EDUCATION: when teachers are left to swing gently in the wind

What do we want from our schools? The obvious answer is an educated populace. The trouble is, we don't agree on what that education should amount to. Remember, what one person thinks is education, another thinks is indoctrination. Consider the kerfuffle over the signage at George Washington's Philadelphia house. The Trump administration objected to the existing signage, saying it overemphasized the role of slaves. The signage's defenders responded by saying they provide an accurate representation of how the house worked. What this controversy is really about, however, is "properly" educating the visitors. 

To demonstrate how much we differ when defining education, here are some competitors: 

"Education in virtue ... which makes a man eagerly pursue the ideal perfection of citizenship and teachers how to rightly rule and obey, this is the only education ... which deserves the name." Plato (c. 427-347 B.C.) Greek philosopher and seminal thinker.

"The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things — the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and genuine rather than the bad and counterfeit." Samual Johnson (1709-1784) British lexicographer, essayist and critic.

"Education, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men — the balance wheel of the social machinery." Horace Mann (1796-1859) American pioneer of public education.

"Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of nature."  Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) British naturalist who helped pioneer evolution theory.

"There can be no true education which is not wholly directed to man's last and ... there can be no ideally perfect education which is not Christian education." Pius XI (1857-1939) Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from 1922 to 1939)
"Education is the acquisition of the art and utilization of knowledge ... . There is only one subject-matter for education, and that is life in all its manifestations." Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) British philosopher and theoretical mathematician.

"Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and who is struck with it." Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) Soviet tyrant and mass murderer.

"Education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race. This begins unconsciously at birth, and is continually shaping the individual's powers, saturating his accomplishments, forming his habits, training his ideas, and arousing his feelings and emotions. ... The most formal and technical education in the world cannot safely depart from this general process, it can only organize it or differentiate it in some particular direction." John Dewey (1859-1952) American philosopher and educator.

These quotations, a small sampling of what is available, illustrate the fundamental disagreement concerning the nature of "education." The fact that they are international in origin should not cause us to think that purely American definitions would fare better. America is one of the most pluralistic countries on earth. As a consequence there is an amazing diversity of opinion that readily translates into conflicts and controversies about education, Of course there is widespread agreement that education is clearly about the acquisition of basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic. Unfortunately, however, there is little agreement regarding the ends these basic skills should serve. 

Ultimately, here is what we face. Whatever choices we make regarding education policy, they are going to generate controversies. That's why public school policy is so commonly reduced to vague generalizations that, at first glance, satisfy nearly everyone. The trouble arises with the details. That is what classroom teachers get stuck with. And be assured that whatever he or she chooses, if  it is anything significant, it will generate controversy. And that is when it does the higher ups are likely to scurry off and let the teacher swing gently in the wind.

SUICIDAL TOLERANCE: championing a judgement free world

The most “woke“ among us champion what might best be called "suicidal tolerance." Why suicidal? Because the foolishness they preach, essentially a judgement and ranking free world, would ultimately eradicate expertise and tolerance itself.

Whence springs their wooly-headed demand that value judgements and rankings must all perish? The main source is their conviction that values are mere “social constructs.” That leads them to jump wildly to the conclusion that cultures themselves are value free. And one is as good as any other. Yet some cultures are so violently intolerant that merely advocating tolerance, as these folks enthusiastically do, would get them killed. (Isis comes to mind.) That obvious fact somehow escapes them.

Paradoxically, women are among the most vocal boosters of this new-found religion. And among the the worst offenders are academic women. One wants to ask these females, so you don’t think it wrong to have some crone excise village girl’s clitoris’s with a razor blade? How about forbidding women to vote? Requiring them to be absolutely obedient to their husbands? To suffer death by stoning if thought to be guilty enough of adultery? Should these hyper-tolerant ladies disapprove of any such things, they cannot logically insist that cultural practices are value free! Still, they do..

