realized. 

The vandals were never identified, much less dealt with. Disorder was so rife in this school that this particular destruction just blended into the customary chaos. Whatever promise the new computers offered was lost to all. Students could not, as the Times article promised, "use free internet applications to complete their classroom assignments" had they even wanted to. Worse still, kids who actually wanted to complete their assignments were in surprisingly short supply. On nice days as many as a third of the youngsters were either hours late reporting for class, or failed to show up at all. 

So far as teachers being able to "track student's academic growth with sophisticated software that allowed them to better tailor lessons and assignments to each youngster's achievement level," that's not just impossible now, it will be in the future — at least at the secondary level. Teachers there are trying to teach upwards of 150 kids spread over five different periods, each with 30 or so kids. Keeping track of all 150 is impossible now and will be in the future. In fact, it will remain impossible so long as we organize public education on a factory like, mass production basis to make it affordable. And we're not about to stop doing that because tax payers, particularly those without school-age children, are already fed up with school taxes.

So far as "parents using instant messaging to chat with teachers about their child's progress," that pipedream requires their parents to have the necessary technology, interest, sobriety, time and freedom from the thousand and one problems that poverty brings. Good luck with that!

What is one to make of all this? That schools and school kids do NOT exist in a vacuum. The world surrounding the school creeps into each classroom mirroring the neighborhoods in which the school is submerged. IF that neighborhood is impoverished, dangerous and dysfunctional no amount of technological innovation is going to save that school from the consequences. If the school is submerged in a neighborhood of affluence, safety and functional families technological innovations will only widen the gap.  

 

For more detailed realistic considerations of educational issues such as this, visit newfoundations.com AND/OR newfoundations.net

THE LIMITS OF INDOCTRINATION: nuns and woke professors

"I just tuned them out."

A worried Israeli émigré once told me her daughter’s Modern Middle East History professor — Jewish, but very woke — consistently condemned Israel. The mother worried that her daughter, born and raised in Israel, would come to despise the land of her birth. 

I opined that most students of college age long ago learned to discount disagreeable instruction. For instance, I knew a woman who experienced 8 years of Catholic schooling conducted by 1950's era take-no-prisoners nuns. Nevertheless, she remained largely ignorant and disregardful of Catholic doctrine." I asked how she preserved her ignorance, given years of Roman Catholic indoctrination. She explained that when she questioned what was being taught, she was either ignored or reproached. Ultimately, she just quit listening. "I tuned them out!" she said. Hence her triumphant ignorance of the "one true faith."

 Pressed for details, the woman specifically recalled being taught that it was a grave sin to save the life of the mother if it required sacrificing the life of her unborn child. Disturbed, she asked what if the mother had other children and a husband who loved and needed her? Her query was met with a reproach. She also remembered being taught that babies are born infected with original sin. She thought it terrible to condemn newborns who are obviously innocent. By this time, though, she had learned not to object. 

This is one way indoctrination falls flat. Done ham-handedly, it can even provoke obdurate opposition. For instance, when I was ten or eleven I asked my Sunday school teacher what happens when people die without ever hearing of Jesus? (I was thinking of very remote areas, like New Guinea.) She replied matter-of-factly, "They go to hell." I said that this didn’t seem fair. She responded by quoting John 14:6 in which Jesus reportedly says: “No man cometh unto the father but by me.” I blurted out that this still seemed unfair. She replied coldly that fairness had nothing to do with it. Adding crossly: “This is not a debating society. If you are unhappy with God's answer, perhaps you shouldn't be here.” I decided she was right.

My usual Sunday school offering, 50 cents, bought 10 pinball games, not counting the free games I won, at a near-bye corner store. I played Sabbath pinball for several weeks. Then my mother found out. I thought I was in serious trouble. But when she heard what. happened, she granted absolution. Evidently she too thought it unfair for anyone to burn for eternity in hell on an ignorance rap. Eventually we both quit going to that church. Indoctrination can backfire. 

Professors, teachers, parents and the general public all tend to overestimate the durability and effectiveness of instruction. In my 46 years as a professor I taught thousands of undergraduates; and I was repeatedly astonished by how little of what they had previously “learned” they actually remembered. Many of them, for instance, found it impossible to simply convert their raw test score, say, 39 correct out of 50, to a percentage. Yet they'd ""learned" that in middle school. Similarly, most could not identify the combatants in World Wars I or II. Only a handful knew the decade of the Great Depression. Many could not find China on an outline map. One thought that France was our northern neighbor because, “people speak French up there.” Another opined that Heinrich Himmler must be the chap who invented that life saving maneuver for people choking on food. 

That famed lifesaver, Heinrich Himmler

These kids were college sophomores who easily mastered complex social media applications and identified every single Kardashian. Yet most of them manifested little applicable knowledge of what  is typically taught in school. 

Worse still, transforming these "students" instrumental interest in merely passing tests into an intrinsic interest in knowledge itself was very difficult. It was like trying to make a dog happy by manually wagging its tail. 

Such undergraduates are certainly not easily influenced by a biased lecturer. In fact, they are seldom influenced long-term by any instruction.

I doubt my 46-years of experience with academic amnesia and disinterest is unusual. In fact I’ll wager student ignorance of past instruction is quite commonplace. This is precisely why university administrators would rather fight rabid pit bulls barehanded than require undergraduates to pass a core subjects knowledge test as a condition for a degree. Merely mentioning such a procedure puts most of these educational "leaders" at risk of a myocardial infarction.

How is any of this pertinent to our émigré mother’s worries? Well, given the perishable nature of most school taught knowledge, it is unlikely that this politically correct pedagogue is going to convert her Israeli-born daughter to an anti-Israel stance. To be sure, his impassioned denunciations of Israel will probably motivate at least some students to admire Hamas, , when in a mob, eagerly shout "From the river to the sea!" But, even then, they are unlikely to be able to identify either body of water or to hold on to that view when it's no longer a popular way to look righteous. 

Yasser Arafat

Is it proper for professors to conduct class in a one-sided manner? Not when the issue is multi-faceted. But it’s not like these students are living in regimes where only one point of view prevails. And it is only in societies where just one point of view is permitted and all others silenced under penalty of death or imprisonment that indoctrination is likely to succeed in the long term.

Yes, it has become true that one-sidedness does prevail in some college departments where Woke has become the official religion. In fact in some colleges the administration actually tolerates, even endorses, this new dogma. Whenever this prevails, our Israeli expatriate should start worrying. So should the rest of us.