In the real world, cultural practices often have weighty moral content. Attitudes regarding individualism provide one example. The fact that individualism has moral content is precisely why some cultures suppress it. They disapprove of the underlying value it places on individual perceptions, judgements and choices. The Taliban, for instance, permit nothing of the kind. For example, these zealous fanatics punish any individuals who question the smallest details of their very narrow interpretation of Islam. These true believers even forbid listening to music and flying kites — the later a very popular past time with Afghan children. Why? Because they perceive such enjoyment as having negative moral content.

So, of course cultural practices can have weighty moral value. And that is exactly why they do NOT have equal value. Just the opposite. In fact, that’s why cultures are more or less dysfunctional. Because of what they will or won’t tolerate and the human happiness or misery this spawns. 

The Taliban are a sterling example of a dangerously dysfunctional culture. Of course it’s intolerant to make such a claim. But, tolerance is not always desirable. After all, some practices, rape, honor killing, and genocide, for instance, are plainly intolerable. Even a Harvard professor should be able to see that. Although some don’t.

Let’s dig a little deeper into cultural relativism’s implications. A major one is that relativism opposes any rankings based on merit. Do you want your favorite baseball team to acquire a highly skilled pitcher. Would you prefer having your heart surgery performed by a highly skilled surgeon? Well, according to these believers in their secular religion, you are supporting existing racial and socioeconomic hierarchies. So does insisting these “woke” individuals be able to tell their ass from third base. And apparently most can’t.

A recent protest by Harvard students illustrates how far this silliness has advanced. Concerned that A’s now make up 60% of all Harvard course grades — up from 24% in 2005 — Harvard has now capped course A grades at 20%. This prompted a student petition asserting that assigning grades on the basis of performance creates “a system of ranking and sorting that mirrors and reinforces existing racial and socioeconomic hierarchies.”

To some extent it does mirror these hierarchies But far from perfectly. If it did, neither upward nor downward mobility would exist and both certainly do. For example, I know a woman who was born in a deep south home with a dirt floor and parents near the bottom of the social hierarchy. But, by dint of academic accomplishment, risk taking, good judgement and damn hard work, she now owns her own accounting firm and also is producing major motion pictures. Are there similar success stories? Of course there are. So the assumption that a system of ranking and sorting simply “mirrors and reinforces existing hierarchies” is plainly false. 

Besides, where would we be without ranking and sorting? We would find ourselves in a competence free world. Heart surgeons selected non-judgementally wouldn’t necessarily know a damn thing about what they were doing. Buildings and bridges would regularly collapse because they were designed by incompetent structural engineers. In short, we couldn’t rely on any specialized expertise whatsoever. What a nightmare.

Clearly a system without judging and ranking belongs in Lala land. So we must vigorously reject the judgement free style advocated by the most “woke” among us. Besides, these folks aren’t really woke at all — they’re dreaming! But as their crackpot social philosophy gains ascendence, their dream is becoming our nightmare.

ARE MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS A THREAT? an historical comparison

A significant number of Americans find Muslim immigration frightening. They see these newcomers as culturally incompatible, dangerously intolerant and potentially larcenous. Moreover, they imagine they are flooding into this country in unacceptable numbers. What should we make of this? Let’s look at it historically.

In the 19th century many Americans were similarly concerned about Roman Catholics, mostly Irish, pouring into an essentially Protestant America. One major worry was that these immigrants were obedient to a foreign monarch, the Pope. He directed an authoritarian and anti-Protestant institution that Protestants found especially threatening. They also asked how a people accustomed to religious
tyranny and intolerance could ever learn to live in democratic America? Wouldn’t these Catholics band together and become another America altogether? 

Then there was the sheer numbers of Irish Catholics immigrants. At the dawn of the Civil War the Catholic presence in America already exceeded the total population of the U.S. just 70 years prior. And their number quickly swelled to five million. That was a lot of culturally different people to absorb so quickly. But Irish Catholic immigrants, despite strident opposition, proved so capable of blending in to the fabric of the nation, understanding, embracing and even exploiting democracy, that a third generation Irish-American, John F. Kennedy, became the 35th President of the United States.

How have the Muslims done in contrast? Well there has never been an America without Muslims. But most of them arrived as slaves and soon lost this religion. Contemporary Muslims arrive in very different circumstances. Coming, as they do, directly from Muslim lands. These new arrivals pledge no allegiance to the equivalent of a Pope, nor even a unified religion. In fact in many areas there still are bloody disagreements among them about what it takes to even be a Muslim. But the one thing they aren't, is Christian. And that makes a decided difference in their reception.

First of all, there is not always a happy coexistence with Christians or the Western way of life. The most fanatical among them, a minority to be sure, want to convert all of the United States to Islam — if necessary, by the sword. And to institute their version of Sharia Law in place of current law. 

Of course internationally a comparatively small number of Muslims have proven to be murderous terrorists. Those who crashed passenger planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon being the most prominent But these perpetrators were foreign nationals. However, in many American’s minds terrorism links to Muslims. That’s certainly not fair. But it is still true. And that means a sizable segment of Americans will oppose more Muslim immigration.

That fanatical variety is certainly dangerous. But keep in mind that Muslim immigrants constitute a tiny fraction of the 19th and early 20th Century flood of Roman Catholics. In fact, the entire Muslim population of the United States amounts to less than 1% of America’s total population. Plus less than 5% of all immigrants currently entering the U.S. are Muslims. Of course, the dangerously fanatical among them is very small indeed.

What about present-day Muslim immigrants fitting in? Will they, unlike the Irish Catholics, prove durably alien? Will they become something of a separate America? Or will these Muslim immigrants prove to be solid American citizens, just like the Irish. We shall see.

Recently some Somali-Americans defrauded Minnesota and the United States government out of multiplied billions of dollars. This massive fraud is causing some Americans to link criminality and lousy citizenship to Muslims collectively. That’s certainly unfair. But if people believe it to be true, it will be true in its consequences.

Besides, the Irish-American experience suggests Muslims have no corner on immigrant criminality. Some immigrant Irish were gangsters of the first magnitude. In fact the Irish Mob once was one of the nation’s most notorious organized crime gangs. Later arriving Italian-Americans proved even more capable of organized criminality. So the Somali’s have no patent on that kind of behavior. 

However, a substantial number of Americans, especially those in the Bible Belt, regard the United States as a Christian nation For them, non-Christians are, ipso facto, un-American. A substantial number of these true believers even maintain that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. (A false belief constantly reinforced by right wing preachers.)  This despite the fact that some of America’s most influential founders like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Ethan Allen and Thomas Paine, were deists or rationalists. Plus the great majority of founders agreed that the United States should  NOT to have a state religion. However, this reality gives no pause for those who believe, or at least promote, the Christian American myth. 

 Looking back, though, many Americans once thought Irish-American Roman Catholic immigrants were a distinct threat. That has faded away. Does that mean Muslims will also attain, even desire, the same degree of integration? That remains to be seen.

"WOKE" RHETORIC AND THE SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY

Over emphasis on injustice backfires. It discourages the personal responsibility that is essential for meaningful growth. Become convinced you are a powerless victim and you will be. 

For instance, African-Americans have dealt with profound injustice in immoderate amounts for centuries. But repeated hammering on this injustice, by excessively "woke" educators, for instance, can trigger the self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Better known as the Thomas Theorem by sociologists, here is how it works. Put simply, when a situation is defined as true, it is true in its consequences. Why? Because outcomes depend as much on the individual’s perception of the situation as they do on the situation itself. Should a person believe that they are a hapless victim, they will behave accordingly. 

Human behavior is not defined by objective facts, but by how people view and make sense of those facts. So as "helpless" victims, they discount their own agency; their own ability, even their own degree of responsibility, for what happens in their lives. When that happens no oppressor is needed. The "oppressed" become their own oppressor. Seeing themselves as powerless, they do nothing but impatiently await salvation. And that can be a long wait indeed. 

I spent over 50 years as an educator. And one of the saddest and most disheartening aspects was watching the above happen over and over again. Instead of availing themselves of the opportunity a free education offered, too many kids, viewing effort as useless, turned their backs. And in so doing they threw away the very best life chance many of them will ever have. 

In 2025 providing this gift to all of America's kids cost the public an average of $17,000.00 per student per year. That's one hell of a present. And it's made repeatedly over 12 long years. Perhaps so many kids do so is because accepting that gift has been made compulsory — possibly a critical mistake. But whatever the reason, a dispiriting number of kids turn up their noses at a gift worth over $164,000.00 — actually far more considering inflation. 

Yes, school curricula, policies and procedures can be out of step with the world many of these kid's live in. But however imperfect it may be, schooling still provides them with a precious means of life enhancement. 

It's especially ironic that many of the kids I saw rejecting this opportunity are African-American. Are these kids aware that slave owners rigorously opposed any and all attempts to school "their property?" Do they know that enslavers also stifled any attempts by that "property" to learn on their own? Their enslavers knew that an education was potentially liberating. Too many of their descendants do not. 

Whatever our school's shortcomings, and there are many, they still offer one of the best opportunities for advancement many kids will ever have. But that opportunity can only by seized by youngsters who stay clear of self-pity, focus sharply on their own agency, and take full responsibility for their own behavior. And, ironically, the well meaning sympathy of the excessively "woke" undermines all of that. In trying to be supportive, they do these kids a profound disservice by preaching the gospel of defeat.

 

PUBLIC SCHOOLS: who's really in charge?

Until the 1920's America's public schools were chiefly a local responsibility. In the 1920's, for instance, some 162,800 local school districts were governed by locally elected lay people who raised the bulk of the revenue, enjoyed considerable autonomy and were responsive to local pressure. These days, state imposed consolidation has reduced that number by 88%, or a total of 13,598. Consequently local autonomy, control and sensitivity to local pressures have shrunk dramatically. 

At the same time school funding gradually shifted from the local to the state level — although the proportion varied from state to state. These days Vermont provides the most: 87%. Utah the least: 58%. The remaining balance of the funding falls mainly on local school districts. The federal government provides just 8%. 

Here's why this matters. Whoever pays, usually sets the rules. With state funding predominating, most key decisions are made at the state level. And when the federal government has gotten more and more involved. Local authorities often are not consulted in any meaningful way. Just told what they must do. These local authorities also are often required to pick up some, sometimes all, of the tab. (State and federal law-makers are fond of enacting one requirement or another then imposing much, sometimes all, of the cost of accomplishment it on local school districts.

There was a brief increase in federal funding beginning most markedly with the administration of George W. Bush — the self-styled "Education President." At this time the federal government increased education spending about 33% to 12% of the total. This further diminished state and local power by adding federal rules that went with the funding. As time when on, enthusiasm for education spending diminished and with it all the increased federal funding. Their rules, however, are still around. Consequently parents and local communities find themselves further and further removed from meaningful influence.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Another source of community and parental disempowerment is the ever decreasing number of schools and a concomitant  increase in the number of students per remaining schools. In 1920 there were some 190,000 public schools, k-12, with an average of 100 students per school. By 2020 there were only 131,000 public schools serving an average of 528 students per school. That's five times more students per school than in1920.  

As school populations grew, individual student differences became less and less important. The chances of a principal even knowing the name of every student, much less anything about them, shrank to nearly zero. Their knowledge of individual parents also shrank dramatically. 

So where does this leave us? With public schools that are less and less responsive to individual differences and more and more indifferent to community values. Who's really in charge? State and federal bureaucrats who are in the hire of state and federal legislators, that's who. Whether or not that's what we want, that's what we've got.

LEARNING WHAT THEY LIVE: not what they're told

Years ago the famed educational philosopher John Dewey tellingly observed that children "learn what they live." Teachers can drone on and on about democracy, for instance. But if they run a despotic classroom, the kids learn to adapt to it. Maybe even learn to need it. Dewey was precisely right. Children learn what they live.  

It's hard to overemphasize the importance of this "hidden curriculum." It is powerful, yet often overlooked. Lessons "taught" in this way can last a lifetime. The person who taught me the most about tyranny and abuse of power, for instance, was my fourth grade teacher, Miss Weast . (Behind her back we kids called her: "Miss Weast, the big fat beast.") Feared by all, this angry, defective, frustrated woman extorted compliance by means of threats and violence. A ruler across the knuckles of your out-stretched hand, for example. 

Eventually, she did go too far. She held a youngster against a hot steam radiator as punishment. His relatively minor burns did not get her fired, as you might expect. But she was transferred to another school. Not before she had unintentionally taught me about the abuse of power, however. I still remember that lesson well even though it was many, many years ago. 

Here's another example. This one concerning Catholic parish schools of the 1950's. In those days a number of overworked and under appreciated nuns bullied, slapped and otherwise mistreated the children in their charge. This taught the kids some unfortunate lessons. For instance, the little girl who lived next door to me developed severe school phobia even though she was never touched herself. She learned school was dangerous. 

I'm not sure what these nuns thought they were doing. Making 'better' Catholics, perhaps. But in this girl's case they taught her that the sermonizing about Christian love, mercy and forgiveness, was all talk. She also learned that it's not what people say, but what they do that counts. Valuable lessons, to be sure. But hardly included in the official curriculum.

Here's still another instance involving an entirely different circumstance. As a professor of education I visited a lot of inner city schools. Most were chaotic. In some the turmoil was so bad that learning was nearly impossible and personal safety doubtful. Evidently those in charge lacked the power and/or will to impose meaningful consequences for gross misbehavior. What did youngsters learn while enduring this chaos? That bullies rule? That might makes right? That there is no point in even trying to learn? That the real world is not even close to what it's supposed to be? Take your pick. 

Do children learn what they live? Count on it. So what did you learn from the "hidden curriculum" you experienced?

COMPULSORY EDUCATION: has it turned out to be a disasterous mistake?

Has compulsory education turned out to be a disastrous mistake?  That essential question remains oddly unaddressed. This is most peculiar, given the serious school problems that unmotivated, disruptive, sometimes openly hostile, kids create when compelled to attend. They learn little, waste prodigious amounts of taxpayer's money and disrupt the entire process. 

To learn, ya gotta wanna. And those who must be compelled to even attend, generally don't wanna. They are the kids "graduating" from high school who still can barely read. Moreover, they are frequently truant. In fact truancy rates in many, perhaps most, inner-city schools, are comically high. 

Wouldn't it be far better if these "students" weren't there? Better for whom? Better for those who want to learn, certainly. And better for their teachers as well. But there seems to be little concern about the fate of the motivated kids, or their teachers,; both of whom pay an unacceptably high price for the disruptive presence of these others. The focus is typically on motivating the disrupters. Those whose behavior causes serious problems, sometimes physical danger, for everyone around them.  

We waste enormous amounts of tax money continuing this process. The latest 2022-2023 data shows the average cost of "educating" a youngster in a U.S. public school is some $163,000.00. Now, imagine giving a child a gift worth about $13,600 per year for twelve or more years and have them refuse to even open it, or possibly destroy it. Not just their own gift, mind you., but other's gifts as well by making it impossible for them to learn. This is what we've been doing, year after year, decade after decade, for well-over a century. 

When "students" are compelled, educators must at least try to force-feed them. Sure, some initially unwilling kids can be coaxed to learn. But this coaxing is so time consuming and costly that it is impractical in a typical classroom. After all, our public schools are, for cost control purposes, run like factories. And factories run very poorly when the raw material is uncooperative, even hostile. Painstaking efforts to seduce uncooperative learners disrupts the production process and consumes vast quantities of scarce resources better used educating the willing. Nevertheless, we  pretend that compulsory education is working — or at least should be working. So we go on forcing kids to attend, then pretending they are learning.

Meanwhile legislators and judges, safe in their offices, have stripped teachers of any ability to impose meaningful sanctions for misbehavior. So they can't even coerce a semblance of civilized behavior from the disruptive. Worse, a similarly emasculated school administration offers besieged teachers little help. Some of these administrators even side with the malefactors. And so it goes, with turmoil and wastage rolling on and on. 

Folks worry that if we abandon compulsory education, menacing kids will roam the streets threatening the peace. That has some validity. Although, because of truancy, a lot of disruptive, potentially dangerous kids aren't in school to begin with — especially when the weather is nice. But, and here's a key point, it is NOT  the school's proper businesses to conduct part-time incarceration. The school's distinctive function is to educate, not incarcerate. And it is way past time to face up to the fact that when educators try to do both, they often can do neither?

In Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District (2017) ruled that schools must provide educational services that are reasonably designed to enable students to make progress appropriate in light of their circumstances. But what counts as "reasonably designed?" Suppose, for instance, a student is failing to make educational progress because his mother is a crack whore who is abusively neglectful and the absent father's identity is a multiple choice question? There are tens of thousands of kids facing similar situations in what passes for their home. And, of course, they are often among the kids who reject and disrupt the educational process. Is there any "reasonable design" possible for them, given available resources and a factory style setting? 

Let's take a fresh look at this and ask why we continue to spend billions upon billions of dollars every year trying to force-feed knowledge to kids who not only resist and resent it, but often also prevent their classmates from learning. Isn't it time to consider public education to be a privilege rather than a right?  After all, the public is providing these youngsters and their parent(s) with free expensivn services.

Of course day care is another largely unacknowledged function of public schooling. Teachers spend an average of 7 hours a day providing that service. Given a class of, say, 25, that means an elementary school teacher is providing day care 175 hours a day or 875 hours per week. That's 31,500 total hours of day care per school year. If the teacher were paid $15 an hour per child, he or she would have earned $472,500.00!

Ignoring the difficulties created by compelling attendance, school districts adopt truancy prevention programs. They are, in effect, encouraging the attendance of potential troublemakers. A major justification of these programs is that truancy breeds broader social problems. It's asserted, for instance, that 95% of juvenile offenders started as truants. We're told that truants are more likely to:

• join a gang running the risk of disease, injury or death; 
• use marijuana, alcohol and hard drugs; 
• become pregnant and drop out of school; 
• have low self-esteem, low aspirations, and educational failure; 
• be illiterate or have serious trouble reading; 
• engage in violent and criminal activities. 

But every one of these assertions suffers from the same fatal flaw. Just because these things correlate, does NOT mean the one causes the other. All juvenile offenders start out as babies, for instance. But does starting life as a baby cause a youngster to become a juvenile offender? Of course not. Correlation is NOT causation. 

Why assume, for instance, that gang membership begins with truancy? Isn't it more likely that gang membership encourages truancy?  The same applies to marijuana, alcohol and hard drug use. Sure, truants are more likely to engage in these behaviors. But why assume that it is truancy that causes them to do so? Are truants more likely to become pregnant and drop out of school? Sure they are; but is truancy the cause? 

As for low self-esteem, low aspirations, and educational failure, isn't it more likely that these things provoke truancy, rather than cause it?  The same applies to serious reading difficulties. And as for kids that engage in violence and criminal activities, don't blame truancy, blame lousy parenting, dysfunctional families, broken homes, poverty, violent neighborhoods, the illicit economic opportunities created by making certain intoxicants illegal, ad infinitum.

Truancy prevention stops being a problem if we quit compelling school attendance to begin with. We've grown used to kids rejecting, even actively destroying, the extremely expensive educational opportunities taxpayers provide. In fact, this sort of behavior is so commonplace in some schools that the educational process is largely a pretense. Teachers pretend to teach and administrators pretend to running a school. Meanwhile standardized testing proves that the whole thing has become a farce. Isn't it time to ask if this very expensive endeavor has failed and, instead, concentrate on effectively teaching those youngsters who are willing to at least try to learn?